29958: Holmstead: FWD: (news) Accusations of UN cover-up in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

FROM: John Holmstead

Accusations of UN cover-up in Haiti
February 2, 2007

HIP - UN Special Envoy to Haiti, Edmond Mulet, held a
roundtable discussion at the Center for International
and Strategic Studies (CSIS) in Washington this past
Wednesday. The CSIS event capped off what amounted to
a whirlwind week long propaganda tour by Mulet where
he has sought to mitigate reports of UN forces killing
unarmed civilians in recent raids against gangs in the
Port-au-Prince shanty town of Cite Soleil. In response
to questions about the huge amount of firepower used
by UN forces in recent raids and the growing number of
accounts of unarmed civilians felled by UN bullets,
Mulet made an extraordinary claim. He stated, "[This
past Jan. 24]...we were under attack for over an hour
and they [gangs in Cite Soleil] shot more than 20,000
rounds at us - 20,000 rounds at us."

A former UN employee and law enforcement expert
assigned to Haiti and speaking on condition of
anonymity commented, "That's just ridiculous. We never
received reports of gangs in Cite Soleil having that
kind of firepower. You also have to ask how Mulet got
that number of 20,000 rounds shot at UN forces? Did
they stop to pick up the cartridges and count them
afterwards? I don't think so."

Mulet's assertion comes on the heels of the release of
Freedom of Information Act documents that show the
United Nations acknowledged firing more than 22,000
rounds of ammunition during a seven-hour period in a
highly controversial raid of Cite Soleil on July 6,
2005. The UN claimed they had only killed six
"bandits" while human rights organizations and
community activists claimed as many as 70 may have
been killed, the vast majority unarmed civilians. In
the same document, a personal commentary apparently
added by former US Ambassador James B. Foley states,
"It remains unclear how aggressive MINUSTAH was,
though 22,000 rounds is a large amount of ammunition
to have killed only six people." To this day, not a
single international human rights organization has
undertaken a serious investigation into the
allegations.

The former UN employee added, "I read the reports
where the UN admitted firing more than 22,000 rounds
in a seven hour period on July, 6, 2005. It appears
that Mulet is playing a numbers game to diminish the
impact of that report. If there are gangs of 30 armed
men running around with 20,000 rounds of ammunition
than you're no longer talking about just gangs. You're
talking about an armed insurgency and Mulet can't have
it both ways. It's even more ridiculous if you do the
math. It would have required each gunman to fire more
than 650 sustained rounds each during the one-hour
period to account for the nearly six bullets fired per
second, as he would have the public believe. That's a
battle of epic proportions, which I think we would
have seen reported in the press by now. I just don't
see it."

During Mulet's presentation at CSIS in Washington, he
also managed to alienate the few Haitians who attended
the event. He claimed that, "... there are many
sectors who don't like our presence there. That is
certain and they dislike us enormously. Of course, I
have [identified] them as the ones who are involved in
drug trafficking, the ones who benefit from impunity,
from the disorder, from the lack of state, from lack
of institutions, the people who benefit from
contraband, from lack of institutions." In an
interview on the radio program Variety and Vibrations
heard on 1320 AM WLQY in Miami FL, a Mr. Wilbert
Clerizier responded, "I was there and I took that to
mean the Lavalas movement. That what he was saying was
that the only people who oppose the UN occupation are
Lavalas and that they are all drug dealers and
criminals. I responded to Mr. Mulet that they should
leave Haiti because they helped to legitimize the
overthrow of the constitutional government. That would
make me a drug dealer and a criminal too, which I am
neither." Lavalas is the political movement of Haiti's
desperately poor majority and the political party of
president Jean-Bertrand Aristide who was ousted on
February 29, 2004 in a coup reportedly backed by the
United States, France and Canada.

Perhaps even more controversial was Mulet's attempt to
write the epitaph for the Lavalas movement when he
stated, "And to the Jean-Bertrand Aristide issue, when
I first arrived in Haiti on the 2nd of June last year,
we've had different marches and manifestations ? all
sorts of protests demanding for the return of this
ex-president and former president. In the beginning,
these were expressions of 5,000 people. Then later on
they became 3,000 and the last ones maybe 75...50
people. So I see that this issue of former President
Aristide is not present anymore in the political
sphere in Haiti anymore, and his movement - familia
Lavalas - is very much divided, weakened."
Contradicting Mulet is HIP video and photographs
documenting a demonstration of over ten thousand
people launched from Cite Soleil this last December
16. Protestors were demanding Aristide's return, an
end the UN military occupation of Haiti and the
release of Lavalas political prisoners. All of this
took place a mere seven weeks ago and according to
Pierre-Antoine Lovinsky, one of the Lavalas
organizers, "December 16, 2006 is not that long ago
but long enough to go beyond the collective memory of
the UN and the apparent temporary amnesia of Mr.
Mulet."

Human rights activists have begun to point to the
December 16th demonstration and others like it in Cite
Soleil as the real reason behind the UN's expanded
military operations in this poor neighborhood packed
with cardboard and cinderblock shacks covered with tin
roofs. Six days later on December 22, UN forces
launched another major military assault on Cite Soleil
that residents claim killed close to 30 people and
wounded many others including a woman who was six
months pregnant. She claims to have been shot by a UN
armored vehicle in the abdomen instantly killing her
unborn child.

Responding to well-documented reports of the UN firing
from helicopters during the Dec. 22 raid, Mulet
claimed, "We never shot from a helicopter ? never. We
had one helicopter with a camera taking pictures and
following the operation, but we never shoot from
helicopters. We never use heavy artillery either."
According to John Carroll, an Illinois-based doctor
who runs a charity that provides medical aid to
Haitian children, "I spoke with the family with holes
in their roof. They said the helicopter fired down on
Cite Soleil for three hours. I saw the holes in the
roof and the holes in the people," he said. "I went to
St. Catherine's Hospital in Cite Soleil. I did not
interview any doctors. I examined the patients myself
and their stories seemed to correspond with their
injuries," Dr. Carroll stated in a recent interview
with Andrew Buncombe of The Independent based in the
United Kingdom. HIP also has video documentation of a
28 year-old man whose family has asked to withhold his
name due to fears of UN reprisals. He is seen dying in
his home. Before succumbing to his wounds, he gives
testimony that directly contradicts UN denials of
firing from helicopter gun ships on the population
below. "I was shot by the helicopter" were his last
words.

"This is beginning to resemble collective punishment
against the residents of Cite Soleil. There is more to
this than just the issue of gangs and alleged
kidnappers. If this were just about gangs then why
isn't the UN going after the Little Machete Army in
Martissant?" asked Brian Concannon, the Director of
the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. A
gang known as the Little Machete Army massacred
spectators at a soccer game in broad daylight down the
street from a UN observation post in August 2005,
hacking its victims to death with machetes. The group
attacked another neighborhood last summer, and
according to media reports it assassinated community
leader Esterne Bruner last September 21, and freelance
photojournalist Jean-Remy Badio on January 19. All
along, Martissant residents had been asking the UN to
provide protection. The Little Machete Army still
controls the area through terror and intimidation
despite the presence of United Nations forces.

To further illustrate his point Concannon points to
other gangs currently operating in Haiti, "Gangs that
were members of the Gonaives Resistance Front took
over the police station in Haiti's fourth largest
city, Gonaives, in February 2004. They have never
disarmed, and some of the gangs, especially those led
by Wilfort Ferdinand and Winter Etienne, regularly and
openly control large parts of the city to this day.
But there are no large-scale assaults to dislodge
them. It is hard not to see the connection between the
large-scale protests in Cite Soleil, and that
neighborhood's being singled out for major military
operations."

In another press conference held earlier in the week
at the UN headquarters in New York, Mulet admitted
that while they were obsessed with disarming gangs in
Cite Soleil, they allowed the former brutal military
to keep their weapons and that they are still heavily
armed to this day. Mulet stated, "When MINUSTAH [the
UN mission] first arrived in the country, the members
of former armed forces of Haiti had been a
destabilizing presence, as well. ALTHOUGH STILL ARMED,
they were not active and organized now."

Human rights organizations have accused the former
military along with paramilitary death squads of
having sowed a campaign of terror against Aristide
supporters following his ouster in Feb. 2004. As part
of UN policy, they were integrated into the Haitian
police that was also accused of committing gross human
rights violations against Aristide supporters
including summary executions and arbitrary arrests.
After having illegally seized the residence of the
exiled former president in late 2004, the brutal
former military was rewarded with a payoff of more
that 29 million dollars, or $5000 per former soldier,
paid for with funds provided by the international
community.

Finally, new reports of a UN military operation in
Cite Soleil at 1:00 AM EST today continue to come into
HIP. According to reporters on the ground, a family of
five was sleeping in their home when UN/MINUSTAH
soldiers started firing weapons in the neighborhood;
there was no report of other gunfire in the area. The
mother and father were wounded and their two daughters
were killed. Seven year-old Stephanie Lubin and four
year-old Alexandra Lubin are now counted among the
mounting toll of unarmed civilians killed by United
Nations forces in Cite Soleil.

©2007 Haiti Information Project



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