UN Clash with Frustrated Students Spills Into Camps

UN Clash with Frustrated Students Spills Into Camp
Inter Press News
By Ansel Herz

PORT-AU-PRINCE, May 25, 2010 (IPS) - United Nations peacekeeping troops responded to a rock-throwing demonstration by university students Monday evening with a barrage of tear gas and rubber bullets in the area around Haiti's National Palace, sending masses of displaced Haitians running out of tent camps into the streets, according to witnesses.

"That child was gravely injured in the face! It was miserable, they were throwing gas everywhere," said Junior Joel, a young man hanging with friends at night outside the palace - still partially collapsed from the January earthquake.

Three volunteer doctors from the NGO Partners in Health who were working in the emergency room of the General Hospital said they treated at least six individuals with wounds from rubber bullets.

"They were bleeding," Sarah McMillan, a doctor from New Hampshire, told IPS. "There was a little girl with a big laceration on her face. It needed about 10 stitches. She'll probably have a scar."

The girl was discharged from the hospital and could not be found in the tent camp as of publication time.

Thousands of families are crowded into the public squares in the Champs du Mars zone around the palace, after the earthquake killed at least 200,000 people and drove nearly two million from destroyed neighbourhoods.

A coalition of political organisations called Tet Kole, Haitian Creole for "Heads Together", has staged protests in the area for the past month, demanding the resignation of President René Préval over his handling of the post-earthquake crisis.

The walls of the Faculty of Ethnology school are dotted with graffiti denouncing Préval and the United Nations. Students said they gave Brazilian peacekeeping troops stationed in jeeps outside the campus the middle finger sign late Monday afternoon.

When the troops tried to enter the campus, angrily calling students thieves and vagabonds, the students showered them with rocks. As the soldiers fled, they fired three bullet rounds in the air and one of them struck the front-facing wall of the school, students said.

When the troops returned in bigger vehicles, Frantz Mathieu Junior said he ran to hide in a bathroom, but the soldiers kicked the thin wooden door open. Junior said he was forced to the ground and kicked repeatedly, then taken away. He says he was force-fed while in detention.

The students showed IPS on Tuesday the cracks in the wooden door and the bullet hole next to a second-storey window. After Junior was taken on Monday, they took to the streets in an angry protest, throwing more rocks.

Edmond Mulet, the head of the peacekeeping mission - known by the acronym MINUSTAH - issued a statement blaming an unnamed student for "the provocation" of throwing stones at a patrol, but apologising for the troops' intrusion on university grounds to seize him.

U.N. troops never fired any bullets or tear gas on Monday, said MINUSTAH spokesperson David Wimhurst. He said only pepper spray and rubber bullets were used to quell an out-of-control protest.

CNN crews heard gunshots, smelled tear gas and saw gas canisters littering the area surrounding the palace. According to witnesses from the surrounding tent camps, U.N. troops blanketed the area with tear gas and fired rubber bullets at 6 p.m. on Monday.

"Everyone ran because nobody wants to be around when there's so much gas," Joseph Marie-ange, a 24-year-old mother of four, told IPS. "They're abusive. They shot the gas in here and the children and elders were falling, everyone was feeling the effects."

Hours after the protests and swirling gas dissipated, Levita Mondesir trudged with her three-month-old baby towards the General Hospital's exit.

"We live in Place Petion, across from the Ethnology school," she told IPS. "The students came, then MINUSTAH released the gas. When I got back to the camp, everyone was running, so I ran too."

"I tried to cover my child and told the other children to lay down under the bed," she continued. "There was smoke and the kids and people were falling. My baby wasn't responding, I was worried he died. I was crying and others helped me take him to the hospital."

She caught a motorcycle taxi to the hospital and received a reserve ticket for her baby to be x-rayed the next day. Tines Clerge, her husband, said he can't continue living there now. "I can't stay at Chanmas anymore," he told IPS.

The opposition protests continued Tuesday afternoon in Chanmas. Scores of U.N. troops and Haitian police ringed the national palace with barricades. The demonstrators accuse President Préval of seeking to grab power by extending his mandate past the original end date. Parliament approved the extension.

Some are also upset with the Haiti Interim Recovery Commission, which directs the spending of nearly 10 billion dollars in aid money. A majority of the commission members are foreigners, though Préval has a final veto on all decisions.

"If they want to suppress the protest, why didn't they shoot the gas at the school where the students are?" asked Malia Villa, an organiser with the Haitian women's group KOFAVIV, who fled the Chanmas area Monday night. "How can they shoot it in the middle of the camp, where we have children and families? They say they're here for security in the country, but how can the government work with them now when they do this?"

"We can't continue to tolerate this anymore. It's revolting to us," she told IPS, throwing up her hands.

U.N. troops have been dogged by persistent accusations of abuse since their mission was established in 2004 after the ouster of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Incidents occurred in 2008 and 2009 in which Haitian witnesses said troops recklessly fired their weapons, killing or injuring civilians, while MINUSTAH internal investigations cleared their troops of wrongdoing.

Further political demonstrations are scheduled for Thursday, according to opposition groups.

*Ansel Herz blogs at http://www.mediahacker.org.

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.

"Displaced Fear Expulsion from Makeshift Camps"

"Displaced Fear Expulsion from Makeshift Camps"
By Ansel Herz
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Apr 8, 2010 (IPS) - For decades, the Saint Louis de Gonzague school has groomed some of Haiti's most elite political players. Francois Duvalier, the iron-fisted dictator who ruled Haiti for 14 years, sent his son to the school. About 1,500 children of Haiti's wealthiest class attend each year.

Within days of the January earthquake, the sparse concrete grounds of the Gonazague secondary school became home to nearly 11,000 Haitian families, driven out of destroyed neighbourhoods in central Port-Au-Prince.

Now the school's director wants to reopen the school. The government encouraged schools to resume classes on Monday, calling it another small step towards normalcy...

Matthew 25 House and Sister Mary Finnick on The Today Show

Matthew 25 House and Sister Mary Finnick on The Today Show

Matthew 25 Guesthouse in Port-au-Prince's Delmas 33 neighborhood has become the home to hundreds of families since the Earthquake on January 12th. The Today Show met with community members as well as Sister Mary Finnick to follow-up on the still urgent needs.

Congress Woman Maxine Waters Joins the Coalition in Solidarity with Haiti for an Emergency Meeting on Sunday January 17th

Congresswoman Maxine Waters Joins

The Coalition in Solidarity with Haiti
Inviting the Haitian Community to an
Emergency Meeting

on Sunday, January 17th
1:00 p.m.

at Full Gospel Apostolic Church of God/
La Mission Chretenne D’Haiti
4749 W. Adams Blvd., LA 90016