Haitian President Michel Martelly late on Sunday “vigorously condemned” the alleged sexual assault by UN troops against an 18-year-old man.
The president’s communications office said in a news release that Martelly is awaiting a detailed report, but he also asked relevant authorities to meet with UN officials to prevent “such acts” from happening, it said.
The UN is investigating allegations that five Uruguayan naval troops at a UN base in southern Haiti sexually molested an 18-year-old man in an attack reportedly captured by a cellphone camera. The soldiers were confined to their barracks pending the outcome of the probe.
The UN mission learned of the charges last week and the scandal prompted Uruguay to fire its naval chief in Haiti.
Shot with a cellphone camera, the clip shows several men in camouflaged uniforms laughing as they pin down a young man on a mattress. The men seem to be saying “no problem” in Spanish as they hold the teen’s arms and hands behind his back. The camera jumps around, and it is not clear from the video what’s happening.
A magistrate in Port-Salut, the southwestern coastal town in which the assault allegedly happened, has gathered testimony from the alleged victim and his mother and filed it in court.
Some residents in Port-Salut planned to demonstrate against the UN yesterday morning in support of the alleged victim and his family and call for the ouster of the peacekeepers there.
The UN peacekeeping mission arrived in Haiti in 2004 after former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was toppled in a violent rebellion. Relations between the troops and many Haitians have been strained, with critics accusing the force of using heavy handed tactics.
Tensions worsened last year after a unit of peacekeepers from Nepal was blamed by many people for an outbreak of cholera. The epidemic has killed more than 6,200 people and sickened more than 438,000, the Haitian Ministry of Health says.
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