[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
27461: Hermantin(News)Violent neighborhood has potential to sway election (fwd)
lhermantin@hotmail.com
Posted on Sat, Feb. 04, 2006
HAITI | CITE SOLEIL
Violent neighborhood has potential to sway election
Violence in a seaside slum posed a threat to participation in Tuesday's Haitian
presidential election.
BY JOE MOZINGO
jmozingo@MiamiHerald.com
PORT-AU-PRINCE - In the two square miles that make up the Cité Soleil slum,
armed gang members who last year had only limited ammunition now fire full
clips at U.N. troops hunkered down in armored vehicles and behind sandbags.
When the peacekeepers fire back, their bullets rip through moldering shanties
teeming with an estimated 250,000 people. More than 250 have been wounded by
gunfire just since Dec. 1, say officials of the neighborhood's hospital.
But while a year ago residents were vowing to boycott presidential elections --
demanding only the return of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide -- they
now say they will vote Tuesday in hopes that a new government can deliver them
from the anarchy and bloodshed. ''We're going to vote because things might
change,'' said Yollette Pierre, 48.
Given the persistent strife in Cité Soleil, everyone with a stake in Haiti's
future is watching the situation there closely. What happens there on Election
Day could have a significant effect on the capital's overall security and the
chances for reconciliation in a country deeply and bitterly divided over
Aristide's ouster.
Since his departure into exile amid an armed revolt in 2004, the slum has
remained a bastion of support for the former priest and the fiercest pocket of
resistance against the U.S.-backed interim government and U.N peacekeeping
force.
PROMISING PEACE
But in the last week, gang leaders have been trying to convince authorities
they will not wreak havoc on election day. ''Now we have guys in Cité Soleil
who want a truce,'' National Police Chief Mario Andresol said Friday. ``They
want the election and they want to vote.''
The change in attitude is due to the emergence of René Préval, a former
president and one-time protégé of Aristide, as the front-runner in opinion
polls.
Of the dozen or so people interviewed by The Miami Herald on two recent visits
to Cité Soleil, all said they plan to vote even if their going to polling
stations outside the slums means they risk retaliation by Haitian police and
gangs with different political interests.
''We know it's risky but we're going to vote,'' said William Baptiste, a gang
leader known here as Ti Blanc. ``All 34 neighborhoods will vote.''
The lawlessness in Cité Soleil is arguably the most profound failure of the
more than 9,000-member U.N. military and police force deployed here.
Frequent shootings and carjackings cut off the country's main highway where it
passes near the slum and paralyzed industry in the area. The slum also had been
the center of a kidnapping-for-ransom industry that hit eight to 10 victims
every day in Port-au-Prince in December. Many of the victims were held in the
slum, a no-go area for U.N. troops and Haitian police.
In mid-January, business and political leaders demanded a full-scale attack
against the gangs.
FEAR IS CITYWIDE
''This situation in Cité Soleil is causing a psychosis of fear in a million
people throughout the capital,'' said Andy Apaid, an apparel manufacturer who
organized a Jan. 16 sit-in to demand that peacekeepers do more to pacify the
slum before the elections.
Because of the insecurity, electoral officials have put the voting centers for
the slum's residents just outside its borders despite several street
demonstrations supporting the elections.
Only on Thursday, gunmen opened fire on U.N. electoral workers entering the
slum in an armored car. The vehicle was hit multiple times, and one bullet
pierced a door, said the U.N. Chief of Electoral Assistance, Gérard Le
Chevallier.
''The team saw them with AK-47s,'' he said. ``You might ask why they would have
a demonstration in the morning and shoot at us in the afternoon.''
No one was hurt in the attack, but officials ruled out polling inside the slum,
meaning its 61,000 registered voters will still have to walk into areas where
they would be at the mercy of police, peacekeepers and even rival gangs.
Jordanian Brig. Gen. Mahmoud Al-Husban, commander of the U.N. military sector
that includes Cité Soleil, said he plans to tighten security on election day,
but will not push his troops into more offensive operations because too many
innocent people would be killed.
'Some people with political background, they are always saying, `When are you
going to finish Cité Soleil? When are you going to destroy Cité Soleil?' '' he
said. ``This is not what we do.''
CHECKPOINTS POROUS
His troops generally stay out of the slum and rely on a series of checkpoints
in an attempt to control who enters and leaves Cité Soleil. But many entry
points are left wide open, and numerous kidnapping victims have reportedly been
taken into the slum without passing a single checkpoint.
By most accounts the checkpoints have been ineffective because the
Arabic-speaking Jordanians mostly stay in defensive positions in their armored
vehicles, unable to check vehicles for guns, ammunition or kidnap victims.
And when troops do step out, they risk their lives. On Jan. 17, three Jordanian
peacekeepers manning a checkpoint on the National Road near Cité Soleil were
shot. One was killed instantly, another died at a hospital, the third survived.
Weapons and ammunition have been streaming into the slum, according to
officials here, hidden in garbage trucks and taxis or brought in by boat from
the bay, which is unguarded.
''The way they are shooting they don't care about the consumption of
ammunition,'' Husban said.
But the shooting is taking a heavy toll on civilians.
Dr. Jacklin St. Fleur, medical director at the Sainte Catherine hospital, keeps
a chart showing that about 40 percent of gunshot victims treated there were hit
in shootouts between the U.N. and gangs, 40 percent didn't know how they got
shot, 10 percent reported being shot during inter-gang warfare and 10 percent
in domestic disputes.