Eviction fears haunt Haiti camp after arson, death

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Rights groups and other activists say there is a growing use of threats and sometimes outright violence in Haiti to clear out sprawling camps that are home to some 320,000 people still homeless since the country's 2010 earthquake.

A standoff at one camp last month has become a symbol of the problem for many people. It set off a chain of events that left several shelters burned and a camp resident dead.

The confrontation occurred a little more than a week before the human rights group Amnesty International issued a report on the jump of camp evictions seen in Haiti this year.

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Eviction fears haunt Haiti camps after attacks

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Attorney Reynold Georges showed up with a judge and a police officer on a recent afternoon at Camp Acra, a cluster of tents and plywood shelters scattered across rocky hills dotted with trees in the heart of the Haitian capital.

The lawyer told the camp of some 30,000 people that they were squatting on his land and had to leave, witnesses said. If they didn't vacate, he said he'd have the place burned down and leveled by bulldozers. Camp leader Elie Joseph Jean-Louis said other angry residents, who had lost their homes in a catastrophic 2010 earthquake, fought back by lobbing rocks at Georges and the people he had come with.

The camp residents managed to protect their homes that day but they also brought to life a far-reaching problem.

In the few weeks since the mid-April confrontation, their plight has become a symbol for what many say is the growing use of threats and sometimes outright violence to clear out sprawling displaced person camps, where some 320,000 Haitians still live.

The standoff set off a chain of events that left several shelters burned and a camp resident dead. It occurred a little more than a week before the human rights group Amnesty International issued a report on the jump in camp evictions in Haiti over the past year.

"This terrible event is proof of the consequences of continuing forced evictions in Haiti," Javier Zuniga, a special adviser to Amnesty International, said in a statement about the standoff. "They have been living in camps with appalling living conditions. As if this were not enough, they are threatened with forced evictions and, eventually, made homeless again."

Georges tells a different story. The former senator, whose most famous law client is former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, denied that he had threatened residents, saying he was only there to show officials what he said was his land.

"If they said that, they are crooks and liars," Georges said of camp residents.

After Amnesty released its report, Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamonthe told The Associated Press that the government of President Michel Martelly was in fact trying to stop the evictions.

The government does not "believe in forced evictions," Lamonthe said. "There are some private owners that do it, but the government itself does not condone that."

Haitians displaced by the earthquake are entitled to special legal protection under the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, which prohibit forced evictions unless necessary to protect the safety and health of those affected. National authorities are responsible for protecting and providing humanitarian assistance to those displaced people.

By all accounts, clearing the camps in a humane way reflects the epic challenge that Haiti still faces more than three years after one of the worst natural disasters in modern history.

The earthquake killed more than 200,000 people and displaced as many as 1.5 million others, a staggering number in a country of 10 million. In its aftermath, settlements such as Acra sprang up around the crowded capital where land runs scarce, with people building shelters with debris, tree branches, salvaged timber, tarps from aid groups and bed sheets. The camps eventually became miniature cities with their own stores, barber shops, bars and churches. About 385 of the settlements are still standing.

Aid groups and officials from Martelly's government say fewer visible encampments and a smaller number of displaced residents are proof Haiti is recovering. But housing advocates worry that many people are actually being evicted with no place to go, at the hands of authorities or people such as Georges who claim to own the land.

Evictions were far more common just after the quake, with the International Organization for Migration calculating that 6,650 people were forced from informal camps during the last six months of 2010.

The practice tapered off, however, with just 279 people evicted in the last six months of 2012, according to the organization.

Now, that number is growing again as private property owners grow impatient to regain their long-occupied land. According to the migration organization, 977 displaced people left the camps through force or threats during the first three months of 2013.

The story is different on public lands, where many displaced people have already moved out of after the government offered rent subsidies elsewhere.

Earlier this year, about 700 people were kicked out of another encampment on private land in the Port-au-Prince district of Carrefour after police fired warning shots and a judge ordered them to leave.

People from yet more camps have said they've fled their temporary homes after fires tore through the settlements in the middle of the night or in some cases when police destroyed their tents or lean-tos with machetes. But unlike Camp Acra, no one in those cases was reportedly killed by the authorities.

That bloodshed has thrust Camp Acra into the heart of the debate, with much of the ire focusing on Georges and his infamous client.

Duvalier, the ex-dictator, returned to Haiti from exile in 2011 and is fighting off human rights charges stemming from years of brutal rule. Camp residents say the former strongman is also among several Camp Acra visitors who have claimed ownership to the land.

Although most of the area is believed to belong to the government, as well as a small portion to Haiti's influential Acra family, even humanitarian groups specializing in housing issues aren't certain who the owners are. Land disputes in Haiti are often settled with bags of cash, guns, machetes or arson.

Residents say Georges' visit was only the start of their problems.

Hours later, an unidentified band on motorcycles raided the camp while residents slept, setting fire to seven makeshift homes, according to an Amnesty investigation. Residents who woke to the smell of smoke quickly doused the flames with buckets of water.

Over the long night, several hundred residents walked down the hill to a police station to report the raid, but the officers refused to help, said camp leader Jean-Louis.

"The police said they didn't have gas for their cars," he said.

Angry camp residents protested by lighting a bonfire of tires and other trash and blocking Delmas 33, a major thoroughfare.

It was around the same time that the tensions turned deadly.

At around 5 a.m., one camp resident, Merius Civil, left his shelter to throw out the trash, just as police officers from the station stormed the camp, his sister Anele said.

The officers arrested Civil as well as neighbor Darlin Lexima, said Patrice Florvilus, an attorney representing the dead man's family and other Camp Acra residents. Lexima said he later saw Civil in police custody, too dazed to speak.

"I saw that his face was bashed in, his nose was bashed in, and he had marks on his body," Lexima said.

Florvilus' law firm said that it believes Civil died at the Delmas station, and that witnesses reported seeing officers carry a sheet-covered body from the station to a patrol car.

Police Inspector Jean-Faustin Salomon offered a different account, saying Civil died at a hospital. He also said a preliminary report showed neighbors beat Civil and Lexima because they didn't participate in the protest.

"A good man has left the world," sister Anele said sitting on a bucket in the doorway of her brother's shelter. "Now that he's dead I want to know why."

For the Rev. Waler Baptiste, a Camp Acra pastor, the settlement came under attack for a simple reason: Haiti wants to rid itself of displaced people without giving them anywhere to go.

"People have been trying to remove us to take back their land," Baptiste said. "The government doesn't care about us. Whoever can take advantage of us will try to take advantage of us."

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Rape, kidnap of tourists feed Rio safety fears

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — A night on the town turned into a six-hour-long nightmare after an American woman was gang raped and beaten aboard a public transit van while her handcuffed French boyfriend looked on helplessly, in an incident that's shocked this resort city as it gears up to host next year's World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.

The police response to the attack was swift: The three alleged perpetrators, aged 20 to 22, have all been taken into custody, and investigators are combing databases to determine whether the men might have been behind any other crimes.

Many still ask whether Rio authorities, who have succeeded in cracking down on much of the city's drug violence, are up to the task of protecting the waves of tourists expected to flood the city during the upcoming double-header of mega-events. Some 2 million people are also expected to flock to the city in late July for World Youth Day, a Roman Catholic pilgrimage that Pope Francis is scheduled to attend.

Some observers said the attack came as a particular shock given that safety has improved at least in the city's tourist-friendly, seaside South Zone neighborhoods. Foreigners and moneyed local residents who even three or four years ago would have hesitated to hail a taxi in the street or walk around after dark now do both without thinking twice.

"No one expects to be attacked in Disneyland, handcuffed and roughed up," Globo newspaper quoted Alfredo Lopes, the head of an association representing Brazil's hotel sector. "Copacabana is our Disneyland."

Yet it was in that very beachfront neighborhood, full of senior citizens in bikinis by day but seedier by night, that the two foreigners hailed one of the fleet of public transit vans often used as a speedier alternative to buses. Police investigating the case say the two foreigners, both in their early-20s, were headed shortly after midnight Saturday to Lapa, a popular downtown nightlife hotspot where Rio's youth converges on clubs, bars and samba venues.

But the pair never made it to their destination. A few minutes into their journey, the van operators forced the other passengers off and inflicted on the two foreigners what Alexandre Braga, the police officer leading the investigation, has called a "party of evil."

The three suspects took turns raping the woman and beating the man, whom they handcuffed and sometimes struck with a metal crowbar, Braga told a news conference Tuesday.

The suspects split up the driving, ending up in Rio's sister city of Niteroi across Guanabara Bay, where they went on a spending spree with the foreigners' credit cards. Once they hit the limit on both cards, spending around $500 at gas stations and convenience stores, the suspects drove the pair back to Rio, where the foreigners were staying, and forced the woman to fetch another credit card, Braga said.

Although she was alone, she didn't call the police or alert anyone, Braga said, "because the young man was still under the suspects' control and she feared something even worse might happen to him."

Some six hours after they were kidnapped, the two were dumped by the side of a highway near the city of Itaborai, some 50 kilometers from Rio. They managed to make it to an unidentified country's consulate, where officials took the two to the special police delegation that specializes in crimes against foreigners. The young woman has returned to the U.S., while the man remains in Rio to help with the investigations, Braga said.

"The victims recognized the three without a shadow of a doubt," Braga said. The men's mug shots were also recognized by another woman who said she'd been raped by the three under similar circumstances last month. Another foreigner has said she'd been robbed by one of the three suspects, police said.

Two of the suspects have confessed to Saturday's attack, while the third denies any responsibility.

"They do not show any repentance," Braga said. "They are quite indifferent, cold."

He said the men appeared to work as legitimate van operators, with crime an occasional side venture. Though they apparently were authorized to transport passengers in Niteroi and neighboring Sao Goncalo, the suspects were not allowed to operate the van in Rio, he said.

The suspects had rented the van, which seats about a dozen people and has dark tinted windows, from the vehicle's owner, who police say is not suspected of any involvement in the crime.

Rio's van services are widely reviled for their precarious safety conditions and reckless driving, as well as their links to organized crime. Some vans are run by militias largely composed of former police and firemen who control large swaths of the city's slums and run clandestine transportation and other services. In general, tourists avoid the vans and opt for regular buses or taxis.

Sexual assaults remain a problem on public transit. Last year, a woman was raped on a moving bus in broad daylight in a widely publicized case, and the Rio subway has special women-only cars to help prevent such attacks.

Still, Brazilian officials emphasized Rio is not particularly prone to such attacks.

"I think sexual violence is something that can happen anywhere," said Aparecida Goncalves, Brazil's national secretary for violence against women. "I don't think that the city of Rio is more dangerous than others."

"Now we have more ways of denouncing them," she said, "of talking about and taking the necessary measures so those responsible are punished and imprisoned."

Walter Maierovitch, Brazil's former drug czar and an organized crime expert, said that with crime down overall, one of the city's main challenges will be making sure visitors remain vigilant and aware of basic safety precautions.

"There has been a lot of improvement in Rio but there is still a lot more to be done in terms of security, mainly more preventive actions, alerting tourists both foreign and domestic of the precautions they should take, neighborhoods to avoid," he said.

He added that Saturday's attack "was a setback, but in terms of image and security I don't think it is a major or long-lasting one that will scare tourists away from Rio."

Australian visitors Emma Richardson and Jason Sestic said they have been taking extraordinary precautions throughout their weeklong stay in Rio.

"We've stayed well away from Copacabana and the beach areas at night because of Lonely Planet," said Sestic, referring to the famous backpackers' guidebook. The 35-year-old, who works in construction, added, "I'm a pretty paranoid person in general and I've heard enough stories about here to be really paranoid."

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AP Television producer Ana Pereira and AP writers Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo and Marco Sibaja in Brasilia contributed to this report.

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Rape, kidnap of tourists feed Rio safety fears

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — A night on the town turned into a six-hour-long nightmare after an American woman was gang raped and beaten aboard a public transit van while her handcuffed French boyfriend looked on helplessly, in an incident that's shocked this resort city as it gears up to host next year's World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.

The police response to the attack was swift: The three alleged perpetrators, aged 20 to 22, have all been taken into custody, and investigators are combing databases to determine whether the men might have been behind any other crimes.

Many still ask whether Rio authorities, who have succeeded in cracking down on much of the city's drug violence, are up to the task of protecting the waves of tourists expected to flood the city during the upcoming double-header of mega-events. Some 2 million people are also expected to flock to the city in late July for World Youth Day, a Roman Catholic pilgrimage that Pope Francis is scheduled to attend.

Some observers said the attack came as a particular shock given that safety has improved at least in the city's tourist-friendly, seaside South Zone neighborhoods. Foreigners and moneyed local residents who even three or four years ago would have hesitated to hail a taxi in the street or walk around after dark now do both without thinking twice.

"No one expects to be attacked in Disneyland, handcuffed and roughed up," Globo newspaper quoted Alfredo Lopes, the head of an association representing Brazil's hotel sector. "Copacabana is our Disneyland."

Yet it was in that very beachfront neighborhood, full of senior citizens in bikinis by day but seedier by night, that the two foreigners hailed one of the fleet of public transit vans often used as a speedier alternative to buses. Police investigating the case say the two foreigners, both in their early-20s, were headed shortly after midnight Saturday to Lapa, a popular downtown nightlife hotspot where Rio's youth converges on clubs, bars and samba venues.

But the pair never made it to their destination. A few minutes into their journey, the van operators forced the other passengers off and inflicted on the two foreigners what Alexandre Braga, the police officer leading the investigation, has called a "party of evil."

The three suspects took turns raping the woman and beating the man, whom they handcuffed and sometimes struck with a metal crowbar, Braga told a news conference Tuesday.

The suspects split up the driving, ending up in Rio's sister city of Niteroi across Guanabara Bay, where they went on a spending spree with the foreigners' credit cards. Once they hit the limit on both cards, spending around $500 at gas stations and convenience stores, the suspects drove the pair back to Rio, where the foreigners were staying, and forced the woman to fetch another credit card, Braga said.

Although she was alone, she didn't call the police or alert anyone, Braga said, "because the young man was still under the suspects' control and she feared something even worse might happen to him."

Some six hours after they were kidnapped, the two were dumped by the side of a highway near the city of Itaborai, some 50 kilometers from Rio. They managed to make it to an unidentified country's consulate, where officials took the two to the special police delegation that specializes in crimes against foreigners. The young woman has returned to the U.S., while the man remains in Rio to help with the investigations, Braga said.

"The victims recognized the three without a shadow of a doubt," Braga said. The men's mug shots were also recognized by another woman who said she'd been raped by the three under similar circumstances last month. Another foreigner has said she'd been robbed by one of the three suspects, police said.

Two of the suspects have confessed to Saturday's attack, while the third denies any responsibility.

"They do not show any repentance," Braga said. "They are quite indifferent, cold."

He said the men appeared to work as legitimate van operators, with crime an occasional side venture. Though they apparently were authorized to transport passengers in Niteroi and neighboring Sao Goncalo, the suspects were not allowed to operate the van in Rio, he said.

The suspects had rented the van, which seats about a dozen people and has dark tinted windows, from the vehicle's owner, who police say is not suspected of any involvement in the crime.

Rio's van services are widely reviled for their precarious safety conditions and reckless driving, as well as their links to organized crime. Some vans are run by militias largely composed of former police and firemen who control large swaths of the city's slums and run clandestine transportation and other services. In general, tourists avoid the vans and opt for regular buses or taxis.

Sexual assaults remain a problem on public transit. Last year, a woman was raped on a moving bus in broad daylight in a widely publicized case, and the Rio subway has special women-only cars to help prevent such attacks.

Still, Brazilian officials emphasized Rio is not particularly prone to such attacks.

"I think sexual violence is something that can happen anywhere," said Aparecida Goncalves, Brazil's national secretary for violence against women. "I don't think that the city of Rio is more dangerous than others."

"Now we have more ways of denouncing them," she said, "of talking about and taking the necessary measures so those responsible are punished and imprisoned."

Walter Maierovitch, Brazil's former drug czar and an organized crime expert, said that with crime down overall, one of the city's main challenges will be making sure visitors remain vigilant and aware of basic safety precautions.

"There has been a lot of improvement in Rio but there is still a lot more to be done in terms of security, mainly more preventive actions, alerting tourists both foreign and domestic of the precautions they should take, neighborhoods to avoid," he said.

He added that Saturday's attack "was a setback, but in terms of image and security I don't think it is a major or long-lasting one that will scare tourists away from Rio."

Australian visitors Emma Richardson and Jason Sestic said they have been taking extraordinary precautions throughout their weeklong stay in Rio.

"We've stayed well away from Copacabana and the beach areas at night because of Lonely Planet," said Sestic, referring to the famous backpackers' guidebook. The 35-year-old, who works in construction, added, "I'm a pretty paranoid person in general and I've heard enough stories about here to be really paranoid."

___

AP Television producer Ana Pereira and AP writers Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo and Marco Sibaja in Brasilia contributed to this report.

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US aids Honduran police despite death squad fears

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — The U.S. State Department, which spends millions of taxpayer dollars a year on the Honduran National Police, has assured Congress that money only goes to specially vetted and trained units that don't operate under the direct supervision of a police chief once accused of extrajudicial killings and "social cleansing."

But The Associated Press has found that all police units are under the control of Director General Juan Carlos Bonilla, nicknamed the "Tiger," who in 2002 was accused of three extrajudicial killings and links to 11 more deaths and disappearances. He was tried on one killing and acquitted. The rest of the cases were never fully investigated.

Honduran law prohibits any police unit from operating outside the command of the director general, according to a top Honduran government security official, who would only speak on condition of anonymity. He said that is true in practice as well as on paper.

Celso Alvarado, a criminal law professor and consultant to the Honduran Commission for Security and Justice Sector Reform, said the same.

"Every police officer in Honduras, regardless of their specific functions, is under the hierarchy and obedience of the director general," he said.

The official line from Honduras, however, is that the money does not go to Bonilla.

"The security programs that Honduras is implementing with the United States are under control of the ministers of security and defense," said Foreign Minister Arturo Corrales, who negotiates the programs with the State Department.

But the security official attributed the contradiction to the politics necessary in a country in the grip of a security emergency.

With 91 murders per 100,000 people, the small Central American nation is often called the most violent in the world. An estimated 40 percent of the cocaine headed to the U.S. — and 87 percent of cocaine smuggling flights from South America — pass through Honduras, according to the State Department.

The allegations against Bonilla, along with other concerns about police and military killings, prompted the U.S. Congress to freeze an estimated $30 million in Honduran aid last August. Most has been restored under agreements with the U.S. Department of State over the monitoring of Honduran operations receiving U.S. money.

The agreement doesn't specifically mention Bonilla, but Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, who has led a Congressional group that has questioned human rights violation in Honduras, said last week that he made his intentions clear:

"No units under General Bonilla's control should receive U.S. assistance without credible information refuting the serious allegations against him," Leahy said in an email to the AP.

That information so far has not been provided by the State Department, and the AP's findings have prompted more questions.

"Senator Leahy has asked the State Department to clarify how they differentiate between what they told the Congress and what is being said by those within Honduran police units under his authority," Leahy aide Tim Rieser said Friday. "Sen. Leahy, like others, made clear early on his concerns about Gen. Bonilla and the conduct of the Honduran police."

Dozens of U.S. Congressmen, Leahy chief among them, have been raising concerns for many years about abuses of authority and human rights violations by the Honduran police, a force of 14,000 officers that is considered among the most corrupt in the world.

The AP reported on Sunday that two gang-related people detained by police in January have disappeared, fueling long-standing accusations that the Honduran police operate death squads and engage in "social cleansing." It also found that in the last three years, Honduran prosecutors have received as many as 150 formal complaints about death squad-style killings in the capital of Tegucigalpa, and at least 50 more in the economic hub of San Pedro Sula.

The country's National Autonomous University, citing police reports, has counted 149 civilians killed by police in the last two years, including 25 members of the "18th Street" gang, one of the largest and most dangerous in the country.

California Rep. Sam Farr sent the AP report to every member of Congress on Friday, saying, "I share the concerns outlined in this article about the continued lack of investigations into human rights violations at the hands of Honduran law enforcement officials."

U.S. law, according to an amendment that bears Leahy's name, requires the State Department to vet foreign security forces receiving U.S. aid to make sure the recipients have not committed gross human rights violations. If violations are found, the money is withheld. The State Department in a report last August said Honduras met the provisions of the Foreign Operations and Related Programs Act, which requires that the secretary of state provide Congress proof that Honduras is protecting freedom of expression and investigating and prosecuting all military and police personnel accused of human rights violations.

The department "has established a working group to examine thoroughly the allegations against (Bonilla) to ensure compliance with the Leahy Law," the State Department report to Congress said. "While this review is ongoing, we are carefully limiting assistance to those special Honduran law enforcement units, staffed by Leahy-vetted Honduran personnel who receive training, guidance, and advice directly from U.S. law enforcement, and not under Bonilla's direct supervision."

When asked by AP if the specially vetted Honduran police units working with the U.S. Embassy report to Bonilla, the Honduran security official said: "Yes, that's how it works, because of personal loyalty and federal law."

U.S. support goes to Honduran forces working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on anti-narcotics operations, and anti-gang, anti-kidnapping and border-security units, according to an embassy official who was not authorized to speak on the record.

On Monday, the State Department announced another $16.3 million in support to Honduran police and prosecutors to battle violence and money laundering and to improve border security. Some of the U.S. money will go to the Gang Resistance Education and Training program under the director of community policing, who also told the AP that he reports directly to Bonilla.

"I only report to the director general, all of the programs of the Honduran police are directed personally by him," said Otoniel Castillo, a police sub-commissioner. "He has a personal and intense closeness to all projects of international cooperation, especially because of his good relationship with the U.S. Embassy."

Assistant Secretary of State William R. Brownfield, who appeared on Monday with the country's vice president to announce the new funding, did not answer questions.

"The United States undertakes stringent vetting procedures, as required by U.S. law, to ensure U.S. assistance doesn't go to individuals or units in the Honduran police and military if there is credible information they're linked to human rights abuses," said William Ostick, a spokesperson in the Western Hemisphere Affairs Bureau of the State Department. "We're in close communication with the U.S. Congress and Senator Leahy on this issue. Promoting human rights and the rule of law is, and will remain, central to our engagement in Honduras."

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Alberto Arce on Twitter: (at)alberarce

Katherine Corcoran on Twitter: (at)kathycorcoran

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