25908: Wayne (News) U.N. to Investigate Alleged Haiti Massacre (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Desiree Wayne <desiree_wayne@msn.com>

http://villagevoice.com/generic/show_print.php?id=66630&page=hunterweb&issue=0532&printcde=MzM2OTc0MzU1MA==&refpage=L25ld3MvaW5kZXgucGhwP2lzc3VlPTA1MzImcGFnZT1odW50ZXJ3ZWImaWQ9NjY2MzA=


U.N. to Investigate Alleged Haiti Massacre
Local Red Cross tells of handing out body bags and shovels

by Aina Hunter
August 4th, 2005 5:01 PM

A canal full of garbage and human waste stagnates in front of Cite Soleil 
homes.

Photos by Margie Williams

In a written statement quietly released last Monday, the United Nations 
admitted it was possible that civilians were injured in a raid by its 
peacekeepers on July 6 in Cite Soleil, a vast concrete-block shantytown of 
about 250,000.
Haitians both in that country and in the United States have been protesting the 
actions of the troops, saying a number of innocent people were killed.

The U.N. plans to investigate exactly what happened in the predawn raid. 
Officials didn't return Voice calls, but by their own account 400 peacekeepers 
invaded the Cite Soleil neighborhood carrying machine guns and driving 
tank-like APCs. They entered the bowels of what is arguably the most miserable 
slum in the Western Hemisphere, seeking to ferret out the infamous Dred Wilme. 
A politically astute community leader and harsh critic of the interim 
government and MINUSTAH, Wilme had a large, loyal following in Cite Soleil. He 
and his followers were feared for their ruthlessness.

They claim to have killed Wilme and four associates in the raid. Two weeks 
after the killings, they said they knew of no civilian casualties that day, but 
now they acknowledge there might have been some.

People in the Bois Neuf section of Cite Soleil tell the Voice peacekeepers shot 
from helicopters and tanks while families slept or were just getting up to 
start their day. At a recent meeting in a cramped Port-au-Prince cafeteria, 
Pierre Alexis, director of Cite Soleil's tiny Red Cross infirmary, said his 
team was first on the scene after the U.N. pulled out around 6:45 that morning. 
Twenty-six people, mostly women and children, were injured, and taxi-vans were 
hired to transport them all to the Doctors Without Borders hospital. In an 
interview, hospital chief Ali Besnaci later confirmed Alexis's account.


They call Cite Soleil home.
Theoretically, peacekeepers from MINUSTAH, the U.N. Mission in Haiti, are there 
to quell the violence between Haitian National Police and armed groups—some 
truly political in nature, others merely hired by political factions—until the 
country is stabilized. Their mission began in June 2004. At first, MINUSTAH 
tried to stop police from gunning down peaceful demonstrators for the ousted 
president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, only to have the interim government accuse 
the U.N. of overstepping its mandate—which is, after all, to help the cops and 
support the interim government. MINUSTAH commanders backed down, but they 
couldn't win for losing.

By spring, human rights groups were criticizing the peacekeeping force for 
doing nothing as police continued to have their way with Aristide supporters. 
Meanwhile, the rich and powerful criticized the troops for doing nothing while 
armed groups terrorized the streets.

In late spring a prominent Haitian industrialist went on the radio accusing the 
U.N. of complicity with “bandits” for the majority Lavalas party. Then the U.S. 
embassy started muttering about sending in the marines. At the beginning of 
June, James Foley, U.S. ambassador to Haiti, told AP reporters that MINUSTAH 
wasn't doing its job. That's about when, critics say, MINUSTAH started 
hammering down on the poor—in the name of killing off “bandits” and 
“gangsters.”

After the raid, outraged human rights activists began funding pilgrimages to 
Port-au-Prince to see the damage for themselves. They returned with eyewitness 
accounts and photos of dead children, igniting a nationwide series of protests.

Cite Soleil residents showed the Voice bandaged wounds, tin roofing ripped up 
by what they said was gunfire from helicopters, schoolhouse walls riddled with 
bullet holes. One man stood on the unmarked grave—a mound of dirt strewn with 
garbage—of a man he said was shot in the face by a U.N. peacekeeper. 
Jean-Joseph Joelle, a member of a pro-Aristide Lavalas group in Cite Soleil, 
spoke for many residents when he said they “can't really call it a massacre 
anymore. To us it seems like genocide.”

MINUSTAH left many more men, women, and children dead, residents claim, not 
only that morning, but in days to follow as injured people slowly died. They 
say these bodies are now buried in random places throughout the broken cement, 
weeds, and canals of sewage. The Red Cross's Alexis confirmed that 
Port-au-Prince's infrastructure has fallen to such a level that workers from 
the state-run General Hospital no longer transport bodies from Cite Soleil to 
the morgue—he says people just deal with their dead as best as they can.


Loisne Nelio points to where he says gunfire from a helicopter showered his 
home. He says his wife was in bed at the time and lost both of her legs due to 
the bullets.
On July 7, the day after the incursion, Alexis says slum dwellers walked to his 
outpost and asked for the black plastic body bags and “pikwas”—digging 
implements the Red Cross tries to keep on hand. The 50 bags he distributed 
offer the bodies some protection from flies, and lock in the rotting smell 
while family and friends dig the grave with the borrowed tools.

In a country this destitute, with virtually no ability to conduct forensic 
science, the agency accused of atrocities is the only organization with the 
resources to get to the bottom of things. Activists are calling for an 
independent investigation, by someone.

As it stands it's a big mess. According to the U.N.'s statement, the Haitian 
National Police (who reportedly stood in the background as MINUSTAH conducted 
the operation) said that “gangs” were seen killing civilians later that 
morning, and that those deaths were wrongly attributed to the U.N.


Brick mason Mira Nelson, 56, says he was shot in the leg by a U.N. soldier on a 
tank while walking to work around 6:15 a.m. on July 6.
A human rights worker familiar with the intricacies of Cite Soleil says that 
though he is no fan of how the U.N. has been conducting itself, it is not 
inconceivable that some part of the civilian damage could have been inflicted 
by friends of Wilme after MINUSTAH left. There's always the chance, he says, 
that some desperate Cite Soleil resident tipped off (or was suspected of 
tipping off) the U.N. and was forced to pay with his or her life.

In an effort to sort fact from rumor, Anne Sosin of the Institute for Justice 
and Democracy in Haiti has assigned the case to a Port-au-Prince based 
investigator. Still, without the ability to order autopsies or ballistics 
tests, all the activists can really do is ask questions.