Violent Past

carlos Nerilus, a Haitian man living in the Dominican Republic’s capital, Santo Domingo, was lynched and beheaded last week by an angry mob. The incident was allegedly sparked by the stabbing of a Dominican man by a Haitian worker in the Buenos Aires neighborhood.

Police say that an "inflamed throng" got a hold of Nerilus and proceeded to lynch him before gruesomely beheading him. Onlookers cheered, applauded and laughed, and some even took cell phone photos and videos of the incident.

There is a history of violence between the neighboring countries, with this incident causing tensions to run particularly high. Kély Bastien, president of the Haitian senate, insisted that due to the gravity of the crime his Government “must go beyond an official protest” and “call the Haitian ambassador in Dominican Republic to Port-au-Prince.” Dominican Foreign Relations Minister Carlos Morales has since condemned the act and pledged to prosecute the responsible parties.
Do you think Dominicans and Haitians will ever be able to move past their violent past?

Haiti will have to wait awhile

Looks like it will be awhile before Haiti knows the results on the election. Even with the low turn out it will take at least eight days before we know the results Ballots are being counted at polling places and tabulated at a warehouse computer center guarded by armed U.N. peacekeepers in an industrial park in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Turnout appeared to be extremely low in the capital, where voter apathy and fear of election-day violence were more common than political interest. President Rene Preval declined to comment on the turnout Sunday until official results are calculated.

U.S. Ambassador Janet Sanderson, who toured the tabulation center Monday, remarked that "Historically, off-year elections in the United States as well as in other countries tend not to be as well-attended as presidential elections. We'll have to see."

The international community gave at least $12.5 million, including $3.9 million from the United States, to help carry out the election.

Supporters of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide — whose still-popular Fanmi Lavalas party was prohibited from running by electoral officials — had also encouraged citizens to stay away from the polls.

The party took credit for the apparently low turnout Sunday.

Voting for a 12th seat from the rural Central Department was halted by Haiti's provisional electoral council after demonstrators ransacked polling places and a poll supervisor was shot in the plateau town of Mirebalais. That race will be rescheduled.

On Monday, Haitian workers guarded by Chinese police in blue U.N. berets examined, scanned and tabulated the results reported by polling places across the country. The original ballots are archived elsewhere.

Since the Port-au-Prince facility is the only place where results are being tabulated, voters will have to wait for ballots to make hours-long journeys over Haiti's washed-out, dilapidated mountain roads and to be brought in by boat from surrounding minor islands.

The U.N. peacekeeping mission issued a statement Monday expressing its hope that the Haitian people and political parties will "await calmly the publication of results ... and that any dispute will be pursued through legal channels."