Dead at 63 - Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier, once Haiti's "President for Life"

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Duvalier was 19 when he assumed the post of "President for Life,” as he called it.

He never apologized for the atrocities committed under his government, including brutal crackdowns on opponents at the hands of the feared Tonton Macoutes civilian militia.
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His rule, based on a purged military, a rural militia known as the Tonton Macoute and the use of a personality cult and voodoo, resulted in the murder of an estimated 30,000 Haitians and the exile of many more.
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Perodicticus potto said:

I highly recommend Alan Whicker's 1968 documentary on Papa Doc:

http://youtu.be/Nnm0GWv1mVk

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Jean-Claude Duvalier was born in Port au Prince on July 3 1951, six years before his father came to power in a presidential election. François Duvalier’s leadership was hailed as a new beginning for Haiti. The ruling classes had always looked to Paris, and Duvalier, as a black descendant of slaves, seemed to offer a new sense of national identity and pride.

The honeymoon was short-lived. Recognising the popular appeal of voodoo brought by the slaves from Africa, he recruited a private army, the sinister Tontons Macoutes (Creole for “bogeymen&#8221 to hold the population in submission through a combination of terror and magic.
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His son Jean-Claude had an early taste of Haitian political life in 1963, when there was an abortive attempt to kidnap him from his school. In reprisal, his father was reported to have ordered the execution of 100 people, including 65 army officers.
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As his father became ill with heart disease, diabetes and incipient insanity, the country was asked to endorse Jean-Claude as his heir, and in 1971 Haitians approved his selection with a vote of 2,391,916 to one.
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Amused foreign reporters dismissed him as "Baby Doc", the son of his fearsome father, President François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, who had terrorised Haiti for 15 years until dying peacefully in bed. The name stuck and humiliation was ensured.

He was born in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. After a failed "kidnapping" of him and another sister as schoolchildren, the obese and gormless Jean-Claude, a poor student, was next heard of in 1971 when his ailing father named him as the country's next "president-for-life" and had him endorsed in a rigged referendum (2,391,916 to one, with two abstentions).
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