29873: Potemaksonje (News) Girl recounts alleged rape by peacekeeper (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Potemaksonje@yahoo.com

Peace at a price in Haiti
Teen girl recounts alleged rape by peacekeeper, one of dozens of sex cases 
brought before the UN           BY REED LINDSAY
Special to Newsday
January 8, 2007



LEOGANE, Haiti - Natasha says she was walking home after school when the Sri 
Lankan soldier called to her.

 Peacekeepers in this small town an hour west of Port-au-Prince often give 
candy and food to children, so 15-year-old Natasha, whose real name is being 
withheld to protect her, readily followed him into a sugarcane field behind the 
military base.

     There, she says, he covered her mouth with his hand, forced her to the 
ground and raped her.

 For Natasha, the nightmare had just begun. When her mother found her, bloody 
and covered in dirt, she beat Natasha savagely in the middle of the street. The 
girl's headmaster expelled her in order not to "stain" the school's reputation. 
Her classmates and neighbors taunted her, calling her "Madame Minustah." 
MINUSTAH is the acronym for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, 
the peacekeeping mission here.



 The investigation begins

 Natasha's mother forbade her to tell anyone about the attack until now - 
nearly two years later. The UN, which says it did not know about the rape 
allegation, has begun to investigate. "I thought they came for peace, not war," 
said Natasha, who speaks English moderately well and whose teacher said she was 
the top student in her class. "I thought they came to protect us. I never 
thought they could abuse me in this way."

 Natasha is not alone. The peacekeeping mission in Haiti, which arrived in June 
2004 to help stabilize the country after the ouster three months earlier of 
former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, has investigated 34 other cases of 
alleged sexual abuse and exploitation. No case of rape and only one case of 
sexual exploitation by UN personnel has been substantiated by the mission, 
which has more than 6,600 soldiers, predominantly from Latin America, and 1,700 
police officers from three dozen countries.

 In the single case of exploitation, a UN investigation in March 2005 concluded 
that two Pakistani riot police officers had paid for sex with a woman in the 
city of Gonaives. They were removed from Haiti, dismissed from the police force 
and sentenced to 1 year in prison by the Pakistani government, according to UN 
spokesman David Wimhurst.

 The UN has been rocked by a series of abuse scandals in recent years, 
implicating peacekeepers from missions in 12 different regions - Burundi, 
Cyprus, Ivory Coast, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia/Eritrea, 
Georgia, Haiti, Liberia, Western Sahara, Sierra Leone, Sudan and East Timor. 
More than 150 peacekeepers in the Congo were implicated in 2004 for raping 
women and paying for sex with food, jobs or as little as $1.

 Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan publicly admitted last month to the 
United Nations' failure to stop sexual misconduct and launched an internal 
effort to fight the problem. Since January 2004, the UN has investigated 319 
peacekeepers for sexual abuse or exploitation, resulting in the repatriation of 
144 military personnel, 17 police officers and 18 civilian officials serving in 
several countries. The UN has no authority to punish wrongdoers and can ask 
only that their home countries do so.



 Disputed investigations

 Some alleged victims dispute the conclusions of the UN Haiti probes - among 
them a 15-year-old girl who accused a Brazilian peacekeeper in September 2004 
of raping her at a UN naval base. Wimhurst said three investigations were 
conducted, but no evidence was found substantiating the allegations. The girl's 
lawyer called the findings a whitewash and said the UN never gave him or his 
client a final report.

 "We take it very seriously. We investigate everything that comes to our 
attention," Wimhurst said. "Clearly, the vast majority of our people are 
behaving themselves. And indeed, since some of these allegations don't pan out, 
I would say it's not a huge problem."

 But some human rights activists say many victims are either too afraid or too 
intimidated by the UN bureaucracy to come forward. "There are likely many more 
cases," said Polin Aleandre, a social worker who claims peacekeepers offered 
five girls he helps, aged 9 to 13, $20 for oral sex in front of the national 
palace. The girls, usually barefoot street children who wash windows and beg 
for change, told Aleandre they refused. "Sex has a huge stigma in Haiti and 
rape even more so. People don't talk about it at all," he said.

 In Haiti, incoming peacekeepers are instructed about the UN's "zero-tolerance" 
policy for sexual abuse and exploitation, which includes exchanging money for 
sex and having consensual sex with a minor.

 "We have a very strong deterrent program in place and that's really where we 
have to put all our effort," Wimhurst said. "Some people might do this anyway, 
but the very few who do, tarnish the rest who behave correctly." In July 2005, 
the UN assigned a civilian official to Port-au-Prince, the capital, to receive 
sexual misconduct complaints brought by the population.

 But many Haitians say they haven't heard about the UN's efforts to stem sexual 
misconduct. While the UN has organized large-scale publicity campaigns in Haiti 
that promote elections and disarmament, there has been no visible effort to 
educate or inform the population about their rights regarding sexual abuse and 
exploitation.



 Unheard complaints

 In Leogane, a relatively peaceful city that has not seen armed conflict since 
the peacekeepers arrived, there are no civilian officials to hear complaints 
about possible abuses by Sri Lankan forces. And in Port-au-Prince, the office 
dealing with sexual abuse complaints was not established until several months 
after Natasha claims she was raped.

 Last month in New York, Annan lamented "an overall climate that makes it 
difficult to report and expose abuses" and proposed a new strategy to help 
victims.

 Natasha, now 17, says she hopes the UN mission will help her return to school 
and leave Leogane, where she continues to be tormented by name-calling and the 
sight of the peacekeepers. "Even now, whenever I see a Minustah soldier I feel 
uncomfortable," she said. "I fear them and at the same time I hate them."

 But Wimhurst said the United Nations is unlikely to be able to substantiate 
her allegations and, as such, would not be able to help her.

 "The longer time goes by in these cases, the more difficult it is to get the 
evidence," he said.


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