Thought for the Day

[bcholmes]

The unrest comes ahead of Haiti's national election on November 28 to choose a new president. Some parties have sought to rally popular support by blaming the international community for the country's continuing misery from the earthquake and now for the outbreak of disease.

Rumors have been spreading for weeks that the cholera epidemic began because septic tanks at a base for Nepalese UN peacekeepers in central Haiti leaked into a major river, contaminating it.

"These guys are coming here and they rape our women, kill our people, and now bring us the disease," Haitian protester Joseph Jacquelin charged of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti, or MINUSTAH, in a Reuters interview. "We are tired of them and they must go. Down with MINUSTAH!"

The cholera epidemic isn't the sole root of this anger. The years of violence that MINUSTAH has waged on the people has not gone unnoticed.

The UN said it tested some of the Nepalese peacekeepers and found no trace of cholera. Meanwhile, health officials said it is impossible to know and the focus must be on containing the epidemic and not divining its source.

The targeting of the foreign peacekeepers for popular anger over the cholera epidemic is particularly worrisome as UN peacekeepers are scheduled to oversee the election later this month.

By discrediting them ahead of time as enemies of the Haitian people, some parties may be preparing the ground for rejecting the election results as unfair.

Um. The elections are unfair.

If so, that could set the stage for still more trouble for Haiti in the coming months as political unrest compounds the country’s already long list of problems.

— "UN Sees Mounting Violence In Haiti Targeting Peacekeepers"