Protests, Government-UN Repression Mount in Haiti

October 18, 2010, CommonDreams.org

by Beverly Bell

“I came to protest so we can find a solution. Misery is killing me,” said Mascarie Sainte-Anne, 70, at the edge of a rally in front of Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive’s office on October 12.

A police officer chases a student during a protest last week in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Haitians have been taking to the streets with increasing frequency since August in calls for redress of the economic and social crisis which has followed the earthquake. The social movements’ demands of the government include the right of those living in internally displaced people’s camps to permanent, humane housing; accessible education; and an increase in minimum wage. Rallies have also protested the continued presence of the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti, or MINUSTAH.

Throughout Haitian history, state repression has often accompanied protests, and that pattern has repeated twice in the past week. Haitian police have killed one demonstrator and beaten a handful of others.

On October 15, according to video footage and to witness Melinda Miles of Let Haiti Live, about 200 people were marching in front of the U.N. logistics base when MINUSTAH forces fired two bullets in the air and leveled their guns at demonstrators. A MINUSTAH vehicle and a second UN car pushed three foreign journalists and at least two Haitian demonstrators into a ditch. Haitian police then began striking demonstrators and journalists, including foreigners Sebastien Davis-VanGelder and Federico Matias, with the butts of their rifles. A policeman bashed his rifle into the mouth of a demonstrator from the Kanarin camp, knocking out his front teeth.

“There was no provocation at all. The Haitian police and the private UN security guards were so aggressive. They were just looking to do violence,” said Miles.

On October 8, demonstrators were in front of the Ministry of Education, peacefully calling for education for the nation’s students, when Haitian riot police fired tear gas. Jean Louis Filbert (his name also reported as Jean Filbert Louis), a math teacher and member of the teachers’ union, was hit in the head with a tear gas canister. He died in the hospital the next day. Jean Pierre Edouard, who was not involved with the rally but had gone to the ministry simply to pick up a certificate, was also hit in the head.

One recent protest focus is also the principal concern of citizens today: permanent housing and other support for the estimated 1.5 million people who lost their homes in the earthquake and who still languish in tents or under tarps nine months later. No authority has told this group what their fates will be. Their shelters, usually made of plastic or nylon, are variously sweltering in the daytime heat and wet and muddy in the torrential night rains. Protection against thieves and rapists is non-existent.

According to an extensive new study, 40% of camps have no water, 30% have no toilets, and only 20% have access to education, medical care, or psychological support. With near-total unemployment; with food aid suspended since April; and with virtually no outside assistance; hunger, illness, and poverty are on the rise.

“Tighten our belts, we can’t take it any more,” loudly sang Sainte-Anne and 200 or so others in front of the prime minister’s office on October 12. “Tighten our belts” is not a metaphor in Haiti; it refers to the belts or ropes that people bind tightly around their waists in an attempt to dull hunger pangs.

The demonstrators continued their call-and-response chant:

“Heat under the tarps is brutal, we can’t take it any more.
We have fever, we can’t take it any more.
We’re being raped, we can’t take it any more.
We have no water, we can’t take it any more.
We have infections, we can’t take it any more.”

This was the third demonstration for a response to massive homelessness in as many months. “Each rally has been larger than the last,” said Reyneld Sanon, a leader with the Force for Reflection and Action on Housing (FRAKKA). “People are starting to stand up for their right to housing that is, after all, guaranteed by the constitution.” The protests are convened by a coalition including a housing rights group, a human rights group,[3] and committees of camp residents.

Sainte-Anne said, “I’m old, I’m going to die, but I don’t want it to be from hunger. I don’t have a husband. I don’t have children. I’ve been sleeping in the street since my house in Martissant fell flat. The government has to do something.”

At least three recent demonstrations, led by labor groups and grassroots organizations, have called for raising the minimum wage from $3.20 (125 gourdes) a day for export assembly work to $12.82 a day (500 gourdes). Last year, after the Parliament passed legislation to raise the minimum wage for all workers, factory owners complained to President René Préval. He refused to implement the law. Instead, a compromise agreement raised the salary of factory workers producing for export to only $3.20 a day. “You couldn’t live on that before the earthquake.  But costs have risen so much since then, it’s really impossible now,” said Gerome Dupervil, an advocate for workers’ rights.

Another series of rallies has taken place on October 1, 14, and 15 in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the U.N. logistics base. Demonstrators were protesting the annual renewal of the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), which has been here since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s ouster in 2004. The force includes almost 12,000 armed personnel. Its current annual budget is $380 million.

MINUSTAH troops have been charged with killings, arbitrary arrests, and human rights violations. They are currently suspected in the death by hanging of a young man, Gerald Jean Gilles, in the courtyard of a MINUSTAH base in Cap-Haïtien on August 17.  MINUSTAH personnel claimed that the youth killed himself, a fact disputed by family and friends.

Activists interviewed say their call for MINUSTAH’s departure is based on the force’s violence, its ineffectiveness in accomplishing its mission, the waste of money, and the undemocratic and colonial nature of the operation in a sovereign nation. The actions have been convened by a coalition including a media network, human rights and housing rights groups, and committees from various camps.

Asked what she and others in Haiti’s social movement want, Jetty Jenet said, “We’re calling out for help to make the authorities hear us.  We’re all dying.” For nine months, Jetty has had no income and has lived with her children under a plastic tarp in Cité Soleil. “But we’re people, too.”

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The Third Estate, October 18, 2010

Haiti’s UN Mission Faces Protests and Problems of Perception

This is a guest post by Isabeau, our friend in Haiti

A tense Friday morning in Port-au-Prince: shots fired in the air and blows traded between UN security personnel and a crowd of some 100 demonstrators gathered outside the UN headquarters in Port-au-Prince to protest the renewal of the forces’ mandate here. Though the mandate was officially renewed on Thursday, a coalition of grassroots and political opposition groups took to the streets to call for the end of what they say is an occupying force costing millions but doing little to ensure the security of the general population.

Despite having been warned of the a protest, UN security personnel seemed unprepared to handle the crowd who blockaded the entrance to the base, stopping traffic and spraying anti-UN slogans on official cars trying to enter. There have been many similar protests throughout the past couple of months, but Friday’s clashes were some of the most intense seen here in recent weeks. At one point a security officer waded into the crowd sparking pushing and shoving, blows were traded followed by shots fired in the air by the Jordanian soldiers forming a cordon to the base. A reckless UN vehicle pushed a hand full of journalists, including myself and Al Jazeera’s correspondent, into a trash-filled ditch. As security chiefs made calls asking for tear gas, reinforcements soon arrived in full riot gear and the crowd eventually dispersed. Both chiefs covered up their UN identification and refused to call in the UN press officer.

The UN mission was invited in to Haiti in 2004 by the US-backed Gerard Latortue’s regime after the coup d’etat against former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide threatened to plunge the country into a civil war. That threat subsided long ago but the mission doesn’t seem likely to end anytime soon.

Similar protests take place every year on the mandate’s expiry date, but lingering resentment has grown after “MINUSTAH”’s handling of the January 12^th crisis and its aftermath. Rather than helping pull people from the rubble they focused on protecting facilities from “looting”. Since then, despite this presence of more than 13,000 troops and armed police, rape inside the camps has quadrupled, violence against internally displaced is growing with many forcibly expelled from their camps, and concern is mounting that as Haiti enters its often-turbulent election season, political factions are distributing weapons in preparation for a campaign of intimidation.

But many Haitians don’t see the UN forces as helping with any of that. Everywhere you go in this city there’s evidence of the animosity many feel towards their presence. The ubiquitous graffiti slogans of “down with the occupation” or “down with UN thieves” speak to the general perception of the UN troop presence here.

As grassroots campaigner and demonstrator Yves-Pierre Louis explains: “It violates the Haitian constitution and the UN charter which specifies that such a force is only necessary in a country which threatens international peace and security. Haiti is not at war… it does not produce atomic bombs, terrorists or drugs, so where is the threat?”

Neither the officer in charge of the riot team, not the MINUSTAH Spokesman, Vicenzo Pugliese, made an official comment on the protest.

One of the reasons cited by the UN Security Council in Thursday’s decision to renew the mandate was that the continued presence of UN forces would help to ensure a “credible and legitimate” vote on November 28. But this comes as complaints are growing that the process has – up to now – been anything but. As 45 members of the US Congress recently warned in a letter to US president Barack Obama, the exclusion of major political groups such as Fanmi Lavalas, Aristide’s party and one of the few with any widespread popular support, invalid the electoral process as unfair, unconstitutional and undemocratic.

Friday the 15th was also the official beginning of political campaigning, but many Haitian’s living in camps insist they will refuse to vote while under tarpaulins. They say they have participated in the democratic process and twice had their collective will betrayed by coup d’etats backed by the US, Canada and France. With frustrations high on the streets, with many Haitians cynical that any change in political leadership will bring improvements to their daily lives, the problem for the UN stabilisation mission is that the troops are often viewed in the same light as those wishing to simply preserve the status quo in a country struggling to recover from disaster.

[updated 15.37, 18/10/2010]