26011: Raber (reply) Re: 26009: Craig (news) U.N. condemns 'lynching' in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: PM Raber <raber88@zoominternet.net>

Back in the late1990's I witnessed such lynchings in the Gressier area first 
hand.  The armed bandits were hunted on foot, horses and bicycles.  Once, the 
police arrived and tried to take  6 men the people had captured away but the 
mob of hundreds attacked the police and even pulled one man out of the police 
car.  They were chopped up and burried on the spot.   When the people have no 
real justice and protection, they will eventually take matter into their own 
hands.  When they are fed up. It will take military intervention to keep them 
from carrying out mob.   Mob justice did work for them as violent crime was 
rare in that area.  The criminals knew that even if they could outfox the 
police, the could not win a gun fight against hundreds with machetes.   I was 
rather upset the first time I witnessed this but later on, was able to 
understand that when one is poor and hungry, there are not many pleasures left. 
People will put their life on the line to protect their freedom to move about 
safely in most provincial towns especially when it involved going to market. 
The Port-au-Prince people have been doing nothing while neighbors audibly get 
raped and killed next door.  They have realized that the UN and the police are 
not doing anything, and that they could be next. They have gone back to the old 
country solution.   This is a more primitive version of "neighborhood watch". 
If the thugs are just taken away by the police, what is the guarantee that the 
people who turn them in will not suffer retaliation when the thugs pay off 
their captors of get loose for whatever reason?

These are desperate solutions.  Think!  If you are ever on a plane and it gets 
hijacked.  Will you sit as they fly it into buildings or will you try and take 
the plane down?