Haiti Criticized Over Forced Stadium Eviction

Haiti Criticized Over Forced Stadium Eviction
AFP News April 12, 2010

PORT-AU-PRINCE - The aid group Action Against Hunger on Sunday slammed Haiti's forced evictions of hundreds of homeless quake victims from the pitch of the country's national stadium.

"We are shocked at the way it has happened. There is no planning. There is no solution offered to the people who lived in the stadium," unlike people evacuated from other camps, said Lucille Grosjean, spokeswoman for the
France-based organization.

Beginning late Friday, contingents of the Haitian National Police began breaking down tents and other shelters in the Sylvio Cator stadium, almost three months after the January 12 quake killed more than 220,000 people and
left 1.3 million homeless.

Evacuations of tent cities across Port-au-Prince were meanwhile being ramped up ahead of the rainy season, including the first few hundred from the overcrowded camp at the Petionville golf club, which is prone to mudslides and flooding, to a new location 20 kilometers (12 miles) away.

About 7,335 people, including some 1,300 families, had sought shelter on national stadium's artificial turf since it was opened up to victims after the disaster, but unlike other camps were not being moved by authorities to other
locales.