29 to 30 September 1991 · Haitianspan
The shooting starts at Freres and Sylvio Claude is burned alive
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Trouble began on 29 September 1991 at the army base at Freres outside Port-au-Prince and at the Cafeteria barracks. The radio stations went off the air. In Cayes that night Sylvio Claude, an opposition leader who had survived years of Duvalierist prisons, was burned to death after leaving a political meeting. The next morning soldiers opened fire on Aristide's house in the suburbs of the capital, where he was resting after his trip to the United Nations. Troops still loyal to him reached the house around noon with an armoured personnel carrier. The French ambassador, Jean-Rafael Dufour, rode beside him for the six miles to the National Palace while the convoy was shot at along the way. Somewhere in the course of the same day Roger Lafontant was killed in his cell at the national penitentiary, and it was said afterwards that the order had come from Aristide in the last hours he held the office. Seven months of elected government in Haiti had ended.
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