The cholera epidemic in Haiti is rapidly becoming a national security issue, with
riots spreading to several cities and towns.Protesters blaming a contingent of Nepalese
peacekeepers for a deadly outbreak of cholera barricaded roads and exchanged gunfire
with U.N. soldiers in clashes that lasted late into the night and saw a UN peacekeeper
shoot and kill a demonstrator.
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.
The
protests apparently began in Cap-Haitien early Monday and within hours had paralyzed
much of the northern port city.
UN officials on the ground are saying the outbreak
is now a matter of national security.
“It's an issue, obviously, of national
security where we have demonstrations starting already against, for example, cholera
treatment centres.”
Deputy envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General in
the Caribbean country, Nigel Fisher, who says the United Nations mission there is
modifying its communication strategy.
“So the communication strategy is broadening
not just from information about how people can protect themselves through better hygiene
but also such examples as to have a cholera treatment centre in your locality is actually
an advantage. It is not a threat to your health.”
Cholera had never before
been documented in Haiti before it broke out about three weeks ago.
Suspicions
quickly surrounded a Nepalese base located on the Artibonite River system, where the
outbreak started. The soldiers arrived there in October following outbreaks in their
home country and about a week before Haiti's epidemic was discovered.
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.
Following an Associated Press investigation,
the U.N. acknowledged that there were sanitation problems at the base, but says its
soldiers were not responsible for the outbreak.
No formal or independent investigation
has taken place despite calls from Haitian human-rights groups and U.S. health care
experts.
Transmitted by feces, the disease can be all but prevented if people
have access to safe drinking water and regularly wash their hands.