Via Google News, a report by The Associated Press: Camps cleared in Haiti as hurricane season starts. Excerpt:
The mayor of a large city in the Haitian capital region has begun clearing out camps set up after last year's earthquake, evicting hundreds of people amid heavy rains and the start of the hurricane season on Wednesday.
Mayor Wilson Jeudy of Delmar city says the settlements — densely packed clusters of wooden shanties and tarps — have become staging areas for robberies, rapes and other crimes. But panicked residents say they have nowhere else to live or seek shelter. The area has seen weeks of punishing rain.
"We don't know where we're going to go," said Elise Antoine, a 27-year-old who has been living on the grounds of Ecole Foyer Saint Famille since shortly after the January 2010 earthquake.
Jeudy ordered police and security guards to clear at least three camps last week in this city at the edge of downtown Port-au-Prince. "We can't give people a public square as a gift to set up tents favorable to gang activity," he said in a radio interview.
The encampments cleared last week were in two public plazas and on the grounds of a Catholic school with several hundred families in each. Guards sliced up tents and tarps and tossed people's belongings aside in early-morning raids, several witnesses told The Associated Press. A dozen people returned hours later to the school, saying they were simply hoping that the mayor wouldn't force them out again.
More evictions are expected.
