Baby Doc: I Brought Democracy to Haiti

“When people talk to me about tyranny, it makes me laugh,” the former dictator said.

Call it an attempt to reframe the debate. In his first interview since returning to Haiti from exile in Paris, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier claimed that people misremembered his regime and that he had helped bring democracy to his country. Speaking to Spanish-language network Univision, Duvalier dismissed the suggestion that he was a tyrant or that the $6 million he has in a Swiss bank account was misappropriated, but when asked about the infamous Tontons Macoute militia, he told the interviewer to move on to the next question. The infamous security force is believed to have killed 30,000 people during Duvalier’s 15-year regime. Duvalier is facing theft and corruption charges after making a shock return to Haiti last month.