Dave Rivard writes to us from Haiti, describing the deteriorating situation:
12/08/10
Last night was pretty bad, today is worse. All airlines and borders are shut down. There is a complete (far as I’ve heard, blackout on news, excepting Metropol. A lot of gunfire and bombs et al. and an unsuccessful attempt to burn down several government buildings and the Kinam (right outside my window) last night.
The airport is completely locked down with no flights from ANYONE till further notice. Needless to say, all roads are curfewed, and we saw the police carry away a guy walking down the street. The ones visible to us are all blocked anyway with hundreds of burning tires—that’s just from our little neighborhood. When you think of it, the government won’t budge, MINUSTAH is verboten on the streets, so that only leaves the Haitian police in control. They retreated with their limited resources to their police stations, so you do have in fact an anarchic situation. All UN staffers and I would guess all major NGO’’s are completely locked down. Our neighbors are all sitting on their roofs watching a serious 4th of July celebration, complete with live ordinance for the fireworks. Recon helicopters are overhead—is this on CNN?
12/13/10
There are still tires burning in the streets and smoke everywhere… even the police seem sympathetic to the protesters--which is worrying, since if the re-tally is not what is wanted, I fear we will have an all out revolution in this country. There is absolutely NO food in the grocery stores except for a few bottles of ketchup. Today I had the last of cereal we had at the apartments. There is no more food or water…. The UN is under complete lockdown. UN employees are ordered to stay in their apartments and commercial flights are not operating....
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