Lavalas demonstration: At least 5 people killed, witnesses claim they saw police shooting

At least 5 people were killed, including a 21-year-old young man, and several others were injured in this demonstration that was aiming to demand the release of political prisoners and the return to constitutional order.



The march gathered thousands of people and was about to reach the district of Bourdon where a message was supposed to be delivered before the UN office when heavily armed men opened fire in the back of the demonstration that had been peaceful until then.



Bodies of the victims who were shot point-blank were mutilated.



Demonstrators accused policemen who were in police vehicles, including a pick-up that usually makes patrols in Nazon, of committing these crimes. "We saw policemen shoot the demonstrators", several of them claimed.



However, a few policemen tried to justify these atrocities by accusing a demonstrator of shooting in the direction of the police. But they didn’t say how many of them had been injured.

Another policeman even forced television teams to film an arm that he claimed he had found on a demonstrator. But witnesses rejected the police’s allegations saying no such thing had happened and this was all a scenario.



Several students coming back from school were injured when the police opened fire, according to several testimonies. One of the wounded people got his leg cut by a bullet. MINUSTHA agents were trying to save him at the beginning of the afternoon. The victim was coming back from the hospital when he was shot.



The MINUSTHA was practically absent from this demonstration. Agents from the mission reportedly intervened only after the tragedy. Numerous demonstrators considered this absence was suspicious.



Spokesperson of Lavalas activists from the populist district of Bel-air, Sanba Boukman, had accused many times this week PNH agents of holding back for several hours a message that had been sent at the PNH general management regarding the demonstration that ended with much bloodshed this April 27th. A letter written also to the MINUSTHA to invite it to ensure security at the demonstration had also been confiscated then, Sanba Boukman declared.

AHP April 27, 2005 3:40 PM