Video | Cholera backlash fuels anti-UN protests in Haiti
Anti-U.N. riots spread to various population centres in Haiti as protesters blamed a contingent of Nepalese peacekeepers for a deadly outbreak of cholera
The protesters barricaded roads and exchanged gunfire with U.N. soldiers in clashes that lasted late into the night.
The protests reportedly began in Cap-Haitien early Monday. Within hours, it had paralyzed much of the northern port city. An APTN television cameraman trying to reach the area was repelled by protesters throwing rocks and bottles from a barricade.
The protests left at least one person dead - a demonstrator who was shot by a U.N. peacekeeper during an exchange of gunfire in Quartier Morin, near Haiti's second-largest city of Cap-Haitien, the United Nations mission said, adding that it was investigating the shooting but asserted the soldier acted in self-defence.
The 12,000-member force reported that at least six U.N. personnel were wounded in protests at Hinche in the central plateau, while local Radio Metropole reported that at least 12 Haitians were injured in Cap-Haitien.
As the day wore on, other protests broke out in surrounding towns and the central plateau. A police station was reportedly burned down in Cap-Haitien, and rocks thrown at peacekeeping bases. A small protest was also reported in the north-western city of Gonaives, but U.N. police said it ended peacefully.
The U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti, or MINUSTAH, dismissed the protests as politically motivated, linking them to the fast-approaching 28 November presidential elections.
"The way events unfolded suggests that these incidents were politically motivated, aimed at creating a climate of insecurity on the eve of elections. MINUSTAH calls the people to remain vigilant and not be manipulated by enemies of stability and democracy in the country," the mission announced.
The cholera backlash plays upon Haitians' long-standing resentment of the 12,000-member U.N. military mission - the dominant security force in Haiti since 2004.
It is also rooted both in fear of a disease previously unknown to Haiti and internationally shared suspicion that the U.N. base could have been a source of the infection that has now left nearly 1,000 dead.
Cholera had never before been documented in Haiti before it broke out about three weeks ago.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the cholera strain now ravaging the country matched a strain specific to South Asia, but said they had not pinpointed its origin or how it arrived in Haiti.
