By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
Published: 04 September 2006
.. Mr Aristide was forced from power in February 2004 by a coalition of former soldiers, members of the business community and US-backed political opponents .. The survey, based on random sampling and extrapolation, suggests that between February 2004 and December 2005, a total of 35,000 women were sexually assaulted. Of those attacks, 90 per cent involved rapes ..
<Professor Royce Hutson> said that, while around half of rape perpetrators were identified as "general criminals", about 14 per cent were members of the Haitian National Police (HNP), a further 12 per cent as members of anti-Aristide groups, with about 25 per cent unidentified. He said the involvement of people with political links and the police suggested something "systematic" may have been taking place.
Of the 8,000 killings - a rate that would give the interim government one of the worst human rights records in the hemisphere - 22 per cent were committed by the police, 26 per cent by the demobilised army or armed anti-Aristide groups and 48 per cent by criminals. Both the HNP and members of the demobilised army acted against supporters of Mr Aristide and his Lavalas party ..
Sexual assault as a form of political repression has a long history in Haiti. A court in New York last week heard evidence against Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, a Haitian now living in the US, who led military death squads that raped and tortured followers of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the early 1990s ..
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1359796.ece