http://www.counterpunch.org/terrall08282008.html
Counterpunch.com
August 28, 2008
"All the Time We are Hungry and Now We Have No One"
Return to Port-au-Prince
By BEN TERRALL

As I flew from JFK to Port-au-Prince Airport on August 11, a fellow journalist handed me the front section of that day’s New York Times with a laugh. My friend pointed to a passage in an article about Russia’s war with Georgia that had prompted her bitter chuckling.

The piece quoted Ambassador Zalmay Khalizad of the United States, who charged that the Russian foreign minister had told Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice “that the democratically elected president of Georgia ‘must go.’” Khalizad described the Russian’s comment as “completely unacceptable.”

Of course, Washington’s posturing as a beacon of peace and freedom has become increasingly more ludicrous as wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue with no end in sight and Bush explains that we do not torture while testimony to the contrary accumulates around the globe. But the U.S. role in supporting the February 29, 2004 rightist coup in Haiti makes the hypocrisy of Khalizad’s statement especially galling.

UN Troops Accused of Human Rights Violations in Haiti
by Maria Luisa Mendonça | January 21, 2008
Americas Program, Center for International Policy (CIP)
http://americas.irc-online.org/
The UN Security Council decided in October 2007 to extend the mandate of the MINUSTAH (United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti) through Oct. 15, 2008. The Brazilian Government is responsible for coordinating the MINUSTAH forces that include approximately 9,000 troops. Yet there is very little discussion in Brazil about the country's role in the occupation of Haiti, and especially, about the accusations leveled against the UN troops for their participation in human rights violations.

UN Arrested 40 Ahead of Harper's Haiti Visit
Many demonstrators remain in jail
by Stuart Neatby
The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca
Forty Haitian demonstrators were arrested by UN soldiers hours before the arrival of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the Haitian slum neighbourhood of Cite Soleil on July 20. Haiti was the last stop for the Prime Minister's Latin American tour, which also included stops in Colombia, Chile, and Barbados. The protest had been organized by residents of Cite Soleil in response to the visit of the Canadian Prime Minister, according to Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, a protest organizer and director of the Haiti-based September 30th Foundation.

AHP News www.ahp.org
'UN Operation in Cite Soleil leaves at least 10 killed, dozens others injured during the night of Thursday December 21'
UN spokesperson [Sophie Boutaud] de Lacombe claims the operation was aimed at apprehending kidnappers in Bois Neuf and bringing them to justice. However local residents say the victims were ordinary citizens whose only crime was that they live in the targeted neighborhood. Detonations could be heard for miles. De Lacombe denies that a UN armored vehicle was seized by bandits.
Some radio stations in the capital have been justifying the attack in Cite Soleil by the fact that local residents had set fire to a UN tank that had been abandoned by UN soldiers who had fled.
In addition to the dead and injured, residents report very serious property damage and there are concerns that a critical water shortage may now develop because water cisterns and pipes were punctured by the gunfire.

AHP News - May 29, 2006 - English translation (Unofficial)
The adherence to a policy of double standards constitutes a mortal danger to democracy and human rights
Any policy of double standards is a deadly poison acting against the birth of democracy or its reinforcement in a country.
In any country where law and justice have meaning, any abuse is an abuse, any violation of human rights is a violation of human rights and any criminal act is a criminal act, regardless of who commits them.
Unfortunately Haiti is one of the countries where the most notorious violators of human rights can be elevated to the ranks of heroes while someone who is guilty of theft or who is innocent altogether can be presented publicly as the most notorious criminal as long as such an act suits an agenda, as long as, you belong to a given social or political sector, as long as... whatever.
We have become accustomed to the indecent practice of preferring to create a lot of commotion and thereby transform a lie into the truth and to downplay evidence until we fall into our own trap...
And that is what happened to us in the elections of February 7, 2006. The majority of the population thwarted a sector in decline that believed it truly possessed all the power because it dominated the economic, political and judicial machinery from one end to the other, and on top of that, it controlled the propaganda machine.

RCMP backs murderous Haitian Police force
By Tim Pelzer
People's Weekly World
Since the US/Canadian/French-backed overthrow of elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Feb. 29, 2004, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have been training and supervising police in Haiti who are killing residents in poor neighbourhoods.
Two different RCMP officers have been in charge of the
United Nations Police Mission (UNPOL): David Beer, who came to Haiti directly from Iraq in May 2004, where he was teaching counter-insurgency tactics, and Graham Muir, who replaced Beer in mid 2005.
Today, Muir commands a 1,600-strong UNPOL contingent that includes 100 RCMP and Quebec Provincial Police officers, under the mandate of the Brazilian led UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), which is responsible for training and overseeing the Haitian National Police (HNP). As UNPOL Commissioner, Muir takes part in all high level planning and strategy meetings, be they military
or policing.

Two Views of the World
haiti.nspirg.org
by Christian Heyne
Citizens of Haiti in the utterly poor communities of Cite Soleil, Bel Air, La Saline, and other distress areas have a problem they can't seem to shake. They are living a battle with the very forces of the world community that are supposed to assure the protection of people in dire need: UN troops, aka MINUSTAH, a multinational force, and their administrative handlers.

Haitian leader's visit to Quebec sparks outrage
Meeting with premier Charest. Expatriate groups blame prime minister for arbitrary jailings and death squads
JEFF HEINRICH, The Gazette
Published: Saturday, March 11, 2006
On the heels of a private meeting yesterday with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Haiti's unelected prime minister, Gerard Latortue, is to meet today with Quebec Premier Jean Charest.
News of the two visits outraged anti-Latortue activists, who say the 71-year-old politician is guilty of crimes against humanity for arbitrary jailings and killings by police and paramilitary forces under his watch.

Haiti's Deadly Class Divide:
Class war takes on a new meaning in Cite Soley
by Leslie Bagg and Aaron Lakoff
Port-au-Prince, January 10/06 - Driving into Cite Soley on January 8th, the day Haitians were supposed to go to the polls in a presidential election, there is no mistaking the fact that we are entering an occupied zone. The streets are almost deserted, the atmosphere tense, and UN armored personnel carriers patrol the streets.
Cite Soley, one of Port-au-Prince's poorest neighborhoods, is home to around 500,000 people living in abject poverty. 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.

Masked Haitian police took Kevin Pina and Jean Ristil away today.
Demand immediate release of Kevin Pina and Jean Ristil
Around 5:15 this afternoon the Haitian Lawyers Leadership received a call
from Haiti telling us that Haitian police, from the Delma police station, in
a car marked with licensed plate # 0879, had entered Father Jean Juste's
presbytery, and was searching it, "destroying the place and generally
creating trauma" to the people who were at the church at the time of the
police invasion. Apparently, the men had black masks on and were accompanied
by an investigative judge to give the exercise a semblance of legality.