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Troops of the United Nations
military occupation force in Haiti are once again accused of
brutalizing Haitians earlier this month.
Three Haitian men claim they
were savagely beaten by eight Brazilian UN soldiers during the
early morning hours of Dec. 14.
The alleged attack comes only four months
after anti-occupation demonstrations erupted around Haiti
following the release of a cell-phone video showing four
Uruguayan UN soldiers apparently sexually assaulting a young
Haitian man in the southern town of Port-Salut (see Haïti
Liberté, Vol. 5, No. 8, 9/7/2011).
On the afternoon of Dec. 13,
Joseph Gilbert, 29, and Abel Joseph, 20, were on their way to
deliver drinking water when their tanker truck broke down near
Fort Dimanche, a former political prison situated between the
Port-au-Prince shanty-towns of Cité Soleil and La Saline.
The men tried unsuccessfully to
repair the truck during the day. As night fell, they decided to
stay with the truck lest it be vandalized or its water stolen
during the night. To help them to guard the vehicle, they called
on Armos Bazile, the nephew of one of Gilbert’s clients, who
joined them at around 10 p.m..
According to the account the
men gave to the National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH)
later that day, at about 3 a.m. on Dec. 14, a patrol of
Brazilian soldiers from the UN Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH)
passed by them in a military vehicle on a routine patrol. After
passing the tanker truck, the soldiers stopped their vehicle and
walked back to the three Haitians.
“The soldiers arrested them
without any explanation,” the RNDDH wrote in its Dec. 16
report on the incident, which drew on the accounts of the three
men, area residents, witnesses, and the Cité Soleil
Justice of the Peace. “They forced them to empty their
pockets, relieving them of the sum of 4500 gourds [$113 US],
representing the amount of three trucks of water delivered
during the day, and a telephone – [with the number] 39350529 –
belonging to Joseph Gilbert.”
The soldiers also took
Gilbert’s driver’s license and the national ID cards of the two
other men before leading them to the courtyard of the Mixed
Educational Institution of La Saline, a school whose courtyard
is used by area residents to dry clay.
There, the eight Brazilian
soldiers beat the three men “with numerous kicks and punches,”
according to the report. “The victims’ bodies still bear the
visible signs of this physical abuse. They were beaten to the
point where they cannot sit.”
La Saline residents, hearing
the victims’ screams, came out of their homes and told the
soldiers that the men were not intruders and were known in the
area, according to RNDDH investigators, who visited the scene of
the alleged attack.
The soldiers then loaded the
three men into the back of their truck and drove them to a remote
plantain field just outside the city off Route 9. There,
according to the victims, the soldiers stripped the men naked and continued to beat them, even using a machete.
The soldiers then burned the
men’s clothes and drove off, leaving them naked in the field,
the victims said.
The UN has yet to accept
responsibility for the alleged attack on the three men. “MINUSTAH
is doing everything it really can to verify these facts as soon
as possible,” said UN spokesman Farhan Haq, referring to the
RNDDH report during a meeting with reporters at UN headquarters
in New York.
Meanwhile, the UN’s Office of
the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and MINUSTAH’s
Human Rights Section (HRS) investigated and criticized the
Haitian National Police (HNP) for five cases between October
2010 and June 2011 “involving at least 16 HNP officers in the
deaths of eight people,” in a report released this week.
The damning report charges that
“killings are too often justified as a consequence of an
exchange of fire between the police and suspected criminals,”
that “HNP officers directly involved in killings are
protected by their colleagues or superiors,” that official
investigations “are not systematic, are typically slow, and
rarely lead to disciplinary action or a conviction,” that “witnesses
are afraid of the consequences of giving testimony and convinced
that justice will not be rendered,” and that some
foot-dragging “judges choose to delay the investigations.”
As a result, “to date, not a single police officer has been
held criminally or administratively responsible for the deaths
that are the subject of this report,” the OHCHR & HRS
conclude.
Just weeks prior to the Dec. 14
incident and the OHCHR/HRS report, MINUSTAH’s Chilean chief
Mariano Fernandez Amunategui painted a glowing picture of the
mission’s effectiveness in a Nov. 29, 2011 letter to the daily
newspaper Le Nouvelliste.
“Through MINUSTAH’s support
in establishing the rule of law, the HNP’s professionalization
is in good position,” Fernandez wrote. “This has
resulted, with the help of the United Nations Police (UNPOL), in
the strengthening of the HNP’s capacity, through theoretical and
practical training, strengthening of technical and human
capacities, and also the restoration of the HNP’s image among
the population.”
 As the Haitian people’s anger
at MINUSTAH grows, so has the frequency of declarations about an
eventual pull-out. This week Chile's Defense Minister Andrés
Allamand announced that his nation would gradually withdraw its
500 troops from Haiti by 2016. The UN Security Council mandate
authorizing MINUSTAH’s deployment only lasts until Oct. 14,
2012.
In September, Brazilian Defense
Minister Celso Amorim announced that his nation would gradually
begin removing is 2,200 troops, the largest contingent in the
force of about 12,500 uniformed personnel, both soldiers and
cops. He set Brazil’s full withdrawal date for 2015.
But most Haitians are not
fooled by the “gradual withdrawal” announcements and want
the UN troops out more quickly. “Recent declarations by
MINUSTAH officials and Latin American ministers are not really
about withdrawal, but rather about how to prolong the presence
of foreign troops in Haiti,” said Yves Pierre-Louis of the
Heads Together of Popular Organizations, a front which has led
many anti-occupation protests. “We want the occupiers out of
Haiti immediately, and certainly not beyond the end of the
current mandate ten months from now.”
MINUSTAH was deployed in Haiti in Jun. 1, 2004,
following the Washington-backed coup three months earlier
against former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. “At the
time, Lula [then Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva]
said that the troops would just be needed for six months to
assure a democratic transition,” said Barbara Corrales, a
leader with the Brazilian Workers Party’s O Trabalho
tendency, which organized a large international anti-occupation
conference in Sao Paulo on Nov. 5 (see Haïti Liberté,
Vol. 5, No. 17, 11/9/2011). “But Brazilian troops and
MINUSTAH are still in Haiti over seven years later. The Haitian
people, and indeed the people of the entire continent, are
saying they must get out now.” |
