[News] Haiti - UN Plans to Invade Cité Soleil

[Anti-Imperialist News]

The Narco News Bulletin

http://www.narconews.com/print.php3?ArticleID=1580&lang=en

January 27, 2006 | Issue #40



Haiti: Hopes for a Peaceful Alternative as the UN Plans to Invade Cité Soleil


An Interview with Frank Eaton, Filmmaker and Kidnapping Victim



By Jeb Sprague
Special to The Narco News BulletinPor Jeb Sprague



January 26, 2006
This report appears on the internet at 
http://www.narconews.com/Issue40/article1580.html

“I think they are going to kill a lot of innocent 
people when they [the UN MINUSTAH forces] go into 
Cité Soleil. It’s going to be like Fallujah. They 
are going to kill a lot of innocent people. I 
remember being in there, I realized, wow a lot of 
people are going to die in here. I realized I was a survivor.”

-Frank Eaton

Documentary filmmaker Frank Eaton, 30, of 
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was kidnapped and 
held for three days in Cité Soleil, a slum in 
Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. Along with his friend, 
Alain Maximilien, a Haitian radio disc jockey, 
they were freed after his captors received 
$20,000, 10 pairs of shoes and a radio on 
December 31, 2005. The story of his experience 
was repeated across the media. News coverage of 
kidnappings in Haiti has continuously focused on 
fear and brutality, or what Eaton calls “the 
pornography of violence,” and has rarely shown 
the context behind the ongoing conflict and kidnappings.

[]

The United Nations MINUSTAH (French abbreviation 
for United Nations Stabilization Mission in 
Haiti) force, under the Security Council adopted 
resolution 1529 (2004), entered Haiti following 
the overthrow of the democratically elected 
government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Feb. 
2004. MINUSTAH includes military and police 
contingents of more than 9,000 people from over 
40 countries under the leadership of Brazil and Canada.

While being involved in numerous running gun 
battles with groups of young men in Cité Soleil, 
MINUSTAH has been implicated in and admitted to 
the killing of numerous innocent civilians – what 
the UN on January 9, 2006 called 
“<http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article337553.ece>collateral 
victims.” Hundreds of Haitians interviewed 
claimed to have been shot by the United Nations 
and in a recent report allegations have emerged 
that UN forces have attacked the only hospital in 
Cité Soleil. Cité Soleil is home to somewhere 
between 250,000 and 400,000 people living in 
abject poverty. Leslie Bagg and Aaron Lakoff 
write in their recent article, 
“<http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=55&ItemID=9520>Haiti’s 
Deadly Class Divide”:

According to Jean-Joseph Joel, the Secretary 
General of the local branch of Fanmi Lavalas, the 
area’s residents are virtual prisoners, and their 
movements restricted by armed police at 
checkpoints. Vilified as bandits or chimeres by 
the elite-run press, he says they face 
persecution if they do manage to escape the 
neighborhood. There is no work and signs of 
malnutrition are obvious in the children.

Following the events of February 2004 (preceded 
by four years of a Bush administration-backed 
embargo and foreign-funded “democracy promotion” 
destabilization programs) Haiti’s public 
institutions were gutted, its elected government 
and many of it’s public employees ousted, jailed, 
and persecuted. Thousands are dead in Haiti 
following the 2004 coup d’état and many more are 
in hiding or under daily persecution. Under UN 
protection and with little mainstream press 
criticism, the interim coup government has 
continued its methodical campaign of persecution 
and imprisonment of political activists. Under 
the U.S. installed regime, in late 2004, human 
rights investigators 
<http://www.law.miami.edu/cshr/CSHR_Report_02082005_v2.pdf>discovered 
hospitals in which Lavalas supporters were being 
allowed to bleed to death, maggot infested 
morgues in which bodies were being eaten away at 
with no refrigeration, and mass graves in which 
pigs devoured the remains of victims.

Edline Pierre-Louis, a Cité Soleil resident, was 
hit in the stomach by gunfire from UN forces, 
causing her to loose her unborn baby on July 6, 
2005. In a recent interview with journalists she 
stated, “They killed so many people and I praise 
God that I am alive to call them liars.”

Some MINUSTAH contingents, outside of 
Port-au-Prince, primarily in the north of Haiti, 
have reportedly behaved in a more professional 
manner, communicating better with local popular 
organizers and representatives. Meanwhile, a 
lawyers’ organization, AUMOHD, has come forward 
attempting to negotiate a peaceful alternative 
for Cité Soleil and other poor areas of Haiti.

Following the 2004 coup and a fatal wave of 
persecution targeting Lavalas demonstrations and 
communities, kidnapping has increasingly plagued 
Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. In recent weeks 
the United Nations has come under rising pressure 
from both the Haitian elite and the foreign press 
to take over the slum of Cité Solei, which today, 
nearly two years after the U.S. Marine led 
kidnapping of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, 
still remains a no-go-zone for the Canadian and 
U.S.-trained Haitian National Police (HNP) and 
the UN MINUSTAH force. The wide-scale persecution 
of the poor and politically motivated layoffs of 
public sector employees by the U.S.-installed 
interim government, have further provoked the situation.

The mainstream media has continuously ignored 
visible examples of Haitians being killed by the 
United Nations and massacres carried out by the 
infamous Haitian National Police, the HNP forces 
often wear masks, and their hooded “machete army” 
attaches, have been well documented by 
journalists from the Haiti Information Project 
(www.haitiaction.net). Human rights and 
immigration lawyer Thomas Griffin documented the 
dire situation in Cite Soleil in an 
<http://www.law.miami.edu/cshr/CSHR_Report_02082005_v2.pdf>investigation 
by researchers at Miami University. Ignoring the 
war against the poor in Haiti, the press has 
focused on the kidnappings, disregarding the 
numerous crimes against humanity at the hands of the HNP and MINUSTAH.

Meanwhile, increasing pressure has come not only 
from the media, but also from Haitian elite to 
intensify the MINUSTAH occupation of Cité Soleil. 
In early January 2006 a group called Group 184, 
including many prominent sweatshop and radio 
station owners and which was partially 
responsible for the overthrow of democracy in 
February 2004, began a campaign, which included a 
business strike 
(http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/1_18_6/1_18_6.html) 
to pressure MINUSTAH towards increasing its 
activities in Cité Soleil. Following alleged 
tense negotiations with the leadership of the 
Haitian elite Group 184, MINUSTAH commander 
Brazilian Lt. General Urano Teixeira da Matta 
Bacellar committed suicide. He was found dead the 
following morning, lying on the balcony of his 
Port-au-Prince hotel room in the upscale Hotel 
Montana (http://www.indybay.org/news/2006/01/1794502.php).

[]

Recent reports have also uncovered a mysterious 
U.S. blacks ops company that has been working 
with MINUSTAH to gain “intelligence” on Cite 
Soleil. On January 18, 2006 Kathryn Cramer, a 
writer investigating pentagon contractor Top Cat 
Marine Security 
(http://www.topcatmarinesecurity.com/), released 
details 
(http://www.kathryncramer.com/kathryn_cramer/top_cat_marine_security/index.html) 
on the role of a mysterious company called the 
Consultants Advisory Group (CAG), run by ex-CIA 
and U.S. military employees living in Panama 
City, Florida, with a representative in Haiti 
(living also in Pétion-Ville’s Hotel Montana). 
According to Cramer, CAG has placed spies 
disguised as journalists in the audiences of 
Haitian presidential candidate debates, arranged 
for Top Cat patrol boats off the coast of Cité 
Soleil, and arranged for the unlawful detention 
of people inside Haiti who have complained about 
CAG’s involvement in human rights violations in Haiti.

Many kidnappings have occurred outside of Cite 
Soleil, something the Haitian Chamber of 
Commerce, under Reginal Bolous, and the Group 
184, under Andre Apaid, refused to address in the 
recent business-led strike. While companies such 
as “Texaco, Shell, Scotia Bank, and upscale 
grocery stores remained shut” during the strike, 
the “informal economy – street vendors, runners, 
tap-tap (taxi) operators – lined the streets, 
unable to skip a day’s work just because the 
island’s wealthiest said so” explain Leslie Bagg 
and Aaron Lakoff in their recent article.

Kidnappings have come not only from the “gangs” 
described by the international press but by 
criminals and members of the Haitian National 
Police. Police Officers Wilfrid Francois, Sony 
Lambert, Rénald Cinéus, and an accomplice of 
theirs named Stantley Handal have all been 
implicated in a kidnapping ring. The Haiti 
Information Project 
<http://www.narconews.com/www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/1_11_6/1_11_6.html>reports:

Handal is a member of one of Haiti’s wealthiest 
families that supported the ouster of Aristide in 
1991 and 2004. He was initially arrested along 
with eight members of Haiti’s police force for 
running a kidnapping ring after he attempted to 
use a stolen credit card taken from one of his 
victims. The judge that released them, Jean Pérs 
Paul, is responsible for keeping Father Gerard 
Jean-Juste behind bars and for the arrest of 
journalists Kevin Pina and Jean Ristil on 
September 9, 2005. The police officer responsible 
for the initial investigation into Handal’s case 
has reportedly been forced into hiding. The U.N. 
and the Canadian government have not commented on 
the case since Jean Pérs Paul ordered the suspects released.

Recent reports have also shown that many 
kidnappings are in fact taking place not in Cite 
Soleil, but in the most upscale quarters in Port-au-Prince, Pétion-Ville:

The Central Directorate of the Judicial Police 
(DCPJ) informed Friday that it has broken up this 
week an important kidnapping network in 
Pétion-Ville, a residential district of 
Port-au-Prince. According to DCPJ General 
Inspector Michaël Lucius, this is the gang which 
had kidnapped on December 30, 2005 Carine 
Rouzier, the wife of a businessman of 
Port-au-Prince, who was released on January 8th. 
The 11 persons abducted by this gang were held in 
a luxurious home evaluated to hundreds of 
thousands of dollars, M. Lucius declared. He says 
he regrets that the bandits had time to run away. 
The discovery of this hiding place in the heart 
of Pétion-Ville proves that important groups are 
involved in kidnapping activities, the DCPJ director declared.

Michael Lucius calls the population to remain 
careful and to beware of well-dressed people, 
saying that the shantytown of Cité Soleil is not 
the only hiding place for kidnappers. 
“Appearances are sometimes deceptive”, he warned, 
affirming that besides Cité Soleil and 
Pétion-Ville, acts of kidnapping are committed in 
other non-populist districts of the capital, 
including Pernier, Meyer, Delmas, Frères, 
Canapé-Vert as well as in the second largest city 
of the country, Cap-Haïtien
Chief of the Haitian 
police Mario Andresol and Head of MINUSTAH Juan 
Gabriel Valdès indicated recently that there are 
candidates to presidency who use kidnapping money 
for their campaign and to try to destabilize the electoral process underway.

(AHP News, English Translation, January 13, 2006)

While kidnappings have received the limelight of 
international press coverage in Haiti, the 
violence against the poor has continually been 
obscured. On June 11, 2005, Juan Gabriel Valdes, 
the Chilean head of the U.N. mission in Haiti, 
made a statement on Haitian radio stations 
declaring he had lived through the Pinochet 
dictatorship and, “compared to that experience, 
there is no political persecution in Haiti.” Time 
correspondent Kathie Klarreich, cited numerous 
“unnamed sources” in a 
<http://www.madamedread.com/IN%20THE%20NEWS/010706.html>recent 
article who used the term “wussies” to describe 
the UN force in Haiti, not once mentioning the 
well documented HNP and MINUSTAH slayings of 
innocent civilians. Another TIME correspondent 
and former employee of the U.S. State Department, 
Edward M. Gomez, 
<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=15archive/&entry_id=2613>explaining 
the violence in Cite Soleil, cited a Le Monde 
statement that the “kids” in Cite Soleil are 
fighting because they are on “crack”.

[]

Over the last year, footage has emerged showing 
the deadly results of UN raids into Cité Soleil, 
including journalist Kevin Pina’s film, Haiti: 
The Untold Story. Pina told 
<http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/11/1436222>Democracy 
Now! that “I personally handed a copy of that 
video to [the UN special envoy, Juan] Valdes at 
JFK airport. He described it as propaganda and 
lies without even looking at it. They are 
predisposed to saying this. They do not want to look at the evidence.”

By ignoring the systematic repression being 
carried out by the U.S., Canadian, and UN-backed 
coup regime while focusing attention on alleged 
gang members “high on crack,” the media provide a 
disingenuous examination of events in Haiti.



Interview with Frank Eaton

What follows are experts from an interview with 
Frank Eaton, a kidnapping victim. Eaton speaks 
about Cité Soleil, his experience being 
kidnapped, and the U.S. media coverage of his 
experience. Below are excerpts from the interview.

Jeb Sprague: Tell me about your experience being kidnapped.

Frank Eaton: Every one of the ten-or-so young men 
who held me bore bullet wounds and scars on their 
bodies from MINUSTAH guns. As I sat there, more 
bored than terrified, I had the profound 
realization that I would almost certainly outlive 
each of them. Now, with the political branch of 
the UN ascendant [the United Nations Office for 
Project Services, or UNOPS, has had an 
increasingly expanding role in Haiti], and an 
occupation of Cité Soleil apparently in the 
works, I’m afraid that the end is near for many 
of these young guys, women, and kids. It’s a 
horrible, horrible thing that’s about to happen there


[]

One night it rained and the night was pretty 
quiet. The other nights, it was a shooting 
gallery. We are sitting listening to this. It is 
unreal. We were in Blecort, the southernmost part 
of Cité Soleil. You can hear MINUSTAH guns; they 
are very regular, high caliber, heavy, heavy 
arms. And then you can hear the local guns, which 
are smaller; pistols and rifles. And that’s where 
people get hurt
To give the UN a little bit of 
credit, with this UN guy [Brazilian Lt. Gen 
Bacellar] that shot himself the other day, there 
is a certain reticence to occupying Cité Soleil 
[among sectors of the UN]. They have knowledge to 
the fact that this “collateral damage” will 
happen as soon as they do this. It is dangerous 
for everybody
 The victims are the people who are 
trapped here. They can’t do anything. They are 
human shields between both sides. I see no way 
into these neighborhoods. We were in a small 
house that is isolated, in a blind alley. No way 
in. No way out. Women, children, and people everywhere.

Jeb Sprague: How were you treated; what type of 
food did you eat when you were in captivity?

Frank Eaton: Every Haitian I met was very 
generous, very hospitable, including these guys. 
The Haitain hospitality that you hear of is true. 
We probably ate better then anybody in the entire 
neighborhood. We ate locally prepared food. We 
had plantains, scrambled eggs the first morning, 
and then we had the traditional spaghetti and hot 
dog. Then we had rice and beans. The best thing I 
had was when one guy made a pâté, a little pastry 
with eggs or chicken on it. It was absolutely 
incredible. We had Prestige Beer, which is really 
good. They were really hospitable, in light of 
the circumstances. There was definitely a level 
of concern there. They hate the UN. They had a 
brand new toothbrush, water, soap for us. We 
slept on a bed. We could wander around. I could 
go around the room and if I wanted to go outside 
and pour water on my head. It was pretty laid 
back. They were mostly lying down. They had guns 
but they weren’t pointing them at us. It wasn’t 
like this macho thing. There was an understanding 
that we weren’t going to run away or take anyone’s gun.

For the majority of the time, the M-14 and the 
other guns remained loaded. The room we were kept 
in served as an ammo dump for this group. Young 
men were coming in constantly to retrieve ammo from a duffel bag.

The guys that kidnapped me, I didn’t feel they 
were capable of hurting me. They weren’t cruel. I 
kept thinking, it’s tough; it’s physically tough 
to hurt a human being. Your body rejects that on 
a physical level. I honestly felt they didn’t 
want to attack me. I was certainly not giving 
them any trouble. They were content with letting 
the process take its course. It was boring for 
all of us. During negotiations things would get 
tense. I was released and Alain stayed behind. 
But he was released afterward; they felt sorry 
for him. They really got along well with him. We 
were all frustrated for the time it took the 
money to get there. For two days we just sat 
doing nothing and on the third day I finally 
said, bring the cash. I used my bank account.

[]

We were picked up far out from Cité Soleil. Now 
I’ve got all these overdraft fees from my bank. I 
wrote a check for $5,000 and after a few other 
charges passed, I was bounced into the red.

Jeb Sprague: What can you say about the context behind the kidnappings?

Frank Eaton: I’m not sure
 It’s so tough for me 
to understand. Since it’s me and my money I can’t 
just say “that’s okay.” But the ten guys who 
watched us were humble guys, and this was just 
sort of the deal at the moment. Like a job. This 
could be a situation where this is the only thing 
that they are able to do. This is their community 
involvement to help facilitate this transfer of money back into the community.

So many innocent people are dying. It’s insane 
fighting right in the middle of all those people. 
The whole situation is the result of a pretty 
heinous socio-political economic environment. 
This is where they live. These people don’t 
conceal themselves; we were not concealed. I know 
they have a lot of support. People would come 
around ­ women and children, old people, moms.

It’s very important for me not to be the poster 
child for Haitian kidnapping or to be a warning 
to stay out of Haiti. I hold no hard feelings. I 
understand that this something that is much 
bigger then me. I don’t feel sorry for myself. I 
had so many good experiences and met wonderful people.

Jeb Sprague: I’ve noticed that in all the 
articles (Miami Herald, Forbes, ABC News, etc.) 
about you, they focus on the guns and the kidnappers having guns around you..

Frank Eaton: Yes, and that’s true. It’s the 
pornography of violence, and I mention that every 
single time to all of the reporters that have 
interviewed me. They gave us food, they gave us 
water, they treated us well. I think that’s one 
of the most interesting things about it all. 
Complicated things like that are more interesting 
than just saying they put guns on us. I always 
say we were treated well and that I have really 
no hard feelings, besides the fact that I am 
financially destitute. I’m $15,000 in debt. I 
also make the distinction that I am no more 
financially destitute then these guys. I got out 
of Cité Soleil. These guys didn’t. I was very 
interested in this whole thing on the human scale.

I don’t come from money, which makes it tough for 
me to operate down there. But they are treated 
terribly. These neighborhoods are 
underrepresented in every way. I’m sure that the 
crime is a natural way to try to regain balance. 
Use the money the way they can
. We just didn’t 
want our ransom money used for weapons.

Jeb Sprague: Why do you think the UN/HNP attacks 
are rarely mentioned in the mainstream press, 
while the kidnappings receive so much coverage?

Frank Eaton: Lots of reporters are in Haiti 
because of the election. But with that postponed 
unfortunately they are all just writing about the 
kidnapping and focusing on that. I just don’t 
know if there is any interest in knowing why these things happen.

It’s a lot of peoples’ faults. The international 
community demands something be done about this. 
The rich community demands something being done 
about this. Poor people want something done about 
the kidnapping; kids are in danger. A lot of 
people are being kidnapped, across all sectors, 
and I don’t know how politically motivated all of it is.

Jeb Sprague: Are you worried about what’s going 
to happen to the people in Cité Soleil and the 
people you saw in the neighborhoods around where you were being held?

Frank Eaton: All roads are leading to Cité Soleil 
right now for the occupying force. I think half 
the reason [Lt. Gen.] Bacellar was trying to keep 
that from happening is because he didn’t want to 
loose his own guys [Interview´s note: nine 
MINUSTAH soldiers have died as of this date]. 
He’s dead now . And I think the political wing of 
the UN has taken over in Haiti, and these are 
guys that are more directly pressured by the 
camps that want to have Cité Soleil occupied and 
have the whole thing shut down. I am expecting 
them to make a move against the neighborhood.

Yes, I think the UN troops are going to kill a 
lot of innocent people when they go into Cité 
Soleil. It’s going to be like Fallujah. They are 
going to kill a lot of innocent people. I 
remember being in there, I realized, Wow a lot of 
people are going to die in here. I realized I was a survivor
.

Jeb Sprague: Do you think the UN can be convinced 
of an alternative to going into Cité Soleil with 
military force? The President of the AUMOHD 
lawyers organization, Evel Fanfan, has presented 
a peaceful alternative. Fanfan has asked to meet 
with interim commander Gen. Herman, of MINUSTAH, 
to review “the work toward self-managed 
disarmament in the poor communities of Grande 
Ravine, St. Bernadette, and Lafwa and to consider 
a totally new approach there and in Cité Soleil.” 
Also, the peace process could also be better 
achieved if a democratically elected government 
was put into place. What do you think about all that?

Frank Eaton: There are definitely people out 
there with solutions that should be tried. There 
are a lot of guns on both sides. With the strike 
that the chamber of commerce held it seems the 
elites are adamant that the UN go into Cité Soleil.

I am trying to handle this without anger
 I would 
hope that they examine the angle of grace before 
going in and blasting their way through a 
neighborhood that is home to a lot of women and 
children. I think that there needs to be a 
discussion, an alternative. I know it wasn’t 
impossible to put negotiators on the ground in 
Cité Soleil to communicate the terms of our 
release. So I know there are ways to open 
channels to talk about a resolution to this thing.

When you go in to try to move money and human 
beings in Cité Soleil it’s easy to find someone 
to talk to. But there is not a lot of 
communication going on. Every night they are 
fighting. On both sides are these young guys, 18 
to 35 years old, looking to kill each other. Both 
are armed to the teeth. Innocent people are being 
killed. Kids are being killed. Children, women. 
Innocent people are put into this situation. It’s 
just such an insane situation. I don’t know if I 
had any business being in Haiti in the first place.

Jeb Sprague is a freelance journalist and a 
graduate student in History at California State 
University of Long Beach. He is currently writing 
his masters degree thesis on the destabilization 
and overthrow of democracy in Haiti, 2000-2004. 
Contact him at Jebsprague@[nospam]mac.com 
(removing the word “nospam”) or visit his blog at 
<http://www.freehaiti.net>http://www.freehaiti.net


The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
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