30806: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-UN-Lynchings (later story) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By STEVENSON JACOBS

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, July 27 (AP) -- The top U.N. official in Haiti on Friday
denounced a sharp increase in lynchings and other mob attacks, including
the killing of two innocent men as they traveled to a wedding.
   At least six people were killed by mobs in a single week in different
attacks this month, according to the U.N. mission's human rights section.
At least 105 people have been reportedly lynched in Haiti since 2005.
   "There has been a very large number of lynchings in the past months and
weeks. We do hope this will not become a trend," Edmond Mulet, the special
U.N. envoy to Haiti, told The Associated Press in an interview.
   He blamed the rise in part on a lack of confidence in Haiti's
notoriously corrupt judicial system, which keeps hundreds of people
imprisoned without trial while others who can afford a bribe walk free.
   "You have cases of gang leaders being released after paying judges,"
Mulet said. "The population knows, so they're fed up ... and they take
justice into their hands."
   Lynchings have become more common especially in rural areas of the
Western Hemisphere's poorest country, where police presence is thin and
courts barely operate.
   Mulet described an incident from earlier this month when two men
traveling to a wedding near the coastal town of St. Marc were mistaken for
kidnappers who had abducted several people the night before. A car knocked
the men off their motorcycle and a crowd beat them to death with rocks and
sticks.
   Police arrested 10 people in the killing. All but one were later
released.
   Thiery Fagart, the head of the U.N. mission's human rights section, said
his office interviewed witnesses to the attack and found that "perfectly
innocent victims were targeted."
   "It is extremely alarming," Fagart told reporters.
   Mulet said the U.N. mission will launch a campaign to remind people that
lynching is a crime, and is urging church leaders to denounce the practice.
   About 9,000 U.N. peacekeepers are in Haiti, deployed after a 2004 revolt
ousted former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
   The U.N. mandate in Haiti expires in October, but the Security Council
is certain to renew it.