By Vanessa Martina Silva on October 6, 2017
Brazilian soldiers landed on Haiti in 2004 to lead troops from different countries in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). On September 1, the soldiers returned to Brazil, and by October, all foreign militaries must be out of the Caribbean territory.
The action of the Minustah has left the country a legacy of over 30,000 deaths from cholera, and there are more than 2,000 rape victims, among other violations. In an informal interview with Brasil de Fato, Guerchang Bastia, of the Socialist Encounter for a New National Initiative Party, considered the Minustah as an occupation force:
“The Minustah generated a lot of violence against students and poor people who live in the favelas. Soldiers raped women and men. A lot of violence was perpetrated against the people in the country along with bringing a cholera epidemic. Their time here was a huge disaster and the UN is responsible”, reports Bastia.
The cholera epidemic hit Haiti after the earthquake of 2010, which left more than 200,000 deaths in the country. Despite the evidence that proves the introduction of cholera came from the hands of the Minustah troops, it took the UN 6 years to acknowledge the mistake. For Bastia, the treatment the people of Haiti has had to endure is inhumane: “We are human beings, we have family, friends, children, spouses. I cannot understand the things they say. People accept, forgive, but it doesn’t mean anything to us”.
The Brazilian soldiers invaded a favela populated by 200,000 people in Cité Soleil, and committed what the Haitians call a massacre. During the action, which is widely condemned, at least 27 civilians died, 20 women under 18 years old among them.
Bastia considers what happened in Haiti as a rehearsal for the actions carried out by the Brazilian army in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. “Brazilian soldiers killed a lot of people in the Haitian favelas. It is understandable that the army prepared to fight their poor by experimenting their tactics here in our favelas because Brazil has so many favelas and other areas of poverty.”
The relationship between the actions of the Brazilian army in Haiti and in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro were recently commented on by General Ajax Porto Pinheiro in an interview he had with the Brazilian radio CBN. When the journalist asked about the possibility of applying the knowledge obtained by the military in the Minustah, the general replied that the UN troops had “more freedom operating in Haiti than in Brazil”. What he meant by that was the green light they had to shoot to kill.
In Haiti, these violations will be denounced in the Popular Court which organizes the actions in the whole country to denounce the occupation, as Bastia explains: “Normal courts are based on the law, and the law is created by the ruling class. Laws do not speak to the most important issues that matters to the people. For example, the United States has destroyed Haiti’s environment and there is no law that addresses that negligence. The judgments’ of the Popular Court is for the cases not treated in common civil court.”
The Popular Court, which began its activities in July, will continue to operate throughout Haiti until 2018. It is an important legal institution because it will be important in measuring just how many people died at the hands of the Minustah troops, since there is no effective report made by the UN regarding this information.
Source: Brasil de Fato