Haiti kidnap wave accompanied by epidemic of rape
By: Joseph Guyler Delva

March 8, 2007 - (Reuters) Haiti's violent gangs are increasingly using rape to terrorize hostages and other victims, government officials and health workers say. Sexual assaults of women appear to have become a fixture of the kidnappings for money carried out by gangs in a crime wave that developed after the ouster in February 2004 of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Myriam Merlet, an official at the Department of Women's Affairs, said almost half of women kidnapped had been raped. "It is hard to say exactly what is the motive for those rapes, but rapes have always been used in Haiti as a weapon for social and political repression," Merlet said. Rape has been used in Haiti before by government death squads intent on sowing terror in the poorest country in the Americas, which has long been rocked by political instability and violence.

A recent effort by U.N. peacekeepers to drive gangs out of the sprawling slums in Port-au-Prince where they held sway, and where they have also imprisoned many of their hostages, appears to have reduced the kidnappings. But health workers report the number of rape victims is increasing.

Doctors and aid workers estimate that more than 800 women were raped between February 2006 and February 2007 in just the capital of this country of 8 million people. Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, a French humanitarian organization which operates three medical centers in Haiti, treated 70 rape victims in the first two months of the year.

"The number of women raped has constantly been increasing over the past months," said MSF medical coordinator Dr. Maria Guevara. She said the number of monthly rape victims seen by the group had grown from five last September to 26 in January. Another 44 were treated in February.

Joanne, a 25-year-old resident of the capital's Delmas district, said she was kidnapped late on Jan. 17 by two men who forced open her door and took her away in a pick-up truck. "They held me for 3 days. They raped me several times and demanded $50,000 from my aunt to whom they talked on the phone," Joanne said. "When they realized my aunt was not able to find any more money, they agreed to release me for $2,000."

The government of President Rene Preval, elected just over a year ago amid widespread hopes that he could bridge the divide between the poor masses and a wealthy elite, and also bring an end to crime, has vowed fight sexual assaults. But health workers say many rapists go unpunished because most victims refuse to go to the police and probably do not even tell their husbands.

From: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N08405626.htm