Reed Lindsay
Independent International Reporter

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Cinder block and sheet metal houses were still in flames and pools of blood had not dried around midday on Saturday hours after Haitian police had led a major operation to root out gang members in the poor neighborhood of Bel Air in coordination with United Nations peacekeepers.

Residents of Bel Air, a stronghold of support for former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, said police entered the neighborhood around 9am, shooting into alleyways, knocking down doors, and dousing houses with gasoline before setting them on fire. At least six houses were still burning and smoldering early Saturday afternoon.

“[The police] shoot people, beat people, burn houses,” said Manes Gustave, a 57-year-old tailor, standing next to a huge pile of sheet metal and charred wood, which he said had been a neighbor’s home. “They think everyone in Bel
Air is a criminal.”

Gustave said he was running an errand a few blocks from his house when he saw hooded police officers dressed in black - a uniform commonly used by special Haitian police units - enter the neighborhood. He hid, and when he returned home, he found his door broken off its hinges and his neighbor’s home in flames.

Others in Bel Air blamed the UN peacekeepers.

Maggy Dalcy said she fled through a back door when black-clad police knocked down her front door.

“There’s no justice in this country,” said Dalcy, 24, standing in front of the remains of her house, a tangled heap of sheet metal and blackened cinder block walls. “The foreigners don’t do anything. They just sit there while the police kill people and massacre people.”

Commissioner David Beer, a Canadian who heads UN police force in Haiti, said Brazilian troops provided back-up during the operation at perimeter positions while two units of Chinese and Jordanian riot police – some 50 in total – worked “more closely” with the Haitian police.

Beer said the UN civilian police was investigating the burning of houses in Bel Air. Repeated phone calls made to [Hatian national] police spokeswoman Gessy Coicou were not returned.

“There are obvious suspicions because there are allegations that they were done by the HNP,” said Beer, using an acronym that refers to the Haitian national police.

Beer said 32 people were arrested and at least two civilians were killed during the raid, whose objective was to arrest gang members.

But a brief visit to Bel Air and interviews with residents suggest the death toll could have been higher.

A pair of red flip-flops lay in a thick pool of blood that had accumulated at the bottom of a sloping alleyway, near the corner of Rue Montalais and Rue des Fronts Forts. The alleyway was covered with blood and several bullet casings from 7.62mm cartridges. Neighbors said three bodies were taken away in a police ambulance after being shot by police.

Half a block away, near the Port-au-Prince cathedral, a street corner was covered in blood although no witnesses could be found.

At a blood-stained sidewalk several blocks uphill into the heart of Bel Air, Renes Leneus, a 61-year-old tailor said police had executed three young men earlier that morning on the sidewalk while he was working in a nearby alleyway. He said at least 10 hooded police dressed in black entered the alleyway and opened fire in a nearby alleyway, although he did not know who they were shooting at.

Only one small dried pool of blood could be found on the gravel sidewalk, while there were more than a dozen bullet casings from 5.56mm cartridges in a nearby alleyway.

In another area at the edge of Bel Air near the Boulevard Dessalines, vendors at a street corner pointed to a pool of blood that had been covered with sand and said a man had been shot there. One of them said he had been shot by police.

Workers at the Port-au-Prince morgue said they were under orders not to say how many bodies had been brought there.

The violence in Bel Air came as Quebec Premier Jean Charest arrived in Haiti for a three-day visit intended to show the Canadian province’s support for Haiti.

Canada has helped lead international efforts to stabilize Haiti after Aristide was escorted from the country by U.S. officials amid an armed revolt in February 2004. After Aristide’s ouster, Canada sent some 500 troops as part of a multinational force including the United States, France and Chile until the UN peacekeeping mission took over in June 2004.

Since then, Canada has headed the UN’s attempt to reform the notoriously brutal and corrupt Haitian police force, contributing 100 of the some 1,400 civilian police officers, 75 of whom are from Quebec. Human rights groups have criticized the UN civilian police for doing little to prevent summary executions, torture, illegal detentions and arbitrary arrests allegedly committed by their Haitian counterparts.

“The question of security and the question of human rights are closely linked, so there must be a balance between the two,” said interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, in an impromptu press conference on Saturday afternoon after meeting with Charest.

Latortue said that he did not know of any human rights abuses in Haiti.

“That answers the essential question,” responded Charest, who added that the two leaders had not yet discussed the issue of human rights.

This article was posted 2005 June 5th, Sunday, at 10:44 am and is filed under Haiti.  You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.  Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.