Progressive Priest Assassinated

Haiti Progres, This Week in Haiti, Vol. 16, no. 20, 5—11 August 1998

On Aug. 3 around 11 a.m., two unidentified armed men shot and killed Father Jean Pierre Louis near the religious center he directed, the Ecumenical Service for Popular Development (SEDEP) on Avenue du Chilie near the Place de Jeremie in Port-au-Prince.

The killers had apparently followed Father Pierre Louis, known as Ti Jean, in his black Toyota pick-up after he left the branch of Unibank at the corner of Rue Cameau and Rue Capois to drive to his office nearby. Before he could get out from behind the steering wheel, the assailants shot him in the mouth and heart and then stole his briefcase and money, according to state radio.

His family took the mortally wounded priest to the Canape Vert hospital, but doctors there could not revive him.

Before the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986, Father Pierre Louis was the cure of the Savanette parish, where he was accused of being a communist and persecuted by authorities. In later years, he was a close friend and collaborator of democracy activist Father Jean Marie Vincent, who was assassinated in a very similar ambush in 1994.

Ti Jan was also close to former priest and former president Jean Bertrand Aristide. A spokesperson for the Aristide Foundation for Democracy said that news of the killing made them very hurt and very sad and charged that Father Pierre Louis’s murder was political, saying that the people who are against change and who have been spreading death around the country finally succeeded in assassinating him.