{"id":967,"date":"2005-07-13T10:47:01","date_gmt":"2005-07-13T14:47:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=967"},"modified":"2005-07-13T10:47:01","modified_gmt":"2005-07-13T14:47:01","slug":"the-un-in-haiti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=967","title":{"rendered":"The UN in Haiti"},"content":{"rendered":"

“We at the UN will do all that we can to help the Haitian people.” – Kofi Annan<\/a><\/p>\n

Eyewitnesses Describe Massacre by UN Troops in Haiti<\/strong>
\nSeth Donnelly interviewed by Amy Goodman<\/a><\/p>\n

AMY GOODMAN: Well, talk about what you learned, what you understand happened, what is the U.N.’s version of events. We tried to get the U.N. on. They did not respond to our calls. <\/p>\n

SETH DONNELLY: Yeah. I’d like to start with the official version, and then we’ll look at what the evidence of the massacre that contradicts the official version. I interviewed the top military command of the U.N. on Friday, July 8, with some Haitian colleagues, human rights workers. And Lieutenant General Augusto Heleno and Colonel Morano claimed that the operation was a success. They did state that about 300 U.N. troops led by a Jordanian contingent, surrounded Cite Soleil, which as you mentioned is one of the largest ghettos in Port-au-Prince. It?s one of the poorest neighborhoods in the world. And it has, even before this operation, it has been sealed off. According to locals, the U.N. had put shipping freight containers blocking various entrances into the community because it’s been a hotbed of support for President Aristide. It is a Lavalas base of support, and there has been ongoing conflicts with U.N. and police in that community. So, the community was already relatively sealed off. But then the 300 troops came around 3:00 a.m. July 6, and then also according to U.N. high military command, they had 18 to 20 armed personal – armored personal carriers, which are basically like tanks without treads. They have cannons. And they had those choking off entrances and exits to and from the ghetto. <\/p>\n

And then around 5:00 a.m., they launched the attack. They tried to locate Dread Wilme and capture him. They claimed he was killed. The community is acknowledging that he was killed. But the top level military command said they were unaware of any civilian casualties during the operation. So that was sort of ? and they also mentioned that there was a helicopter that flew 3,000 feet overhead just for observation purposes, but it did not shoot down into the community. <\/p>\n

What we found actually when we went into the community the day after the operation was widespread evidence that the troops had carried out a massacre. We found homes, which when we say homes, we are talking basically shacks of wood and tin, in many cases, riddled with machine gun blasts as well as tank fire. The holes in a lot of these homes were too large just to be bullets. They must have been tank-type shells penetrating the homes. We saw a church and a school completely riddled with machine gun blasts. And then the community came out. <\/p>\n

Once we had passed through, and we were — the community understood who we were, women, children, old and young, came out en masse and started to give us their testimony. They clearly were not being coerced by (quote\/unquote) ?gang leaders? or ?gang elements.? They took us into their homes. They showed us bodies that still remained. They gave us very emotional testimony. People were hysterical still. And they all claimed that the U.N. forces had fired into their homes, had fired into their community, and people were saying at a minimum 20, if not more, people were killed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[MORE<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Josh Buermann<\/a> has a few observations of his own about Haiti.<\/p>\n

G. Dunkel provides more details in “Labor delegation reports massacre in Port-au-Prince<\/a>“.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“We at the UN will do all that we can to help the Haitian people.” – Kofi Annan Eyewitnesses Describe Massacre by UN Troops in Haiti Seth Donnelly interviewed by Amy Goodman AMY GOODMAN: Well, talk about what you learned, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-fB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}