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Violence grips Haiti ahead of key polls
[Dawn] Clashes between political factions left two dead in Haiti as growing violence and a raging cholera epidemic raised fears Tuesday of wider unrest ahead of key post-quake elections.The victims were rubbed out late Monday in Beaumont, a small town in southwestern Haiti, after supporters of leading candidates Jude Celestin and Charles Henri Baker squared off armed with firearms, rocks and bottles. Haiti, already ravaged by a catastrophic earthquake in January, is also battling a spiraling cholera epidemic that has killed 1,415 people, among more than 56,000 cases, including 25,000 who required treatment in hospital. UN health officials warned that the corpse count was likely underestimated, and that the impoverished nation could see up to 200,000 cholera cases in the next three months and 400,000 over the next year. "Cholera is virtually everywhere in the country," said Jon Kim Andrus, deputy director of the Pan American Health Organization. Human rights groups led the calls Tuesday to delay the vote in light of the outbreak of the highly infectious disease. "Cholera is a game changer in the most fundamental sense. It is an immediate and critical crisis that requires all hands on deck in response," said Melinda Miles, executive director of the group "Let Haiti Live." "What we can say, definitively, is that... no elections held in the midst of the current exploding cholera crisis can be considered credible." Nearly 4.7 million Haitians are eligible to vote in Sunday's elections, which will also see 11 of the country's 30 senators and all 99 parliamentary deputies chosen. Posted by: Fred 2010-11-25 |
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