Haiti: Poor residents of capital describe a state of siege

Nearly two months since UN troops began launching heavy attacks that they say are aimed against gang members in poor neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince, roadblocks and barbed wire remain in place and the atmosphere is grim. Mercius Lubin of the Boston district of Cité Soleil told IPS that an assault earlier this month left his only two children dead. "It is the noise of MINUSTAH's [the UN peacekeeping force] fire that awoke us." It was about 11pm on Feb. 1, he said, and the family was sleeping on the floor because UN soldiers had advised everyone in the area to do so. "Then they started shooting…. I saw that I was wounded in one of my arms, my wife in one of her feet and my two young girls were bathed in their own blood." He said it was MINUSTAH bullets that had sprayed across his home, killing his daughters. IPS viewed the corpses of Stephanie, 7, and Alexandra Lubin, 4. A top MINUSTAH military commander acknowledges the UN fired shots that day. Residents also state that UN vehicles fired heavily down the road which the Lubin home sits along. Officials of MINUSTAH, whose military contingent is headed by Brazil, have admitted to "collateral damage" but say they are there to fight gangsters at the request of the René Préval government. Speaking at a press conference at UN headquarters on Feb. 28, Joel Boutroue, deputy special representative of the secretary-general for Haiti, referred to the allegation that MINUSTAH soldiers had shot "two little girls," but said that gang members were responsible for the killings. "[The UN soldiers] are taking extra care in minimizing the number of civilian casualties," he said. "The rules of engagement are very clear–they only shoot when shot at.... The number of casualties has been very limited." However, Boutroue acknowledged that while the UN does investigate some specific cases and attempts to tally casualties in local clinics after large operations, they do not determine whether people have been hit by MINUSTAH or other weapons. "That's impossible to know," he said. UN and government officials have pointed to one gang leader in particular named Evans. In recent weeks they have arrested a number of men from his group. But many residents and local human rights activists say that scores of people who have no involvement with gangs have been killed, wounded and arrested in the raids and fighting. A climate of fear persists in much of Cité Soleil. IPS observed that buildings throughout Cité Soleil were pockmarked by bullets; many showing huge holes made by heavy caliber UN weapons, as residents attest. Often pipes that brought in water to the slum community now lay shattered. A recently declassified document from the US embassy in Port-au-Prince revealed that during an operation carried out in July 2005, MINUSTAH expended 22,000 bullets over several hours. In the report, an official from MINUSTAH acknowledged that "given the flimsy construction of homes in Cité Soleil and the large quantity of ammunition expended, it is likely that rounds penetrated many buildings, striking unintended targets." A hardened UN strategy became apparent just days before Christmas, when UN officials stated they were entering Cité Soleil to capture or kill gangsters and kidnappers in the Bois Neuf zone. According to some residents, the Dec. 22 assault became known as Operation "Without Pity for Cité Soleil" as the noise of the 50-mm MINUSTAH machine guns could be heard echoing for miles. Five days later, the people of Bois Neuf buried 11 young people that they say were among those killed by MINUSTAH. Frantz Michel Guerrier, a young man who is the spokesman of the Committee of Notables for the Development of Cité Soleil and based in the Bois Neuf zone, said: "It is very difficult for me to explain to you what the people of Bois Neuf went through on Dec. 22, 2006–almost unexplainable. It was a true massacre. We counted more than sixty wounded and more than 25 dead among [them] infants, children and young people." "We saw helicopters shoot at us, our houses broken by the tanks," Guerrier said. "We heard detonations of the heavy weapons. Many of the dead and wounded were found inside their houses. I must tell you that nobody had been saved, not even the babies. The Red Cross was not allowed to help people. The soldiers had refused to let the Red Cross in categorically, in violation of the Geneva Convention." The UN denies that it blocked ambulances from entering the slum but acknowledges that a peacekeeper did shoot out an ambulance tire in Port-au-Prince that day. Multiple residents said that MINUSTAH, after conducting its operations, evacuated without checking for wounded.