30120: HaitiAnalysis (News) Poor Residents of Capital Describe a State of Siege (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: haitianalysis-at-gmail-dot-com


HAITI:
Poor Residents of Capital Describe a State of Siege
Wadner Pierre and Jeb Sprague

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36772

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 28 (IPS) - Nearly two months since U.N. troops began
launching heavy attacks that they say are aimed against gang members in poor
neighbourhoods of Port-au-Prince, roadblocks and barbed wire remain in place
and the atmosphere is grim.

Mercius Lubin of the Boston district of Cité Soleil told IPS that an assault
earlier this month left his only two children dead. "It is the noise of
MINUSTAH's (the U.N. peacekeeping force) fire that awoke us."

It was about 11 p.m. on Feb. 1, he said, and the family was sleeping on the
floor because U.N. soldiers had advised everyone in the area to do so. "Then
they started shooting... I saw that I was wounded in one of my arms, my wife
in one of her feet and my two young girls were bathed in their own blood."

He said it was MINUSTAH bullets that had sprayed across his home killing his
daughters. IPS viewed the corpses of Stephanie, 7, and Alexandra Lubin, 4. A
top MINUSTAH military commander acknowledges the U.N. fired shots that day.
Residents also state that U.N. vehicles fired heavily down the road which
the Lubin home sits along.

Officials of MINUSTAH, whose military contingent is headed by Brazil, have
admitted to "collateral damage" but say they are there to fight gangsters at
the request of the René Préval government.

Speaking at a press conference at U.N. headquarters Wednesday, Joel
Boutroue, deputy special representative of the secretary-general for Haiti,
referred to the allegation that MINUSTAH soldiers had shot "two little
girls", but said that gang members were responsible for the killings.

"[The U.N. soldiers] are taking extra care in minimising the number of
civilian casualties," he said. "The rules of engagement are very clear --
they only shoot when shot at...The number of casualties has been very
limited."

However, Boutroue acknowledged that while the U.N. does investigate some
specific cases and attempts to tally casualties in local clinics after large
operations, they do not determine whether people have been hit by MINUSTAH
or other weapons. "That's impossible to know," he said.

U.N. and government officials have pointed to one gang leader in particular
named Evans. In recent weeks they have arrested a number of men from his
group.

But many residents and local human rights activists say that scores of
people who have no involvement with gangs have been killed, wounded and
arrested in the raids and fighting. A climate of fear persists in much of
Cite Soleil.

IPS observed that buildings throughout Cité Soleil were pockmarked by
bullets; many showing huge holes made by heavy calibre U.N. weapons, as
residents attest. Often pipes that brought in water to the slum community
now lay shattered.

A recently declassified document from the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince
revealed that during an operation carried out in July 2005, MINUSTAH
expended 22,000 bullets over several hours. In the report, an official from
MINUSTAH acknowledged that "given the flimsy construction of homes in Cité
Soleil and the large quantity of ammunition expended, it is likely that
rounds penetrated many buildings, striking unintended targets".

A group of religious and human rights groups active within Cité Soleil, the
Haitian Nonviolent, Nonpartisan Coalition (HNVNPC), is attempting to revive
a peace process. A spokesman for the group, Evel Fanfan, declared we were
"forged out of the desperation of victims and leaders in the battlefields of
Cité Soleil" and call "immediately for a ceasefire".

The group is attempting to work with the Préval government's National
Commission for Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reinsertion, headed up by
Alix Fils Aimé, to renew the possibility for a peace process. Already one
armed group has offered to turn in their weapons for amnesty and government
investment in the community.

A hardened U.N. strategy became apparent just days before Christmas, when
U.N. officials stated they were entering Cité Soleil to capture or kill
gangsters and kidnappers in the Bois Neuf zone.

According to some residents, the Dec. 22 assault became known as Operation
"Without Pity for Cité Soleil" as the noise of the 50-mm MINUSTAH machine
guns could be heard echoing for miles.

Five days later, the people of Bois Neuf buried 11 young people that they
say were among those killed by MINUSTAH. A huge crowd gathered in front of
the caskets.

Ronald Saint-Jean of the Group for the Defence of the Rights of the
Political prisoners (GDP) was one of the few representatives of a human
rights group to attend the funeral.

The GDP is part of a newly founded grassroots human rights coalition called
the National Coordination of Organisations Defending Human Rights (CONODDH).


Following the overthrow of Haiti's elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide
government, hundreds, possibly up to a thousand, Fanmi Lavalas political
activists were imprisoned under the U.S. backed interim government,
according to a Miami University Human rights study.

Another study published in the British medical journal, The Lancet,
estimated that 8,000 had been killed and 35,000 sexually assaulted in the
greater Port-au-Prince area during the time of the interim government
(2004-2006). In the second half of the study presented in January at the
American Public Health Association conference in Boston, the study
identified 57 percent of the victims as Lavalas and 30 percent as belonging
to Lespwa -- the parties of Aristide and Preval.

The Aristide administration (2001-2004), financially embargoed by
international financial institutions, had refused to privatise state
enterprises. The embargo lost the government much needed aid, contributing
to economic decline and destabilisation. Following Aristide's ouster, after
members of Haiti's former military invaded from the Dominican Republic, an
interim framework was set into motion under International Monetary Fund
advisement.

According to some Haitian labour leaders, it laid off between eight and ten
thousand civil sector workers, many from the poorest slums of
Port-au-Prince.

Other programmes under the Aristide government, such as subsidised rice for
the poor, literacy centres and water supply projects, came to a halt
following the 2004 coup d'etat. A medical university, a first of its kind
for Haiti, constructed by the Aristide government was taken over by MINUSTAH
forces.

Frantz Michel Guerrier, a young man who is the spokesman of the Committee of
Notables for the Development of Cité Soleil and based in the Bois Neuf zone,
said "It is very difficult for me to explain to you what the people of Bois
Neuf went through on Dec. 22, 2006 -- almost unexplainable. It was a true
massacre. We counted more than sixty wounded and more than 25 dead among
[them] infants, children and young people".

"We saw helicopters shoot at us, our houses broken by the tanks," Guerrier
told IPS. "We heard detonations of the heavy weapons. Many of the dead and
wounded were found inside their houses. I must tell you that nobody had been
saved, not even the babies. The Red Cross was not allowed to help people.
The soldiers had refused to let the Red Cross in categorically, in violation
of the Geneva Convention."

The U.N. denies that it blocked ambulances from entering the slum but
acknowledges that a peacekeeper did shoot out an ambulance tire in
Port-au-Prince that day. Multiple residents told IPS that MINUSTAH, after
conducting its operations, evacuated without checking for wounded. U.N.
sources say gang members shoot with small arms at their detachments.

Residents and Lavalas officials explain they oppose all violence and want
peace. But sources close to the National Palace speak of immense pressure to
toughen its stance on Cité Soleil to dislodge armed groups.

Opposition remains strong against MINUSTAH's military style tactics in the
densely populated neighbourhoods. On Feb. 7, the 21st anniversary of the
fall of the Duvalier dictatorship, a huge march took place in Port-au-Prince
with smaller demonstrations in Cap-Haïtien, Saint-Marc, Miragoâne, Jacmel,
Léogâne and Gonaïves, all calling for an end to the violence and that
Aristide be allowed to return to the country.

*Wadner Pierre and Jeb Sprague are primary contributors to HaitiAnalysis.com.
(END/2007)