Wednesday, February 28, 2007

HAITÍ ONU acusada de matar civiles

Por Wadner Pierre y Jeb Sprague

PUERTO PRÍNCIPE, 1 mar (IPS) - La tensión y el miedo persisten en la capital de Haití tras una serie de ataques lanzados por soldados de la ONU contra bandas armadas en los barrios más pobres. Residentes acusan a las fuerzas del foro mundial de matar a civiles.

Mercius Lubin, del tugurio capitalino de Cité Soleil, dijo a IPS que en uno de los ataques, el 1 de febrero, murieron sus dos hijas.

A eso de las 11 de la noche, él y su familia dormían en el suelo por indicación de los soldados de la Misión de las Naciones Unidas para la Estabilización de Haití (Minustah, por su acrónimo en francés) y "entonces comenzaron a disparar".

"Me di cuenta de que estaba herido en un brazo, mi esposa en un pie y mis dos niñas estaban bañadas en sangre", recordó.

La Minustah fue creada por el Consejo de Seguridad en abril de 2004, por medio de la resolución 1542.

Lubin responsabilizó a esa misión de acribillar su casa y matar a sus hijas. IPS pudo ver los cuerpos de ellas, Stephanie, de 7 años, y Alexandra, de 4.

Un importante comandante de la Minustah reconoció que la fuerza de paz lanzó un operativo ese día.

Por su parte, residentes de la zona también declararon que soldados de la ONU (Organización de las Naciones Unidas) habían disparado desde sus vehículos al pasar por la calle donde se encuentra la vivienda de Lubin.

Funcionarios de la Minustah, encabezada por Brasil, admitieron "daños colaterales", pero subrayaron que su presencia obedece a un pedido del gobierno del presidente René Préval para luchar contra las bandas armadas.

Por su parte, el vicerrepresentante especial de la ONU para Haití, el francés Joel Boutroue, responsabilizó el miércoles a los pandilleros por la muerte de las dos niñas.

No obstante, reconoció que, cuando el foro mundial investiga y trata de llevar la cuenta de las víctimas luego de los grandes operativos militares, no puede determinar si las personas fueron heridas por pandilleros o por la propia Minustah. "Es imposible de saber", admitió.

En particular, la ONU y del gobierno haitiano están detrás de uno de los líderes de las pandillas conocido como Evan. En las últimas semanas detuvieron a varios integrantes de su grupo.

Pero residentes y activistas de derechos humanos aseguran que muchas personas sin vínculo alguno con las bandas armadas son asesinadas, heridas o detenidas durante las redadas de la Minustah y de la policía haitiana.

En la mayor parte de Cité Soleil persiste un clima de temor. IPS pudo constatar que muchas de las casas están agujereadas, la mayoría de ellas por artillería de la Minustah, según residentes. Además, el sistema sanitario está en su gran parte destruido.

Un documento desclasificado por la embajada de Estados Unidos en Puerto Príncipe reveló que, durante una operación llevada a cabo en julio de 2005, la Minustah disparó 22.000 municiones en varias horas.

Según el informe, un oficial de esa fuerza de paz reconoció que "dada la endeble construcción de las viviendas en Cité Soleil y la gran cantidad de disparos, es posible que las balas hayan penetrado los edificios, golpeando objetivos no planeados".

Mientras, la organización religiosa Coalición Haitiana No Violenta y No Partidaria pretende reactivar el proceso de paz.

"Nos vimos impulsados por la desesperación de las víctimas y de los líderes en los campos de batalla de Cité Soleil", señaló Evel Fanfan, portavoz del grupo, al tiempo que reclamó "un inmediato cese del fuego".

La organización se propone trabajar junto a la Comisión Nacional de Desarme, Desmovilización y Reinserción, del gobierno de Préval, presidida por Alix Fils Aimé, para tratar de reinstaurar un ambiente de diálogo.

Una de las pandillas ya declaró su disposición a entregar las armas a cambio de una amnistía e inversiones en la comunidad.

Desde las vísperas de Navidad fue evidente que la Minustah había adoptado una postura más severa contra las bandas armadas. Algunos funcionarios señalaron que ingresaban a Cité Soleil para detener, y si era necesario matar, a pandilleros y secuestradores en el distrito Bois Neuf de ese tugurio.

Las fuerzas de la ONU lanzaron un ataque el 22 de diciembre que pasó a ser conocido como "Sin Piedad por Cité Soleil". El estruendo de las ametralladoras de la Minustah se pudieron escuchar a kilómetros de distancia, aseguraron residentes.

Cinco días después, los habitantes de Bois Neuf enterraron a 11 jóvenes que, según ellos, habían sido asesinados por la Minustah. Una gran multitud se congregó frente a los ataúdes.

Tras el derrocamiento del gobierno electo de Jean-Bertrand Aristide en 2004, cientos de activistas del Fanmi Lavalas, el partido político del ex mandatario, fueron detenidos por la administración interina, apoyada por Estados Unidos, según una investigación de la Universidad de Miami.

El último gobierno de Aristide (2001-2004), que se negó a privatizar las empresas estatales, fue objeto de un embargo por parte de las instituciones financieras internacionales a causa de sus deudas pendientes, lo que aceleró el declive económico y político del país.

Tras la expulsión del presidente, provocada por la invasión de ex integrantes del ejército desde República Dominicana, se elaboró un plan de reactivación provisional con asesoramiento del Fondo Monetario Internacional.

Pero los potenciales estímulos económicos, que aparecieron recién con la llegada al poder de Préval en 2006, se enfrentan ahora a una fuerza contraria que parece incontrolable: las bandas armadas.

"Es difícil para mí explicarles lo vivido por los residentes de Bois Neuf el 22 de diciembre, es casi inexplicable. Fue una verdadera masacre. Contabilizamos más de 60 heridos y más de 25 muertos entre bebés, niños y niñas y jóvenes", aseguró Frantz Michel Guerrier, portavoz del Comité de Notables para el Desarrollo de Cité Soleil.

Residentes y partidarios de Lavalas se mostraron contrarios a todo tipo de violencia y manifestaron sus deseos de paz. Pero fuentes cercanas al gobierno denuncian fuertes presiones para intervenir con mano dura en Cité Soleil y desalojar a los grupos armados.

La oposición a la estrategia adoptada por la Minustah en los barrios densamente poblados sigue siendo fuerte.

El 7 de febrero, con motivo del 21 aniversario de la caída de la dictadura de François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, que gobernó entre 1957 y 1971, se organizó una gran manifestación en Puerto Príncipe y otras más pequeñas en otras ciudades, todas reclamando el fin de la violencia y pidiendo se permita regresar al país a Aristide.

* Wadner Pierre y Jeb Sprague son importantes colaboradores del sitio web Haitianalisis.com

***** + Minustah (http://www.un.org/spanish/Depts/dpko/minustah/)

(FIN/IPS/traen-vf/js/ks/ca hd ip pr ha/07)

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Haiti: Poor Residents of Capital Describe a State of Siege

By: Wadner Pierre and Jeb Sprague

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 28, 2007 (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 Evens. 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 contribute to HaitiAnalysis.com. (END)

Monday, February 26, 2007

Unmarked graves where flowers grow

This wonderful band The Arcade Fire (from Canada) spoke out against the 2004 coup and right now they are raising money for Partners in Health (PIH). Arcade Fire’s lead singer Régine Chassagne was born in Haiti, but her family emigrated to Canada to escape the terror of the Duvalier regime. Here they are performing their hit-song "Haiti":


Haïti, mon pays,
wounded mother I'll never see.
Ma famille set me free.
Throw my ashes into the sea.

Mes cousins jamais nés
hantent les nuits de Duvalier.
Rien n'arrete nos esprits.
Guns can't kill what soldiers can't see.

In the forest we are hiding,
unmarked graves where flowers grow.
Hear the soldiers angry yelling,
in the river we will go.

Tous les morts-nés forment une armée,
soon we will reclaim the earth.
All the tears and all the bodies
bring about our second birth.

Haïti, never free,
n'aie pas peur de sonner l'alarme.
Tes enfants sont partis,
In those days their blood was still warm


See this http://www.youtube.com/v/RuBLzbzwsYc

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Grassroots human rights workers ignored

I was just forwarded this compiled list of attacks on Martissant and Gran Ravine that Lame Ti Manchet are charged with. The facts behind all of these violent attacks were ignored in a recent AlterPresse article. Similarly an IPS article last year by the same author was also carefully crafted to essentially manipulate the discussion on human rights in Gran Ravine and Martissant, almost totally ignoring the role of the largest and most violent armed group. Grassroots human rights workers have been consistently reporting on the killings carried out by Lame Ti Manchet. See a response at HaitiAnalysis that was recently posted on the Haiti Corbett list. The Komisyon Episkopal Nasyonal Jistis ak Lapè has also compiled a detailed statistical analysis of violence in the area.

-20 August 2005: Massacre at Bernadette soccer field in Martissant
conducted by Haitian police and Lame Ti Manchet.
-21 August 2005: House torchings in Gran Ravine conducted by Haitian
police and Lame Ti Manchet.
-7 July 2006: Twenty innocent men, women and children massacred plus
three hundred+ torched homes in Gran Ravine conducted by Lame Ti Manchet.

-28 September 2006: Human Rights coordinator Esterne Bruner assassinated
in Gran Ravine after returning from AUMOHD's office. Lame Ti Manchet is
suspected.
-19 January 2007: Photojournalist Jean-Remy Badio assassinated in
Martissant. Lame Ti Manchet is suspected (friends, family, AHP and Le
Nouvelliste). Deibert (and RSF likewise) shamefully fail to properly attribute the charges.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Manipulating Death in Martissant and Gran Ravine

A freelance photojournalist Jean Rémy Badiau was killed on January 19 2007 in the Port-au-Prince district of Martissant. AHP interviewed family and friends that claimed his murder was connected to the vigilante group Lame Ti Manchet. The Haitian newspaper Nouvelliste made a similar report on February 13.

In an earlier report the Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontières placed equal blame for violence in Martissant on another group known as Baz Gran Ravine. The report provided no proof to back up the statement. A recent article for AlterPresse by Michael Deibert states that Badio was "murdered in his home, evidently by gang-affiliated gunmen from the area, last month". The article made no mention of the widespread charges against Lame Ti Manchet for having involvement in the killing of Badio and scores of other people in Martissant.

A previous article (August 2 2006) by Deibert on the violence in Martissant also ignored the numerous documented attacks and killings carried out by the group, acknowledging only the charges that "a former police official" was accused of "financing and organizing a gang known as Lamè Ti Machet". He makes no mention of the numerous and well recorded Lame Ti Manchet attacks.
>
According to human rights workers active consistently in Martissant, such as those within AUMOHD and the Community Human Rights Councils (CHRC), it is the Lame Ti Manchet that has been responsible for the vast amount of reported attacks over the last few years and is the driving force behind violence in the area. Also the Komisyon Episkopal Nasyonal Jistis ak Lapè has gathered statistics over the last few years that also show the Lame Ti Manchet was the main perpetrator of violence in the area. This does not mean that Baz Gran Ravine and armed groups committed no violence, but it does mean that according to human rights workers and community groups in Martissant the vigilante group known as Lame Ti Manchet conducted the huge majority of recorded violence and was really a driving force for killings in the area. Disturbingly Lame Ti Manchest was also documented to have had connections with the police force during the interim government.

AUMOHD observed that the 2006 massacre conducted by Lame Ti Manchèt "was meant as a smoke screen to provoke Baz Gran Ravine into a retaliation and thereby distract from the push to get police and civilians involved with Lame Ti Manchèt into jail. AUMOHD'S community human rights council (CHRC) coordinator, Esterne Bruner, was assassinated by Lame Ti Manchèt 9/21/06. But there has not been any retaliation reported. Instead the CHRC, non-violent and non-partisan, continues to prosecute all the killings".

Other attacks conducted by Lame Ti Manchet which is also ignored by Deibert include a massacre of 21 people, the burning down of 300 homes 7/9/06, and a massacre carried out jointly with the Haitian police at a USAID sponsored soccer tournament 8/20/05. The attempts at transference and manipulation are important to document because they show how scientific human rights studies (Lancet, Miami University Griffin report, etc) and testimony collected by human rights workers (AUMOHD, CHRC, IJDH) from poor victims of violence is ignored. Many of the same authors/groups that ignore the reports coming from Martissant also ignored the half dozen human rights reports that came out during the 04-06 period showing the interim government's role in violence against slum dwellers, such as the extrajudicial killing of young journalist Abdias Jean.

Human rights workers on the ground in Martissant now report that the wife of Rudy Kernizan has been apprehended. Rudy himself - chief of the vigilante Lame Ti Manchet - has escaped reportedly to the Dominican Republic. In early February human rights workers reported that several (3-4) Lame Ti Manchet people were arrested by MINUSTAH and the Haitian police. Another 31 individuals were arrested days ago in Martissant.




Funeral of Jean Rémy Badiau
(Photo: Guyvard Alexis/APH)



Young victim of Lame Ti Manchet (Photo: AUMOHD)