UN mission liberates Haiti's police stations from armed gangs threatening population
The United Nations peacekeeping operation and local police in Haiti liberated police stations occupied by the disbanded military and their armed sympathizers after the Transitional Government of the Caribbean country concluded that its negotiations were yielding no improvement, the chief of the UN mission said today.
The last two operations in Terre Rouge and Petit-Goâve over the weekend, which resulted in the deaths of two UN peacekeepers and two armed elements, was in contrast to the voluntary disarmament and demobilization of some 300 former Haitian military from northern Cap Haïtien, the Special Representative of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Juan Gabriel Valdés, told a news conference at UN Headquarters in New York.
The men in Terre Rouge and Petit-Goâve, mainly supporters of the former military, had refused to heed appeals from the Transitional Government that they leave the stations, he said, adding that in Terre Rouge the armed elements had attacked trucks, abused the population and had been accused of killing policemen.
With elections coming up in October and November, the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) had a mandate to guarantee a free constitutional process where people would not be threatened by armed groups or gangs, Mr. Valdés said.
The military was disbanded in 1995, but some non-military people had joined them in the opposition and the problems of last Sunday were with these non-military combatants. Now only four or five small, rural police stations were still occupied, he said.
Mr. Valdés reminded correspondents that MINUSTAH had also launched operations in mid-December to evict some former military men from Mr. Aristide's abandoned residence and in January to remove gang members from the poor Cité Soleil district of the capital, Port-au-Prince. Since then, numerous operations have been carried out at a rate of one a week.
It was not possible to solve the gang problem in shanty towns by force alone, however, he said. The people of the towns needed to be given water, food, education and cleaned-up areas, all of which would take time, he said.
In a meeting three days ago in Cayenne, French Guiana, donors approved more than 300 projects for the shanty towns, Mr. Valdés said.
Video of press briefing [21mins]