30154: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti kidnap wave accompanied by epidemic of rape (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, March 8 (Reuters) - Haiti's violent gangs are
increasingly using rape to terrorize hostages and other victims, government
officials and health workers say.
     Sexual assaults of women appear to have become a fixture of the
kidnappings for money carried out by gangs in a crime wave that developed
after the ouster in February 2004 of former president Jean-Bertrand
Aristide.
     Myriam Merlet, an official at the Department of Women's Affairs, said
almost half of women kidnapped had been raped.
     "It is hard to say exactly what is the motive for those rapes, but
rapes have always been used in Haiti as a weapon for social and political
repression," Merlet said.
     Rape has been used in Haiti before by government death squads intent
on sowing terror in the poorest country in the Americas, which has long
been rocked by political instability and violence.
     A recent effort by U.N. peacekeepers to drive gangs out of the
sprawling slums in Port-au-Prince where they held sway, and where they have
also imprisoned many of their hostages, appears to have reduced the
kidnappings.
     But health workers report the number of rape victims is increasing.
     Doctors and aid workers estimate that more than 800 women were raped
between February 2006 and February 2007 in just the capital of this country
of 8 million people.
     Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, a French humanitarian organization
which operates three medical centers in Haiti, treated 70 rape victims in
the first two months of the year.
     "The number of women raped has constantly been increasing over the
past months," said MSF medical coordinator Dr. Maria Guevara. She said the
number of monthly rape victims seen by the group had grown from five last
September to 26 in January. Another 44 were treated in February.
     Joanne, a 25-year-old resident of the capital's Delmas district, said
she was kidnapped late on Jan. 17 by two men who forced open her door and
took her away in a pick-up truck.
     "They held me for 3 days. They raped me several times and demanded
$50,000 from my aunt to whom they talked on the phone," Joanne said. "When
they realized my aunt was not able to find any more money, they agreed to
release me for $2,000."
     The government of President Rene Preval, elected just over a year ago
amid widespread hopes that he could bridge the divide between the poor
masses and a wealthy elite, and also bring an end to crime, has vowed fight
sexual assaults.
     But health workers say many rapists go unpunished because most victims
refuse to go to the police and probably do not even tell their husbands.