A United Nations' peacekeeper carries a student after she inhaled tear gas during clashes with university students in Port-au-Prince, June 4, 2009.?[Agencies]
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti?-- Student demonstrators attacked and burned a UN police vehicle in the Haitian capital on Wednesday, adding to security concerns ahead of this weekend's scheduled Senate elections.
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A United Nations' peacekeeper carries a student after she inhaled tear gas during clashes with university students in Port-au-Prince, June 4, 2009.?[Agencies] |
The student protests, now in their fourth week, are part of a general uptick in violence leading into Sunday's scheduled second-round elections for 11 vacant Senate seats. At least two people have been killed in clashes between political parties elsewhere in Haiti.
Peacekeepers from India and Jordan arrived and formed a perimeter around the SUV. Students threw rocks at the soldiers from inside the campus and peacekeepers responded with repeated rounds of tear gas. Haitian riot police stood at the ready nearby.
When peacekeepers and police left after towing the vehicle amid a driving rainstorm, hundreds of onlookers rushed in from the surrounding neighborhood dancing and chanting, "Burn them! Burn them!" Peacekeepers fired a final canister of tear gas as they sped away on the rock-strewn street.
The student demonstrations began in late May against the elimination of medical school classes but quickly grew into protests against the 9,000-member UN force that has been in Haiti since 2004, and in support of increasing Haiti's minimum wage from $2 to $5 a day.
The salary increase has been approved by the legislature but is opposed by business owners, especially owners of factories that produce garments for sale in the United States and elsewhere. An agreement is expected to be announced by President Rene Preval this week.
Haitians are watching these protests closely as student-led demonstrations preceded major recent upheavals including the 2004 rebellion that ousted former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the overthrow of dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986.