Baby Doc Finally Speaks Out, as Haitians Settle in to New Life

Former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier spoke out on Friday, Jan. 21, about his sudden return to Haiti after nearly 25 years in exile.

Duvalier said that he wanted to help in Haiti's reconstruction following last year's devastating earthquake. This was the defamed dictator's first speech since his .

Many Haitian-Americans in Brooklyn – a borough that boasts the largest Haitian population outside of Haiti – remembered Duvalier's regime as a repressive and scary time, and called for his arrest.

"He should have never come back," said Marcrooseler Sylla, a Bed-Stuy resident who was born in Haiti and left at the age of five. Sylla said he remembers his childhood in Haiti as a time when his family lived in fear and held a hatred for the dictator until they were able to leave for America. He recalls whispers of neighbors disappearing and feeling as though they had to walk on pins and needles.

"He was our boogie man back then," said Sylla.

In his speech that he delivered from a rented guest house in Port-au-Prince, he apologized for any wrongdoings of his administration, offered sympathy for those who suffered as a consequence of his regime and said he was ready for any kind of "persecution."

"When I made the decision to come back to Haiti to commemorate this sad anniversary with you, in our country, I was ready for any kind of persecution," said Duvalier. "But I believe that the desire to participate by your side in this collaboration for the national reconstruction far outweighs any harassment I could face."

"I express my profound sadness toward my countrymen who consider themselves rightly, to have been victims of my government," he said.

Duvalier expressed regret for any of his countrymen who were "killed, burned, grilled, tortured by 'Pe Lebrun'" — the Haitian slang term for placing a tire around someone's neck and setting it on fire — or who lost their property in revenge against his regime following his exile.

He concluded with a statement that seemed to imitate Martin Luther King, stating he envisioned a day when "all Haiti's children, men and women, old and young, rich and poor, from the interior and from the Diaspora, can march hand in hand without exclusion to participate together in Haiti's rebirth."

Meanwhile, in the midst of Duvalier's two-week long distraction, the people of Haiti have begun to resolve themselves to the reality that aid may not come after all. Others feel that if it does, it will be a long while before it arrives.

As a result, many of the earthquake victims have begun erecting thousands of makeshift homes out of flat wood and metal frames, reminiscent of apartheid-era shantytowns. A burgeoning black market and free health clinics also are another sign that residents are settling into the idea that it may be a while before life gets better.