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<font size=5 color="#FF0000"><b>TWO STORIES FOLLOW<br>
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<a href="http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/31/144235" eudora="autourl">
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/31/144235<br><br>
<br>
</a>Thursday, August 31st, 2006 - Democracy Now<br><br>
</i></font><font size=4><b>Shocking Lancet Study: 8,000 Murders, 35,000
Rapes and Sexual Assaults in Haiti During U.S.-Backed Coup Regime After
Aristide Ouster<br><br>
</b></font><hr>
<font size=3>A shocking new report in the British medical journal the
Lancet on human rights abuses in Haiti finds that 8,000 people were
murdered and 35,000 women and girls raped during the U.S.-backed coup
regime that followed Jean Bertrand Aristide. Those responsible included
Haitian police, United Nations peacekeepers and anti-Lavalas gangs. We
speak with the co-authors of the report. [includes rush transcript] <br>
<hr>
A shocking new report published in the British medical journal The Lancet
has found widespread and systematic human rights abuses in Haiti
following the ouster of democratically-elected president Jean Bertrand
Aristide in February 2004. <br><br>
New figures reveal that during the 22-month period of the U.S.-backed
Interim Government, 8,000 people were murdered in the greater Port-au
Prince area alone. 35,000 women and girls were raped or sexually
assaulted, more than half of the victims were children. Kidnappings,
extrajudicial detentions, physical assaults, death threats, and threats
of sexual violence were also common. <br><br>
Those responsible for the human rights abuses include criminals, the
police, United Nations peacekeepers and anti-Lavalas gangs. <br><br>
The findings are based on a new report published in the British medical
journal the Lancet. The study is based on an extensive survey of
households in the Port-au-Prince area . <br><br>
<ul>
<li><b>Athena Kolbe</b>, master's level social worker with the Wayne
State University school of social work in Detroit Michigan. In December
2005 she coordinated an extensive survey of households in the
Port-au-Prince area to determine rates of human rights abuse under the
interim Haitian government.
<li><b>Dr. Royce Hutson</b>, assistant professor of social work at Wayne
State University. He co-authored the Lancet study on human rights abuses
in Haiti. <i></i>
</ul><br>
<b>AMY GOODMAN: </b>The findings are based on a new report published in
the British medical journal, <i>The Lancet</i>. The study is based on an
extensive survey of households in the Port-au-Prince area of Haiti.
Athena Kolbe is one of the authors of the report. She’s a Master’s-level
social worker with the Wayne State University School of Social Work in
Detroit, Michigan. She joins us from a studio in San Francisco. We're
also joined by Dr. Royce Hutson, on the phone from Detroit, co-author of
the report, assistant professor of social work at Wayne State University.
We welcome you both to <i>Democracy Now!</i> <br><br>
Athena Kolbe, these are startling findings. 8,000 murdered. Over what
time period? And how do you know this? <br><br>
<b>ATHENA KOLBE: </b>We started -- well, basically what we did is we
randomly selected households in the greater Port-au-Prince area, 1,260
households, and then went and interviewed them about their experiences
with human rights violations beginning in February 29, 2004 with the
departure of Aristide through December of 2005, which is the one-month
period, where we did the interviews. So based on that, we found that 23
households out of the 1260 had members who had been assassinated in that
time period. And the figure of 8,000 is derived from estimating that
based on the population of the greater Port-au-Prince area. <br><br>
<b>JUAN GONZALEZ: </b>Now, when you say “randomly selected,” obviously in
Haiti, one of the poorest -- the poorest country in the western
hemisphere, a lot of people don't have phones -- or even locating folks.
Could you explain your use of GPS to actually develop who would be the
random households selected? <br><br>
<b>ATHENA KOLBE: </b>This was actually kind of a unique type of a study,
because this methodology hasn't really been used before in public health
and human rights studies. It was a used a little bit in another
<i>Lancet</i> study about Iraq just before and after the U.S. invasion of
Iraq. But what we did is we randomly selected GPS locations, 1,500 of
them, and then went and visited each location, eliminated the ones that
weren't actually households, the ones that were, you know, the side of a
mountain or the airport runway or whatever, and then went and interviewed
people at the remaining ones that were households. <br><br>
And we had an over 90% response rate, which is extraordinarily high and
really indicates that even those that were legitimate sites, where we
went and talked to people, most people were willing to talk to us,
indicating that they had something to say and wanted their story to be
told about their experiences with human rights. <br><br>
<b>AMY GOODMAN: </b>And can you talk about who carried out these
killings? <br><br>
<b>ATHENA KOLBE: </b>Yeah. We had -- the largest number of perpetrators
for most of the violations were criminals, indicating that there was high
rates of criminal activity. But also, we also had a number of
assassinations that were done by members of the Haitian National Police,
as well as killings by UN soldiers and killings by demobilized soldiers
from the ex-Haitian army that was disbanded by President Aristide in
1995. <br><br>
<b>JUAN GONZALEZ: </b>And in terms of the rapes and sexual assaults,
because you said that you had -- you identified actually 23 families that
had actually experienced assassinations or killings within their own
families, and in terms of the raw numbers on the actual rapes and
assaults, and then how you extrapolated those to this astounding number
of 35,000. <br><br>
<b>ATHENA KOLBE: </b>Dr. Hutson could actually talk a little bit more
about that, because he has the figures right in front of him. But I
believe that it was 93 families total out of the 1,260 that had sexual
assault victims in their household. And some of those had multiple
victims within one household. <br><br>
<b>AMY GOODMAN: </b>Dr. Royce Hutson, could you follow up on that?
<br><br>
<b>DR. ROYCE HUTSON: </b>Sure, absolutely. Yeah, actually, Athena, it was
94, but very close. Yeah, so we took 94, and we essentially extrapolated
it to the greater Port-au-Prince area with the estimated number of
females in the greater Port-au-Prince area that we got from our own
sample. Census data wasn't really available with regards to what the
average household size, what percentage of the population is female. So
we had to sort of construct those figures for ourselves. And then we took
those constructed figures and extrapolated our findings to the greater
Port-au-Prince area. And we got to 35,000, roughly, female sexual assault
victims. <br><br>
<b>AMY GOODMAN: </b>We're going to break, and then we’re going to come
back to this discussion and also go to Haiti, some videotape that is
quite shocking of UN forces moving into the neighborhood around Cite
Soleil and opening fire. We're also going to talk with an attorney who
has brought a lawsuit against a man who now sits in a New York jail. He's
sitting there for mortgage fraud charges, but he's a leader of a
paramilitary death squad, Emmanuel Constant, and they have brought a
lawsuit against him for sexual abuse and rape of women in Haiti. Stay
with us. <br><br>
[break] <br><br>
<b>AMY GOODMAN: </b>On the phone with us, Athena Kolbe, social worker
with the Wayne State University School of Social Work in Detroit. We're
also joined on the telephone by Dr. Royce Hutson, assistant professor of
social work at Wayne State. Athena is in a San Francisco TV studio.
Athena -- Juan, a question. <br><br>
<b>JUAN GONZALEZ: </b>Yes. I’d like to ask Dr. Hutson, these findings are
so startling that obviously a lot of people are going to question them,
because this is something that really has not been extensively reported
in the past. So I’d like to ask you, in your figures you claim that over
50% of the murders were committed by government forces or anti-Lavalas
groups and the bulk of the others by criminals, very few by Lavalas
supporters themselves. And also in the rapes, about a quarter of them
were committed by either government forces, police or anti-Lavalas
groups. Now, obviously this is a peer-reviewed study, appearing in the
<i>Lancet</i>, but your defense of those who will say that you're
basically extrapolating from very small numbers of people that you
actually interviewed who were victims of these crimes? <br><br>
<b>DR. ROYCE HUTSON: </b>Well, actually, I would argue that it was not
really that small of a number, though it was 1,260 households that really
represented 5,720 individuals. And in survey methodology, that's
considered a rather large number of people to be surveying. If you looked
at our -- for instance, if you looked at our confidence intervals, you'll
find that for at least a number of -- in extrapolated figures, I should
explain, that those are pretty tight figures, because our sample sizes
are rather large. <br><br>
With regards to who is committing these, we made a special point of, for
instance, not using interviewers that are associated with Lavalas or less
political parties, in the interest of trying to keep the study
nonpartisan. I mean, of course, there's a possibility that people would
claim that someone did something to them when they didn't. But we find
that , in fact, probably was not the case, in that when we look at the
figures, you know, it goes across the breadth of various anti-Lavalas
groups -- the demobilized army, the HNP -- which are not exactly what I
consider to be a sole entity. They are, in fact, separate groups.
<br><br>
<b>AMY GOODMAN: </b>And just to explain, Lavalas being pro-Aristide
forces. Aristide removed in Haiti in 2004 in a U.S.-backed coup against
him. We're talking about this period after his removal. <br><br>
<b>DR. ROYCE HUTSON: </b>That's correct. We didn't find any -- we didn’t
detect any Lavalas atrocities with regards to murder or sexual assault.
We did detect some physical assaults by Lavalas members and some
threatening behavior by Lavalas members. So they're not completely
exonerated from any human rights abuses. However, as the questioner
noted, a vast majority of the atrocities that weren't committed by
criminals, but by others, were from groups affiliated in some fashion
with anti-Lavalas movements. <br><br>
<b>AMY GOODMAN: </b>Athena Kolbe, who are the restaveks? <br><br>
<b>ATHENA KOLBE: </b>The restaveks are unpaid domestic servants. They are
children, usually from the countryside, who come into the city, and they
work with Haitian households in exchange for room and board. And we found
that girls who were restaveks were particularly at risk for sexual
assault, more so than other children, although children in general were
particularly at risk, but also more so than even adult women. <br><br>
And this really begs the question of, when you have so many restaveks who
were sexually assaulted -- and when we're talking about sexual assault,
also I want to clarify, we're not just talking about molestation or
someone grabbing someone sexually when they don't want it. We're talking
about more than 90% of the sexual assaults in our study involved
penetration. And some of the them involved multiple perpetrators,
involved penetration with inanimate objects, like a piece of metal. These
were very brutal sexual assaults that we recorded. And when we're looking
at such high numbers of children being sexually assaulted by officers
from the Haitian National Police, and then particularly this vulnerable
group of child domestic servants, it really makes you wonder what exactly
was going on under the interim Haitian government in regards to the
sexual assault of children by police officers. <br><br>
<b>JUAN GONZALEZ: </b>And what about the international peace monitoring
force that is stationed there? Did you find any indication of violations,
human rights violations, by them? <br><br>
<b>ATHENA KOLBE: </b>We certainly did. Although the rates were lower than
some people might have expected, we found that they had very high rates
of threatening behavior, of committing death threats, threats of sexual
and physical violence. And by threats, we mean not just pointing your gun
at someone, because when you're a peacekeeping soldier, you know, you
carry a gun. If you have to point it at people, then some people might
interpret that as a threat. We didn't count that as a threat. We counted
threats as something verbal, a verbal, you know, “Do this, or I’ll kill
you,” where the person really felt like they were legitimately
threatened, like their life was really at stake or the life of their
family was really at stake. And they had actually relatively high numbers
of death threats and threats of sexual and physical violence, which is
perhaps indicative of a pattern of perhaps a lack of training, or since
it was so many troops from different countries, as well, who are involved
in this threatening behavior, that perhaps the United Nations forces are
not interacting with the Haitian populous in a really appropriate way.
<br><br>
<i>Thursday, August 31st, 2006<br>
</i></font><font size=4><b>Eyewitnesses Account: UN Forces Open Fire on
Poor Haitian Neighborhood<br><br>
</b></font><hr>
<font size=3>United Nations troops in Haiti opened fire last week on a
poor neighborhood outside of Cite Soleil. We show footage of the raid,
speak with a writer and activist who witnessed the raid and hear from the
mother of a nineteen year-old who was killed in the raid. [includes rush
transcript] <br>
<hr>
Is life in Haiti improving under the new presidency of Rene Preval? Well
just last week, UN forces opened fire on a poor neighborhood outside of
Cite Soleil. An international delegation of activists was in the area and
witnessed what happened. They also caught much of the raid on tape. In a
moment we are going to play some of that tape. But first we are joined in
our firehouse studio by one of the witnesses. Ben Terrall is a writer and
activist. He just returned from Haiti this week. <br><br>
<ul>
<li><b>Ben Terrall</b>, writer and activist who just returned from Haiti.
His writings have appeared in CounterPunch, In These Times, the San
Francisco Chronicle and else where.
</ul>We go back to the day of the UN raid in Simon Pele. These are
members of the international delegation describing the scene: <br><br>
<ul>
<li>Witnesses describe the UN raid as it is caught on tape.
</ul>Nineteen year-old Wildert Sanedy was shot and killed by UN troops in
the raid. The delegation caught up with his mother, Adacia Sanedy, four
days after the shooting. She spoke about her son. <br><br>
<ul>
<li><b>Adacia Sanedy</b>, son killed by UN troops in Haiti.<i></i>
</ul><br>
<b>AMY GOODMAN: </b>I want to stay on this issue of UN forces. Is life
improving under the new presidency of Rene Preval? Just last week UN
forces opened fire on a poor neighborhood outside Cite Soleil. An
international delegation was in the area and witnessed what happened.
They also caught some of the raid on tape. In a moment, we'll play a clip
of that tape, but first we're joined in our Firehouse studio by one of
the witnesses, Ben Terrall, who is a writer and activist, just returned
from this delegation in Haiti. Ben, would you set the scene for us about
what we're going to see? <br><br>
<b>BEN TERRALL: </b>Well, I was with other members of this delegation on
a road in Simon Pele, which is adjacent to Cite Soleil. It joins it on
one side. And we saw two armored personnel carriers come in as we were
there and go down one street, and on a perpendicular street there were
two other APCs. And I personally saw five or six Brazilian UN troops run
out of one of the APCs into the neighborhood. And we went towards the
APC, and we got footage. <br><br>
<b>AMY GOODMAN: </b>This footage is quite something. Let's go to the day
of the UN raid in Simon Pele. These are members of the international
delegation describing the scene. <br><br>
<ul>
<b>SASHA KRAMER: </b>We're in Pele in Cite Soleil, and we just heard
several rounds of gunfire. We saw soldiers jump out of the tank and run
into the houses nearby. Sounds like they were shooting from inside the
houses. <br><br>
<b>HAITIAN CIVILIAN: </b>[translated] Last week, there were several
groups in Cite Soleil who said they would turn over their weapons. But
since, MINUSTAH has continued to shoot on the population. They have not
done that. As you can see right here, they are continuing to shoot on the
population. <br><br>
<b>DELEGATION WITNESS: </b>There’s the MINUSTAH soldiers firing from
their tank into a residential neighborhood. And the blue helmets signify
that it's UN soldiers. They're wearing the Brazilian uniforms. They're
getting instructions over the radio right now. They don't seem to be at
all deterred by our presence. More troops have moved into position here,
and it looks like a military operation underway. The foot troops are
going into the area -- the infantry troops are going into the area.
They're positioning themselves for some kind of an attack in this
civilian neighborhood. <br><br>
<b>HAITIAN CIVILIAN: </b>[translated] This is the same formula they used
when they killed Dred Wilme on the 6th of July last year. So they are
cutting off a street here using bulldozers, so people can't get in and
out. They say they are looking for bandits. But we do not know exactly
who they are looking for. <br><br>
</ul><b>AMY GOODMAN: </b>19-year-old Wildert Sanedy was shot and killed
by the UN troops in the raid. The delegation caught up with his mother,
Adacia Sanedy, four days after the shooting. She talked about her son.
<br><br>
<ul>
<b>ADACIA SANEDY: </b>[translated] After I lost my son, I didn't even
know what to do. I couldn't even stand up. I felt like I lost him in a
very bad situation. My message to the UN is to thank them for the son
that they killed. They are always looking for bandits. Apparently they
didn't get them. At this time, any innocent civilians just passing can
get shot for nothing. <br><br>
<b>AMY GOODMAN: </b>Ben Terrall, there is a grieving mother. Explain what
she's saying, because maybe it misses something in translation, as she
says I thank the UN troops. <br><br>
<b>BEN TERRALL: </b>Well, I was going to ask her if she had a message to
the outside world, but we just sort of let her talk about the experience.
And she described how her son was fixing the radio on the roof as the
snipers came in. And she said, ‘This is my message to the UN: I want to
thank you for killing my son. You come in here. I don't know why you're
here. Civilians are killed all the time.’ So this is part of a pattern.
This operation -- <br><br>
<b>AMY GOODMAN: </b>She’s being sarcastic. <br><br>
<b>BEN TERRALL: </b>Completely sarcastic. Yeah, she’s very obviously very
bitter about this. And her son did nothing to deserve this. He wasn't
connected to an armed group. He was just fixing a radio on the roof. And
this has been true throughout these operations. I talked to an older man
who was leaving the neighborhood, who said there had been many people
killed. We have him on tape, as we were interviewing him. He said many
people had been killed, and they weren't connected to armed groups. <br>
So the UN, they’re -- basically the UN is operating without oversight.
They're operating with impunity. They're going in, and they're just,
quote/unquote, "securing" these neighborhoods at the behest of
the ultra-rightwing small elite in Haiti that want to kill as many people
as possible in these areas. They're not going after death squads. They're
not disarming the rightist-backed forces and the holdover forces from the
coup, which unfortunately are still controlling the judiciary. They're
controlling much of the Haitian government. <br><br>
And though there have been a small number of high-profile political
prisoners released, as well they've been targeting people. So this week I
spoke with an incredible Lavalas organizer who’s very close to Aristide.
He had been with Lavalas from their early years. They come back from
exile. His name is Rene Civil. He had come back from exile, and he was
picked up for what looks to be a completely bogus charge. His lawyers
denounced the charges on the radio. And I spoke to him, and it just
looked completely ridiculous. He left his car in Haiti. He went to the
D.R. They're charging him with crimes committed by the police, when they
had his car when he was in exile. <br>
So this guy spoke to us earlier in the week about a program he was
running, which was getting scholarships to poor kids. He's working with
the poorest of the poor, as the Lavalas movement is all about. I mean,
their motto was “From misery to poverty with dignity.” And apparently,
the U.S. continues to just feel -- clearly the U.S., France, and Canada
continues to not be willing to accept that. And their friends who are
still in power there just want to target these people as much as possible
and kill people and do all the things that we heard of in the
<i>Lancet</i> reports. <br><br>
<b>JUAN GONZALEZ: </b>I’d like to ask you about some of these incidents
and the atrocities of the UN peacekeepers. What kind of coverage in the
media -- first of all, in Haiti, because the rest of the world has
already, like, forgotten Haiti, ever since Preval came back, was
re-elected as president. But in terms of -- what's happened now in terms
of the Haitian media? <br><br>
<b>BEN TERRALL: </b>Well, the largely rightwing elite-controlled Haitian
media is driven by these ultra-rich, ultra-right forces that want the UN
to crack down further. They want them to kill more people. There's been a
campaign of complete dehumanization of the poorest neighborhoods in
Haiti. And so, you're not getting accurate information in most of the
Haitian press and a small number of radio stations. <br>
But certainly internationally, we don't hear the broader -- we never hear
the broader context of what the UN has been doing, since the beginning of
the coup, which is backing up the Haitian police, aiding and abetting
slaughters. And this went on in the first two years. A key factor of this
is this went on in the first two years. And they were provoking the
population by engaging in vast numbers of killings, the police. And it's
been thoroughly documented before the <i>Lancet</i> study by the
University of Miami Law School, by filmmaker Kevin Pina, by the Institute
for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. <br>
So they kill off, they imprison, they torture the nonviolent leadership.
And then a small number of people, after two years of these attacks, take
up arms. But they're very limited in number. And it's something that I
think people in Houston would do if their neighborhoods were under siege
by armed forces for two years. And you have to remember, in the ’91 coup,
there were like 5,000 people killed, so people have this memory of that.
And it's always -- in the media reporting, it's always taken out of that
context. <br>
And also, you never hear about the people that are running free, you
know, the rightwing people like Guy Philippe, who was a key player in the
coup forces that came in from the north, who was trained by the U.S., you
know; and Jodel Chamblain is out now, too. And these people are running
around. They’re old Duvalier people running around, who were backing all
these death squads, and nobody's disarming them.<br>
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