30156: Paul - News- Kidnappings and rapes developped after the ouster of JB Aristide (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From Paultrouillot@hotmail.com

I have a great admiration for Delva. He is a serious journalist.
It is a bit ironic that the UN intervention with more than 8'000 soldiers 
brought more violence to our country? I am asking a question.
Either JB Aristide is behind these operations of destabilization or this coup 
was really stupid and brought only more chaos to our country? Why was Haiti 
better off before he left and with only a small and poor trained police.



================
By Joseph Guyler Delva
REUTERS

10:02 a.m. March 8, 2007

PORT-AU-PRINCE – Haiti's violent gangs are increasingly using rape to terrorize 
hostages and other victims, government officials and health workers say.
Sexual assaults of women appear to have become a fixture of the kidnappings for 
money carried out by gangs in a crime wave that developed after the ouster in 
February 2004 of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

AdvertisementMyriam Merlet, an official at the Department of Women's Affairs, 
said almost half of women kidnapped had been raped.
“It is hard to say exactly what is the motive for those rapes, but rapes have 
always been used in Haiti as a weapon for social and political repression,” 
Merlet said.

Rape has been used in Haiti before by government death squads intent on sowing 
terror in the poorest country in the Americas, which has long been rocked by 
political instability and violence.

A recent effort by U.N. peacekeepers to drive gangs out of the sprawling slums 
in Port-au-Prince where they held sway, and where they have also imprisoned 
many of their hostages, appears to have reduced the kidnappings.

But health workers report the number of rape victims is increasing.

Doctors and aid workers estimate that more than 800 women were raped between 
February 2006 and February 2007 in just the capital of this country of 8 
million people.

Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, a French humanitarian organization which 
operates three medical centers in Haiti, treated 70 rape victims in the first 
two months of the year.

“The number of women raped has constantly been increasing over the past 
months,” said MSF medical coordinator Dr. Maria Guevara. She said the number of 
monthly rape victims seen by the group had grown from five last September to 26 
in January. Another 44 were treated in February.

Joanne, a 25-year-old resident of the capital's Delmas district, said she was 
kidnapped late on Jan. 17 by two men who forced open her door and took her away 
in a pick-up truck.

“They held me for 3 days. They raped me several times and demanded $50,000 from 
my aunt to whom they talked on the phone,” Joanne said. “When they realized my 
aunt was not able to find any more money, they agreed to release me for 
$2,000.”

The government of President Rene Preval, elected just over a year ago amid 
widespread hopes that he could bridge the divide between the poor masses and a 
wealthy elite, and also bring an end to crime, has vowed fight sexual assaults.

But health workers say many rapists go unpunished because most victims refuse 
to go to the police and probably do not even tell their husbands.

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