=?x-unknown?q?27376=3A__Esser=3A_=28news=29_Haiti=3A_Hopes_fo?==?x-unknown?q?r_a_Peaceful_Alternative_as_the_UN_Plans_to?==?x-unknown?q?_Invade_Cit=E9_Soleil__=28fwd=29?=

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser

The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com/Issue40/article1580.html

January 25, 2006


Haiti: Hopes for a Peaceful Alternative as the UN Plans to Invade
Cité Soleil
An Interview with Frank Eaton, Filmmaker and Kidnapping
Victim

By Jeb Sprague
Special to The Narco News Bulletin

“I think they are going to kill a lot of innocent people when they
[the UN MINUSTAH forces] go into Cité Soleil. It’s going to be like
Fallujah. They are going to kill a lot of innocent people. I remember
being in there, I realized, wow a lot of people are going to die in
here. I realized I was a survivor.”

-Frank Eaton

Documentary filmmaker Frank Eaton, 30, of Winston-Salem, North
Carolina, was kidnapped and held for three days in Cité Soleil, a
slum in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. Along with his friend, Alain
Maximilien, a Haitian radio disc jockey, they were freed after his
captors received $20,000, 10 pairs of shoes and a radio on December
31, 2005. The story of his experience was repeated across the media.
News coverage of kidnappings in Haiti has continuously focused on
fear and brutality, or what Eaton calls “the pornography of
violence,” and has rarely shown the context behind the ongoing
conflict and kidnappings.

The United Nations MINUSTAH (French abbreviation for United Nations
Stabilization Mission in Haiti) force, under the Security Council
adopted resolution 1529 (2004), entered Haiti following the overthrow
of the democratically elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in
Feb. 2004. MINUSTAH includes military and police contingents of more
than 9,000 people from over 40 countries under the leadership of
Brazil and Canada.

While being involved in numerous running gun battles with groups of
young men in Cité Soleil, MINUSTAH has been implicated in and
admitted to the killing of numerous innocent civilians – what the UN
on January 9, 2006 called “collateral victims.” Hundreds of Haitians
interviewed claimed to have been shot by the United Nations and in a
recent report allegations have emerged that UN forces have attacked
the only hospital in Cité Soleil. Cité Soleil is home to somewhere
between 250,000 and 400,000 people living in abject poverty. Leslie
Bagg and Aaron Lakoff write in their recent article, “Haiti’s Deadly
Class Divide”:

According to Jean-Joseph Joel, the Secretary General of the local
branch of Fanmi Lavalas, the area’s residents are virtual prisoners,
and their movements restricted by armed police at checkpoints.
Vilified as bandits or chimeres by the elite-run press, he says they
face persecution if they do manage to escape the neighborhood. There
is no work and signs of malnutrition are obvious in the children.

Following the events of February 2004 (preceded by four years of a
Bush administration-backed embargo and foreign-funded “democracy
promotion” destabilization programs) Haiti’s public institutions were
gutted, its elected government and many of it’s public employees
ousted, jailed, and persecuted. Thousands are dead in Haiti following
the 2004 coup d’état and many more are in hiding or under daily
persecution. Under UN protection and with little mainstream press
criticism, the interim coup government has continued its methodical
campaign of persecution and imprisonment of political activists.
Under the U.S. installed regime, in late 2004, human rights
investigators discovered hospitals in which Lavalas supporters were
being allowed to bleed to death, maggot infested morgues in which
bodies were being eaten away at with no refrigeration, and mass
graves in which pigs devoured the remains of victims.

Edline Pierre-Louis, a Cité Soleil resident, was hit in the stomach
by gunfire from UN forces, causing her to loose her unborn baby on
July 6, 2005. In a recent interview with journalists she stated,
“They killed so many people and I praise God that I am alive to call
them liars.”

Some MINUSTAH contingents, outside of Port-au-Prince, primarily in
the north of Haiti, have reportedly behaved in a more professional
manner, communicating better with local popular organizers and
representatives. Meanwhile, a lawyers’ organization, AUMOHD, has come
forward attempting to negotiate a peaceful alternative for Cité
Soleil and other poor areas of Haiti.

Following the 2004 coup and a fatal wave of persecution targeting
Lavalas demonstrations and communities, kidnapping has increasingly
plagued Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. In recent weeks the United
Nations has come under rising pressure from both the Haitian elite
and the foreign press to take over the slum of Cité Solei, which
today, nearly two years after the U.S. Marine led kidnapping of
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, still remains a no-go-zone for the
Canadian and U.S.-trained Haitian National Police (HNP) and the UN
MINUSTAH force. The wide-scale persecution of the poor and
politically motivated layoffs of public sector employees by the
U.S.-installed interim government, have further provoked the
situation.

The mainstream media has continuously ignored visible examples of
Haitians being killed by the United Nations and massacres carried out
by the infamous Haitian National Police, the HNP forces often wear
masks, and their hooded “machete army” attaches, have been well
documented by journalists from the Haiti Information Project
(www.haitiaction.net). Human rights and immigration lawyer Thomas
Griffin documented the dire situation in Cite Soleil in an
investigation by researchers at Miami University. Ignoring the war
against the poor in Haiti, the press has focused on the kidnappings,
disregarding the numerous crimes against humanity at the hands of the
HNP and MINUSTAH.

Meanwhile, increasing pressure has come not only from the media, but
also from Haitian elite to intensify the MINUSTAH occupation of Cité
Soleil. In early January 2006 a group called Group 184, including
many prominent sweatshop and radio station owners and which was
partially responsible for the overthrow of democracy in February
2004, began a campaign, which included a business strike
(<http://tinyurl.com/835bx>) to pressure MINUSTAH towards increasing
its activities in Cité Soleil. Following alleged tense negotiations
with the leadership of the Haitian elite Group 184, MINUSTAH
commander Brazilian Lt. General Urano Teixeira da Matta Bacellar
committed suicide. He was found dead the following morning, lying on
the balcony of his Port-au-Prince hotel room in the upscale Hotel
Montana (<http://tinyurl.com/boh7x>).

Recent reports have also uncovered a mysterious U.S. blacks ops
company that has been working with MINUSTAH to gain “intelligence” on
Cite Soleil. On January 18, 2006 Kathryn Cramer, a writer
investigating pentagon contractor Top Cat Marine Security
(<http://www.topcatmarinesecurity.com/>), released details
(<http://tinyurl.com/8gcl2>)
on the role of a mysterious company called the Consultants Advisory
Group (CAG), run by ex-CIA and U.S. military employees living in
Panama City, Florida, with a representative in Haiti (living also in
Pétion-Ville’s Hotel Montana). According to Cramer, CAG has placed
spies disguised as journalists in the audiences of Haitian
presidential candidate debates, arranged for Top Cat patrol boats off
the coast of Cité Soleil, and arranged for the unlawful detention of
people inside Haiti who have complained about CAG’s involvement in
human rights violations in Haiti.

Many kidnappings have occurred outside of Cite Soleil, something the
Haitian Chamber of Commerce, under Reginal Bolous, and the Group 184,
under Andre Apaid, refused to address in the recent business-led
strike. While companies such as “Texaco, Shell, Scotia Bank, and
upscale grocery stores remained shut” during the strike, the
“informal economy – street vendors, runners, tap-tap (taxi) operators
– lined the streets, unable to skip a day’s work just because the
island’s wealthiest said so” explain Leslie Bagg and Aaron Lakoff in
their recent article.

Kidnappings have come not only from the “gangs” described by the
international press but by criminals and members of the Haitian
National Police. Police Officers Wilfrid Francois, Sony Lambert,
Rénald Cinéus, and an accomplice of theirs named Stantley Handal have
all been implicated in a kidnapping ring. The Haiti Information
Project reports:

Handal is a member of one of Haiti’s wealthiest families that
supported the ouster of Aristide in 1991 and 2004. He was initially
arrested along with eight members of Haiti’s police force for running
a kidnapping ring after he attempted to use a stolen credit card
taken from one of his victims. The judge that released them, Jean
Pérs Paul, is responsible for keeping Father Gerard Jean-Juste behind
bars and for the arrest of journalists Kevin Pina and Jean Ristil on
September 9, 2005. The police officer responsible for the initial
investigation into Handal’s case has reportedly been forced into
hiding. The U.N. and the Canadian government have not commented on
the case since Jean Pérs Paul ordered the suspects released.

Recent reports have also shown that many kidnappings are in fact
taking place not in Cite Soleil, but in the most upscale quarters in
Port-au-Prince, Pétion-Ville:

The Central Directorate of the Judicial Police (DCPJ) informed Friday
that it has broken up this week an important kidnapping network in
Pétion-Ville, a residential district of Port-au-Prince. According to
DCPJ General Inspector Michaël Lucius, this is the gang which had
kidnapped on December 30, 2005 Carine Rouzier, the wife of a
businessman of Port-au-Prince, who was released on January 8th. The
11 persons abducted by this gang were held in a luxurious home
evaluated to hundreds of thousands of dollars, M. Lucius declared. He
says he regrets that the bandits had time to run away. The discovery
of this hiding place in the heart of Pétion-Ville proves that
important groups are involved in kidnapping activities, the DCPJ
director declared.

Michael Lucius calls the population to remain careful and to beware
of well-dressed people, saying that the shantytown of Cité Soleil is
not the only hiding place for kidnappers. “Appearances are sometimes
deceptive”, he warned, affirming that besides Cité Soleil and
Pétion-Ville, acts of kidnapping are committed in other non-populist
districts of the capital, including Pernier, Meyer, Delmas, Frères,
Canapé-Vert as well as in the second largest city of the country,
Cap-Haïtien…Chief of the Haitian police Mario Andresol and Head of
MINUSTAH Juan Gabriel Valdès indicated recently that there are
candidates to presidency who use kidnapping money for their campaign
and to try to destabilize the electoral process underway. (AHP News,
English Translation, January 13, 2006)

While kidnappings have received the limelight of international press
coverage in Haiti, the violence against the poor has continually been
obscured. On June 11, 2005, Juan Gabriel Valdes, the Chilean head of
the U.N. mission in Haiti, made a statement on Haitian radio stations
declaring he had lived through the Pinochet dictatorship and,
“compared to that experience, there is no political persecution in
Haiti.” Time correspondent Kathie Klarreich, cited numerous “unnamed
sources” in a recent article who used the term “wussies” to describe
the UN force in Haiti, not once mentioning the well documented HNP
and MINUSTAH slayings of innocent civilians. Another TIME
correspondent and former employee of the U.S. State Department,
Edward M. Gomez, explaining the violence in Cite Soleil, cited a Le
Monde statement that the “kids” in Cite Soleil are fighting because
they are on “crack”.

Over the last year, footage has emerged showing the deadly results of
UN raids into Cité Soleil, including journalist Kevin Pina’s film,
Haiti: The Untold Story. Pina told Democracy Now! that “I personally
handed a copy of that video to [the UN special envoy, Juan] Valdes at
JFK airport. He described it as propaganda and lies without even
looking at it. They are predisposed to saying this. They do not want
to look at the evidence.”

By ignoring the systematic repression being carried out by the U.S.,
Canadian, and UN-backed coup regime while focusing attention on
alleged gang members “high on crack,” the media provide a
disingenuous examination of events in Haiti.


Interview with Frank Eaton

What follows are experts from an interview with Frank Eaton, a
kidnapping victim. Eaton speaks about Cité Soleil, his experience
being kidnapped, and the U.S. media coverage of his experience. Below
are excerpts from the interview.

• Jeb Sprague: Tell me about your experience being kidnapped. Frank
Eaton: Every one of the ten-or-so young men who held me bore bullet
wounds and scars on their bodies from MINUSTAH guns. As I sat there,
more bored than terrified, I had the profound realization that I
would almost certainly outlive each of them. Now, with the political
branch of the UN ascendant [the United Nations Office for Project
Services, or UNOPS, has had an increasingly expanding role in Haiti],
and an occupation of Cité Soleil apparently in the works, I’m afraid
that the end is near for many of these young guys, women, and kids.
It’s a horrible, horrible thing that’s about to happen there…

One night it rained and the night was pretty quiet. The other nights,
it was a shooting gallery. We are sitting listening to this. It is
unreal. We were in Blecort, the southernmost part of Cité Soleil. You
can hear MINUSTAH guns; they are very regular, high caliber, heavy,
heavy arms. And then you can hear the local guns, which are smaller;
pistols and rifles. And that’s where people get hurt…To give the UN a
little bit of credit, with this UN guy [Brazilian Lt. Gen Bacellar]
that shot himself the other day, there is a certain reticence to
occupying Cité Soleil [among sectors of the UN]. They have knowledge
to the fact that this “collateral damage” will happen as soon as they
do this. It is dangerous for everybody… The victims are the people
who are trapped here. They can’t do anything. They are human shields
between both sides. I see no way into these neighborhoods. We were in
a small house that is isolated, in a blind alley. No way in. No way
out. Women, children, and people everywhere.

• Jeb Sprague: How were you treated; what type of food did you eat
when you were in captivity?

• Frank Eaton: Every Haitian I met was very generous, very
hospitable, including these guys. The Haitain hospitality that you
hear of is true. We probably ate better then anybody in the entire
neighborhood. We ate locally prepared food. We had plantains,
scrambled eggs the first morning, and then we had the traditional
spaghetti and hot dog. Then we had rice and beans. The best thing I
had was when one guy made a pâté, a little pastry with eggs or
chicken on it. It was absolutely incredible. We had Prestige Beer,
which is really good. They were really hospitable, in light of the
circumstances. There was definitely a level of concern there. They
hate the UN. They had a brand new toothbrush, water, soap for us. We
slept on a bed. We could wander around. I could go around the room
and if I wanted to go outside and pour water on my head. It was
pretty laid back. They were mostly lying down. They had guns but they
weren’t pointing them at us. It wasn’t like this macho thing. There
was an understanding that we weren’t going to run away or take
anyone’s gun.

For the majority of the time, the M-14 and the other guns remained
loaded. The room we were kept in served as an ammo dump for this
group. Young men were coming in constantly to retrieve ammo from a
duffel bag.

The guys that kidnapped me, I didn’t feel they were capable of
hurting me. They weren’t cruel. I kept thinking, it’s tough; it’s
physically tough to hurt a human being. Your body rejects that on a
physical level. I honestly felt they didn’t want to attack me. I was
certainly not giving them any trouble. They were content with letting
the process take its course. It was boring for all of us. During
negotiations things would get tense. I was released and Alain stayed
behind. But he was released afterward; they felt sorry for him. They
really got along well with him. We were all frustrated for the time
it took the money to get there. For two days we just sat doing
nothing and on the third day I finally said, bring the cash. I used
my bank account.

We were picked up far out from Cité Soleil. Now I’ve got all these
overdraft fees from my bank. I wrote a check for $5,000 and after a
few other charges passed, I was bounced into the red.

• Jeb Sprague: What can you say about the context behind the
kidnappings? Frank Eaton: I’m not sure… It’s so tough for me to
understand. Since it’s me and my money I can’t just say “that’s
okay.” But the ten guys who watched us were humble guys, and this was
just sort of the deal at the moment. Like a job. This could be a
situation where this is the only thing that they are able to do. This
is their community involvement to help facilitate this transfer of
money back into the community.

So many innocent people are dying. It’s insane fighting right in the
middle of all those people. The whole situation is the result of a
pretty heinous socio-political economic environment. This is where
they live. These people don’t conceal themselves; we were not
concealed. I know they have a lot of support. People would come
around — women and children, old people, moms.

It’s very important for me not to be the poster child for Haitian
kidnapping or to be a warning to stay out of Haiti. I hold no hard
feelings. I understand that this something that is much bigger then
me. I don’t feel sorry for myself. I had so many good experiences and
met wonderful people.

• Jeb Sprague: I’ve noticed that in all the articles (Miami Herald,
Forbes, ABC News, etc.) about you, they focus on the guns and the
kidnappers having guns around you..

• Frank Eaton: Yes, and that’s true. It’s the pornography of
violence, and I mention that every single time to all of the
reporters that have interviewed me. They gave us food, they gave us
water, they treated us well. I think that’s one of the most
interesting things about it all. Complicated things like that are
more interesting than just saying they put guns on us. I always say
we were treated well and that I have really no hard feelings, besides
the fact that I am financially destitute. I’m $15,000 in debt. I also
make the distinction that I am no more financially destitute then
these guys. I got out of Cité Soleil. These guys didn’t. I was very
interested in this whole thing on the human scale.

I don’t come from money, which makes it tough for me to operate down
there. But they are treated terribly. These neighborhoods are
underrepresented in every way. I’m sure that the crime is a natural
way to try to regain balance. Use the money the way they can…. We
just didn’t want our ransom money used for weapons.

• Jeb Sprague: Why do you think the UN/HNP attacks are rarely
mentioned in the mainstream press, while the kidnappings receive so
much coverage?

• Frank Eaton: Lots of reporters are in Haiti because of the
election. But with that postponed unfortunately they are all just
writing about the kidnapping and focusing on that. I just don’t know
if there is any interest in knowing why these things happen.

It’s a lot of peoples’ faults. The international community demands
something be done about this. The rich community demands something
being done about this. Poor people want something done about the
kidnapping; kids are in danger. A lot of people are being kidnapped,
across all sectors, and I don’t know how politically motivated all of
it is.

• Jeb Sprague: Are you worried about what’s going to happen to the
people in Cité Soleil and the people you saw in the neighborhoods
around where you were being held?

• Frank Eaton: All roads are leading to Cité Soleil right now for the
occupying force. I think half the reason [Lt. Gen.] Bacellar was
trying to keep that from happening is because he didn’t want to loose
his own guys [Interview´s note: nine MINUSTAH soldiers have died as
of this date]. He’s dead now . And I think the political wing of the
UN has taken over in Haiti, and these are guys that are more directly
pressured by the camps that want to have Cité Soleil occupied and
have the whole thing shut down. I am expecting them to make a move
against the neighborhood.

Yes, I think the UN troops are going to kill a lot of innocent people
when they go into Cité Soleil. It’s going to be like Fallujah. They
are going to kill a lot of innocent people. I remember being in
there, I realized, Wow a lot of people are going to die in here. I
realized I was a survivor….

• Jeb Sprague: Do you think the UN can be convinced of an alternative
to going into Cité Soleil with military force? The President of the
AUMOHD lawyers organization, Evel Fanfan, has presented a peaceful
alternative. Fanfan has asked to meet with interim commander Gen.
Herman, of MINUSTAH, to review “the work toward self-managed
disarmament in the poor communities of Grande Ravine, St. Bernadette,
and Lafwa and to consider a totally new approach there and in Cité
Soleil.” Also, the peace process could also be better achieved if a
democratically elected government was put into place. What do you
think about all that?

• Frank Eaton: There are definitely people out there with solutions
that should be tried. There are a lot of guns on both sides. With the
strike that the chamber of commerce held it seems the elites are
adamant that the UN go into Cité Soleil.

I am trying to handle this without anger… I would hope that they
examine the angle of grace before going in and blasting their way
through a neighborhood that is home to a lot of women and children. I
think that there needs to be a discussion, an alternative. I know it
wasn’t impossible to put negotiators on the ground in Cité Soleil to
communicate the terms of our release. So I know there are ways to
open channels to talk about a resolution to this thing.

When you go in to try to move money and human beings in Cité Soleil
it’s easy to find someone to talk to. But there is not a lot of
communication going on. Every night they are fighting. On both sides
are these young guys, 18 to 35 years old, looking to kill each other.
Both are armed to the teeth. Innocent people are being killed. Kids
are being killed. Children, women. Innocent people are put into this
situation. It’s just such an insane situation. I don’t know if I had
any business being in Haiti in the first place.


Jeb Sprague is a freelance journalist and a graduate student in
History at California State University of Long Beach. He is currently
writing his masters degree thesis on the destabilization and
overthrow of democracy in Haiti, 2000-2004. Contact him at
<Jebsprague@[nospam]mac.com> (removing the word “nospam”) or visit
his blog at <http://www.freehaiti.net>