Outside Haiti’s National Palace, U.N. Troops’ Clash with Frustrated Students Spills into Camps
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By Ansel Herz
Mediahacker
Thursday, May 27, 2010
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.
Update: Paul Sebring says he witnessed a UN armored vehicle firing rounds of rubber bullets into the crowd. CEPR adds
historical context about the MINUSTAH’s
forays into Cite Soleil.
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