By Michael Morton
“Toto must go! Toto must go!” they shouted as they walked up 225th Street to the man's reputed residence near 137th Avenue. The protesters carried wanted posters of the man with charges of “murder” and a “rape.”
Emmanuel “Toto” Constant, co-founder of the Revolutionary Front for Haitian Advancement and Progress, or FRAPH, is accused of human rights abuses during the early 1990s in Haiti, where he was convicted in absentia in 1994 for a massacre that year.
“Why is it that in the middle of the war on terror we have a known terrorist living in New York?” asked Ron Daniels, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a Manhattan-based group that helped organize the protest.
Daniels said American leaders could not speak about democracy, human rights and justice while Constant walks free. “These are the kinds of contradictions we face in this country,” he said.
Human Rights Watch has reported that Constant's group, FRAPH, was responsible for executions, torture and rape during military rule in Haiti between 1991 and 1994.
According to the rights organization and news reports, Constant was convicted in Haiti in 1994 of murder after the military regime was displaced following U.S. intervention to restore the democratically elected Jean Bertrand-Aristide to power. Aristide had been deposed in a coup in 1991.
Constant allegedly fled to the United States with a tourist visa before he was caught and went into hiding in Queens, reportedly at the home of an aunt or his mother. In 1995 the U.S. government bowed to demands from Haitian activists and the press and arrested him, and an immigration judge ordered him deported to Haiti.
In 1996, however, Constant was released from jail, with Immigration and Naturalization Services saying that deporting him to Haiti would place too great a strain on the legal system there.
At the protest Saturday, the organizers said Constant threatened to go public with details about CIA involvement in Haiti, leading to a deal. Constant has acknowledged he received payments from the agency, according to news reports.
“Their intent is to let him melt into the population,” Daniels said of the American government.
A similar protest was held in 2000, and Daniels said current events in Haiti spurred his group to act.
“The organization he heads has resurfaced in Haiti,” Daniels said, adding that while he once wanted Constant deported, now he wants the United States to arrest and keep him here.
Former President Aristide resigned on Feb. 29 under pressure from France and the United States as an armed uprising engulfed a large swath of Haiti.
The interim government has yet to crack down on former FRAPH members and others accused of past abuses, said Joanne Mariner, deputy director of the Americas for Human Rights Watch. She said FRAPH members were deported from the United States when Aristide was in power, but most have now escaped Haitian jails.
Mariner said Constant might go free if he, too, were returned to Haiti and that under American law Constant could be sued by alleged torture victims but not arrested without being deported.
Daniels said the previous march had drawn more protesters but that FRAPH members in Queens had filmed the demonstration and then threatened marchers and their relatives in Haiti. He said some FRAPH supporters lived in Laurelton, but most Haitians wanted Constant arrested.
“This community is loaded with Haitians, but people are scared,” Daniels said.
Across the street from Constant's reputed home, a neighbor who asked to be called Ms. S., said Constant had moved away after the 2000 protest.
But he continues to be spotted in the area in places such as a realty firm in Cambria Heights and a Long Island Rail Road platform in Baldwin, L.I., people at the protest said.
“I don't think anybody realized he was here,” the neighbor said about Constant's time on 225th Street before the previous protest.
Reach reporter Michael Morton by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by calling 718-229-0300, Ext. 154.
