not in the news lately . .

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Murdering Haiti July 18, 2005
By Yves Engler

While the media was focusing on the dead in London, United Nation?s soldiers and Haitian police were murdering the poor in Port au Prince.

On Friday a Haitian National Police (HNP) operation in the slum of Bel Air left ten dead, according to Agence Haitien Presse.

On Wednesday, UN forces killed as many as eighty people in Cite Soleil, the largest and poorest slum in Haiti. A labour/human rights delegation sponsored by the San Francisco Labour Council reported that residents claimed to have seen 23 bodies after a UN forces raid to kill ?gang leader? Dread Wilme in the early morning. Residents of Cite Soleil said UN forces shot out electric transformers in their neighborhood. People were killed in their homes and also just outside of their homes, on the way to work.

According to journalists and eyewitnesses, one man named Leon Cherry, age 46, was shot and killed on his way to work for a flower company. Another man, Mones Belizaire, was shot as he readied for work in a local sweatshop and died later from an infection. A woman who was a street vendor was shot in the head and killed instantly. One man was shot in his ribs while brushing his teeth.

Another was shot in the jaw as he left his house to make some money to pay his wife?s medical costs and endured a slow death. Yet another man named Mira was shot and killed while urinating in his home. A mother, Sena Romelus, and her two young children were killed in their home, either by bullets or by a 83-CC grenade UN forces threw. Film footage of many of these deaths was shared with the US human rights delegation.

Eyewitnesses claimed that the offensive overwhelmed the community and that there was not a "firefight", but rather a slaughter. Primarily UN forces conducted the operation, with the HNP taking a back seat, according to witnesses.

Earlier in the week, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said that since opening a trauma center in Port au Prince seven months ago, they have treated more than 1112 people ?for violence-related injuries, including; 861 gunshot victims; 126 for machete or knife wounds; 67 for beatings; and 40 for rape. Half of those treated for such injuries are women, children, or elderly.?

MSF explains that; ?Some [victims of violence] have said they were wounded during operations conducted by the Haitian National Police (HNP) and the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).? MSF also ?called on all armed groups in the city [Port au Prince] to respect the safety of civilians and allow those wounded during clashes immediate access to emergency medical care.? The HNP is known for picking up those hospitalized with bullet wounds, only for the patients never to be heard from.

Recent killings are the continuation of seventeen months of horror for Haiti?s poor. The U.S. National Lawyers Guild delegation visiting Haiti shortly after the February 29th coup reported that on March 7, 2004, morgue officials dumped 800 bodies and another 200 three weeks later. This is an extraordinary number in light of the morgue worker?s report that the average is under 100 bodies per month. On October 15, 2004, US journalist, Kevin Pina reported that, ?the General Hospital had to call the Ministry of Health today in order to demand emergency vehicles to remove the more than 600 corpses that have been stockpiled there.?

Structural violence is also greater than before the coup. Unemployment has increased. A recent article in Alterpresse documented a huge rise in the cost of a dozen food staples, many of which have tripled in price ? further impoverishing the poor.

The human rights situation is so bad that the ?head of UN peacekeeping operations says conditions in parts of Haiti are worse than in Sudan's devastated Darfur region? according to a June 28, 2005, Voice of America report.

?A month ago I was in Darfur, and God knows the situation of the IDPs [internally displace persons] there is tragic, but at least, thanks to the mobilization of the international community, you see IDPs in camps in al Fasher or cities in Darfur, they have medical facilities, there is drinking water, there are latrines. It?s a terrible situation, but some of the basics are being provided by the international community.

The Haitians in Cap Haitien, this is a quiet place, they have no drinking water, no latrines, garbage not collected, situation is squalor, its terrible. They are in [a] worse situation than some of the IDPs I saw in Darfur,? said Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno

Guehenno may even have correctly diagnosed the source of the problem - an illegitimate government - saying, ?So long as you don't have an effective law and order structure that is trusted by people, seen as fair, impartial, has basic means to deliver law and order, you need an international presence there.? In other words, when armed thugs (foreign or domestic) overthrow a popularly elected government human rights abuses are an inevitable result.

Yves Engler is author (with Anthony Fenton) of a forthcoming (September) book, Canada in Haiti: Waging war on the poor majority published by RED/Fernwood. For those interested in organizing a book tour/Haiti solidarity caravan stop in your community beginning in Ontario in early September, please contact yves: at (514) 807 9037 or yvesengler@...

For those interested in joining the Canada Haiti Action Network listserve, please contact Kevin kskerrett@...