Time for the army has come

angegardien · #1 06-19-05, 09:32 PM

Isn't it time that we call in our own army? Isn't it time that idiot Latortue realizes that he made a mistake by screwing them up? Those UN people have proven to be a waste. Things never have been so worst in Haiti. The country is ours, the problems are Haitians, the solutions must be Haitians: Drastics.

Our former soldiers are the only ones left with some balls.

Human rights is not a one way street. Why are we even talking about them when the other side is playing dirty? We need the army badly. We need a giant cleanup.

Kidnapping Surge Adds to Terror in Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti Jun 19, 2005 (AP) ? Jean Henold Buteau's wife listened frantically to the brusque voice on the other end of the telephone line: We've got your husband. Give us $1 million or start planning his funeral.

Then she heard his screams as the kidnappers tortured her bound and hooded husband, crushing the tips of his fingers and earlobes with pliers and burning his feet.

Buteau's 20-hour abduction in April was part of a rash of kidnappings that are adding to the misery in a country already beset by political violence and instability.

An average of four people are kidnapped each day by politically aligned street gangs, drug traffickers, crooked police and criminal deportees from the United States, officials say.

"I was thinking, 'Thank God my mother is dead because she couldn't take this,'" said Buteau, a physician and leader of a center-left political party. "They were very, very brutal."

Buteau was released after his family paid a ransom well below the amount demanded. The figures weren't revealed.

The kidnappings are the latest trend in relentless violence that one U.N. official called "an urban war" to destabilize Haiti ahead of fall elections aimed at filling a power vacuum after a revolt toppled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide last year.

At least 130 people were kidnapped in the capital of Port-au-Prince in April, a big jump over previous months, U.N. officials have said. Precise statistics were not available for the previous months, or for May and June.

The victims range from wealthy business owners pulled out of luxury vehicles on busy streets to working-class Haitians snatched from poor neighborhoods and held for a few hundred dollars.

Foreigners also are targets.

On Friday, an Italian woman, Gigliola Martino, was kidnapped in the capital but was later released unharmed, the Italian Foreign Ministry said. The Italian news agency ANSA reported that Martino, 65, has been living in Haiti for about 30 years with her husband and two children.

The abduction came days after a Canadian woman was seized from her home and reportedly held for $300,000. She was freed Wednesday, but it was not known if a ransom was paid. At least six foreigners have been kidnapped in recent months.

We are facing a kind of terrorism," said Ann-Marie Issa, a member of a U.S.-backed council of business leaders, academics and others who helped choose Haiti's interim government and monitor it. "When we go out in the morning we don't know if we'll come home."

Many wealthier Haitians, who had been relatively insulated from violence, are leaving the nation or fleeing to the countryside, Issa said. Several business owners have been forced to close up shop, laying off workers and perpetuating Haiti's cycle of poverty, she said.

Increased violence prompted the Peace Corps to pull its 16 volunteers out of Haiti this week, three weeks after the State Department warned Americans against traveling here and ordered nonessential U.S. personnel to leave.

Haitian officials blame much of the kidnappings on well-armed pro-Aristide street gangs, but say drug traffickers, corrupt police and an influx of criminal deportees from the United States are also involved.

"Some of these guys were not even born in Haiti, but their parents were Haitians," interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue said recently, urging U.S. authorities to stop sending back criminals of Haitian decent.

A 7,400-strong U.N. peacekeeping force is patrolling volatile slums of the capital and parts of the countryside but says it can do little to combat kidnappings.

"The kidnapping (problem) is not the job of peacekeepers," U.N. military spokesman Lt. Col. Elouafi Boulbars said. "It's the job of the population, civil society and law enforcement."

Haiti's ill-equipped police force is forming a new anti-kidnapping squad, but families of victims are often reluctant to involve police, who are sometimes behind the crimes themselves. Two police officers were detained this week for alleged kidnappings, police spokeswoman Gessy Coicou said.

Buteau, a 52-year-old Aristide opponent and leader of the Movement for National Reconstruction party, says he may have been targeted for his political views.

After being tortured for hours, Buteau said he managed to soften his captors by talking with them, even giving medical advice to one with a sick child. He said he persuaded them to lower the ransom demand.

"My main goal was to survive," said Buteau, who still has scars on his wrists and feet and has started using a bodyguard.

U.N. Civilian Police Commissioner David Beer called the violence "an urban war" aimed at "destabilizing the government" ahead of elections scheduled for October and November.

capoislamort · #2 06-20-05, 02:24 AM

GOOD JOB!

There will always be election-driven candidates who cannot stand for anything but themselves.Haitian people cannot count on them. They see no evil, they hear no evil, they talk no evil. They see, hear and talk only one thing:ELECTIONS.

We, the people of Haiti, believe it is time to correct the biggest mistake made by the Transition government: It is time for the foreign troops to go away.It is time to call on the Haitian Army. Believe me : Haitian Army with the back-up of the population is ready and determined to face the bad guys.

We need the Haitian Army back!