HAITI: EARTHQUAKE VICTIMS FACE NEW TRIALS WITH FORCED EVICTIONS.
By Charles Arthur
Tens of thousands of people made homeless by the Jan. 12 earthquake (see NotiCen-2010-01-21) are facing new terrors as police deployed by the government and thugs hired by private landlords have begun forcibly evicting residents from a number of camps across Port-au-Prince.
Forcible evictions of homeless people who had set up camps on any available ground began in late March. Private landlords who wanted the internally displaced people off their land sent in hired men under the cover of darkness to pull down makeshift shelters and tents and drive the occupants out.
The first high-profile mass eviction saw police forcibly remove some 7,000 people from the Sylvio Cator national soccer stadium over the weekend of April 10-11.=20 Thousands more were subsequently forced out of Camp Sipot in Delmas 31 and Camp Refugee in Caradeux Delmas 75.
Contrary to the guidelines on the treatment of internally displaced people issued by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), no alternative accommodation was provided. Media reports told of evicted camp dwellers setting up lean-to shelters in bushes on hillside wasteland.
With authorities and relief agencies belatedly beginning the process of providing alternative temporary housing outside the capital, in Port-au-Prince some landowners have seen the development as a signal that they can force people off their land and close down squatter camps. Toward the middle of April, residents at the Camp Methodiste de Freres in Delmas 95, and Camp San Louis Gonzague in Delmas 31/33, reported their fears that forced evictions were imminent. =20=20=20=20=20 Rainy season brings need to move survivors
More than 1 million people lost their homes during the January 12 earthquake. About half of them subsequently left the capital and its suburbs to find shelter with relatives living in the provinces. The rest--more than half a million people--massed in more than 600 settlement camps in and around Port-au-Prince.
These camps were initially composed of makeshift tarpaulin homes and shanties, but eventually international relief agencies succeeded in distributing tents to many of the displaced people.
In the weeks after the earthquake, government officials and aid workers said that nearly all the displaced would need to be moved to carefully planned camps ahead of the arriving rainy season. Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive even spoke of the need to requisition vacant land for...
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