Tuesday, July 25, 2006

by Clarens Renois

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFP): Residents of the Haitian capital have returned to System D after a week which saw a new wave of kidnappings and eight people killed in clashes with UN peacekeepers.

Under the self-defence plan widely known as "System D", you keep doors on cars locked when driving, let people know where you are going, and keep away from the streets and districts that have turned Haiti into the kidnapping capital of Latin America.

The cost of ignoring the anti-kidnapping code can be between 5,000 and 50,000 dollars, depending on the background and nationality of the victim: an American obviously gets a higher price.

According to Haitian civic and human rights groups, abductions have become a multi-million-dollar industry and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has had an agent in Port-au-Prince working on cases.

Two American missionaries and a Haitian employee at the US embassy were among 15 people reported kidnapped last week. A ransom was paid for the missionaries.

Haiti was quiet during the country's presidential elections in February and when President Rene Preval was inaugurated in May. So the new wave of violence is a worry for the government.

Investigators in the police's special anti-kidnapping unit said they had no explanation for the upsurge and no arrests have been made.

The UN mission suspects that the gangs do have some political motive however. After a series of killings earlier this month, UN mission spokesman David Wimhurst said: "There are clear indications that someone wants to disturb the climate."

Two women are recovering from their abduction ordeal at a clinic in Petion-ville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince. "My sister was kept in a kind of warehouse in the Cite Soleil with a lot of other kidnapped people," said one doctor. Cite Soleil is Haiti's biggest shanty, controlled by drug and crime gangs.

A photographer was grabbed in the street in the capital and released a few hours later after his family paid 6,000 dollars.

Another woman seized from her home and only freed after paying a ransom.

Other people who disappeared one week ago are still missing and believed held because they cannot pay money to their captors.

Some elaborate schemes are also hatched up to raise money from abductions.

One young girl was recently "kidnapped" by her boyfriend in a bid to get 50,000 dollars from her parents. Their plot was uncovered.

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