23652: (pub) Chamberlain: U.N. envoy calls for inquiry into Haiti killings (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

    PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Oct 28 (Reuters) - The U.N. special envoy for
Haiti urged the nation's interim government on Thursday to investigate the
killing of as many as 13 people whom neighbors said were executed by
police.
    "What happened is extremely serious. It is not good for the image of
the government and for the (U.N.) mission," Special Envoy Juan Gabriel
Valdes told human rights activists in a meeting. "I am going to ask the
government to open an investigation to determine what happened."
     Valdes said that "at least seven people had been executed" in the Fort
National slum in Port-au-Prince on Tuesday.
     "Our mission is re-establish security, but it is also to protect human
rights," he said of the U.N. forces brought in to restore order in the
deeply impoverished Caribbean nation after former President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide was forced into exile amid an armed revolt in February.
     Fort National residents accused police of killing 13 people believed
to be Aristide partisans. Neighbors said police forced the victims to lie
on the ground and then shot them and took the bodies away in an ambulance.
     Workers at the General Hospital morgue said they received the bodies
of seven people killed by gunshots in Fort National, and residents said
other bodies could have been dumped in secret graves.
     Several human rights groups called on interim authorities for an
explanation.
     "Human rights are being systematically violated in Haiti under the
interim government," the head of the Lawyers Committee for Individual
Rights, Renand Hedouville, told Reuters. "The execution of those 13
Haitians by police is a proof that the right to life is not respected in
Haiti, under this government."
     Police Chief Leon Charles denied that police carried out any operation
in Fort National on Tuesday and said police were investigating the
killings. He blamed armed gangs for a recent spate of violence that has
killed dozens of people, and acknowledged for the first time that not all
of the gangs were Aristide supporters.
     Aristide, Haiti's first democratically elected president, was
overthrown in a military coup during his first term in 1991 and disbanded
the military when he returned to office three years later. He began a
second term in 2001 but was then forced into exile in February.
     Haiti's police force includes many former soldiers who took part in
the rebellion, and Aristide supporters have accused them of killing and
illegally arresting Aristide partisans.
     Ex-soldiers who took part in the revolt against Aristide in February
have already assumed de facto police duties in several provincial cities.