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Haiti tunes in after clashes
12/12/2003 18:48 - (SA)
Port-Au-Prince - Two Haitian radio stations resumed news broadcasts on Friday, a day after halting them amid threats, while government backers set up flaming-tyre barricades and students planned new anti-government protests.
The government says the latest protests are meant to spoil state-sponsored celebrations for Haiti's bicentennial on January 1.
The United States embassy was temporarily closed on Friday for security purposes, said officials, and university students called a third day of protests demanding the ousting of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Police were posted outside four radio station that had suspended broadcasts when government supporters made death threats a day earlier.
Radio Metropole and Vision 2000 resumed broadcasts on Friday morning while Radio Caraibes and Radio Kiskeya said they planned to follow soon.
Many stores were closed after thousands of university students poured into the streets on Thursday in what was believed to be the largest anti-government demonstration in the capital in recent years.
Police fired teargas to break up Thursday's demonstrations, in which at least eight students were wounded.
'This is an example of democracy'
A bystander was shot and killed on Thursday in a separate protest in western Gonaives.
As government backers set alight tyre barricades and planned a counter-demonstration Friday, governing party senator Clones Lans said "this is an example of democracy".
"Aristide partisans have the right to express themselves, too. We are for the respect of the constitution and elections," Lans said.
"They (government opponents) are for a coup d'etat."
Student protests also contributed to the fall of President Elie Lescot in 1946 and dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986.
Government supporters, some of them armed, stepped down from trucks that brought them to the centre of the capital on Friday, shouting: "Aristide for five years!"
The opposition refuses to take part in new elections unless Aristide steps down. The president, however, says he will serve out his term, which ends in 2006.
At barricades, some government backers reportedly harassed drivers.
Haiti's government has been locked in a stalemate with the opposition since flawed 2000 legislative elections that the opposition charged were rigged.
Paying only lip service
Since mid-September, clashes during anti-government protests have killed at least 18 people and wounded scores.
A government commission is investigating violence during a university protest last Friday, when more than 24 people were injured.
Andy Apaid jun, a civil society leader, said: "The government's idea of democracy is to pay lip service to democratic values and to do something else."
Aristide, a former priest, was deposed in a military coup in 1991 and restored in a United States invasion in 1994.
He stepped down in 1996 due to a term limit and was re-elected by a landslide in 2000.
- AP
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