Haiti

(Quelle: New York Times) The United States has ordered all non-emergency personnel evacuated from Haiti while urging Americans to depart the country for what the State Department described as a 'volatile security situation.' The country has been ravaged by violent crime in recent months, including kidnappings and random shootings, and State Department officials said it had become difficult to ensure the safety of all its personnel.

(Quelle: New York Times) Yvon Neptune, the prime minister under former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, finally appeared before a judge over accusations that he masterminded the killings of 25 political opponents in February 2004, during the revolt against Mr. Aristide. The closed hearing in western St. Marc, where the attack took place, came a month after he started a hunger strike to protest his 11-month imprisonment without formal charges, and he was carried to the court on a stretcher.

(Quelle: BBC) Former Haitian Prime Minister Yvon Neptune has appeared before a judge to be charged with ordering political killings in 2004. Mr Neptune, who served under former President Aristide, has been on hunger strike for a month in protest at being held nearly a year without charge. … International pressure had been mounting on Haiti to either charge Yvon Neptune or to free him.

(Quelle: UN News) Recommending that the mandate of the United Nations peacekeeping operation in Haiti be extended for another year and the mission enlarged, Secretary-General Kofi Annan commends it for carrying out crucial tasks in difficult circumstances and says it has created a security environment in which the political transition can take place.

(Quelle: Reliefweb) The European Union on Thursday unblocked 12.3 million dollars in aid for Haiti's general election, as well as three million dollars aimed at disarming decommissioned troops and helping them re-establish themselves in society. Haiti's interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue and European Union representative, Dutch ambassador Marcel Van Opstal, attended the ceremony to sign over the first installment of a total 22 million dollars in election aid.

(Quelle: UN News) Though elections, scheduled for October, should not be seen as the universal remedy to Haiti's crisis, they are essential to forming a legitimate government as the Caribbean country's political transition period comes to an end, the Brazilian representative told the Security Council today. Introducing the report of the four-day Council mission he led to Haiti last month, Ambassador Ronaldo Mota Sardenberg said there was no alternative to the elections and all political parties that rejected violence should be entitled to take part.

(Quelle: BBC) Haiti's Supreme Court has overturned the convictions of dozens of military leaders found guilty in 2000 of murder and torture. They were convicted of mass killings during an attack on supporters of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the shanty town of Raboteau in 1994. The government of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue says it did not influence the judges' decision. But Aristide supporters were outraged, calling it a 'partisan' decision.

(Quelle: Reliefweb) A Russian contractor for a UN peacekeeping force in Haiti kidnapped this week amid growing insecurity in the Caribbean state has been freed, the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday.

(Quelle: UN News) The United Nations peacekeeping mission has welcomed the start of voter registration in Haiti in preparation for elections later this year. ... The Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) launched the registration effort in Gonaïves, in the Artibonite department.

(Quelle: Reliefweb) Postponing a presidential election planned in Haiti this year would just trigger more instability, the U.N. envoy to the troubled Caribbean country said on Thursday. A recent spate of violence in the poorest country in the Americas has raised doubts that the election to replace ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was forced out by an armed revolt last year, can be held as planned in November. But Juan Gabriel Valdez, who heads a U.N. mission to stabilize Haiti, said postponing the vote would be the worst scenario possible.