In Port-au-Prince, French diplomats, like those from the United States a day prior, were characterized as racists by a considerable number of Haitian citizens that reacted to the news of the incident around the French embassy.
Reports from eye-witnesses on that Friday morning is that a half dozen or so students organized a sit-in protest in front of the Embassy of France in Haiti. They were denouncing the continued corrosive interventions of French diplomats into Haiti's internal affairs.
French Ambassador José Gomez is alleged to have personally called the police chief in the area of Champ de Mars. A zealous group within the police force were dispatched and said to have arrived brutalizing the young people taking part in a non-violent demonstration.
Four of the students were ultimately arrested and taken directly to the National Penitentiary as opposed to the local police stateion. The penitentiary is a place where prisoners and sometimes political detainees go to be forgotten in a system termed by the international community as 'prolonged pre-trial detention'.
Through the outrage of the population, intervening on various news programs and radio stations, and by the grace of human rights lawyers, a justice of the peace issued a release order by 2:30 PM Friday afternoon. But by Saturday morning, the students were still imprisoned. An individual calling into Radio Caraïbes said the French Embassy had again intervened, calling officials at the penitentiary, to block the release of the students.
The French diplomats published a note and sent it wide throughout the press. The note said "the French Embassy firmly rejects the malicious, totally unfounded rumors that it has asked for the arrest of students participating in a demonstration. Its premises were the subject of violent attacks without any justification on October 26."
No images or footage of damage or an attack have been made public as of yet. The French Embassy in Port-au-Prince is situated in a zone vast in closed-captioned cameras throughout its vicinity and neighboring streetings according to one familiar with embassy operations who spone on Saturday.
Fresh grafitti was observed on the outer façades of the French mission on Saturday morning. Slogans such as
Remember Vertieres,
They are still the same people,
Do not touch our comrades, was spray painted seemingly in retalition to the incident.
Haitians have come to regard the repeated violations and interferences of France, U.S., United Nations, among other diplomats in Haiti, as racism. Their practices are prohibited by the Vienna Convention and are not accepted anywhere else in the world but in Haiti. Haitians have more frequently, in recent months, exclaimed their hurt and discouragement at the realization of continuing racist behavior by the diplomats in Haiti.
In September, Senator Nenel Cassy (Fanmi Lavalas - Nippes) identified a U.S.-led group of diplomats calling themselves "The Core Group" as
principle purveyors of such racist behaviors in Haiti. He made the declarations following "meetings of intimidation" with opposition leaders, as characterized by Haitian political analysts at the time.
