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RIGHTS-HAITI: UN to Probe Deadly Raid

Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 25 2005 (IPS) - Following protests by human rights groups in the United States, the United Nations mission in Haiti has decided to investigate the alleged killing of civilians by its troops there early this month.

In a statement Monday, the U.N. Stabilisation Mission in Haiti, also known as MINUSTAH, admitted for the first time that civilians might have been injured or killed during the Jul. 6 raid on a working-class neighbourhood in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.

MINUSTAH is the sixth U.N. mission to hit Haiti in a decade, and comes on the heels of the country’s second U.S.-led invasion and occupation in as many years.

Until recently, the U.N. mission had consistently and categorically denied activists’ claims that many innocent people had died as a result of indiscriminate firing by U.N. troops in Cite Soleil, a stronghold of the supporters of ousted president Jean Bertrand Aristide.

"MINUSTAH forces did not target civilians in the operation on Jul. 6," U.N. officials said in a statement, adding that "the nature of such operation in densely populated urban areas is such that there is always a risk of civilian casualties."

The statement said the mission "deeply regrets any injuries or loss of life during its security operation," but gave no count of the dead or injured.

Right activists say community leaders in Cite Soleil had counted at least 23 bodies, including those of women and children, as a result of firing by U.N. troops. More than 400 troops took part in the assault.

U.N. mission officials said the security situation in parts of Port-au-Prince remained "very tense," adding that for the past few months different armed gangs had "terrorised" the population and "disrupted" the economic activity of the city.

MINUSTAH and the Haitian police have collaborated on many missions in the capital and in the countryside, carrying out raids, confronting gang violence and providing security for events.

Justifying the Jul. 6 action, the U.N. mission said it had taken a "robust posture to disrupt the activities of these armed gangs and bring the alleged criminals to justice," because it was necessary to create "a secure and stable environment within which the constitutional and political process can take place."

In April, a delegation of 10 Security Council members, headed by Brazilian Ambassador to the Security Council Ronaldo Mota Sardenberg, and members of the U.N.’s Economic and Social Council ECOSOC, visited Haiti to pledge support for a disarmament campaign, reform of the police force and justice system, economic and social development, and national elections slated for this fall.

But U.S.-based activists, who have interviewed scores of local residents and medical aid workers in Port-au-Prince, see things differently. They say since Aristide’s ouster from power, the people of poor neighbourhoods like Cite Soleil have faced extreme repression – including extra-judicial killings – at the hands of Haitian police.

In response, some young people have set up their own armed networks, which are labeled by authorities as "gangs."

While the U.N. mission in Haiti wants those youth to surrender their arms, it has failed to rein in the police units that have been terrorising people in the poor neighborhood, according to some Haiti watchers.

Though welcoming the U.N. decision to probe the use of excessive force by its peacekeeping troops, activists said that was not sufficient.

"That is not the way to conduct a professional police operation," Seth Donnelly, an activist who closely watched the recent events in Haiti, told IPS. "Rather this seems to be what the U.S. military did in Falluja, Iraq to find insurgents."

The widely-publicised siege of Fallujah in April 2004, called in response to the killings of four U.S. military contractors, included massive air and artillery strikes, and resulted in hundreds of Iraqi civilian deaths.

Donnelly and others insist that the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Commission, not MINUSTAH, should be given the authority to conduct an inquiry.

"We are hoping that Human Rights Commission will conduct its own investigation," said Donnelly. "It’s clear that higher authorities are involved here."

Earlier this month, Donnelly and his colleagues were sent to Port-au-Prince by the San Francisco Labour Council to attend a major labor conference there. They said they were still in Haiti when the U.N. troops raided Cite Soleil and that they had access to videotaped footage showing innocent people dying as a result of that operation.

"The evidence of a massacre by U.N. military forces is substantial and compelling. It completely contradicts the official version," they said.

Critics of the U.N. mission’s way of handling the pervasive violence in Haiti say the world body’s mission there needs to strike a balance in the conflict between Haitian police and members of the local communities.

"The U.N. mission apologised to the Haitian police for its delayed arrival on the scene of an incident where two police officers were killed on May 22, but it has never once apologised for any of the many documented instances where its troops killed civilians," said Pierre Labossiere of the Haiti Action Committee, a U.S.-based group.

Noting that under its most recent mandate, the U.N. has supervision of the Haitian police, he added: "Instead of stopping the killing of civilians, the U.N. is stepping up the slaughter. That must not be accepted by the international community."