PORT-AU-PRINCE, Nov 17 (IPS) — When the United Nations’ Haiti chief Lakhdar Brahimi stepped up to the microphone at a press conference here earlier this week, he used the occasion to denounce the actions of street protesters.

‘’The law and the constitution say that it is the police that maintain order, not volunteers,’’ said Special Representative Brahimi, adding that a state of law cannot be built on people taking matters into their own hands.

And that message was reinforced by the head of the some 6,000 U.N. troops in the Caribbean nation.

‘’We have to operate under the rule of law and not under the rule of the mob,’’ U.S. Maj. Gen. Joseph Kinzer told Haitian radio, referring to the major unrest that has rocked Haiti this past week. At least six people have died in the protests.

By contrast, Haitian government officials, popular organisations, and some human rights groups, are defending the mobilizations as legitimate defense in the face of ongoing threats and killings from armed opponents of democracy.

Under the banner of ‘’Operation Disarmament’’ protesters in four major cities this past week erected roadblocks and barricades, and began searching cars and houses for illegal weapons.

‘’Wherever there is a situation where the population feels threatened, they can’t sit back and wait,’’ argued Yvon Neptune, an advisor and spokesperson for President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. ‘’They must act and they have a constitutional right to defend themselves.’’

Although U.N. and Haitian officials have publicly patched up relations after President Aristide’s angry speech last weekend denouncing U.N. ‘’hypocrisy’’, the differing interpretations of the nationwide popular mobilizations reflects a serious, and perhaps irreparable, division between the international community and the President.

Privately, diplomats and U.N. officials are furious with Aristide. They say his speech severely damaged his reputation and would scare off investors, decrease international financial assistance, and create a dangerous political climate for the future.

Haiti’s elite have also been joining the chorus, raising alarm bells over the popular priest turned president. Once again, they say, he’s supporting ‘mob violence.’

In his Nov. 11 speech at the state funeral for a popular legislator slain in the streets of Port-au-Prince, Aristide said all Haitians had a right to peace and security. He implied that the international community had supported human rights and economic benefits for Haiti’s rich and powerful, while Haiti’s desperately poor majority has received little or nothing except for more bloodshed.

‘’The game of hypocrisy is over,’’ he warned.

Those divisions between the Haitian government and the international community, and between rich and poor, are becoming more apparent throughout Haiti. Some human rights groups and sections of Haiti’s urban poor, in particular, have become more critical of the U.N. Mission in Haiti (UNMIH).

In the western port town of Gonaives, where at least five people died in protests Monday, townspeople demonstrated against the U.N. presence earlier this week. Demonstrators claimed Tuesday that Nepalese soldiers had fired into the crowd the night before, killing at least one person and wounded eight others, according to reports from the U.N. and a local rights group.

U.N. spokesperson Eric Falt denied that U.N. forces killed anybody. He said that a group of 60 soldiers, accompanied by Haitian police, only fired into the air to disperse a crowd that had surrounded a house, threatening the occupant. He said shots had been fired from inside the house and perhaps another location and he welcomed a full investigation of the incident.

The Catholic Church’s regional human rights group, the Justice and Peace Commission, slammed the quick U.N. statement. Arguing that the U.N. account did not correspond with the facts on the ground, they called for full government investigation into the incident. They also called Wednesday for the replacement of the Nepalese troops by other U.N. soldiers, saying that animosity between the people and the soldiers had reached a crisis.

Underscoring the growing antagonism to the role of the international community in Haiti, U.N. human rights observers report that they are no longer welcome in poor areas of Gonaives and Cap Haitien.

In addition, groups of foreigners, with some Haitians, felt it necessary to spend Tuesday night holed up at a fancy hotel in the northern town of Cap Haitien, Haiti’s second largest city and the site of three days of what one U.N. source in the city called ‘major unrest.’

Similarly, a group of 21 foreigners spent the night in a hospital in the northern town of Limbe, according to UNMIH.

The nationwide protests were sparked by the Nov. 7 murder of a deputy from President Aristide’s ruling coalition, the Lavalas Platform. The southern town of Port Salut, the deputy’s district, and the neighboring city of Les Cayes exploded in anger.

At least one person was killed in Les Cayes and more than 20 houses ‘dechouked,’ or ‘uprooted’ — the practice of attacking persons or symbols associated with 35 years of the Duvalier family dictatorship (1957-1986) and the ensuing military dictatorships (1986-1994).

Flaming barricades were erected throughout Port-au-Prince Saturday, Sunday and Monday, paralyzing the downtown area. Both Gonaives and Cap Haitien, and surrounding areas, were similarly effected Monday and Tuesday, with the crisis in Cap Haitien continuing through Wednesday.

‘’The situation is slowly returning to normal throughout Haiti,’’ U.N. spokesperson Eric Falt said.

Behind the protests lies increasing frustration at the slow pace of reform here and the lack of tangible economic benefits for Haiti’s extremely poor majority. Protesters have denounced the politics of reconciliation, the lack of justice, the high cost of living, and they are calling for Aristide to stay in office three more years, the length of time he spent in exile.

The main focus of the protesters, like that of President Aristide in his Nov. 11 speech, remains that of disarmament. They say that they still feel insecure despite a drastic improvement in the human rights situation over the last year, and point to the fact that former soldiers and paramilitary groups remain armed and dangerous.

Local and international human rights groups have also consistently complained over the last year about the lack of disarmament by U.S. and U.N. troops. (ENDS/IPS/DC/FN/95)

Origin: Amsterdam/HAITI/ ----

[c] 1995, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS) All rights reserved

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