Journalist Abdias Jean of Miami radio station WKAT 1360 was killed by "security" forces in Village de Dieu during a police sweep of that populist district on Friday, January 14. An eyewitness testified that before he was executed, the journalist begged, "Don't kill me, I am a journalist. Why should I be killed like that?"
The same day, Haitian police officers seized a video camera from two journalists with the station Télé Ginen. The police only returned the camera several hours later, after removing video footage of the violent sweep of Village de Dieu. Human rights activists also decried the summary execution of Lavalas activist Jimmy Charles, whose bullet-riddled body was found at the morgue of the General Hospital while he was supposed to be in the hands of the police after having been initially taken into custody by members of the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). Activists also denounced the extra-judicial killing of student Ederson Joseph.
CPDH (Committee for the Defense of the Rights of the Haitian People) director Ronald St-Jean accused MINUSTAH of not doing enough to pursue the killers of Abdias Jean, Jimmy Charles, and Ederson Joseph.
But a MINUSTAH spokesperson denied that the UN had any responsibility for the killing of civilians taken into custody by UN soldiers and handed over to the national police.
The spokesperson argued that the only legal force authorized to follow-up on arrests is the national police, and that MINUSTAH has no responsibility in cases of individuals turned over to the police who are later found dead.
A new report (view pdf) from the Center for the Study of Human Rights (CSHR) at the University of Miami reports credible evidence that raids began on Port au Prince's poorest neighborhoods immediately after the landing of U.S. troops, and increased after major pro-Aristide demonstrations in September illustrated continuing wide support for the forcibly-ousted President¹s return. CSHR investigators witnessed events immediately before and after a Nov. 18 raid on the desperately poor neighborhood of Bel Air. The report includes photographs and interviews with Haitian National Police and MINUSTAH shortly before the raid began. Investigators photographed bodies of those killed--including women and teenagers--during the operation, and interviewed some of the severely wounded--including at least one who identified the MINUSTAH (UN) soldiers who shot him. Police and residents testified that such violent raids had taken place almost daily since September. One police officer said that they were pushed to target specific individuals for assassination, but that for every ten killed, six were merely witnesses or bystanders. Residents were afraid to take the wounded to the General Hospital, where doctors often refused to treat patients without money (the former staff of Cuban volunteer doctors was expelled after the coup), and where the HNP often came to seize such victims who subsequently disappeared.
Institute For Justice & Democracy In Haiti | Summary Executions by Haitian Police and MINUSTAH complicity | UNESCO Denounces Journalist’s Murder, in Haiti | president of Haitian Journalists' Association receives death threats | Reuters Haiti correspondent receives death threats | Coup government threatens Reuters Haiti correspondent