Protests against the UN’s MINUSTAH peacekeeping forces reached the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on Thursday, demonstrating growing frustration with the security forces many believe were responsible for bringing the current cholera epidemic to the country. As CNN reports a planned protest near the center of the capital began peacefully yesterday but soon turned violent as it moved toward the presidential palace.
The UN was not the only institution against which anger was directed. CNN also reports that President Rene Preval – and the presidential candidate he has endorsed, Jude Celestin – were singled out by demonstrators. CNN:
“Several threw rocks at a campaign poster for presidential candidate Jude Celestin, whose candidacy has been endorsed by outgoing president Rene Preval. Others threw Molotov cocktails at the poster. Some Haitians have said Celestin is a symbol of what is not working in the country, and that Preval's endorsement of him means the election -- set for November 28 -- will not be fair.”
CNN, also quoting one of Thursday’s protestors who expresses disappointment with the Preval government and little faith in next week’s scheduled vote:
“The Haitian government is doing nothing for us. And we know the international government is still spending a lot of money for the Haitian people. But Preval, with his government, he still keeps their money to take back to the United States to buy some house… This is not election time.”
Al-Jazeera’s reporting on unrest in Port-au-Prince Thursday adds that the military wing of the national police fired tear gas into at least one camp for the internally displaced, across the road from the national parliament – that while young demonstrators “pelted” MINUSTAH vehicles with stones yelling “Cholera: It's Minustah who gave it to us!” and “Minustah, go home.” Meanwhile, independent journalist, Ansel Herz, speaking to Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman from Cap-Haitien yesterday, says the idea that protests are being “manipulated” doesn't “hold much water.” Rather, frustrations have much deeper roots. Herz:
“There have been longstanding accusations against the peacekeeping mission here for abusing Haitians and for lacking transparent investigations into any of these alleged human rights violations.”
From the Washington Post’s William Booth this morning, a more specific – although somewhat superficial – focus on next Sunday’s presidential vote, which, according to Booth, “Haitians pray is not another disaster.” The packed field of 19 includes a “charismatic carnival singer who used to perform in drag, a former first lady whose husband was ousted by a military coup and a rich industrialist who boasts of surviving seven assassination attempts,” says the Post. Some of the most telling information from the piece is the decidedly US-focus. The paper quotes US ambassador to Haiti, Kenneth Merten, who recently said he had not met anybody the US cannot work with, amongst the 19 contenders. Merten also takes what some may find as a rather absurd position on recent violence. Merten: “By Haiti standards, it has been quite peaceful.”
The Post also provides a thin case for making the following conclusion about the current government: “If Preval has done anything, he has brought Haiti relative stability.”
More on US statements regarding the current government and upcoming elections, from CNN’s report on Haiti. Mark Ward, the acting director of the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance at the U.S. Agency for International Development, says, for example, U.S. authorities continue to have “a lot of confidence” in the Haitian government's “response to the outbreak.”
Lastly, some opinions. The Washington Post does not take a position on the elections but says that the US must focus on the “longer-term priority” of “improving Haiti's severely inadequate water systems so that drinking water is not contaminated by sewage.” Rory Carroll at the Guardian critiques the “republic of NGOs” aid model. And also at the Guardian, independent journalist Isabeau Doucet has a very good piece providing context for the recent wave of protests against MINUSTAH.
To other stories:
· From the AP, a report that the International Criminal Court has begun “preliminary investigations” in Honduras to decide if there is reason to open an actual case in connection to human rights crimes that followed the June 2009 coup against the government of Manuel Zelaya. Few details right now about the nature of those investigations.
· Meanwhile, EFE reports that rights groups in Honduras are blaming the government of Porfirio Lobo for the deaths of at least five peasants killed by private security forces in Bajo Aguan this week. “This massacre is clear evidence of how the armed forces of Honduras, the National Police and the army of oligarch Miguel Facusse have again united to make the power of the boot and the rifle count over that of law and justice,” reads a joint statement from the Human Rights and Agrarian Platform. A total of 16 peasants have been killed in the region so far this year, the two organizations maintain. The most recent killings come over disputed land which the agriculturalist Miguel Facusse maintains control over but which the National Agrarian Institute says was purchased by the government more than 10 years ago to distribute among landless peasants.
· In a story I have admittedly had trouble keeping track off, Costa Rica said Thursday it will take Nicaragua to the International Court of Justice over an ongoing border dispute related to the San Juan River. That filing comes after the Permanent Council of the OAS voted, 22-1 to hold a special foreign ministers meeting on the matter (Venezuela voted against, Nicaragua boycotted, and seven countries abstained). The OAS meeting is set for Dec. 7. But according to EFE’s reporting, Nicaragua may concur with Costa Rica that the ICJ is in fact the more appropriate location for the dispute to be resolved. EFE: “Nicaraguan Ambassador Denis Moncada noted that his country’s president, Daniel Ortega, will go to the International Court of Justice to establish the border, given that this is a matter on which the OAS has no jurisdiction.” For his part, former Costa Rican president Oscar Arias said this week the UN Security Council would be the best place for a resolution to be sought. For a detailed account of the conflict thus far, the Alliance for Global Justice’s Nicaragua News Bulletin has a complete summary.
· The LA Times this morning reports on daily life and violence in Nuevo Laredo and the “violence-ridden state of Tamaulipas.” Al-Jazeera with a video report on a recent case of “vigilante justice” in the small town of Asención, Chihuahua. El Diario de Juarez says two suspects connected to Los Aztecas have been arrested in the killing of three individuals connected to the US consulate in Juarez last March. From El Universal, Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission now says 66 journalists have been killed in the country since 2005. Twelve others remain “disappeared.”
· Reuters looks at the agenda which ALBA member governments hope to push at the upcoming UN climate summit in Cancun. Reuters, on one of the ALBA proposals: “ALBA leaders want the rich world to commit to a near-50 percent greenhouse emissions cut from 1990 levels by 2017 -- far deeper than cuts planned by any developed nation -- and to give as much money to fight climate change as for defense budgets.”
· At Foreign Policy, Helen Coster on the tension between international child labor standards and the fact that such labor is strongly unionized in Bolivia. Coster: “Unionized child workers and their advocates argue that because child labor is a necessity born of poverty, it can't and shouldn't be eradicated. But they want the government and NGOs to differentiate between child labor -- which they see as an economic necessity -- and exploitation, which is how they characterize children working in dangerous jobs, like mining, and harvesting Brazil nuts and sugar cane.”
· The Council on Hemispheric Affairs with a good summary of the future of US-Cuba relations during the next US Congress.
· The Economist with a critique from the right of nationalizations and what it calls “state socialism” in Venezuela. And from the Real News Network, an interview with journalist and author Ben Dangl who has the critique from the Left of some left-leaning Latin American governments’ and their increasingly antagonistic relationship with social movements.
· In Peru, indigenous activist Alberto Pizango, the leader of protests in Bagua in June 2009, says he will run for president in 2011 on an indigenous rights platform. IKN has the latest poll numbers from Peru this week which put former Lima mayor Luis Castaneda three points ahead of Alejandro Toledo and nearly six points ahead of Keiko Fujimori.
· And, from Mercopress, more rumblings about possible new secretary generals at UNASUR. Uruguay’s Pepe Mujica allegedly had a long conversation with his Ecuadorean counterpart recently, and while no consensus has yet been reached, Rafael Correa has suggested former Uruguayan President Tabaré Vazquez or outgoing Brazilian President Lula da Silva remain the frontrunners.
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