APRIL 2007
Accusations of UN cover-up in Haiti
http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/2_2_7/2_2_7.html
February 2, 2007 News HaitiAction.net
by Haiti Information Project
http://www.teledyol.net/HIP/about.html
HIP - UN Special Envoy to Haiti, Edmond Mulet, held a roundtable discussion at the Center for International and Strategic Studies (CSIS) in Washington this past Wednesday. The CSIS event capped off what amounted to a whirlwind week long propaganda tour by Mulet where he has sought to mitigate reports of UN forces killing unarmed civilians in recent raids against gangs in the Port-au-Prince shanty town of Cite Soleil. In response to questions about the huge amount of firepower used by UN forces in recent raids and the growing number of accounts of unarmed civilians felled by UN bullets, Mulet made an extraordinary claim. He stated, "[This past Jan. 24]...we were under attack for over an hour and they [gangs in Cite Soleil] shot more than 20,000 rounds at us - 20,000 rounds at us."
A former UN employee and law enforcement expert assigned to Haiti and speaking on condition of anonymity commented, "That's just ridiculous. We never received reports of gangs in Cite Soleil having that kind of firepower. You also have to ask how Mulet got that number of 20,000 rounds shot at UN forces? Did they stop to pick up the cartridges and count them afterwards? I don't think so."
Mulet's assertion comes on the heels of the release of Freedom of Information Act documents that show the United Nations acknowledged firing more than 22,000 rounds of ammunition during a seven-hour period in a highly controversial raid of Cite Soleil on July 6, 2005. The UN claimed they had only killed six "bandits" while human rights organizations and community activists claimed as many as 70 may have been killed, the vast majority unarmed civilians. In the same document, a personal commentary apparently added by former US Ambassador James B. Foley states, "It remains unclear how aggressive MINUSTAH was, though 22,000 rounds is a large amount of ammunition to have killed only six people." To this day, not a single international human rights organization has undertaken a serious investigation into the allegations.
The former UN employee added, "I read the reports where the UN admitted firing more than 22,000 rounds in a seven hour period on July, 6, 2005. It appears that Mulet is playing a numbers game to diminish the impact of that report. If there are gangs of 30 armed men running around with
20,000 rounds of ammunition than you're no longer talking about just gangs. You're talking about an armed insurgency and Mulet can't have it both ways. It's even more ridiculous if you do the math. It would have required each gunman to fire more than 650 sustained rounds each during the one-hour period to account for the nearly six bullets fired per second, as he would have the public believe. That's a battle of epic proportions, which I think we would have seen reported in the press by now. I just don't see it."
During Mulet's presentation at CSIS in Washington, he also managed to alienate the few Haitians who attended the event. He claimed that, "... there are many sectors who don't like our presence there. That is certain and they dislike us enormously. Of course, I have [identified] them as the ones who are involved in drug trafficking, the ones who benefit from impunity, from the disorder, from the lack of state, from lack of institutions, the people who benefit from contraband, from lack of institutions." In an interview on the radio program Variety and Vibrations heard on 1320 AM WLQY in Miami FL, a Mr. Wilbert Clerizier responded, "I was there and I took that to mean the Lavalas movement. That what he was saying was that the only people who oppose the UN occupation are Lavalas and that they are all drug dealers and criminals. I responded to Mr. Mulet that they should leave Haiti because they helped to legitimize the overthrow of the constitutional government. That would make me a drug dealer and a criminal too, which I am neither." Lavalas is the political movement of Haiti's desperately poor majority and the political party of president Jean-Bertrand Aristide who was ousted on February 29, 2004 in a coup reportedly backed by the United States, France and Canada.
Perhaps even more controversial was Mulet's attempt to write the epitaph for the Lavalas movement when he stated, "And to the Jean-Bertrand Aristide issue, when I first arrived in Haiti on the 2nd of June last year, we've had different marches and manifestations - all sorts of protests
demanding for the return of this ex-president and former president. In the beginning, these were expressions of 5,000 people. Then later on they became 3,000 and the last ones maybe 75...50 people. So I see that this issue of former President Aristide is not present anymore in the political sphere in Haiti anymore, and his movement - familia Lavalas - is very much divided, weakened." Contradicting Mulet is HIP video and photographs documenting a demonstration of over ten thousand people launched from Cite Soleil this last December 16. Protestors were demanding Aristide's return, an end the UN military occupation of Haiti and the release of Lavalas political prisoners. All of this took place a mere seven weeks ago and according to Pierre-Antoine Lovinsky, one of the Lavalas organizers, "December 16, 2006 is not that long ago but long enough to go beyond the collective memory of the UN and the apparent temporary amnesia of Mr. Mulet."
"I lost my leg when I was seven years
old so unlike others, I’m not afraid.
I’ll tell you what I really  think. The HNP (Haitian
National Police) are not welcome here. They
attack us so we have to attack them. If we throw
rocks at them, they respond by shooting us. They
will shoot you if they see you. Even if you have
not done anything, they will run after you. The
HNP are like savage dogs --- they run after you
to kill you without knowing why. The Brazilians,
however, treat us better. They will not shoot you
for no reason. They will come and find out what
is going on and will talk to us. But they need to
be living here in Bel Air with us. They need to
walk on the streets more. We want them
around. The area that we are in right now is
pretty secure but there are areas that everyone
is afraid to come to. Those are the areas we need
the Brazilians in because it will make us
safer. If the HNP want to come to Bel Air
to arrest people, they can only come if the
Brazilians take them there because we do not
trust them, only the Brazilians. |
Human rights activists
have begun to point to the December 16th demonstration
and others like it in Cite Soleil as the real reason
behind the UN's expanded military operations in this poor
neighborhood packed with cardboard and cinderblock shacks
covered with tin roofs. Six days later on December 22, UN
forces launched another major military assault on Cite
Soleil that residents claim killed close to 30 people and
wounded many others including a woman who was six months
pregnant. She claims to have been shot by a UN armored
vehicle in the abdomen instantly killing her unborn
child.
Responding to
well-documented reports of the UN firing from helicopters
during the Dec. 22 
raid,
Mulet claimed, "We never shot from a helicopter -
never. We had one helicopter with a camera taking
pictures and following the operation, but we never shoot
from helicopters. We never use heavy artillery
either." According to John Carroll, an
Illinois-based doctor who runs a charity that provides
medical aid to Haitian children, "I spoke with the
family with holes in their roof. They said the helicopter
fired down on Cite Soleil for three hours. I saw the
holes in the roof and the
holes in the people," he said. "I went to St.
Catherine's Hospital in Cite Soleil. I did not interview
any doctors. I examined the patients myself and their
stories seemed to correspond with their injuries,"
Dr. Carroll stated in a recent interview with Andrew
Buncombe of The Independent based in the United Kingdom.
HIP also has video documentation of a 28 year-old man
whose family has asked to withhold his name due to fears
of UN reprisals. He is seen dying in his home. Before
succumbing to his wounds, he gives testimony that
directly contradicts UN denials of firing from helicopter
gun ships on the population below. "I was shot by
the helicopter" were his last words.
"This is beginning to
resemble collective punishment against the residents of
Cite Soleil. There is more to this than just the issue of
gangs and alleged kidnappers. If this were just about
gangs then why isn't the UN going after the Little
Machete Army in Martissant?" asked Brian Concannon,
the Director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy
in Haiti. A gang known as the Little Machete Army
massacred spectators at a soccer game in broad daylight
down the street from a UN observation post in August
2005, hacking its victims to death with machetes. The
group attacked another neighborhood last summer, and
according to media reports it assassinated community
leader Esterne Bruner last September 21, and freelance
photojournalist Jean-Remy Badio on January 19. All along,
Martissant residents had been asking the UN to provide
protection. The Little Machete Army still controls the
area through terror and intimidation despite the presence
of United Nations forces.
To further illustrate his
point Concannon points to other gangs currently operating
in Haiti, "Gangs that were members of the
GonaivesResistance Front took over the police station in
Haiti's fourth largest city, Gonaives, in February 2004.
They have never disarmed, and some of the gangs,
especially those led by Wilfort Ferdinand and Winter
Etienne, regularly and openly control large parts of the
city to this day. But there are no large-scale assaults
to dislodge them. It is hard not to see the connection
between the large-scale protests in Cite Soleil, and that
neighborhood's being singled out for major military
operations."
In another press
conference held earlier in the week at the UN
headquarters in New York, Mulet admitted that while they
were obsessed with disarming gangs in Cite Soleil, they
allowed the former brutal military to keep their weapons
and that they are still heavily armed to this day. Mulet
stated, "When MINUSTAH [the UN mission] first
arrived in the country, the members of former armed
forces of Haiti had been a destabilizing presence, as
well. ALTHOUGH STILL ARMED, they were not active and
organized now."
 Resident holds projectile fired by UN forces. Journalists saw many such small hard metal projectiles residents claim are sprayed from a weapon mounted on UN APV's. Residents said that the weapon fires thousands of rounds in a matter of seconds. |
Human rights organizations have accused
the former military along with paramilitary death squads
of having sowed a campaign of terror against Aristide
supporters following his ouster in Feb. 2004. As part of
UN policy, they were integrated into the Haitian police
that was also accused of committing gross human rights
violations against Aristide supporters including summary
executions and arbitrary arrests. After having illegally
seized the residence of the exiled former president in
late 2004, the brutal former military was rewarded with a
payoff of more that 29 million dollars, or $5000 per
former soldier, paid for with funds provided by the
international community.
 Edline Pierre-Louis shows scar
from a life-saving operation performed on July 6,
2005, after the UN opened fire, hitting her in
the stomach and killing her unborn baby.
"They killed so many people and I praise God
that I am alive to call them liars" |
Finally, new reports of a
UN military operation in Cite Soleil at 1:00 AM EST today
continue to come into HIP. According to reporters on the
ground, a family of five was sleeping in their home when
UN/MINUSTAH soldiers started firing weapons in the
neighborhood; there was no report of
other gunfire in the area. The mother and father were
wounded and their two daughters were killed. Seven
year-old Stephanie Lubin and four year-old Alexandra
Lubin are now counted among the mounting toll of unarmed
civilians killed by United Nations forces in Cite Soleil.
©2007 Haiti Information Project
http://www.teledyol.net/HIP/about.html
See Also:
UN terror kills Haiti's children at night
http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/2_2_7a/2_2_7a.html
POVERTY:
A hellish state to be in. It is no virtue. It is a crime,
Marcus Mosiah Garvey.
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