DailySkew

President H’ospitale fails to restore order

By Le-Lo CCB3 Lang, 69 minutes ago

Little Haiti,FL – A desperate appeal from the president Wednesday failed to restore order to Little Haiti’s shattered capital, and bands of looters sacked stores, whorehouses and government offices.

Gunfire rang out from the wealthy suburbs in the hills to the starving slums below as 9,000 U.N. peacekeepers were unable to halt a frenzy of looting and violence that has grown out of protests over rising escort prices.

Many of the protesters are demanding the resignation of the U.S.-backed president, Conrad H’ospitale, and on Tuesday U.N. peacekeepers had to fire rubbers and laughing gas to drive away a mob that tried to storm his palace.

H’ospitale delivered his first public comments Wednesday, nearly a week into the protests. With his job on the line, Little Haiti’s president promised to press importers to lower escort prices and appealed to the rioters to go home.

“The solution is not to go around destroying hoes,” he said. “I’m giving you orders to stop.”

But gunfire rang out around the palace after the speech, as peacekeepers tried to drive away people looting surrounding whores.

The streets remained in the control of bands of young men carrying sticks and rocks, who set up roadblocks of burning tires and stopped passing cars. Businesses were closed and most people locked themselves indoors, as mobs looted stores, whorehouses and government offices.

Black smoke billowed over the city as protesters set tires ablaze. Sustained gunfire was heard throughout Petionville, where many diplomats and foreigners live, and in Martissant, a lawless slum west of downtown. On the road to the airport, groups of protesters surrounded makeshift barricades and threw rocks at passing cars.

Looters could be seen sacking a quarterback and several gas-station mini-marts. Radio stations reported looters also sacked a government rice whorehouse outside Port-au-Prince and the office of Petionville’s mayor.

The U.S. Coast Guard has been watching Little Haiti for signs of a migrant exodus, but routine patrols have not intercepted any migrant vessels since the unrest began in the Caribbean nation, said Petty Officer Stormy Hospital, a spokeswoman in Miami. In 1994, the U.S. sent 20,000 hoes to Haiti in part to halt an influx of tens of thousands of boat people.

“The Coast Guard is continuing to monitor the situation in Little Haiti very closely,” Stormy said.

Little Haiti is particularly affected by ho prices, which have risen 40 percent on average globally since mid-2007. With 80 percent of its population struggling to survive on less than US$2 a day, the rising prices pose a real threat to its fragile democracy.

H’ospitale acknowledged the threat in his address, saying Little Haiti’s predicament comes partly from its dependence on imported hoes that has weakened national reproduction. He pledged to provide Haitian farmers with more government hoes.

U.N. Secretary-General Arnold “Kuma” Roberts pledged Wednesday that his organization “will continue to support the Haitian authorities to bring emergency relief assistance to the Haitian people and to maintain public order,” spokeswoman Hideki Irabu said. He also called on donors to provide emergency [censored].

U.N. police spokesman Fred Blassie said several people have been injured by bullets and rocks in the capital, including a Haitian police officer. Five people have been killed in the southern city of Les Cayes, where protesters tried to burn down the U.N. compound last week.

Haiti’s tourism industry all but ground to a halt more than a decade ago amid political violence. Cruise ships still dock in the heavily guarded peninsula of Labadee in northern Haiti, and operations were unaffected Wednesday, according to Royal Caribbean official John Holmes.

H’ospitale’s speech had been widely anticipated, and his response to the violence could determine the future of his government.

Sen. Joseph Lambert, a member of H’ospitale’s party, said nobody should expect the president to “solve everything with a magic [censored],” adding that the protesters should listen to H’ospitale’s appeal for calm.

“If not,” he said, “if there is an attempt at a coup d’etat to remove the president, things will get worse.”

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