bcholmes | UN department of denial (Reply)

The United Nations is investigating allegations that five Uruguayan naval troops at a UN base in southern Haiti sexually molested an 18-year-old man in an attack reportedly captured by a cellphone camera.
The UN mission learned of the allegations last week and the scandal prompted Uruguay to sack its naval chief in Haiti.
The soldiers were confined to their barracks pending the outcome of the probe.
Shot with a cellphone camera, the clip shows several men in camouflaged uniforms laughing as they pin down a young man on a mattress.
The men seem to be saying "no problem" in Spanish as they hold the teen's arms and hands behind his back. The camera jumps around, and it's not clear from the video what's happening.
A magistrate in Port-Salut, the southwestern coastal town in which the assault allegedly happened, has gathered testimony from the alleged victim and his mother and filed it in court.
— "UN Haiti peacekeepers accused of sex assault", CBC

Before the cellphone video emerged, the UN unilaterally denied these allegations. Inner City Press writes:

On August 17, Inner City Press asked Ban's now departed deputy spokesman Farhan Haq:
Inner City Press: in Port-Salut there are complaints against the Uruguayan peacekeepers of MINUSTAH [United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti], including on sexual abuse grounds --what is MINUSTAH’s response on this topic that Ban Ki-moon has recently said is so important to him?
Acting Deputy Spokesperson Haq: MINUSTAH is in fact looking into this to see about these allegations and whether there is any credibility to them.

The very next day on August 18, Haq began the noon briefing by reading out a denial:
"further to what I said yesterday on an investigation in Port-Salut, Haiti, the UN Mission there (MINUSTAH) tells us that the preliminary report of this investigation was finalized. After discussions with local authorities and members of the population in Port-Salut, the investigators found out that these allegations of misconduct could not be substantiated. The UN Mission in Haiti says that no supporting evidence was provided by anyone, and local authorities confirmed that these allegations were unfounded."

— "UN Denied Sex Abuse Before Video Came Out in Haiti, Where New DPKO Chief Ladsous Defended Ouster of Aristide"

Here's the video. It's not perfectly clear, but strongly suggests abuse.

It stuns me how MINUSTAH just keeps denying everything. They denied that they were the source of cholera. They denied that they were still dumping human waste near rivers. They deny that they shot a mourner at Fr. Jean-Juste's funeral. They deny that they sexually assaulted an 18-year old man. Then, oops. There's video evidence.

Al Jazeera makes this point about the video evidence: it was shot by another MINUSTAH soldier, but the Haitians got hold of it.

Ansel Herz, a journalist in Port Salut, where the incident is alleged to have occurred, said the video footage was passed around via mobile phones after two Haitian men saw the video and copied it while they were exchanging music with a Ururguayan soldier via Bluetooth.
"The video was originally taken by a UN soldier who was there at the time," he told Al Jazeera.
On Friday, a Haitian magistrate said he had turned the case over to prosecutors after the alleged victim and his mother gave depositions.
"Everybody was watching this video in the court case as the mother was making a complaint against these soldiers," said Herz.

During my last delegation to Haiti, I met this man:

He's a resident of Bel Air, a poorer neighbourhood of Pòtoprens, and one of the neighbourhoods that was subject to MINUSTAH raids in 2005/2006. This man reported to us that he was in the streets when a raid began on August 8th, 2005. He was afraid of the soldiers, and afraid to run from them. So he stopped in place, and raised his hands above his head, letting the soldiers search him to show that he didn't have a weapon.

After they searched him, they told him he could go. But as he was turning to leave, a soldier pushed him to the ground, and he was shot in neck. He says that his partner saw him in lying in the street, and tried to take him to the hospital, but the soldiers beat her up. He's now lost the use of his legs.

He tried to pursue a legal case against the UN. And he reports that they threatened him to back off the case.

MINUSTAH needs to be out of Haiti.