U.N. ambassador denounces police brutality in Haiti
Two days after Haitian police opened fire on a crowd of peaceful protesters and killed two, the head of the U.N. mission here said police brutality is undercutting progress and such action will no longer be tolerated. "We cannot tolerate executions," U.N. Ambassador Juan Gabriel Valdes said in an interview with The Miami Herald on Wednesday. "We can't tolerate shooting out of control. We will not permit human rights abuses." He said U.N. peacekeepers will intervene - and use force if necessary - if Haitian police attack unarmed civilians again. The peacekeepers began arriving in Haiti in June to support the small and outgunned police force in restoring law and order after the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But shootouts between Haitian police and residents of poor neighborhoods still loyal to Aristide are becoming a daily occurrence. And allegations are mounting that officers are killing unarmed people without provocation. Valdes concedes that the international troops have witnessed suspicious police shootings before Monday's attack. "There was an incident last week in which four people were killed," he said. The stakes could not be higher. Such attacks are fueling unrest in the vast slums around the capital city of Port-au-Prince and threaten to derail the legitimacy - or even feasibility - of elections now set
for October to replace the interim government. [
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- Haitian police open fire on nonviolent march for democracy Feb. 28 [more]