27461: Hermantin(News)Violent neighborhood has potential to sway election (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

lhermantin@hotmail.com

Posted on Sat, Feb. 04, 2006


HAITI | CITE SOLEIL
Violent neighborhood has potential to sway election
Violence in a seaside slum posed a threat to participation in Tuesday's Haitian 
presidential election.
BY JOE MOZINGO
jmozingo@MiamiHerald.com

PORT-AU-PRINCE - In the two square miles that make up the Cité Soleil slum, 
armed gang members who last year had only limited ammunition now fire full 
clips at U.N. troops hunkered down in armored vehicles and behind sandbags.

When the peacekeepers fire back, their bullets rip through moldering shanties 
teeming with an estimated 250,000 people. More than 250 have been wounded by 
gunfire just since Dec. 1, say officials of the neighborhood's hospital.

But while a year ago residents were vowing to boycott presidential elections -- 
demanding only the return of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide -- they 
now say they will vote Tuesday in hopes that a new government can deliver them 
from the anarchy and bloodshed. ''We're going to vote because things might 
change,'' said Yollette Pierre, 48.

Given the persistent strife in Cité Soleil, everyone with a stake in Haiti's 
future is watching the situation there closely. What happens there on Election 
Day could have a significant effect on the capital's overall security and the 
chances for reconciliation in a country deeply and bitterly divided over 
Aristide's ouster.

Since his departure into exile amid an armed revolt in 2004, the slum has 
remained a bastion of support for the former priest and the fiercest pocket of 
resistance against the U.S.-backed interim government and U.N peacekeeping 
force.

PROMISING PEACE

But in the last week, gang leaders have been trying to convince authorities 
they will not wreak havoc on election day. ''Now we have guys in Cité Soleil 
who want a truce,'' National Police Chief Mario Andresol said Friday. ``They 
want the election and they want to vote.''

The change in attitude is due to the emergence of René Préval, a former 
president and one-time protégé of Aristide, as the front-runner in opinion 
polls.

Of the dozen or so people interviewed by The Miami Herald on two recent visits 
to Cité Soleil, all said they plan to vote even if their going to polling 
stations outside the slums means they risk retaliation by Haitian police and 
gangs with different political interests.

''We know it's risky but we're going to vote,'' said William Baptiste, a gang 
leader known here as Ti Blanc. ``All 34 neighborhoods will vote.''

The lawlessness in Cité Soleil is arguably the most profound failure of the 
more than 9,000-member U.N. military and police force deployed here.

Frequent shootings and carjackings cut off the country's main highway where it 
passes near the slum and paralyzed industry in the area. The slum also had been 
the center of a kidnapping-for-ransom industry that hit eight to 10 victims 
every day in Port-au-Prince in December. Many of the victims were held in the 
slum, a no-go area for U.N. troops and Haitian police.

In mid-January, business and political leaders demanded a full-scale attack 
against the gangs.

FEAR IS CITYWIDE

''This situation in Cité Soleil is causing a psychosis of fear in a million 
people throughout the capital,'' said Andy Apaid, an apparel manufacturer who 
organized a Jan. 16 sit-in to demand that peacekeepers do more to pacify the 
slum before the elections.

Because of the insecurity, electoral officials have put the voting centers for 
the slum's residents just outside its borders despite several street 
demonstrations supporting the elections.

Only on Thursday, gunmen opened fire on U.N. electoral workers entering the 
slum in an armored car. The vehicle was hit multiple times, and one bullet 
pierced a door, said the U.N. Chief of Electoral Assistance, Gérard Le 
Chevallier.

''The team saw them with AK-47s,'' he said. ``You might ask why they would have 
a demonstration in the morning and shoot at us in the afternoon.''

No one was hurt in the attack, but officials ruled out polling inside the slum, 
meaning its 61,000 registered voters will still have to walk into areas where 
they would be at the mercy of police, peacekeepers and even rival gangs.

Jordanian Brig. Gen. Mahmoud Al-Husban, commander of the U.N. military sector 
that includes Cité Soleil, said he plans to tighten security on election day, 
but will not push his troops into more offensive operations because too many 
innocent people would be killed.

'Some people with political background, they are always saying, `When are you 
going to finish Cité Soleil? When are you going to destroy Cité Soleil?' '' he 
said. ``This is not what we do.''

CHECKPOINTS POROUS

His troops generally stay out of the slum and rely on a series of checkpoints 
in an attempt to control who enters and leaves Cité Soleil. But many entry 
points are left wide open, and numerous kidnapping victims have reportedly been 
taken into the slum without passing a single checkpoint.

By most accounts the checkpoints have been ineffective because the 
Arabic-speaking Jordanians mostly stay in defensive positions in their armored 
vehicles, unable to check vehicles for guns, ammunition or kidnap victims.

And when troops do step out, they risk their lives. On Jan. 17, three Jordanian 
peacekeepers manning a checkpoint on the National Road near Cité Soleil were 
shot. One was killed instantly, another died at a hospital, the third survived.

Weapons and ammunition have been streaming into the slum, according to 
officials here, hidden in garbage trucks and taxis or brought in by boat from 
the bay, which is unguarded.

''The way they are shooting they don't care about the consumption of 
ammunition,'' Husban said.

But the shooting is taking a heavy toll on civilians.

Dr. Jacklin St. Fleur, medical director at the Sainte Catherine hospital, keeps 
a chart showing that about 40 percent of gunshot victims treated there were hit 
in shootouts between the U.N. and gangs, 40 percent didn't know how they got 
shot, 10 percent reported being shot during inter-gang warfare and 10 percent 
in domestic disputes.