San Francisco Bay View » Haiti and Latin America

Poor little rich Haiti to be fleeced of copper-silver-gold via Caracol deep-water port

Mary — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:54:02 +0000

by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery

A turtle swims in the pristine waters of Caracol Bay, one of the world's most beautiful bays, set to become a deep water port to facilitate the plundering of northeastern Haiti’s plentiful mineral riches. President Martelly says the port will be “built with the U.S. government’s help.”

Show me a corporate boss who calls Haiti the “poorest country in the Western Hemisphere,” and I’ll show you a con artist preparing to fleece Haiti. Likewise, show me a Western technocrat who bemoans Haiti’s “dramatic deforestation due to charcoal production,” and I’ll show a bio-pirate or vandal preparing to wreck Haiti’s remaining cloud-forest and mangrove-forest ecosystems.

It turns out that the real plan for Haiti’s northeastern region – especially the Caracol Bay area – is one that was hatched by Canadian mining corporations, with the U.S. and South Korean sweatshop zone being a side project and distraction. If this mining plan is given a green light while Haiti is under foreign occupation, it will permanently strip the country of much of its mineral, cultural and ecological wealth.

If this mining plan is given a green light while Haiti is under foreign occupation, it will permanently strip the country of much of its mineral, cultural and ecological wealth.

In a recent interview with Canada’s Financial Post, Majescor Resources Inc. CEO Dan Hachey was effusive about Michel Martelly’s installment as president because he expects Martelly’s policy of mimicking the Dominican Republic (DR) to be a boon to the mining sector.

Hachey enthusiastically noted that “30 years ago, there was no mining sector to speak of in the Dominican Republic ….

Dominican Republic Pueblo Viejo mine on Aug. 7, 2009; one would be hard put to find deforestation due to charcoal production that looks quite as bad as this. – Photo: Mining Journal

“In that short period of time they’ve seen the development of the Pueblo Viejo Project [by Barrick and Goldcorp], which is one of the world’s largest gold deposits – and is pretty much a neighbor of ours.

“They’re going to be coming on with production this year.”

This glowing picture omits the fact that Barrick and Goldcorp have come under strong popular opposition in the DR. In a country where 20 percent of the population lacks access to drinking water, these companies are accused of polluting 2,500 cubic meters of water per hour with the vast quantities of cyanide needed to process 24,000 tons of ore a day by opencast – or open-pit – mining. Open-pit mining is banned by the European Union. Activists in the DR have joined forces with a broader group called Observatorio de Conflictos Mineros de América Latina (OCMAL) that has launched a campaign to end this practice in the region.

There is great concern that the DR’s biggest water reservoir, which is close to the mining operations, is continuously at risk of cyanide contamination, since stories of spills and massive fish die offs caused by mining companies are legion. Barrick and Goldcorp have also been accused of dynamiting mountains and destroying Taino Indian archaelogical sites.

In this April 10, 2012 photo, Haitians watch as workers build a road through the mountains that will lead to an exploratory drill site in the department of Trou Du Nord, Haiti. Two mining companies are drilling around the clock to determine how to get the gold, silver and copper out. – Photo: Dieu Nalio Chery, AP

Like the Pueblo Viejo region of the DR currently under exploitation, the spot being eyed for mining by Majescor in Haiti – a 50-square-kilometer area called the SOMINE property – is part of broader region, replete with archeological sites, situated along a metal-rich mountain ridge running from southeast DR to northern Haiti. This was formerly known simply as the Massif du Nord but has become the “Massif du Nord Metallogenic (or Mineralization) Belt.”

SOMINE is an acronym for Société Minière du Nord-Est S.A. and is described in the mineral trade sheets as a “Haitian affiliate mining company.” It is 66.4 percent owned by Majescor, with the rest being owned by Haiti’s elite. Majescor is still a relatively small company that conducts mineral surveys.

The SOMINE property is surrounded by other mining properties owned jointly by Majescor and much larger concerns like Eurasian Minerals and Newmont Mining. Once Majescor’s surveys are complete, it plans to find a big partner, like Barrick, Eurasian or Newmont to handle the extractive part of the project.

Curiously, the area of the SOMINE property was initially surveyed as early as “the 1970s by the U.N. Development Program, with some very good results [but the project was not pursued, then] there was a feasibility study done by the Germans [Bundesanstalt fur Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe (BGR)] in 1980, and there was further drilling done in the 1990s by Canadian junior [mining companies],” recalled Hachey.

During the 1980s, the area was explored again by the UNDP and also surveyed by the French Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minière (BRGM), both of which reported finding only copper.

The metal-rich mountain ridge running from southeast DR to northern Haiti was formerly known simply as the Massif du Nord but has become the “Massif du Nord Metallogenic (or Mineralization) Belt.”

The official story is that an abundance of copper had until recently obscured the fact that the area’s ore is also rich in silver and gold, and this was discovered from Majescor’s recent prospects of Douvray, Blondin and Faille-B. However, the story could just as well be that the mining executives were biding their time and waiting for a “stable” non-nationalistic government to take effect before initiating their projects.

The mineral rights to the area were assigned to SOMINE under a Mining Convention executed on May 5, 2005 – valid until March 9, 2020 – between this company and the post-Aristide coup government. After this, it did not take long for Haiti’s mountains to start to glitter. For example, an exploration of the Faille-B prospect in 2007 found a gold vein that averaged 42.7 grams of gold per ton of ore (g/t) over 6 meters, including values of 107.5 g/t of gold over one meter.

According to Hachey, April 11, 2012, assays from Blondin found:

0.45 percent copper over 96.5 meters;
0.3 percent copper over 12 meters, including 0.61 percent copper over 1.5 meters; 154 grams of silver per ton (g/t) over 12 meters, including 869 g/t silver over 1.5 meters.

March 13, 2012, results from Blondin discovered:

72.4 g/t silver over 15 meters;
16.9 g/t silver over 113 meters, including 6.2 g/t silver over 1.5 meters; 0.43 percent copper over 113 meters, including 4.44 percent copper over 1.5 meters.

In April 2012 an EMX-Newmont joint venture and the Haitian government signed a Memorandum of Understanding that allows exploration drilling while a Mining Convention is being ratified to permit development. Under this new MOU, the Savane La Place gold prospect is the first project selected for drilling. – Source: http://www.eurasianminerals.com/new/Haiti.asp

Feb. 1, 2012, results from Douvray discovered:

255 g/t silver over 13.5 meters, including 2,069 g/t silver over 1.5 meters; 0.35 percent copper over 13.5 meters, including 0.52 percent copper over 1.5 meters; 0.02 g/t gold over 13.5 meters, including 0.04 g/t gold over 1.5 meters;
277 g/t silver over 13.5 meters, including 1,428 g/t silver over 1.5 meters; 0.18 percent copper over 13.5 meters, including 0.52 percent copper over 1.5 meters; 0.04 g/t gold over 13.5 meters, including 0.04 g/t gold over 1.5 meters.

These highly concentrated deposits of copper, silver and gold should reasonably represent a new found wealth for Haiti at a time of dire need of resources for the country’s reconstruction. But if the DR is to serve as an example, Haiti will not benefit from its minerals.

These highly concentrated deposits of copper, silver and gold should reasonably represent a new found wealth for Haiti at a time of dire need of resources for the country’s reconstruction. But if the DR is to serve as an example, Haiti will not benefit from its minerals.

In the DR, Barrick owns 60 percent of the Pueblo Viejo gold mine and Goldcorp Inc. owns the remaining 40 percent. To get a sense of the scale of the greed, one need only consider that currently the Pueblo Viejo mine is slated to produce 1 million ounces of gold per year at a cost of only US$20-$50 per ounce, making it one of the lowest-cost gold mines in the world.

Hachey comments with evident enthusiasm, “What we’re most excited about is that we found some silver, which was never really realized before. It’s the first silver discovery in Haiti.

Majescor has found fabulous riches in the 50-square-kilometer SOMINE property in Haiti’s Massif du Nord Mineralization Belt.

“Part of the reason why it was never really discovered was that historically there was so much copper prevalent – there’s a lot of outcropping at surface. The people who did the work before did not do much testing, even for gold.

“The geology is a little complex for a copper porphyry, but in a good way. The surprises that we’re getting are all good ones.”

As major draws for a big mining partner to this next phase of the project, Hachey is advertising that, unlike Port au Prince, which was destroyed by the earthquake, Cap Haïtien is a pleasant place for a Canadian mining executive and his family to come to. In addition he notes that there are plans for “the construction of a deep-water port at Caracol,” only 15 kilometres from the SOMINE property and near Cap Haïtien.

The textile factories’ contributions to the degradation of Caracol Bay should be trivial compared to the damage from opencast gold mining and construction of a deep-water port.

This first official announcement of a deep-water port for Caracol explains in part why there has been no effort to mitigate the ecological effects of the massive free-trade (sweatshop) zone inaugurated in March 2012 in that area: The textile factories’ contributions to the degradation of Caracol Bay should be trivial compared to the damage from opencast gold mining and construction of a deep-water port.

Update

Monday, May 7, 2012, Le Matin – Martelly announces that the construction of a port will soon start in Fort-Liberte [near Caracol], in the Northeast. The port will cost US$179 million and is supposed to be “built with the U.S. government’s help,” but it will likely be entirely owned by U.S. concerns.

Recommendations from Haiti Chery

Dady Chery grew up at the heart of an extended working-class family in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She emigrated to New York when she was 14 and since then has traveled throughout the world, living in Europe and several North American cities. She writes in English, French and her native Créole and holds a doctorate. She can be reached at dc@dadychery.org. This story first appeared on her blog, Haiti Chery.

Paramilitary gangs join UN force in preying on Haitian population

junya — Sun, 13 May 2012 06:15:14 +0000

by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery

Members of the dissolved Haitian army parade at Camp Lamantin, a former military base in Port-au-Prince. – Photo: Ramon Espinosa, AP

For several weeks, armed groups of young Black men, presumably Haitian and too young to be veterans of the Haitian Armed Forces (Forces Armees d’Haiti, FAd’H) disbanded in 1995, have been parading in military fatigues through Haitian towns. Some politicians and the Haitian press have been calling these men “former soldiers.”

For the sake of accuracy, let us forgo this awkward and unfounded label and call them “men” or “gangs.” These marching men claim they want to enforce respect for the national sovereignty and get their back pay. One suspects their priorities are reversed.

These gangs have been around for months, but their more public appearances immediately followed massive demonstrations on Feb. 29 to commemorate the 2004 coup against Aristide. The march had been organized by a new party of Lavalas supporters called “Ghettos-Unis” (United Ghettos). Over 10,000 people marched through Port-au-Prince chanting, “Yes to democracy, no to reinstatement of dictatorship!” and proclaiming, “Intimidations will not make us back down! We don’t need your motorcycles; give your passport instead!” with reference to Martelly’s refusal to deliver his passport to a Senate committee investigating the citizenship of various government officials.

The appearance of the armed gangs has coincided with a rash of murders by gunfire. At least three members of the Haitian National Police (PNH), one lawyer and a well-known painter were killed in March 2012, but the most famous victims of the crime spree have been Jean Liphete (Ti Lifet) Nelson and Jean-Baptiste Jean-Philippe (Samba Boukman), both politically outspoken Fanmi Lavalas members and accomplished individuals who could probably have qualified for political office if this had been their ambition.

Jean Liphète Nelson (Ti Lifèt)

Unlike many of Haiti’s top politicians of dubious citizenship, Ti Lifet was born in Cite Soleil in 1974 and lived there all his life. He initiated, among many things, Cite Soleil’s Radio Boukman, which he was running, along with other projects that provided schooling for children, hot meals for the elderly poor and mobile clinics for the sick. He was loved and widely respected.

Samba Boukman was a charismatic musician and militant who is best known for having helped to broker a truce between the poor neighborhood of Bel-Air’s armed Lavalas partisans and the U.N., when MINUSTAH was randomly blasting these neighborhoods with gunfire from tanks and helicopters after Aristide’s removal.

In addition, Reginald Antoine, a labor leader and director of Platform for Workers Unjustly Fired from Public Administration (Plateforme des Employés Injustement Révoqués de l’Administration Publique, PEVEP) had his entire family – sister and brother in law, and two children, 2 and 10 – killed by explosives on March 13, according to AHP. Members of PEVEP had been protesting and demanding the benefits associated with their severance.

Jean-Baptiste Jean-Philippe (Samba Boukman)

Understandably, Haitians have focused on the terrible loss of life this month, but sadly, cries of “insecurity” play into the hands of MINUSTAH, which now exists merely to continue itself as part of the growing cancer of the U.N. “peacekeepers” and wants, more than anything, to renew its mandate. Despite the U.N.’s record of rapes, child prostitution, trading of food for sex, and killings by gunfire and cholera, this organization still claims to be indispensable for safety and democracy in Haiti.

It is worthwhile to consider how the new armed gangs are supported. Their training camps have been photographed in the Haitian countryside by the Western press since before Martelly’s inauguration. The sources of weapons and training may be reasonably guessed because, after all, the U.S. publicly promised to sell arms to Haiti for its presumed drug war, and France formally pledged to train Haiti’s new army right after Haiti promised to relax its adoption policy.

Both of these “friends” of Haiti also wield considerable influence in the U.N. So it is hardly worthwhile to entertain some notion that MINUSTAH and the new gangs might somehow be at odds with each other. In fact they reinforce each other: The presence of MINUSTAH is proffered as the reason a “Haitian army” is needed to protect the national sovereignty, and the threat of paramilitaries is used to justify MINUSTAH’s continued stay in Haiti.

Despite the U.N.’s record of rapes, child prostitution, trading of food for sex, and killings by gunfire and cholera, this organization still claims to be indispensable for safety and democracy in Haiti.

Leaving MINUSTAH aside for now, a more productive line of thinking is to consider that, although weapons and uniforms make for a good show, these are not all an army needs. Given that even in the best cases, armies are parasitic on a population, how does this mysteriously emergent paramilitary force get its meals, water, board and clean clothes? After all, back when the army was disbanded in 1995, its 7,000 soldiers had been consuming 40 percent of Haiti’s national budget.

Reports of appropriations of government buildings by the armed gangs have become common. Their speaker, a man called Larose Aubain, circulates freely and communicates with officials of the executive branch. For example, in an AHP report of Feb. 27, Aubain claimed that he and his colleagues had conferred with the minister of defense. In the same report, Aubain vowed that the gangs would occupy all the former FAd’H bases until the army’s restoration.

Paramilitaries are attractive to Haitians unable to find any other way to support their families. – Photo: Isabeau Doucet

On the evening of Monday, March 19, about 50 armed men in military fatigues took over Cap Haitien’s Northern Province Agriculture Department building, a structure that had been vacated by the FAd’H and replaced by government offices since 1995, AHP reported March 20. In the fashion of Duvalier’s Tontons Macoutes, who were formally known as the Volunteers for National Security (Les Volontaires de la Securite Nationale, VSN), the new gang of armed men are getting their livelihood, including food, entirely by extortion from the city’s municipal authorities. Other groups are likewise getting supported elsewhere in the country as they occupy government buildings that were once FAd’H bases.

Asked how he would rid the city of the gangs, Yvon Alteon, the presidentially appointed delegate for the Northern Region, replied that the problem must be handled at the highest level, and anyway the men should not be feared because they’ve promised to “behave themselves.”

A week earlier Martelly had responded to similar questions by saying that there would come a more propitious time for the armed men to serve their country and advising them to be patient, get out of their uniforms and put down their weapons within a week. After this “ultimatum” expired, Secretary of State for Public Safety Reginald Delva reported, according to a March 16 AHP report, “Following an agreement with the authorities, these citizens will not be forced to vacate the premises, but will not, for now, circulate in military uniform and with weapons.”

Again, the repetition that these are merely young Haitians who have an inordinate zeal to serve their country and are in need of a change of clothing. Mr. Delva added that negotiations were continuing as the government inventories “the human resources” at the camps.

For its part, MINUSTAH announced, through Information Officer Eliane Nabaa, that U.N. “peacekeepers” are ready and able to disarm and dislodge the paramilitaries but will not do so without first getting a request from the Haitian National Police (PNH), according to AHP March 20.

Haitian paramilitary recruits train weekly on the outskirts of Port au Prince. This militia is called the Organization of Demobilized Soldiers for the Reconstruction of Haiti. – Photo: Andres Martinez Casares, New York Times

Thus the PNH, which is hardly perfect but nevertheless the only legitimate armed force currently on Haitian soil, finds itself in a quandary. On one hand, it lacks the resources to oppose the armed gangs that are fanning themselves throughout the country; on the other hand, MINUSTAH is the last organization from which the Haitian police would seek assistance. MINUSTAH soldiers, who earn over U.S. $6,000 per month, are deeply resented by the poorly-paid Haitian police officers. Moreover, MINUSTAH troops have preyed on Haitian police – particularly those in the poor neighborhoods – as they have the rest of the population. For example,

On May 29, 2008, police officer Jacques Luckner, assigned to the Cite Soleil police station, was molested by MINUSTAH soldiers;
On Aug. 6, 2008, police officers Donson Bien-Aimee and Ronald Denis, both assigned to the Cite Soleil police station, were beaten by MINUSTAH soldiers although they had clearly identified themselves as policemen.

By far the most serious consequence of inviting MINUSTAH to help confront “the insecurity problem” would be to buttress the U.N.’s arguments for renewal of this force, although the great majority of the population despises it, and the Haitian Senate has formally approved a resolution calling for the U.N. soldiers to depart by October 2012.

Member of the Lower House of Parliament Ronald Lareche, who sits on the Justice and Public Safety Committee, commented that MINUSTAH ought to fulfill its supposed mandate of strengthening democracy, rather than do nothing but watch paramilitary gangs, which are an obvious departure from democracy, train in the country in full view of everyone.

In addition, Mr. Lareche called for National Police Director Mario Andresol to take drastic action against any member of the police who disregards his orders. This apparently had the effect of immediately causing rumors to start to fly about heads rolling at the NPH.

In late March, Port-au-Prince was calm, with a single buglary as its most serious crime in one 72-hour span. Suspects in the assassination of Ti Lifet and the killing of a police officer have been arrested. Departmental Director of Western Police Michel Ange Gideon attributes this turnaround to the implementation of “Boukle Port-au-Prince” (Buckle Port-au-Prince), a program that combines a heavy police presence together with roadblocks of the city’s major arteries, where random searches are conducted. There is now talk of extending this program for a month.

However long Boukle Port-au-Prince lasts, it is unlikely to bring relief to cities like Cap Haitian that are under predation. But our Haiti is another place with a bad case of post-colonialitis: a disease that causes people to believe that their capital city is the only place that matters, though it is merely a port from which wealth is removed. Those who neglect to treat this disease do so at their own risk.

The Haiti Press Network (HPN) reported April 6 that police had successfully dislodged a paramilitary gang from the city of Saint Marc. Recall that Saint Marc, according to reports by HPN on March 23 and AHP on March 28, is also the place where the population recently refused to allow Martelly’s unelected appointees to the city government into the municipal buildings.

On April 25, according to HPN, “ex-soldiers” responded to a call by Haitian Minister of the Interior and National Defense Thierry Mayard-Paul to appear at the old premises of the Academy of Brothers to register themselves. Mr. Mayard-Paul announced that the government has put 107 million gourdes (U.S. $5 million) at the disposal of the “ex-soldiers.”

Background

For more information, see Harvest of Hope: Kevin Pina Documentary on Haitian Army, With Review by Dady Chery.

Feb. 29 protest – Video: PalechoTV

The character assassination of Samba Boukman

Mary — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 06:56:54 +0000

by Dominique Esser

Samba Boukman

The long time Haitian community organizer Samba Boukman was assassinated on Friday, March 9, 2012, and major media outlets, immediately following his death, reported on Boukman as having been divisive and controversial. It is important to understand that this vilification goes back in part to disreputable “human rights” organizations such as the Haitian organization Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains, also known as RNDDH, as can be seen in the article below.

This revisionist attempt at trying to portray community and political activists as violent gang leaders and violent criminals was employed in the run-up to Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s ouster in 2004 and gained momentum in the years afterwards. After 2004 the Haitian police in conjunction with U.N. troops in Haiti (MINUSTAH) made many forays into poor neighborhoods such as Bel-Air, in which Samba Boukman was active. During these raids many community activists were detained, and police and soldiers on tanks and from helicopters shot indiscriminately through the walls and roofs of houses, killing and severely wounding numerous innocent Haitians in the process.

This revisionist attempt at trying to portray community and political activists as violent gang leaders and violent criminals was employed in the run-up to Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s ouster in 2004 and gained momentum in the years afterwards.

The disinformation campaign was conducted alongside an attempt by media and business sectors in Haiti to portray any resistance to the undemocratic and U.S.-installed regime that had followed the 2004 coup as violent and criminal. Peter Hallward, in his book “Damming the Flood: Haiti and the Politics of Containment,” describes these actions by the media and interested parties, including the Western governments that had interfered in Haitian politics, as an “elaborate campaign to suppress Lavalas.”

U.N. “peacekeepers” invade Bel Air in the early morning of Nov. 18, 2004. – Photo from “Haiti Human Rights Investigation: November 11-21, 2004”

It is imperative that we keep in mind these media distortions when being confronted by the continued demonization of militants and activists from the popular neighborhoods of Haiti. Below is an excerpt of an article by the Haitian news agency AHP, providing more detail on the defamation campaign launched against the grassroots activist Samba Boukman:

“Port-au-Prince, Sept. 21, 2006 (AHP) – … The president of the commission also denounced a recent defamation campaign against the commission’s representative for the popular neighborhoods Jean Baptiste Jean Philippe, aka Samba Boukman.

“Samba Boukman is accused of having been arrested for possession of illegal weapons and involvement in multiple rapes and for being wanted by the police. On the issue, Fils-Aimé recalled that under the previous regime, the police issued warrants with no regard for the law. He called for those responsible for the accusations to show physical evidence of the legitimacy of their statements immediately; otherwise, they may face legal reprisals.

“The presence of Samba Boukman within the commission is very important, said Fils-Aimé.

“It is RNDDH, an organization known to be close to the Latortue regime, that has launched the defamation campaign.

“The organization is also accused of having dozens of executives and political activists arrested following the departure of Aristide, including the former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune and artist Annette Auguste. They accuse Boukman of being the spokesperson for what they call Operation Baghdad.

Ginel Valbroun, 12, lay shivering naked in a pool of his own blood pouring from an entry wound in his back on Nov. 18, 2004. The gaping exit wound can be seen at his right hip. He said he had been shot from behind six hours earlier by Haitian police. – Photo from “Haiti Human Rights Investigation: November 11-21, 2004”

“According to some youth in the area of Bel-Air, this pseudo operation was an intervention of the Latortue regime to justify police extortion in popular neighborhoods.”

Notes

1. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

2. AHP is a Haitian news organization: Agence Haïtienne de Presse. A March 9, 2012, AHP article on Samba Boukman’s asassination in French can be found here: “Assassinat d’un activiste politique et ex-membre de l’ancienne Commission nationale de désarmement.” The full text of the 2006 article is available here.

3. For more information on raids on activists in the poor neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince, see:

• “Haiti: Violence, fear in wake of Aristide ouster,” Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) delegation report, April 2004

• “Haiti Human Rights Investigation: November 11-21, 2004,” by Thomas M. Griffin, Esq., University of Miami School of Law, November 2004

• “UN works to squash followers of Aristide in Haiti” by Haiti Information Project, January 2005

• “Hearts of Stone” by John Maxwell, February 2005

• “Interview with Emmanuel Dread Wilmè before he was was assassinated by UN” by Ezili Danto, HLLN, April 2005

• “Cite Soleil Community Turns Out En Masse For Funeral of Dread Wilmè” by U.S. Labor and Human Rights Delegation, July 2005

• “Haitians Accuse the U.N. of Massacre” by Aina Hunter, The Village Voice, July 2005

• “Evidence mounts of a UN massacre in Haiti” by Haiti Information Project, July 2005

• “Eyewitnesses Describe Massacre by UN Troops in Haitian Slum” by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, July 2005

• “The Politics of Brutality in Haiti” by Aaron Lakof, The Dominion, January 2006

• “Human rights abuse and other criminal violations in Port-au-Prince, Haiti: a random survey of households” by Athena Kolbe and Royce A. Hudson, Wayne State University, published in The Lancet, August 2006

• “Another Massacre in Cité Soleil? Haitian Human Rights Activist Accuses UN of Killing Dozens in Recent Attack on Port-au-Prince Neighborhood” by Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, Democracy Now, December 2006

• “UN in Haiti accused of second massacre” by Haiti Information Project, January 2007

• “Poor Residents of Capital Describe a State of Siege” by Wadner Pierre and Jeb Sprague, IPS News Service, February 2007

• “The Cite Soleil Massacre Declassification Project” by Keith Yearman, College of DuPage, June 2007

• “North American and European Nonprofits Promote Elitist, Revisionist Vision of 2004 Haiti Coup Aftermath” by Joe Emersberger, The Narco News Bulletin, February 2008

• “Haiti’s Big Lie – Operation Baghdad and Imperial Propaganda” by Nick Barry-Shaw, ZNet, April 2008

• “Inter-American Court of Human Rights Denounces Haiti for Political Persecution of Yvon Neptune” by Joe Emersberger, ZNet, July 2008

• “The Assault on Haitian Democracy” by Kevin Edmonds, NACLA, August 2010

• “WikiLeaks: Haiti’s elite tried to turn the police into a private army” by Kim Ives and Dan Coughlin, Haïti Liberté, June 2011

Photojournalist Dominique Esser can be reached at torx@joimail.com or on Twitter at @dominique_e_. This story first appeared on HaitiAnalysis.blogspot.com.

Tribute to Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste

Mary — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 05:08:57 +0000

On Saturday, March 3, 4-6 p.m., Haiti Action Committee invites you to an afternoon of solidarity with the Haitian people to mark the eighth anniversary of the Feb. 29, 2004, coup d’etat, dedicated to the memory of Jean Ristil Jean-Baptiste, at La Pena Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley

by Ezili Dantò

The wonderful Jean Ristil surrounded by children at his May-June 2009 Fondasyon Kolézépol Photography Workshops – Photo: ©Jennifer Pantaléon

On Feb. 25, 2012, the sun set on the life of Jean Ristil Jean-Baptiste. We lost a great warrior, courageous and committed. Jean Ristil suffered from chronic ill health, anxieties and stress, but for him, saying he was feeling fine was an automatic reflex, almost to the very end, even when it wasn’t true.

He wanted to live. He was only 30 years old. He spent months before his death in hiding because of the constant threats to his life from the Duvalierist retaking of Haiti behind U.S.-U.N. firepower and false NGO charity.

Jean Ristil gave his life, all his love, even his health for Haiti. His blood flowed for Haiti. He was a brave and consequential man. He was our true brother – Dessalines’ descendant. He never sold Haiti out to the foreigners. He knew it was the blood of the Ancestors which gave us our freedom. It was not a gift the whites made us.

Jean Ristil’s photographs are etched into our hearts. Here are some of our favorites that the Bay View has run over the years. This is his classic photo of the outpouring of love shown to former President Aristide and his family on March 18, 2011, the day they returned to Haiti for the first time since the Feb. 29, 2004, coup. They poured into the yard of his home, even onto the roof, to welcome him home at last. – Photo: Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste

Jean Ristil was born in Site Solèy (often spelled in French as Cité Soleil), Haiti, on Dec. 12, 1981. Jean lived his entire life in the city. Through good times and bad times, he was always there for the people of Haiti. He was thrown in jail under the Gerard Latortue regime. He was persecuted. They beat him many times for his work as a journalist and photojournalist. He fought hard to give voice to the voiceless.

Jean Ristil fearlessly, even recklessly faced the complexities and harsh realities of living in Site Solèy – the poorest, most destitute community in the Western Hemisphere. He was a living library of information which he extended to the world as a Haiti journalist, photographer, community leader, founder of Fondasyon Kole Zepòl Pou Sove Timoun Site Solèy and longtime member of the HLLN (Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network)-Ezili Dantò Witness Project.

When the rains came in June 2010, five months after the earthquake, these meager tents housing suvivors in Cite Soleil were surrounded by a lake. The tents, then new, are now tattered and torn but still home. – Photo: Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste

Jean Ristil was an information source for us at Ezili Dantò’s HLLN from 2004 to the present on what was going on in the populous neighborhoods under attack by the U.S.-U.N. occupation forces. A loyal friend, a soldier for justice, a respected leader in Site Solèy, an indomitable spirit.

Jean led with a quiet energy. You reached out, he was there, watching, already in the mix, listening intensely, ready to be of service, to share. He had stubborn determination. He hustled, he had game, he refused to be defeated. No matter the difficulty, he expected to come through it safely.

Jean Ristil worked closely with the beloved Father Gerard Jean-Juste. – Photo: Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste

He would take on a task, even when he had no idea how to get it done, but then he’d make a way. Jean frustrated you sometimes but you forgave him. What are you going to do? It wasn’t Jean Ristil’s fault that he scared you to death always facing danger so directly – going where angels fear to tread. Not his fault he had to feed and provide for so many who would otherwise go hungry in NGO-occupied Haiti.

It wasn’t Jean Ristil’s fault that he scared you to death always facing danger so directly – going where angels fear to tread. Not his fault he had to feed and provide for so many who would otherwise go hungry in NGO-occupied Haiti.

Jean Ristil was the real thing. He could not look away or betray his community – as the most educated, privileged and powerful in Haiti, in the world, at the U.N. Security Council do. Jean didn’t live to make a profit over people but to be of service.

When former President Aristide’s party, Lavalas, was banned from the April 19, 2009, ballot, Haitians boycotted the election. This photo of the nearly empty ballot box dramatically illustrates the success of the boycott. – Photo: Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste

We’ll miss Jean Ristil. So much. His work and courage remain to inspire us, to keep us going forward.

He spent all his time helping the children in Site Solèy – especially those without fathers, those without mothers. Everyone of consequence who knew him loved Jean Ristil, loved what this humble man did with his life.

He didn’t have much formal schooling, but he was a degreed professor in the university of life. He knew the real meaning of “honor and respect.” He educated us: His life showed us how a Haitian without material means fights on without rest for justice for the people. His life showed us the very meaning of being in the struggle for justice.

The coup that saw U.S. Marines pluck democratically elected President Aristide and his family out of Haiti and fly them to the Central African Republic occurred on leap year day, Feb. 29, 2004, perhaps, considering Haitians’ habit of marking anniversaries with huge marches, to foil commemorations. But they were held every year anyway, this one on the first leap year day following the coup, Feb. 29, 2008, in Port au Prince. – Photo: Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste

His life is testimony that a genuinely educated man is a man with empathy for those less privileged. Pale Fransé pa edikasyon (Speaking French doesn’t necessarily mean you’re educated.)

A great warrior, great warrior. Jean Ristil Jean-Baptiste, we wanted to save you. An avan, an avan for Jean Ristil, his children, family and all in need in Site Soley. We mourn our loss but rejoice in the memory of his ceaseless struggle for justice and equality. Nou pap bay legen (We will not give up).

When starvation looms in Haiti, a special clay containing calcium and other nutrients from near the town of Hinche in the Central Plateau is combined with salt and vegetable shortening to make cookies that are dried in the sun and eaten. As these children’s lethargy testifies, the cookies help to sustain life – barely. – Photo: Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste

He worked for justice, to bring life and health to Haiti. He kept his honor. Ayibobo pou ou Jean Ristil (All hail Jean Ristil). He was our genuine brother and, as Jean once wrote, “God will never forget those he loves.” Haitians with loving hearts will never forget you.

We are tired of death. Tired that so many of our warriors are dying, brave men like Jean Ristil Jean-Baptiste who work for social justice in Haiti but never live to see justice done for themselves nor for their children. He leaves the rest to us.

For more information

To learn more about the life and legacy of Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste, read the HLLN Sept. 9, 2005, post “Free Kevin Pina and Jean Ristil,” photos of his 2009 Cité Soleil Photography Workshops taken by Jennifer Pantaléon and the photos Jean Ristil took recently for HLLN. Visit Kole Zepòl Pou Sove Timoun and Facebook pages Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste and Zanmi Lakay.

Ezili Danto, award winning playwright, performance poet, dancer, actor and activist attorney born in Port au Prince, Haiti, founded and chairs the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN), supporting and working cooperatively with Haitian freedom fighters and grassroots organizations promoting the civil, human and cultural rights of Haitians at home and abroad. Visit her at www.ezilidanto.com or www.open.salon.com/blog/ezili_danto. This story was translated by the Haitian blogger.

This is Jean Ristil’s footage of the U.N. December 2006 massacre in Site Soley, Haiti. The U.N. lied, said they only shot “gangsters” on Dec. 22, 2006. Jean Ristil interviews those “gangsters” – innocent, unarmed civilians in Site Soley – as they lay dying from U.N. bullets. @haitiinfoproj

Jean Ristil’s footage of the July 2005 massacre in Site Soley is at the end of “Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits.” @haitiinfoproj

Haiti’s elected mayors illegally replaced by presidential appointees

Mary — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 06:36:04 +0000

by Dady Chery

Haiti Chery – Back in May 2011, undistracted by Haiti’s $4.5-million presidential inauguration, I sounded the alarm about a brewing legislative coup d’etat:

“Within five days of being seated and, in two meetings totaling less than 20 hours, Haiti’s newly assembled 49th legislature modified over 100 articles of the 1987 Constitution.

“[The amended] document was drafted and voted on so quickly that, when the parliamentary session closed, the president of the assembly had no time to reread to the lawmakers the amendments on which they had voted the two previous days.”

By contrast to these hastily crafted amendments, the 1987 Constitution had been approved by 90 percent of the voters in a popular referendum that followed the document’s publication in Creole and French. A hallmark of this constitution was the decentralization of the government and reduction of executive power. Details of the constitution and proposed amendments are discussed in my article.

Despite many years of the corruptive influence of a coalition of colonial powers, the 1987 Constitution has not only thwarted a return to a dictatorship, but also prevented foreign concerns from buying the country wholesale from well-cultivated officials of the executive branch.

One of the proposed amendments to the 1987 Constitution stated: “From now on, until the municipal elections of 2013, all Haiti’s mayors will be replaced by ‘Municipal Agents’ designated by the central government.”

The reason offered for this proposal was the high cost of elections. In fact, this move was meant to dismantle local governments so as to confiscate resources such as commons lands and waters.

In fact, this move was meant to dismantle local governments so as to confiscate resources such as commons lands and waters.

Due to a series of gaffes – and outcries by some lawmakers who pointed out that a draft of the amendments did not correspond to their discussions – the project was quietly dropped, and Martelly was grudgingly forced to swear to uphold the 1987 Constitution.

Interestingly, as Martelly was about to take his oath of office, the microphone went silent and, for all we know, he might have instead insulted somebody’s mother, as is his way. An investigation discovered that, despite the best security money could buy, the power cord to the microphone had been sliced with an instrument as unsubtle as a machete. Apart from concluding that the Haitian gods have an odd sense of humor, one could logically say that, since no one heard what Martelly swore to do, he was never actually inaugurated president of the republic.

On Feb. 24, while everyone was distracted by the resignation of former Clinton aide and U.N. employee Gary Conille from the prime ministerial post, an attempt was under way to replace 13 of Haiti’s mayors with presidential appointees.

The following government communique appeared under the cover of the Carnaval festivities:

“The President’s Office of Communication informs the population in general and the press in particular that, by a presidential decree of Jan. 18, 2012, until the next elections the citizens whose names are this list have been named the Regional Commission members for each of the following regions:

Maniche: Jean Luc Tolivio Durand, President; Albert Point du Jour, Member; Alexis Pieree Evens, Member.
Arniquet: Valentin Bertin, President; Marie Guerline Denis, Member; Félix Rigaud, Member.
Mirebalais: Jean Rodney Ambroise, President; Elionel Casseus, Member; Guerly Esther Jean-Baptiste, Member.
Saut d’Eau: Jespère Barthelmy, President; Jean Narcisse Romulus, Member; Enock Rounfils Thomas, Member.
Camp Perrin: Vital Indry, President; Chantal Richard, Member; Saint Armand Daguilard, Member.
Saint-Marc: Jean Rony Eugene, President; Maxo Malvoisin, Member; Epson Vernet, Member.
Savanette: Jeantes Belfort, President; Mathieu Petit-May, Member; Rodney Fils-Aime, Member.
Anse Rouge: Marc Antoine Aidee, President; Antoine Saint Hilien, Member; Clareste Honorat, Member.
Lascahobas: Saint Luc Lamandier, President; Dinois Rateau, Member; Monique Colas, Member.
Belladère: Hoslor Alcide, President; Cham Lejean, Member; Yveline Estiverne, Member.
Boucan Carré: Fegues Germain, President; André Wakensy Merville, Member; Enel Paul, Member.
Estère: Michelet Jean-Jacques, President; William Exavier, Member; Reynald Thermitus, Member.
Ennery: Yves Alexis, Président; Samson Renelus, Member; Gilbert Jeanniton, Member.

“And by a decree of Dec. 7, 2011, the following individuals are chosen for the posts of general secretary in the six Departmental Delegations:

Central Department: Jonas Jerome
Western Department: Sylvera Jean Simon
Northwestern Department: Fedmond Mazar
Southern Department: Roosevelt Guerrier
Northeastern Department: Lucien Desamour
Southeastern Department: Frantz Magellane Pierre-Louis

“The president reiterates his confidence in the willingness and competence of these new members of the administration to achieve his objective, which is none other than to improve the situation of the Haitian population and give a new image to the country.”

National Federation of Haitian Mayors (FENAMH) press conference Feb. 23, 2012

It is up to the regions’ citizens to make sure these charlatans never set foot in their city halls and other government buildings.

On Feb. 23, the National Federation of Haitian Mayors (FENAMH) gave a press conference to alert the population about the recent developments.

FENAMH President Charles Pierre Moise said that letters of dismissal had been received by the following mayors:

Mayor Alexy Fortuna, of Estère
Mayor Marc André Dubois, of Ennery
Mayor Joseph M. Brunel Metayer, of Anse-Rouge

According to Mayor Marc Andre Dubois, a new mayor arrived in Ennery on Friday, Feb. 18, and preceded by two days a letter that said he should meet with his replacement who is “taking an inventory of the heritage of Ennery.”

This current attempt at a wholesale dismissal is hardly the worst to have happened to Haiti’s mayors since the country’s foreign occupation began.

On Feb. 3, for example, the writer Jean-Claude Fignole, who is also the mayor of Abricots and chair of the Association of Mayors of Grand Anse, felt compelled to write the following open letter in the newspaper Le Nouvelliste.

“Mrs. Yolaine Gilles, Platform for Human Rights

“Madam,

“From various sources, I recently learned that Departmental Delegate of Grand Anse, Mr. Norman Wiener, wrote a letter to President Martelly in which he denounced my efforts to decentralize and develop the Grand Anse Department as undermining the authority of the president and government and therefore being detrimental to national security.

Abricots Mayor Jean-Claude Fignole

“Thus we are thrown back to a time as insane and criminal as that of previous dictatorships, when their stooges, to reap the benefits from the exercise of unbridled power, managed to see conspiracies everywhere.

We are thrown back to a time as insane and criminal as that of previous dictatorships, when their stooges, to reap the benefits from the exercise of unbridled power, managed to see conspiracies everywhere.

“According to all, pursuant to this denunciation, my life is under threat. I ask you to alert the citizenry, and national and international agencies for the protection of human rights, about this new trend and its execution by local satrap at the service of who knows what interest and unhindered in their villainy.

“I also take this opportunity to suggest that an Investigative Commission be sent to Grand Anse to monitor my activities either as Mayor of Abricots or as the head of the Association of the Mayors of Grand Anse, to find out if these activities are contrary to my mandate to help my community and my department anchor their dreams and wishes of decentralization in the forthcoming plans for development.

“Wishing, in spite of everything, that President Martelly would not be so gullible as to swallow Mr. Wiener’s nonsense, I beg you, dear Mrs. Gilles, to accept my best regards.

“Jean-Claude Fignole”

In Ganthier, a border town that is coveted as a base for a legion of NGOs, including Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti, a wealthy family with its own police force took over 9,000 acres of commons land so as to sell it to local police and corrupt government officials. When Mayor Ralph Lapointe supported a group of farmers who opposed the land grab, Mayor Lapointe’s life was threatened, and he was beaten within sight of the local police, who did nothing whatever to help him. He was rescued by the town people. Later, he and his City Hall director, Mr. Jean Vilvalex Cetoute, were arrested and jailed in a neighboring town.

In Ganthier, a border town that is coveted as a base for a legion of NGOs, including Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti, a wealthy family with its own police force took over 9,000 acres of commons land so as to sell it to local police and corrupt government officials.

In Milo, a northern district near Cap Haitien, shortly after the coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, French soldiers and U.N. troops, at 4 a.m. on June 14, 2004, invaded and ransacked the house of Mayor Jean-Charles Moise. When they discovered the mayor to be away, the soldiers took his wife into custody and abandoned the couple’s frightened young children to themselves.

The above list of incidents is hardly comprehensive.

With regard to the current assault on the mayors, FENAMH President Charles Pierre Moise pointed out at the press conference that the appointment of new mayors by the executive branch is “contrary to the Constitution, which requires that an elected replaces one elected.”

Member of Parliament Romial Smith, chair of the Committee on Local Authority in the House of Representatives, has accused Secretary of the Interior Georges Racine of being behind the wave of dismissals and violating the law. MP Smith informed the parliament: “We do not recognize the authority of these [executively appointed] judges, and an elected must be replaced with one elected.”

MP Smith added that the newly nominated mayors had been given free rein to squander the municipalities’ funds and advised that the government put into place the mechanisms for the next elections.

The persecution of the mayors, a larcenous and unsubtle bid at a return to dictatorship, is a reminder that Haiti’s municipal executives currently constitute the country’s most legitimate government.

The persecution of the mayors, a larcenous and unsubtle bid at a return to dictatorship, is a reminder that Haiti’s municipal executives currently constitute the country’s most legitimate government. In this context, it is worth noting that it was Mirebalais Mayor Lochard Laguerre who first led Al Jazeera and Associated Press journalists to the Nepalese U.N. base that had been dumping its choleric sewage into the Meille tributary to the Artibonite River.

Mirebalais Mayor Lochard Laguerre

The great majority of mayors are not the stooges of foreign powers but legitimately elected, upstanding citizens of their communities. Their persecution by a “Vichy administration” ought to be regarded as strong evidence of their patriotism.

In fact, rather than the dismissal of the mayors by the executive, a move by an association of legitimately elected mayors to dismiss and replace a foreign-picked executive branch would be closer to the spirit of the 1987 Constitution, which sought to decentralize power and promote national sovereignty. Such a proposal should be entertained when amendments to the Constitution are next considered.

Rather than the dismissal of the mayors by the executive, a move by an association of legitimately elected mayors to dismiss and replace a foreign-picked executive branch would be closer to the spirit of the 1987 Constitution, which sought to decentralize power and promote national sovereignty.

As the world wrings its hands, searching where the aid money went, it is worth noting that aid sent directly to Haiti’s mayors would be far more likely to improve the lots of Haitians than aid sent to foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or Haiti’s central government.

It is imperative, right now, that we turn away from the spectacle of yet another prime ministerial clone’s dismissal and shine a spotlight on the ongoing coup d’etat: the assault against some of Haiti’s most stalwart civil servants so as to concentrate power in a dictatorial executive branch.

References

1. A prefab parliament, prefab president, and prefab constitution for occupied Haiti, by Dady Chery

2. Nomination de nouvelles commissions communales et de secrétaires généraux dans quelques délégations départementales du pays

3. Haïti-maires: une dizaine de maires renvoyés par le pouvoir

4. L’écrivain Jean-Claude Fignolé craint pour sa vie et dénonce le délégué Norman Wiener

5. The battle in Haiti for a town called Ganthier: Complicity of NGOs in a land grab, by Dady Chery

6. Press release: UN troops invade home of Jean Charles Moise

7. De nombreux secteurs s’élèvent contre la décision du gouvernement de remplacer les conseils municipaux dans plusieurs communes du pays (Feb 23, 2012)

8. La révocation des magistrats est illégale

Comment by Pierre Labossiere, co-founder of the Haiti Action Committee

This is one of the arenas where Martelly in true “Tonton Macoute” fashion is moving swiftly and steadfastly to restore the Duvalierist dictatorship with the support of the occupation establishment. Already the former military has taken over their old barracks and are parading with brand-new weapons and uniforms. Martelly associates have claimed that France has pledged the funds to restore the former military.

Threats, violent attacks against various critics and arbitrary arrests are on the rise as people close to Martelly, including himself on one occasion, have taken to put out the slogan, “Martelly a vie” or “Martelly for life,” similar to “Duvalier a vie” of the Duvalier dictatorship, to his great delight, according to various reports. Already the presidents of the Haitian Senate and Assembly have issued an appeal to the nation to stand up against the dictatorial moves being made by Martelly.

For a revolutionary Black History Month

Mary — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 04:39:45 +0000

by Mumia Abu Jamal

After 30 years in solitary confinement on Pennsylvania’s Death Row, Mumia Abu-Jamal is finally in general population, where he can, for the first time in those three decades, touch another person. His first “contact” visit was with his wife, Wadiya Jamal, and lawyer, Rachel Wolkenstein, on Feb. 6. This is the second visit, on Feb. 13, with Pam Africa, coordinator for the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and other supporters.

As we once again approach February, the papers and TV stations will feature programming that shows more Black faces than usual. Some will show movies, some documentaries and some will feature history in celebration of Black History Month.

Undoubtedly, Martin Luther King Jr.’s epic “March on Washington” speech will be sampled, its grainy, black and white videotape the very symbol of a bygone era, and it’s key catchphrase, “Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last!” a haunting and ironic mockery of the real state of most of Black America.

One tape that invariably will not be shown is one of the final press conferences of the nation’s first – and perhaps only – Black U.S. Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, aged and ill, yet with the presence of mind to announce, “I’m still not free.”

For millions of Black Americans, this Black History Month, while perhaps rich in symbol, comes amidst the greatest loss of collective assets in our history – crippling joblessness, haunting home foreclosures, public schools that perform more mis-education than education, rabid police terrorism and perhaps the highest Black incarceration rates in U.S. history and all that entails.

That we have Black History Month at all is due to the Black Freedom Movements of the ‘60s and the dogged persistence of Black historian Carter G. Woodson, who began his efforts with Negro History Week, back in the 1920s! Yet, it begins, as do all struggles for progress, with the movement.

If Black mothers and grandmothers and later Black schoolchildren didn’t follow King, we wouldn’t know his name, except perhaps as an historical footnote. For, without followers, there is no movement – and thus no progress.

The late great Marxist revolutionary historian, C.L.R. James, in his finest work, “Black Jacobins,” a history of the Haitian revolution, illustrates how the leadership – including Gen. Toussaint L’Ouverture – tried repeatedly to betray the revolution or to face two immovable forces: the racist recalcitrance of the French government of Napoleon, who wanted to restore slavery, and the militancy of the Black soldiers, who pushed onward to revolution.

The point? People make history by mass movements, often ones which go faster and further than the leaders want. And masses make and sustain revolutions – often against “leaders” whose every instinct is to betray them.

The point? People make history by mass movements, and masses make and sustain revolutions – often against “leaders” whose every instinct is to betray them.

In a forward to one of the many editions of “Black Jacobins,” James reminds us “that it was the slaves who had made the revolution. Many of the slave leaders to the end were unable to read or write.” (James, xvi)

Haitian Gen. Jean Jacques Dessalines won the last major battle of the Haitian revolution, the Battle of Vertieres in November 1803, against Napoleon’s troops, then the most powerful army on earth, and strung up a few of the French officers.

But they sure knew how to fight.

Africans, by the tens of thousands, broke their chains and though penniless, hungry and scarred by the ravages of bondage, found weapons and the will to fight for freedom against the defenders of slavery: France, Britain, and Spain. They beat them all, because their hunger for freedom was greater than anything.

ANYTHING.

And by so doing they changed world history.

They shattered French dreams of an American Empire and enabled the U.S. to double in size after its purchase of Louisiana from Napoleon.

They also did what no “slave” army had ever done in modern or ancient history. They defeated an empire.

The Haitians did what no “slave” army had ever done in modern or ancient history. They defeated an empire.

That is revolutionary Black History – and it deserves to be remembered during Black History Month.

© Copyright 2012 Mumia Abu-Jamal. Read Mumia’s latest book, “The Classroom and the Cell: Conversations on Black Life in America,” co-authored by Columbia University professor Marc Lamont Hill, available from Third World Press, TWPBooks.com. Keep updated at www.freemumia.com. For Mumia’s commentaries, visit www.prisonradio.org. For recent interviews with Mumia, visit www.blockreportradio.com. Encourage the media to publish and broadcast Mumia’s commentaries and interviews. Send our brotha some love and light: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM 8335, SCI-Mahanoy, 301 Morea Road, Frackville, PA 17932.

Haiti: Seven places where the earthquake money did and did not go

Mary — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 02:21:43 +0000

by Bill Quigley and Amber Ramanauskas

Haitians protesting for jobs and housing in Port au Prince on the eve of the second anniversary of the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake, are barred from Parliament. – Photo: Carl Juste, Miami Herald

Haiti, a close neighbor of the U.S. with over 9 million people, was devastated by earthquake on Jan. 12, 2010. Hundreds of thousands were killed and many more wounded.

The U.N. estimated international donors gave Haiti over $1.6 billion in relief aid since the earthquake – about $155 per Haitian – and over $2 billion in recovery aid – about $173 per Haitian – over the last two years.

Yet Haiti looks like the earthquake happened two months ago, not two years. Over half a million people remain homeless in hundreds of informal camps, most of the tons of debris from destroyed buildings still lies where it fell, and cholera, a preventable disease, was introduced into the country and is now an epidemic killing thousands and sickening hundreds of thousands more.

It turns out that almost none of the money that the general public thought was going to Haiti actually went directly to Haiti. The international community chose to bypass the Haitian people, Haitian non-governmental organizations and the government of Haiti. Funds were instead diverted to other governments, international NGOs and private companies.

Almost none of the money that the general public thought was going to Haiti actually went directly to Haiti.

Despite this near total lack of control of the money by Haitians, if history is an indication, it is quite likely that the failures will ultimately be blamed on the Haitians themselves in a “blame the victim” reaction.

Haitians ask the same question as many around the world: “Where did the money go?”

Here are seven places where the earthquake money did and did not go.

One: The largest single recipient of U.S. earthquake money was the U.S. government. The same holds true for donations by other countries.

Right after the earthquake, the U.S. allocated $379 million in aid and sent in 5,000 troops. The Associated Press discovered that of the $379 million in initial U.S. money promised for Haiti, most was not really money going directly, or in some cases even indirectly, to Haiti. They documented in January 2010 that 33 cents of each of these U.S. dollars for Haiti was actually given directly back to the U.S. to reimburse ourselves for sending in our military. Forty-two cents of each dollar went to private and public non-governmental organizations like Save the Children, the U.N. World Food Program and the Pan American Health Organization. Hardly any went directly to Haitians or their government.

They documented in January 2010 that 33 cents of each of these U.S. dollars for Haiti was actually given directly back to the U.S. to reimburse ourselves for sending in our military.

The overall $1.6 billion allocated for relief by the U.S. was spent much the same way, according to an August 2010 report by the U.S. Congressional Research Office: $655 million was reimbursed to the Department of Defense; $220 million to the Department of Health and Human Services to provide grants to individual U.S. states to cover services for Haitian evacuees; $350 million to USAID disaster assistance; $150 million to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for emergency food assistance; $15 million to the Department of Homeland Security for immigration fees and so on.

International assistance followed the same pattern. The U.N. Special Envoy for Haiti reported that of the $2.4 billion in humanitarian funding, 34 percent was provided back to the donors’ own civil and military entities for disaster response, 28 percent was given to U.N. agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for specific U.N. projects, 26 percent was given to private contractors and other NGOs, 6 percent was provided as in-kind services to recipients, 5 percent to the international and national Red Cross societies, 1 percent was provided to the government of Haiti, four tenths of 1 percent of the funds went to Haitian NGOs.

Two. Only 1 percent of the money went to the Haitian government.

Less than a penny of each dollar of U.S. aid went to the government of Haiti, according to the Associated Press. The same is true with other international donors. The Haitian government was completely bypassed in the relief effort by the U.S. and the international community.

Three. Extremely little went to Haitian companies or Haitian non-governmental organizations.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research, the absolute best source for accurate information on this issue, analyzed all the 1,490 contracts awarded by the U.S. government after the January 2010 earthquake until April 2011 and found only 23 contracts went to Haitian companies. Overall the U.S. had awarded $194 million to contractors, $4.8 million to the 23 Haitian companies, about 2.5 percent of the total. On the other hand, contractors from the Washington, D.C., area received $76 million or 39.4 percent of the total. As noted above, the U.N. documented that only four tenths of 1 percent of international aid went to Haitian NGOs.

Overall the U.S. had awarded $194 million to contractors, $4.8 million to the 23 Haitian companies, about 2.5 percent of the total. The U.N. documented that only four tenths of 1 percent of international aid went to Haitian NGOs.

In fact, Haitians had a hard time even getting into international aid meetings. Refugees International reported that locals were having a hard time even getting access to the international aid operational meetings inside the U.N. compound. “Haitian groups are either unaware of the meetings, do not have proper photo-ID passes for entry, or do not have the staff capacity to spend long hours at the compound.” Others reported that most of these international aid coordination meetings were not even being translated into Creole, the language of the majority of the people of Haiti!

Four. A large percentage of the money went to international aid agencies and big well-connected non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

The American Red Cross received over $486 million in donations for Haiti. It says two-thirds of the money has been contracted to relief and recovery efforts, though specific details are difficult to come by. The CEO of American Red Cross has a salary of over $500,000 per year.

A woman prays on the steps of the Notre Dame National Cathedral on the second anniversary of the earthquake, which killed 316,000. Many Haitians visited the still heavily damaged cathedral to pray and honor the lives of loved ones lost two years ago. – Photo: Carl Juste, Miami Herald

Look at the $8.6 million joint contract between the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) with the private company CHF for debris removal in Port au Prince. CHF is a politically well-connected international development company with an annual budget of over $200 million whose CEO was paid $451,813 in 2009. CHF’s connection to Republicans and Democrats is illustrated by its board secretary, Lauri Fitz-Pegado, a partner with the Livingston Group LLC. The Livingston Group is headed by the former Republican speaker-designate for the 106th Congress, Bob Livingston, doing lobbying and government relations. Ms. Fitz-Pegado, who apparently works the other side of the aisle, was appointed by President Clinton to serve in the Department of Commerce and served as a member of the foreign policy expert advisor team on the Obama for president campaign. CHF “works in Haiti out of two spacious mansions in Port au Prince and maintains a fleet of brand new vehicles,” according to Rolling Stone.

Rolling Stone, in an excellent article by Janet Reitman, reported on another earthquake contract, a $1.5 million contract to the New York-based consulting firm Dalberg Global Development Advisors. The article found Dalberg’s team “had never lived overseas, didn’t have any disaster experience or background in urban planning … never carried out any program activities on the ground …” and only one of them spoke French. USAID reviewed their work and found that “it became clear that these people may not have even gotten out of their SUVs.”

Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton announced a fundraising venture for Haiti on Jan. 16, 2010. As of October 2011, the fund had received $54 million in donations. It has partnered with several Haitian and international organizations. Though most of its work appears to be admirable, it has donated $2 million to the construction of a Haitian $29 million for-profit luxury hotel.

“The NGOs still have something to respond to about their accountability, because there is a lot of cash out there,” according to Nigel Fisher, the U.N.’s chief humanitarian officer in Haiti. “What about the $1.5 to $2 billion that the Red Cross and NGOs got from ordinary people and matched by governments? What’s happened to that? And that’s where it’s very difficult to trace those funds.”

Five. Some money went to for-profit companies whose business is disasters.

Less than a month after the quake hit, U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Merten sent a cable titled “THE GOLD RUSH IS ON” as part of his situation report to Washington. In this Feb. 1, 2010, document, made public by The Nation, Haiti Liberte and Wikileaks, Ambassador Merten reported the president of Haiti met with former Gen. Wesley Clark for a sales presentation for a Miami-based company that builds foam core houses.

Less than a month after the quake hit, U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Merten sent a cable titled “THE GOLD RUSH IS ON” as part of his situation report to Washington.

Capitalizing on the disaster, Lewis Lucke, a high ranking USAID relief coordinator, met twice in his USAID capacity with the Haitian prime minister immediately after the quake. He then quit the agency and was hired for $30,000 a month by a Florida corporation, Ashbritt – known already for its big no-bid Katrina grants – and a prosperous Haitian partner to lobby for disaster contracts. Locke said, “It became clear to us that if it was handled correctly, the earthquake represented as much an opportunity as it did a calamity.” Ashbritt and its Haitian partner were soon granted a $10 million no-bid contract. Lucke said he was instrumental in securing another $10 million contract from the World Bank and another smaller one from CHF International before their relationship ended.

Six. A fair amount of the pledged money has never been actually put up.

The international community decided it was not going to allow the Haiti government to direct the relief and recovery funds and insisted that two institutions be set up to approve plans and spending for the reconstruction funds going to Haiti. The first was the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) and the second is the Haiti Reconstruction Fund (HRF).

In March 2010, U.N. countries pledged $5.3 billion over two years and a total of $9.9 billion over three years in a conference March 2010. The money was to be deposited with the World Bank and distributed by the IHRC. The IHRC was co-chaired by Bill Clinton and the Haitian prime minister. By July 2010, Bill Clinton reported only 10 percent of the pledges had been given to the IHRC.

Seven. A lot of the money which was put up has not yet been spent.

Nearly two years after the quake, less than 1 percent of the $412 million in U.S. funds specifically allocated for infrastructure reconstruction activities in Haiti had been spent by USAID and the U.S. State Department and only 12 percent has even been obligated, according to a November 2011 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Nearly two years after the quake, less than 1 percent of the $412 million in U.S. funds specifically allocated for infrastructure reconstruction activities in Haiti had been spent.

The performance of the two international commissions, the IHRC and the HRF, has also been poor. The Miami Herald noted that as of July 2011, of the $3.2 billion in projects approved by the IHRC, only five had been completed for a total of $84 million. The Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), which was severely criticized by Haitians and others from its beginning, has been effectively suspended since its mandate ended at the end of October 2011. The Haiti Reconstruction Fund was set up to work in tandem with the IHRC, so while its partner is suspended, it is not clear how it can move forward.

What to do

The effort so far has not been based on a respectful partnership between Haitians and the international community. The actions of the donor countries and the NGOs and international agencies have not been transparent so that Haitians or others can track the money and see how it has been spent. Without transparency and a respectful partnership, the Haitian people cannot hold anyone accountable for what has happened in their country. That has to change.

The U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti suggests the generous instincts of people around the world must be channeled by international actors and institutions in a way that assists in the creation of a “robust public sector and a healthy private sector.” Instead of giving the money to intermediaries, funds should be directed as much as possible to Haitian public and private institutions. A “Haiti First” policy could strengthen public systems, promote accountability, and create jobs and build skills among the Haitian people.

A “Haiti First” policy could strengthen public systems, promote accountability, and create jobs and build skills among the Haitian people.

Respect, transparency and accountability are the building blocks for human rights. Haitians deserve to know where the money has gone, what the plans are for the money still left, and to be partners in the decision-making for what is to come.

After all, these are the people who will be solving the problems when the post-earthquake relief money is gone.

Bill Quigley teaches at Loyola University New Orleans, is the associate legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights and volunteers with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. Amber Ramanauskas is a lawyer and human rights researcher. A more detailed version of this article with full sources is available. Bill can be reached at quigley77@gmail.com. Amber can be reached at gintarerama@gmail.com.

Aid as a Trojan horse: On the anniversary of the Haitian earthquake

Mary — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:58:16 +0000

We lived sustainably, with color and panache

by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery

“Haiti Rising from the Ashes” will premiere Thursday, Jan. 12, on the second anniversary of the cataclysmic earthquake, featuring the work in solidarity with grassroots Haitians of a medical-media team led by three young pan-Africans, Chris Zamani, M.D., Minister of Information JR and filmmaker Siraj Fowler. The screening starts at 7 p.m. at Twin Space Continuum, 2111 Mission St., third floor, San Francisco. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Long before the word sustainable became fashionable, before Scott and Helen Nearing experimented with non-establishment living in the 1930s and concluded that their project had failed because it lacked community, before even Henry David Thoreau noted that “(a) man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone,” there was Haiti.

Haiti was not always aided. Between 1963 and 1972, for example, the country enjoyed an economic renaissance as it buzzed with the activities of small entrepreneurs. The Kennedy administration had cut off all aid to Haiti in 1963 so as to bring Francois Duvalier to heel. The short doctor with heavy-rimmed glasses turned out to be a rather complicated dictator: keenly intolerant of dissent but fiercely nationalistic. He had come to prominence in Haiti as a leader of the 1940s negritude (Black pride) movement that succeeded the U.S. occupation. He was nobody’s boy and afraid of no one.

“Marché bruyant” (“Vibrant market”) by S.V. Germain

Haiti thrived with style and panache during this decade that merely continued its earlier isolation as the world’s first Black republic. A community that was sustainable, tolerant and harmonious with its gods had been forged, with none of the starkness associated with sustainability projects. Haiti brimmed with laughter, flavor, music and color.

Things dear to the Haitian soul were valued – things that could not be bought.

Things dear to the Haitian soul were valued – things that could not be bought. Anacaona’s descendants lived there, and their life’s purpose was self-realization and the creation of art. This was the Haiti in which I grew up.

Some lyrics from a traditional song

Haiti Cherie (Darling Haiti)

Gen bon soley (There’s bright sunlight)

Nan rivyè gen bon brévaj (And the rivers bring sweet drink)

Enba pyé bwa (Beneath the trees)

Nap toujou gen bon lombraj (Cool shade’s always to be found)

Gen bon ti ven (There’s a sweet breeze)

Pou ba nou bon ti freshè (That carries us such freshness)

Ala bon payi (What a fine country)

Oh bondyé ce Ayiti! (Oh good lord this Haiti!)

A country of small entrepreneurs

In the Haiti of the ‘60s and ‘70s, everything a poor Haitian ate, touched or wore was Haitian made. I was poor, but I lacked for nothing. My family of 10 was supported mostly by one woman who, for the most part, traded her skills as a beautician for the skills of other small entrepreneurs. For the rest, she used the local currency: the Haitian gourde.

Local, organic, fresh and in season

Every day my family breakfasted and dined on freshly baked bread and drinks of fruit juice, cocoa or coffee. We lunched on large helpings of rice or corn, pulses and vegetables, plus a little bit of meat. The meat was usually a cut of goat or pig. Fish, shellfish or crustaceans were eaten when in season. Some Sundays, we cooked a chicken. Our meat consumption was so modest that one bird sufficed for a family of ten.

“Paysage” (“Countryside”) by Berny Mathais

All the food was local, organically grown and fresh. All the animals were wild-caught or free range. All the vegetables were offered in season. It had been so for 150 years. We simply called it food.

As poor folk, my family could not afford an imported frigidaire (refrigerator). We had no use for one because our food was brought to us daily by the marchandes: women vendors who strolled through Port-au-Prince’s streets with baskets of provisions on their heads. Their walk was living grace, their dresses and scarves a riot of color.

Every day, Auntie would call on the same women as they swayed past our two-room apartment in a gingerbread house. Auntie would bargain with these marchandes for their live chickens, milk, rice, flour, corn, plantain, fruits and other edible goods.

“Ti chérie (little darling), tell me how much you want for three cups of this rice,” she would ask, for example. The marchande would propose a price. Auntie would describe her week and financial situation before offering a lower price. The marchande would in turn describe her own week to justify a higher price. After some discussion, in which every sentence on each side would begin with “ti chérie,” the two women would agree on a final price and wish each other well, having learned a great deal more about each other’s lives than necessary for their transaction.

Back then, the Haitian population was 80 percent agricultural, and Haiti produced 100 percent of its food. The first supermarket opened in Port-au-Prince a few months before I turned 6. The fluorescent lights and reflective linoleum floors were dizzying, the fruits improbable. For that birthday, I dearly wished for one of the shiny red apples, and my mother saved up and bought one. I never let on that the taste of wax had failed to live up to the promise of the gleaming red fruit.

Custom-made clothes and shoes

Like every female in my family, I owned one everyday dress and one special-occasion dress. Those of us who went to school also owned two sets of uniforms so that one could be washed while the other was worn. All were sewn by my mother’s former schoolmate Paula. Mom would walk with me to Paula’s house, where we would pick a style from a fashion catalog, and Paula would measure and remeasure my shoulders, torso, arms, waist, hips and legs. Mom and I would then walk to town to buy the fabric and deliver it to Paula. When Paula was finished with the dress, I would be summoned to her place for a fitting. Again, she would measure and remeasure … nip here, tuck there. A day or two later, I would collect a superbly tailored dress.

“Marchande de volailles” (“Poultry vendor”) by Wilson Bigaud

Likewise, when one of my two pairs of shoes began to wear, Auntie would walk with me to town, and together we would visit tens of small buildings, each one with its shoemaker. Auntie would bargain with each man before choosing the best deal. Each of my feet would be considered and measured. We would decide on the details of the heel, the sole and the style of the shoe. A week later, I would return to walk a few steps in them, wait for the inevitable adjustments, and then take home my tailor-made brand new shoes.

Clean water

Potable water that could be drunk without boiling was piped through the city of Port-au-Prince. As a rule, plumbing was excluded from the main buildings. Water faucets were found outside or in small shower buildings built of cement. Our use of water was necessarily economical, since the water had to be collected from a faucet and carried to our quarters for our cooking and washing.

Latrines

Water was not wasted in indoor toilets. We used latrines, which were placed well away from the main house above a hole many feet deep. When the hole became more than half full, a new one was dug, and the dirt from the excavation was tossed into the old latrine. The latrines were kept clean. Cholera was unknown in Haiti.

Schools

Although a fair number of lycées (high schools) and professional schools were state run and free, few poor Haitians were literate, largely because all the elementary schools were private. A minority of parents managed to save up for their children’s schooling by fattening a creole pig or some other means. I was among them.

“Marchand de fresco” (“Shaved-ice vendor”) by Ernst Louizor

By the time I was 13, I had received a typical Haitian education in history, geography, algebra, grammar, literature (mostly French and Haitian), Latin, Greek and English. All of it was done by Haitian teachers. I had also received a series of vaccinations, all from Haitian doctors and nurses.

I studied under a mango tree during the day and by the light of a kerosene lamp at evening. The lamp was Haitian made. The straw-seat chair that I leaned against the tree was Haitian made. All my textbooks were printed in town. The rest of our furniture was homemade. I had watched an uncle shape, shave and sand all of it. Some of this furniture was made of mahogany.

The marchandes, shoemakers, teachers and Paula were poor, like us. To our great bemusement, Haiti was called “the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere” even back then, because the economic activities of this informal sector were not computed in the GDP.

In fact, Haiti was the richest country in the Western Hemisphere because it had the lightest footprint. Those who want to know about sustainable living would do well to learn about Haiti.

Haitian hunger is a natural result of aid policy

A Haitian proverb, “Kaka poul pa zé,” translates to “Chickenshit ain’t eggs” or, put more politely, “What issues from a chicken is not always an egg.”

“Ecole en Haiti” (“School in Haiti”) by Gerard Fortune

International aid began to arrive in Haiti with the 1972 inauguration of Jean-Claude Duvalier as president, one year after the death of his father Francois Duvalier. The aid came from the U.S. government (USAID), the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, and it required that Haiti’s economy be changed from a sustainable domestically-oriented economy into an export-led economy – to benefit the U.S. The motivations for foreign aid to Haiti remain the same today.

The aid required that Haiti’s economy be changed from a sustainable domestically-oriented economy into an export-led economy – to benefit the U.S. The motivations for foreign aid to Haiti remain the same today.

The following two items were noted as the “comparative advantages” of Haiti to be exploited as it was brought into a capitalistic world economy:¹

1. Fertile lands and climate appropriate to year-round cultivation.

2. Low-cost, hard-working labor force.

The aid agencies provided funds to wealthy Haitian landowners on condition that they switch large tracts of Haitian land from production of foods for the domestic market to the production of fruits and vegetables for the U.S. market. Because the U.S. market was nearby, the foods could be sold fresh there while in season; alternatively, they would be processed for export. Based on growth of GDP, the aid policies would look like a roaring success.

The expected consequences for Haitians are elaborated in numerous USAID and World Bank reports. Briefly, famine would ensue for Haitian peasant farmers and they would be displaced in huge numbers from the rural areas to the urban centers.

Haitian black pig

When the rate of urbanization proved slower than predicted, the Haitian creole pig was wiped out as part of a $23 million eradication and restocking program. This was the first major blow to the peasant subsistence economy, for which this pig had traditionally served as a savings account.

Another blow came with flooding of the Haitian market with cheap Arkansas rice during the Clinton years.

Yet a more recent blow came with the U.N.-introduced cholera epidemic that caused a large migration from the most fertile region of the country – the Artibonite river valley. Currently, less than 40 percent of the food for Haitian consumption is produced locally; as recently as 1986, this was 80 percent.²

Currently, less than 40 percent of the food for Haitian consumption is produced locally; as recently as 1986, this was 80 percent.

Since the late 1980s, Haiti has known real hunger. Garment-factory wages have hardly budged from 14 cents per hour. Corporations and their owners have paid no taxes.

Government-steered ‘non-governmental organizations’

The advent of NGOs in Haiti began with a large influx of funds to subvert the democratic process between the expulsion of Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986 and the election of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1990. During this period, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funneled over $2.3 million into Haiti. According to USAID’s own estimates, by 1988 U.S. funds reached at least one third of the 1,200 or so NGOs in the country. The current number of NGOs has grown to 16,000 – one NGO per 560 Haitians.

“Paysans” (“Farmers”), crafted from recycled steel oil drums, by Serge Jolimeau

As the association between USAID and the NGOs has solidified, the hunger has intensified. Since 1990, for example, those U.S. NGOs that accept aid from USAID have been allowed to cover their expenses by selling non-emergency food aid in Haiti’s markets, in a policy called “monetization.” ((“Sak Vid Pa Kanpe: The Impact of U.S. Food Aid on Human Rights in Haiti,” New York School of Law Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, Partners in Health, RFK Center for Justice & Human Rights, Zanmi Lasante, 2010. By 2010, Haiti’s domestic food production had plummeted to a mere 40 percent, and Port-au-Prince’s population had tripled to over 2 million from its 1981 number of about 800,000.)) The food is generally of poor quality and foreign to Haitians. For example, this has included unfortified Arkansas rice that caused scurvy in prisoners.

If Haiti has become poor, let us be clear on the fact that it was not always so.

Yes, the earthquake has hurt Haiti, but capitalism has hurt it more.

The earthquake has hurt Haiti, but capitalism has hurt it more.

Long ago USAID predicted that, if successful, its aid policies would cause famished farmers to migrate from the Haitian countryside into urban areas, and this would in turn cause the population of Port-au-Prince to double to 1.6 million by the 21st century.³

The population swelled as predicted. Then the earth beneath Port-au-Prince shook.

In memory of those who died and celebration of those who live.

References

1. “The Haiti Files: Decoding the Crisis,” James Ridgeway, editor. Essential Books, Washington D.C., 1994.

2. “Sak Vid Pa Kanpe: The Impact of U.S. Food Aid on Human Rights in Haiti,” New York School of Law Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, Partners in Health, RFK Center for Justice & Human Rights, Zanmi Lasante, 2010. By 2010, Haiti’s domestic food production had plummeted to a mere 40 percent, and Port-au-Prince’s population had tripled to over 2 million from its 1981 number of about 800,000.

3. “Facts about Port-au-Prince, Haiti,” Amanda Briney. About.com (2010). The earthquake of Jan. 12 killed about 316,000 people, injured 300,000, and created over 1 million homeless.

Calculation by Dady Chery: considering that more than two thirds of Port-au-Prince’s population came there as a result of foreign-aid policy, this implies that USAID, the World Bank, and IAD are responsible for over:

• 211,000 Haitian earthquake deaths

• 200,000 injuries

• 670,000 cases of homelessness.

There has been no word about reparation, only talk of more foreign aid.

Report from Haiti: Where’s the money?

Adrian — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 09:08:41 +0000

by Bill Quigley

A woman in Port au Prince tries to set her tent back up after a rainstorm. – Photo: AP

Broken and collapsed buildings remain in every neighborhood. Men pull oxcarts by hand through the street. Women carry 5-gallon plastic jugs of water on their heads, dipped from manhole covers in the street. Hundreds of thousands remain in grey sheet and tarp covered shelters in big public parks, in between houses and on any small pocket of land. Most of the people are unemployed or selling mangoes or food on the side of every main street. This was Port au Prince during my visit with a human rights delegation of School of Americas Watch – more than a year and a half after the earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands and made 2 million homeless.

What I did not see this week were bulldozers scooping up the mountains of concrete remaining from last January’s earthquake. No cranes lifting metal beams up to create new buildings. No public works projects. No housing developments. No public food or public water distribution centers.

Everywhere I went, the people of Haiti asked, “Where is the money the world promised Haitians?”

The world has moved on. Witness the rows of padlocked public port-o-lets standing on the sidewalk outside Camp St. Anne. The displacement camp covers a public park hard by the still hollow skeleton of the still devastated St. Anne church. The place is crowded with babies, small children, women, men and the elderly. It smells of charcoal smoke, dust and humans. Six hundred fifty families live there without electricity, running water or security.

I talked with several young women inside the camp of shelters, most about 8 feet by 8 feet made from old gray tarps, branches, leftover wood, and pieces of rusty tin. When it rains, they stand up inside their leaky shelters and wait for it to stop. In a path in front of one home, crisscrossed with clotheslines full of tiny children’s clothes, a group of women from the grassroots women’s group KOFAVIV told us Oxfam used to help administer the camp but quit in May.

When Oxfam left, the company that had been emptying the port-o-lets stopped getting paid and abandoned the toilets. Some people padlocked them and now charge a couple of cents to use the toilets, money most residents don’t have. There is no work to earn the money to pay for toilets. The Red Cross had just visited the camp that morning telling them they would be evicted in 10 days. Where will they go, we ask? We have no idea, they told us. Jesus will provide, they told us.

Where has the money raised for Haiti gone? What about the Red Cross? What about the U.S. government? What about the money raised in France, Canada and across the world? What about the pledges to the U.N.? Where is the money?

The people of Haiti continue to be plagued by the earthquake of more than 20 months ago. They are our sisters and brothers. They deserve answers. They deserve help.

Bill Quigley is a law professor and human rights lawyer at Loyola University New Orleans and with the Center for Constitutional Rights. He volunteers with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and the Bureaux des Advocats in Port au Prince. You can reach him at quigley77@gmail.com.

What happens in Haiti doesn’t stay in Haiti

Mary — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 06:26:37 +0000

by Dady Chery

Preparation for two sporting events, the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, is the excuse for forcing the eviction of Brazilians who live in the favelas that cling to the mountains above Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo. As many as 1.5 million families live within the “urban renewal” construction zones. The Brazilian troops driving out their own people learned the techniques for brutally occupying poor neighborhoods in Haiti, where Brazil’s “peacekeepers” lead the U.N. mission, MINUSTAH. Here, the Brazilian Navy’s armored vehicles patrol the streets during the occupation of the Rocinha favela on Nov. 13, 2011. – Photo: Marcelo Sayao, EPA

The Nov. 13 attack on Brazil’s Rocinha neighborhood and its ongoing occupation by MINUSTAH-trained soldiers together with Brazilian police is a dramatic case of a peacetime merger of military and police to make war on their country’s poor. It is not the first, and it certainly won’t be the last.

For an excellent background account of the events that led to the occupation of Brazil’s favelas, see “Human Rights Abuses in Brazil’s Favelas Ahead of World Cup and Olympics.”

If your country has contributed soldiery to U.N. (de)stabilization missions, sit up and take notice. Blue helmets are coming home to roost. Here, for example, is the roster of the troop contributors to Haiti’s MINUSTAH (United Nations (de)Stabilization Mission in Haiti): Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Ecuador, France, Guatemala, Japan, Jordan, Nepal, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, the U.S. and Uruguay.

The “peacekeepers” are the fastest-growing branch of the U.N., with a budget of U.S. $8 billion and over 110,000 troops serving 15 operations. Ten percent of this budget is spent on Haiti – a small country that is not at war – to train foreign troops for future warfare against their own civilians.

Ten percent of the budget for U.N. peacekeepers is spent on Haiti – a small country that is not at war – to train foreign troops for future warfare against their own civilians.

Another instance of violence first practiced on Haiti – in Gonaives after hurricanes Ike and Jeanne – exported to the U.S. – New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina – and returned to Haiti – Port-au-Prince after the earthquake – was the rampant corruption that thwarted reconstruction efforts despite huge sums of charitable donations.

Yet another attack on Haiti was the removal of its democratically elected leaders and their replacement by a succession of IMF, World Bank and now U.N. sycophants.

Brazilian MINUSTAH troops, returned home from Haiti, practice what they learned there – terrorizing poor neighborhoods. Their armored vehicle is running over rubble from homes that have already been razed, the residents displaced. – Photo: Marcelo Sayao, EPA

This summer, in the West, some might have glanced at their flat-screen televisions in between jokes and sips of wine, as U.N. “peacekeepers,” together with France, forcibly replaced Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo with IMF economist Alassane Ouattara five months after Laurent Gbagbo was declared the winner of his country’s elections.

And now … (gasp!)

Western prime ministers are summarily removed and exchanged for financiers. Former European Central Bank Vice-President Lucas Papademos has replaced Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, and Mario Monti, an international adviser to Goldman Sachs, has just replaced ousted Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

And yeah, the tainted waters and vaccines will come your way too … unless you help us to stem their flow in Haiti.

It is not charity that Haiti needs, but solidarity against the imperial machine and a prudent sense of self preservation.

The uses of Haiti’s poor children: Guinea pigs for cholera vaccines

Mary — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 07:24:45 +0000

by Dady Chery

A child stricken with cholera is being treated at a cholera treatment center in Carrefour.

Haiti’s Ministry of Health finally gave in and officially announced the beginning of a vaccination campaign against cholera, after one year of pressure from the United Nations’ Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the recent takeover of Haiti’s prime-ministerial position by Clinton aide and U.N. employee Garry Conille.

Cholera is eminently curable, and the cure is clean water.

If Haitians are still getting cholera at the rate of over 10,000 a month, this is because they are continuing to drink surface water from sources previously considered safe but that have become contaminated. So why are the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), Paul Farmer and Partners in Health (PIH) so eager to administer vaccines to Haitians and so slow to promote waste treatment and water purification?

By contrast to MSF and PIH, 900 Cuban health experts, working out of their mobile medical units in 40 Haitian communities, are promoting disease prevention. So far, Cuban medical aid to Haiti has been vastly more successful than aid from NGOs.

As an example, consider the massive post-earthquake aid contributed by Cuba’s relatively small staff.

The relatively small Cuban-led medical brigade has also treated 30 to 40 percent of Haiti’s cholera patients.

Since the cholera vaccination campaign is quite futile, it is not surprising to find that this campaign is not a part of Cuba’s medical aid.

Unlike the diseases against which people are traditionally vaccinated, cholera is not communicable. In other words, with a minimum of good hygiene, cholera cannot be caught from casual contact with someone. According to Dr. Renaud Piarroux:

“[Cholera] can be provoked by close contact with somebody suffering from cholera, but it’s easy to protect oneself from this kind of transmission by good hygiene. This is why medical staff rarely get ill despite the fact that they have numerous contacts with people suffering from cholera.”

Tourists also don’t get cholera. Vaccines are not recommended to those entering areas where cholera is endemic because clean water and good hygiene are best, and cholera vaccines are demonstrably unreliable.

Vaccines are not recommended to those entering areas where cholera is endemic because clean water and good hygiene are best, and cholera vaccines are demonstrably unreliable.

Cholera vaccines:

• Protect only a fraction of the people who are vaccinated – usually about 60 percent.

• Typically confer protection only for a few months, since the cholera bacteria rapidly change their DNA.

• Do not protect at all against strains of cholera other than those targeted by the vaccination.

Nevertheless PAHO began to promote a cholera vaccine for Haiti almost from the day the cholera epidemic hit the country in fall 2010. PAHO was supported in this by Harvard scientists with financial interests in the sale of cholera vaccines.

The same scientists also helped the U.N. to cover up the source of Haiti’s cholera for many months. Paul Farmer still enjoys considerable trust from Haitians because he founded PIH, but, like Garry Conille, he is now a U.N. employee and Clinton aide. He also hails from Harvard. He needs to explain why he is promoting these useless vaccines so much more enthusiastically than waste and water treatment.

The aim of the much-touted new vaccination campaign is to inoculate 100,000 Haitians — mostly children — with 200,000 doses of a vaccine called Shanchol, at $1.85 per dose. Development of Shanchol was financed by the Gates Foundation, and its manufacture is by an Indian company called Shantha Biotechnics.

Less than a month ago, Shantha Biotechnics still lacked the WHO approval required for U.N. agencies to buy the vaccine, because the WHO had continued to argue that cholera vaccines are unnecessary. Miraculously, Shanchol was quickly “pre-qualified” by the WHO on Sept. 29.

Less than a month ago, the World Health Organization (WHO) continued to argue that cholera vaccines are unnecessary.

Despite the claims that the vaccine will alleviate the cholera in Haiti, hardly anything is known about the effects of vaccines on endemic cholera. So this vaccination campaign is actually an experiment designed to test just this, and Haitian children will be the guinea pigs.

Unsurprisingly, the campaign will start with some of Haiti’s poorest children: those from Cite Soleil.

Hardly anything is known about the effects of vaccines on endemic cholera. So this vaccination campaign is actually an experiment designed to test just this, and Haitian children will be the guinea pigs.

Parents who agree to submit their children to this campaign will be taking a big chance. Many problems, including deaths, often result from vaccination campaigns, because vaccines are notorious for shortcomings such as contaminations of lots.

And if you think the campaign will ever end, think again. Cholera bacteria change. PAHO is already predicting 250,000 new cases of cholera in Haiti next year. Once the vaccinations begin, they will become a yearly event: another carnival.

On Oct. 17 and 19, separate demonstrations in areas of Leogane and Port-au-Prince were held by Haitian groups against the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti known as MINUSTAH, blamed for inadvertently starting a cholera outbreak that has killed over 6,500 people in the past year. Of course, because neither protest resulted in any tear gas or violence, they were almost entirely ignored by the international press. – Video: Yvon Vilius and Ansel Herz, Media Hacker

Why it took 11 months instead of three weeks to show that Haiti’s cholera is Nepalese

Christine — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 06:58:25 +0000

A tale of noble and ignoble scientists, Harvard and the U.N.

Mis à jour avec traduction française

by Dady Chery

A Haitian resident holds his relative who is suffering from cholera at St-Catherine hospital in the slum of Cite-Soleil in Port-au-Prince Nov. 12, 2010. (Un résident d’Haïti tient son parent qui souffre de choléra à l’hôpital Sainte-Catherine dans le bidonville de Cité-Soleil, à Port-au-Prince Novembre 12, 2010.) - Photo: St-Felix Evens, Reuters

It took nearly a year since the start of Haiti’s cholera epidemic for scientists to get conclusive proof that the cholera bacteria in Haiti are identical to bacteria in Nepal. Drs. Frank Aarestrup from Denmark, Paul Keim from Arizona and Geeta Shakya from Kathmandu led a recent study that provided this evidence.

The DNA in cholera changes rapidly when these bacteria infect humans. This makes the cholera a moving target and very difficult to vaccinate against. On the other hand, when two cholera turn out to be identical, one can say with confidence that they originated from the same place or infected person(s).

By comparing the complete DNA sequences (also called “genomes”) from the cholera in Haiti to the complete DNA sequences from cholera in Nepal, the international group of scientists found that Haiti’s cholera exactly matches one of four Nepalese cholera. The resemblance between the Haitian and Nepalese cholera was so strong that, in a sequence of about 4,000,000 DNA bases, all agreed except for one or two. This is as good as comparing one complete volume of Shakespeare’s works to a new tome from a different publisher, discovering that there are no more than one or two single-letter differences between them, and concluding that both are indeed the complete Shakespeare. The techniques for this type of study are enormously expensive but very quick and not especially demanding.

DNA double helix sequence (Séquence de l’ADN en double hélice)

One could reasonably ask if it is necessary to compare every letter in two volumes of Shakespeare to decide that they are the same. Why not scan, for example, through the section headings for the same sequences of acts in the plays and the same succession of sonnets? Indeed there exist older and cheaper techniques for examining DNA that do something of the sort. This is how the Center for Disease Control (CDC) found that the cholera strain in Haiti is Vibrio Cholerae O1 Ogawa Biotype El Tor. It is also how the CDC discovered that every Haitian who got cholera had the identical bacteria, which was taken to mean that the Haitian epidemic had a single source.

If expense was an issue for the CDC, it certainly was not for the groups that favor the current technology. According to the latter, two cholera-sized “books” can be scanned at “single-letter” resolution over 30 times in less than 24 hours.

So why did it take 11 months to nail the source of Haiti’s cholera? The only reason it took so long to discover that Haiti’s cholera came from Nepal is because scientists had until now not bothered to compare the cholera from Haiti to cholera from Nepal.

The only reason it took so long to discover that Haiti’s cholera came from Nepal is because scientists had until now not bothered to compare the cholera from Haiti to cholera from Nepal.

Back when a precise knowledge of the source of the epidemic would have saved lives and probably aborted the renewal of the U.N. (MINUSTAH) mandate in Haiti, John Mekalanos’ group at Harvard promised to carry out the study that was finally done by Aarestrup, Keim and Shakya. Mekalanos argued that the conclusive proof of the origin of any cholera could only come from studies using the most modern methods. Other scientists deferred to Harvard, first because, well, it was Harvard, and second, because they could not afford the new technology. Instead of doing a proper study, however, Mekalanos’ group compared the DNA of the cholera from Haiti to the DNA of three types of cholera from different epidemics. Not a single one was from Nepal.

In the end the Harvard group published an article in which the word “Nepal” did not appear even once. The cholera they used were from an epidemic in Peru and two different epidemics in Bangladesh. They merely concluded that the cholera in Haiti is Asian: a fact that was already known from the CDC studies.

Dr. Mekalanos had this to say during an interview with Science Watch in February 2011:

“My colleagues and I have been very clear in saying that the genomic evidence says that this strain in Haiti has its origin in South Asia. True, Nepal is part of South Asia so it clearly needs more investigation and a commission has been established by the U.N. to look into the possibility.”

The Vibrio Cholerae O1 Ogawa Biotype El Tor bacteria has been identified as the single source of cholera in Haiti. (Le Vibrio cholerae O1 Ogawa biotype El Tor bactérie identifié comme la source unique du choléra en Haïti.) – Photo: Dartmouth College

Without exaggerating, one might say, for example, that the cholera study by Harvard was analogous to using the most sensitive instruments and best-trained scientists to test for Fukushima radiation everywhere in the globe except Japan, reporting that the meltdowns had probably happened somewhere in Asia, and then proposing that a commission from the nuclear-power companies finish the investigation.

Unlike the Harvard group, the Denmark and Arizona scientists collaborated with Katmandhu researchers who gave them access to cholera samples collected from 24 patients in five Nepalese districts between July 30 and Nov. 1, 2010. Given that the Nepalese government has violently protested all mentions of any association with the epidemic, the Nepalese scientists who participated in this project did so at considerable personal risk. It made sense to look in Nepal for a possible source for Haiti’s cholera, because U.N. troops arrived fresh from the cholera epidemics in Nepal days before the first Haitian case of the disease was diagnosed.

The fact that the Harvard group discovered nothing much about Haiti’s cholera did not prevent them from admonishing Haitians to be immediately vaccinated. They did so although cholera vaccines are not recommended by the Word Health Organization (WHO) even to tourists entering areas with endemic cholera. Such vaccines are considered worse than useless because they give the illusion of protection and encourage reckless behavior. Since the cholera change rapidly, vaccination lasts for only about six months even against the cholera strains for which the vaccines are made. Moreover, the vaccines give zero protection against other cholera strains.

But here is what Mekalanos’ colleague Dr. Matthew Waldor said:

“It’s time to seriously consider vaccinating people who live in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, not only to save lives there, but to prevent the spread of this new strain to other countries in the region.”

Science, universities, corporations and profits

I was so impressed by this enthusiasm for vaccines that I decided to look into the list of disclosures that the Harvard scientists had to file for their publication. I discovered the following:

Several of the Harvard scientists own stock in Pacific Biosciences, a company that makes the machines and all the supplies for the expensive new method of DNA sequencing that they had been promoting. One person on the project was employed by Pacific Biosciences. One could say, in a way, that the Haiti cholera study was an advertisement for PB’s products.

Dr. John Mekalanos and his corporate interests

Dr. Mekalanos is involved in cholera-vaccine development. He and Harvard University receive royalties from Vaccines Technologies Inc., a company that entered an exclusive license and development agreement with Celldex Therapeutics Inc.(formerly AVANT Immunotherapeutics, Inc.) in January 2009. The agreement allows VTI to develop and commercialize Celldex’s CholeraGarde(R) vaccine program.

He is co-founder of three biotechnology firms, Virus Research Institute, PharmAthene and, most recently, Matrivax. Virus Research Institute later merged with another company and became Avant Immunotherapeutics, a firm that receives grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Harvard’s Haiti cholera study can be seen as an advertisement for Pacific Biosciences, where some of the researchers owned stock. The photo shows off Pacific Sciences’ $700 million DNA sequencing machine. According to Shareholder.com, their 2011 second quarter revenues totaled $10.6 million and gross profit, $7.9 million. Working on the machine is the company’s founder, Stephen Turner, in laser-resistant glasses. (L’étude du choléra d’Haïti à Harvard peut être considérée comme une publicité pour Pacific Biosciences, où certains des chercheurs tiennent du stock. Cette photo montre une machine de séquençage d’ADN de Pacific Biosciences qui coute 700 millions de dollars. Leurs affaires du 2ème trimestre 2011 s’élèvent à 10.6 millions de dollars et le bénéfice brut, 7.9 millions de dollars.) – Photo: Gregg Segal, Bloomberg Businessweek

Mekalanos’ PharmAthene is a biodefense company involved with the development and commercialization of medical countermeasures against biological and chemical weapons. Their customers included the U.S. Defense Department, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and the U.S. National Institutes of Health. For the second quarter of 2011 PharmAthene saw revenues of $6.4 million compared to $4.8 million the same period of 2010: an increase of $1.6 million. His company’s SparVax program totaled $5.3 million for the three months ending June 30, 2011, compared to $2.1 million for the same period in 2010.

Mekalanos’ third company, Matrivax Research & Development Corp. in Boston, is a small private corporation with only eight employees that received an annual revenue of $710,000 last year, shared by Mekalanos, his two partners and employees. He is director of Matrivax, which is privately funded, including grants from the Bill Gates Foundation.

Mekalanos is also the founder of Virus Research and Versicor. Versicor is at least a multi-million dollar corporation, gaining $22 million in investments in 1997 alone. That same year, they targeted “the substantial worldwide medical need for antibiotics as evidenced by the current market size, which currently exceeds $23 billion.” The company “gained access to proprietary technology for the identification of novel drug targets in bacteria from the laboratory of Professor John Mekalanos, chairman of the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics.”

According to his executive profile in Bloomsberg Businessweek, information on Mekalanos’ annual income, stock options and total compensation is not available.

Mekalanos has not let any conflict of interest stop him from flogging his vaccine:

“When I heard in January 2010 that an earthquake had hit Haiti, the first thing that crossed my mind was ‘how long?’ I knew cholera would happen sooner or later; the only question was when.

“Why wasn’t it stockpiled? You’ll never stockpile this vaccine without a few global health organizations saying it makes sense to do so. And the obvious organization, the one which stands right in the cross hairs, is the WHO. It takes courage to make that statement and stand by it.

“By way of full disclosure, I have been involved in developing cholera vaccines, so you might say I’m conflicted. However, others have made cholera vaccines too. The problem has not been as much making a safe and effective vaccine. It is getting agencies to say they are willing to use it as part of public policy. After that, I’m sure we can figure out how to get that global stockpile made.”

The idea that earthquakes cause cholera is patently absurd. Earthquakes cannot create cholera. Cholera may be released from sewage into drinking water during earthquakes, but this can only happen in places where the cholera already exists in the sewage.

There is no evidence that cholera has ever existed in Haiti before October 2010. The cholera first appeared explosively in the Artibonite region: a rural area that had suffered no damage from the earthquake. By contrast, in Port-au-Prince, where the earthquake damage was massive, the incidence of cholera was five times lower than in the Artibonite.

Interestingly, the most enthusiastic support for Harvard’s efforts to vaccinate Haitians has come from none other than U.N. Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) director Dr. John Andrus.

“I see a real opportunity to vaccinate vulnerable groups in countries that have yet to see the outbreak but we know would be very vulnerable if cholera was imported …. I worry about some of the poorer countries of the Caribbean. I worry about Central America.”

Andrus’ first action during the epidemic was to give a press conference. There he announced that one should expect many thousands of Haitians to die of cholera, and he pleaded for donations of $164 million to the U.N. and a group of 42 NGOs that he had quickly gathered under PAHO’s umbrella.

Several times former President Preval’s government came under strong pressure from the U.N. to vaccinate the Haitian population, and every time the Haitian Ministry of Public Health refused. If the ministry had acquiesced to the vaccination campaigns, the U.N., via PAHO, would have purchased massive doses of the Mekalanos vaccine. Harvard and corporate affiliates would have made tidy profits.

It is worthwhile to note that the source of Haiti’s cholera was identified, not by U.S. or European researchers many months after the epidemic but by Haitians at home and in the diaspora within days of the first cases of cholera. In an article in Axis of Logic, I argued that the epidemic had been introduced into Haiti by the U.N. Soon thereafter, Mirebalais’ mayor and other citizens brought to the press’ attention their observation that the epidemic had started downstream of the U.N. base of Nepalese soldiers in the nearby village of Meille in the Artibonite region.

A more formal epidemiological study led by Dr. Renaud Piarroux confirmed and strengthened this summer the initial observations. Two Haitians contributed to the study as authors, Dr. Robert Barrais, who is an epidemiologist in Haiti’s National Laboratory of Public Health, and Dr. Roc Magloire, who is the director of this institution. Other Haitian epidemiologists and medical authorities declined to be co-authors of the paper because of concerns about retaliation.

Importantly, Piarroux’s team in France and Haiti concluded that there must have been active cases of cholera among the Nepalese MINUSTAH troops last October for the dose of cholera in the Artibonite river water to have been lethal.

“To our knowledge, only infectious doses over 10,000 bacteria were shown to produce mild patent infection in healthy volunteers, and higher doses are required to provoke severe infections. Reaching such doses in the Meille River is hardly compatible with the amount of bacteria excreted by asymptomatic carriers, whereas if one or several arriving soldiers were incubating the disease, they would have subsequently excreted diarrheal stools containing 10 billion to 10 trillion bacteria per liter. We therefore believe that symptomatic cases occurred inside the MINUSTAH camp.”

This implies a coverup by the U.N., which continues to claim that none of its troops was ever ill with cholera.

At least six scientific studies have resulted from the Haitian cholera epidemic, though only two have yielded results of any consequence. Every one of these studies has dismissed the discoveries by Haitians as mere “rumor,” although it was these findings, together with Haitian and Cuban record keeping, that made possible the epidemiological study by the French. If Haitians had not identified the source of the cholera, it might never have been discovered; instead, the epidemic would have been blamed on the supposed bad hygiene of the poor, and the U.N. and NGOs would have exploited the epidemic as yet another occasion to enrich themselves from the misfortune of Haitians.

The U.N. continues to claim that none of its troops was ever ill with cholera. If Haitians had not identified the source of the cholera, it might never have been discovered; instead, the epidemic would have been blamed on the supposed bad hygiene of the poor, and the U.N. and NGOs would have exploited the epidemic as yet another occasion to enrich themselves from the misfortune of Haitians.

Surprisingly the French study provided no explanation for the fact that the cholera managed to reach the off-shore island of La Gonâve, and it accepted as fact the government explanation that the prisoners who died of cholera had been given river water to drink. Actually the cholera initially spread much too rapidly throughout the country to be explained by anything but a widespread distribution of the bacteria in infected bottled water.

After I pointed this out early in the epidemic, the Haitian government discontinued the “dlo nan sachèt” (water in plastic bags) that were being distributed as “purified water” throughout the country. Discontinuing this distribution of infected water probably saved lives.

Piarroux stopped short of suggesting that some means of distribution of highly infected water was involved in the epidemic. He did say, however, that he could not explain the mechanism by which people were lethally infected well downstream of the Meille tributary of the Artibonite, when the river water, moving at more than 100 cubic meters per second, should have rapidly diluted the cholera to non-lethal doses.

Certainly one of the most important lessons from the earthquake and cholera epidemic is that Haitians can be each other’s salvation. During the first days of the epidemic, when scientific investigations of its origin mattered most, there were no plans for a thorough epidemiological study nor a comparison of the DNA of the cholera in Haiti to those from Nepal. It took the international scientific community nearly a year to do its job, and at every step it had to be shamed into it by Haitians determined to help each other.

It took the international scientific community nearly a year to do its job, and at every step it had to be shamed into it by Haitians determined to help each other.

The proof that the U.N. brought the cholera epidemic into Haiti has come much too late, but perhaps some use can be derived from it apart from publications and accolades for Western researchers. When the U.N. Security Council next considers MINUSTAH’s mandate in mid-October of this year, Drs. Renaud Piarroux, Frank Aarestrup and Paul Keim should stand up and explain why MINUSTAH troops must be immediately removed from Haiti so as to prevent new epidemics. The scientists should additionally propose that MINUSTAH countries make reparations for polluting Haiti’s rivers and aquifers.

The scientists should additionally propose that MINUSTAH countries make reparations for polluting Haiti’s rivers and aquifers.

Instead of promoting useless vaccines to Haitians, the U.N. should compensate the families of cholera victims and finance the construction of sewage- and water-treatment plants throughout the country using Haitian labor for this enterprise at every level.

Onze Mois Au Lieu de Trois Semaines Pour Montrer Que le Choléra en Haïti Provient Du Népal

par Dady Chery

Traduit de l’anglais à français par Dady Chery

Il a fallu presqu’un an depuis le début de l’épidémie de choléra en Haïti pour que les scientifiques obtiennent une preuve concluante que la bactérie du choléra en Haïti est identique à une bactérie au Népal. Drs Frank Aarestrup du Danemark, Paul Keim de l’Arizona, et Geeta Shakya de Katmandou ont recemment mené une étude qui a fourni cette preuve.

Lorsque le choléra infecte l’homme, l’ADN de cette bacterie change rapidement. Cela rend le choléra une cible mouvante et très difficile pour combattre avec des vaccins. D’autre part, lorsque deux sources de choléra se révèlent être identiques, on peut dire avec confiance qu’elles proviennent du même endroit our personne infectée.

En comparant les séquences complètes de l’ADN (également appelées «génomes») provenant du choléra en Haïti aux séquences complètes de l’ADN provenant du choléra au Népal, le groupe international de scientifiques a constaté que le choléra en Haïti correspond exactement à l’un des quatre choléra Népalaises. La ressemblance entre les choléra haïtiens et népalaises a été si forte que, dans une séquence d’environ 4.000.000 de bases de l’ADN, tous furent d’accord sauf un ou deux. La resemblance est aussi bonne que de comparer un volume complet des œuvres de Shakespeare à un autre, découvrir seulement une ou deux lettres de différence, et conclure que les deux volumes sont en effet les mêmes oeuvres de Shakespeare. Les techniques pour ce type d’étude sont extrêmement chères, mais très rapides et pas particulièrement difficiles.

On pourrait raisonnablement se demander s’il est nécessaire de comparer chaque lettre entre deux volumes de Shakespeare pour décider qu’ils sont les mêmes. Pourquoi ne pas verifier, par exemple, les titres de section pour les mêmes séquences d’actes de théâtre et la même succession de poêmes? En effet, il existe des techniques plus anciennes et moins coûteux pour examiner l’ADN qui se fassent come cela. C’est ainsi que le Center for Disease Control (CDC) a constaté que la souche de choléra en Haïti est Vibrio cholerae O1 Ogawa biotype El Tor. C’est également comment le CDC a découvert que tous les haïtiens qui ont été atteints par le choléra portaient des bactéries identiques, ce qui a été interprétée comme signifiant que l’épidémie haïtienne avait une source unique.

Si le cout a été un problème pour le CDC, ce n’était certainement pas pour les groupes qui favorisaient la technologie la plus moderne. Selon ces derniers, deux “livres” du choléra peuvent être examinés à une résolution “d’une seule lettre” plus de 30 fois en moins de 24 heures.

Alors pourquoi at-il fallu 11 mois pour connaitre la source du choléra en Haïti? La seule raison pour laquelle il a fallu si longtemps pour découvrir que le choléra en Haïti provenait le Népal est parce que les scientifiques n’avaient jusqu’à présent pas pris la peine de comparer le choléra en Haïti aux choléra du Népal.

La seule raison pour laquelle il a fallu si longtemps pour découvrir que le choléra en Haïti provenait le Népal est parce que les scientifiques n’avaient jusqu’à présent pas pris la peine de comparer le choléra en Haïti aux choléra du Népal.

À l’époque où une connaissance précise de la source de l’épidémie aurait sauvé la vie a tant de personnes, et probablement causé la chute du rénouvellement de l’ONU (MINUSTAH) en Haïti, le groupe scientifique de John Mekalanos à Harvard a promis qu’il réaliserait l’étude qui a été finalement réalisé par Aarestrup, Keim et Shakya. Mekalanos a dit que la preuve concluante de l’origine du choléra ne pourrait provenir que des études utilisant les méthodes les plus modernes. D’autres scientifiques se sont excusés du project, parce que premièrement c’était Harvard, et deuxièmement, ils ne pouvaient pas acheter cette nouvelle technologie. Au lieu de faire une étude appropriée, cependant, le groupe Mekalanos a comparé l’ADN du choléra d’ Haïti à l’ADN de trois types de choléra provenant d’autres épidémies. Pas un seul d’elles a été du Népal.

En fin de compte le groupe de Harvard a publié un article dans lequel le mot “Népal” n’aparassait pas même pas une seule fois. Ils ont été utilisés les cholera d’une épidémie au Pérou et deux épidémies différentes au Bangladesh. Ils ont simplement conclu que le choléra en Haïti est asiatique: un fait qui était déjà connu des études du CDC.

Dr Mekalanos avait ceci à dire au cours d’un entretien avec Science Watch en Février 2011:

“Mes collègues et moi avons été très clair en disant que les preuves génomiques disent que cette souche en Haïti a son origine en Asie du Sud. Certes, le Népal fait partie de l’Asie du Sud. On a besoin de plus d’enquêtes pour savoir mieux, et une commission a été établie par l’ONU pour examiner la possibilité.”

Sans exagérer, on peut dire, par exemple, que l’étude du choléra par Harvard était comme ceci: obtenir des instruments les plus sensibles et les scientifiques les mieux formés pour tester pour le radiations de Fukushima, chercher partout dans le monde entier sauf au Japon, annoncer que les catastrophes nucléaires ont probablement eu lieu quelque part en Asie, et puis proposer que des sociétés de l’énergie nucléaire finissent l’enquête.

Contrairement au groupe de Harvard, les scientifiques du Danemark et de l’Arizona ont collaboré avec des chercheurs du Katmandhu qui leurs ont donné des échantillons du choléra recueillis dans 5 districts du Nepal et 24 népalaises entre 30 Juillet 1er Novembre 2010. Étant donné que le gouvernement népalais a violemment protesté toutes mentions d’une association avec l’épidémie, les scientifiques népalaises qui ont participé à ce projet l’ont fait à des risques personnels considérables. Il était logique de chercher au Népal pour une source possible du choléra en Haïti, parce que les soldats de l’ONU sont arrivés des épidémies de choléra au Népal juste avant le premier cas de la maladie en Haïti.

Le fait que les chercheurs de Harvard n’aient rien trouvé de nouveau sur le choléra d’Haïti ne les a pas empêché de recommander aux Haïtiens de se vacciner immédiatement. Ils l’ont dit malgré que les vaccins contre le choléra ne sont pas recommandés par l’Organisation de la Santé (OMS, aussi WHO) même pour les touristes entrant dans les zones ou le choléra est endémique. Ces vaccins sont considérés comme pire qu’inutile, car ils donnent l’illusion de protection et encouragent un comportement imprudent. Le cholera change rapidement, et alors la vaccination ne dure qu’à peu pres six mois, même contre les souches de choléra pour lesquelles les vaccins sont preparées. Par ailleurs, les vaccins donnent nulle protection
contre les autres souches de choléra.

Mais voici ce que le collègue de Mekalanos , le vaccins donnent nulle protection a déclaré:

“Il est temps d’envisager sérieusement la vaccination des personnes qui vivent en Haïti et la République dominicaine, non seulement pour sauver des vies, mais pour éviter la propagation de cette nouvelle souche dans d’autres pays de la région.”

Sciences, Universités, Compagnies, et Profits

J’ai été tellement impressionné par cet enthousiasme pour les vaccins que j’ai décidé de vérifier la liste de divulgation que les scientifiques de Harvard ont dû remplir pour leur publication. J’ai trouvé ce qui suit:

Plusieurs des scientifiques de Harvard tiennent le stock de Pacific Biosciences, une compagnie qui fabrique les machines et toutes les fournitures pour la méthode plus coûteuse de séquençage de l’ADN pour laquelle ils fasaient la promotion. Une personne sur le projet était un employé de Pacific Biosciences. On pourrait dire, en un sens, que l’étude du choléra en Haïti a été une publicité pour des produits de Pacific Biosciences.

Le Docteur John Mekalanos et ses Intérêts

Dr Mekalanos a participé dans la formulation d’un vaccin du choléra. Lui et l’Université de Harvard reçoivent des redevances de Vaccine Technologies Inc, une compagnie qui est entré en licence exclusive et accord de développement avec Celldex Therapeutics Inc (anciennement AVANT Immunotherapeutics Inc.) en Janvier 2009. L’accord permet à VTI de développer et commercialiser une programme de vaccination pour CholeraGarde Celldex (R).

Il est co-fondateur de trois entreprises de biotechnologie: Virus Research Institute, PharmAthene et plus récemment, Matrivax. Virus Research Institute s’est ensuite fusionné avec une autre compagnie et est devenu Avant Immunotherapeutics Inc., une entreprise qui reçoit aussi des bourses du NIH.

La PharmAthene de Mekalanos est une compagnie de biodéfense pour le développement et la commercialisation de contre-mesures médicales contre les armes biologiques et chimiques. Leurs clients inclusent le Département de la Défense des Etats-Unis, l’Institut National des Allergies et des Maladies Infectieuses, Biomedical Advanced Research Authority and Development, et les Instituts nationaux américains de la santé. Pour le 2e trimestre de 2011, PharmAthene a vu des revenus de 6.4 millions de dollars comparativement à 4.8 millions de dollars à la même epoque pour l’année 2010: une augmentation de 1.6 millions de dollars. Son programme d’entreprise SparVax, a totalisé 5.3 millions de dollars pour les trois mois se terminant en Juin 30, 2011, comparativement à 2.1 millions de dollars pour la même période en 2010.

La troisième compagnie de Mekalanos, Matrivax Research & Development Corporation à Boston est une petite compagnie privée, avec seulement 8 employés qui a reçu un revenu de 710.000 dollars l’an dernier, partagé par Mekalanos et ses deux partenaires et employés. Il est directeur du Matrivax qui reçoit des fonds privés, y compris les bourses de la Fondation Bill Gates.

Mekalanos est également le fondateur de Versicor qui fait des recherches sur les virus. Versicor est au moins une compagnie de plusieurs millions de dollars, gagnant 22 millions de dollars en investissements dans l’année 1997. Cette même année, ils ont ciblé “le besoin important médical dans tout le monde pour les antibiotiques [qui] se témoigne a la taille actuelle du marché, qui dépasse actuellement $ 23 milliards de dollars.” La société “a eu accès à une technologie exclusive pour l’identification de nouvelles cibles thérapeutiques dans les bactéries provenant du laboratoire du Professeur John Mekalanos, qui est le Chef du Département de Microbiologie et de Génétique Moléculaire.”

Selon son profil exécutif en Bloomsberg / Businessweek, des informations sur le revenu annuel de Mekalanos, ses stocks, et sa rémunération totale ne sont pas disponibles.

Mekalanos n’a laissé aucun conflit d’intérêt l’empêcher de promouvoir son vaccin:

“Quand j’ai entendu en Janvier 2010 qu’il y avait un tremblement de terre en Haïti, la première chose qui m’a traversé l’esprit était ‘combien de temps?’ Je savais que le choléra passerait là, tôt ou tard, la seule question était quand.

“Pourquoi le pays ne s’etait pas stocké avec le vaccin? Vous n’aurez jamais les stocks de ce vaccin si quelques organisations de la santé mondiale ne disent pas qu’il est logique de le faire. Et l’organisation évidente est l’OMS (WHO). Il faut du courage pour faire cette déclaration et de s’y tenir.

“En guise de divulgation complète, j’ai été impliqué dans le développement de vaccins contre le choléra, sorte que vous pourriez dire que je suis en conflit. Toutefois, d’autres ont aussi fait des vaccins contre le choléra. Le problème n’a pas été celle de bien faire un vaccin sûr et efficace. C’est aux agences de dire qu’ils sont prêts à l’utiliser dans le cadre de la politique publique. Après cela je suis sûr que nous pourrons savoir comment obtenir des stocks mondiaux”

L’idée que les tremblements de terre causent le choléra est absurde. Les tremblements de terre ne peuvent pas créer le choléra. Le choléra peut être libéré par la contamination de l’eau potable par des eaux usées lors des tremblements de terre, mais ceci ne peut pas arriver dans des endroits où le choléra n’existe pas déjà dans les eaux usées. Il n’existe aucune preuve que le choléra ait jamais existé en Haïti avant l’Octobre 2010. La première apparition du choléra fut explosive et dans la région de l’Artibonite: une zone rurale qui n’avait pas subi de dommages par le séisme. A Port-au-Prince, où les dégâts du tremblement de terre ont été massive, l’incidence du choléra a été cinq fois moins que celle de l’Artibonite.

Fait intéressant: le soutien le plus enthousiaste pour les efforts de Harvard pour vacciner les Haïtiens est venu de nul autre que l’ONU, du Directeur de l’Organisation panaméricaine de la santé (OPS, aussi PAHO), le Dr John Andrus.

“Je vois une réelle opportunité de vacciner les groupes vulnérables dans les pays qui n’ont pas encore vu l’épidémie, mais que nous savons seraient très vulnérable si le choléra est importé …. Je m’inquiète au sujet de certains des pays les plus pauvres des Caraïbes. Je m’inquiète de l’Amérique centrale. “

La première action d’Andrus pendant l’épidémie était de donner une conférence de presse. Là, il a annoncé que l’on doit s’attendre à plusieurs milliers de morts Haïtiens du choléra, et il a plaidé pour des dons de 164 millions de dollars à l’ONU et un groupe de 42 ONG qu’il avait rapidement réuni sous l’égide de l’OPS.

Plusieurs fois, l’ancien gouvernement du président Préval est venu sous une forte pression de l’ONU pour vacciner la population haïtienne, et chaque fois le ministère haïtien de la Santé Publique a refusé. Si le ministère avait acquiescé aux campagnes de vaccination, l’ONU, par l’intermédiaire de l’OPS, aurait acheté des doses massives du vaccin de Mekalanos. Harvard et ses affiliées d’affaires aurait réalisé de grandes bénéfices.

Il est intéressant de noter que la source de choléra en Haïti a été identifié, non pas par des chercheurs américains ou européens plusieurs mois après l’épidémie, mais par les Haïtiens chez eux et au diaspora dans les premiers jours du choléra. Dans un article paru dans Axis of Logic, j’ai ecrit que l’épidémie avait été introduite en Haïti par les Nations Unies. Peu après le Maire et citoyens de Mirebalais ont portés à l’attention de la presse leur observation que l’épidémie avait commencé en aval de la base de l’ONU des soldats népalais près du village de Meille dans la région de l’Artibonite.

“Une étude épidémiologique plus formelle dirigée par le Docteur Renaud Piarroux a confirmé et renforcé cet été les observations initiales. Deux haïtiens ont contribué à l’étude comme auteurs: le Dr. Robert Barrais, un épidémiologiste au Laboratoire National de la Santé Publique en Haïti, et le Dr. Roc Magloire qui est le directeur de cette institution. D’autres épidémiologistes et authorités medicales Haïtiens se sont ont excusés d’être co-auteurs du document, en raison de préoccupations au sujet de représailles.

Surtout, l’équipe Piarroux en France et en Haïti a conclu qu’il doit y avoir eu des cas actifs de choléra parmi les troupes de la MINUSTAH népalais en Octobre dernier pour que la dose de choléra dans l’eau du fleuve Artibonite ait été mortelle:”

“A notre connaissance, seules des doses infectieuses plus de 10.000 bactéries peuvent produire une infection bénigne sur des volontaires sains et des doses plus élevées sont nécessaires pour provoquer des infections graves. A atteindre de telles doses dans la rivière Meille n’est pas compatible avec la quantité de bactéries excrétées par des porteurs asymptomatiques, alors que si un ou plusieurs soldats ont été incubation de la maladie en arrivant, ils auraient ensuite excrétés des selles diarrhéiques contenant 10000 à 10000000 millions de bactéries par litre. Nous pensons donc que les cas symptomatiques ont survenus à l’intérieur du camp de la MINUSTAH.”

Cela implique un cover-up par l’ONU, qui continue à prétendre qu’aucun de ses troupes n’a jamais été malade et atteint du choléra.

Au moins six études scientifiques ont résulté de l’épidémie de choléra haïtienne, mais seulement deux ont abouti à des résultats de conséquence. Chacun de ces études a rejeté les découvertes par les Haïtiens comme une simple “rumeur”, bien qu’il ait été ces résultats, avec la tenue des dossiers par des haïtiens et cubains, qui ont rendu possible l’étude épidémiologique par les Français. Si les haïtiens n’avaient pas identifié la source du choléra, il ne pourrait jamais avoir été découvert, mais plutôt l’épidémie aurait été blâmé sur la supposée mauvaise hygiène des pauvres, et l’ONU et les ONG auraient exploité l’épidémie comme une autre occasion de s’enrichir du malheur des Haïtiens.

Étonnamment l’étude française n’a fourni aucune explication pour le fait que le choléra a réussi à atteindre l’île de la Gonâve, et a accepté l’explication du gouvernement que les prisonniers qui sont morts du choléra avaient reçu l’eau de la rivière pour boire. En fait, au debut le choléra s’est répandu beaucoup trop rapidement à travers le pays pour être expliqué par autre chose qu’une grande distribution de la bactérie dans l’eau infectée en bouteille. Après j’ai signalé cela au début de l’épidémie, le gouvernement haïtien a interrompu les distributions des “dlo nan sachèt” (l’eau dans des sacs en plastique) qui se distribuaint comme “l’eau purifiée” dans tout le pays. L’arrêt de cette distribution de l’eau infectée a probablement sauvé des vies.

Piarroux s’arrêta de suggérer que certains moyens de distribution d’eaux hautement infectées ont été impliqué dans l’épidémie. Il a dit, toutefois, qu’il ne pouvait pas expliquer le mécanisme par lequel les gens ont été mortellement infectés bien en aval de l’affluent Meille de l’Artibonite, où l’eau du fleuve, se déplaçant à plus de 100 mètres cubes par seconde, aurait rapidement dilué le choléra à des doses non létales.

Certainement l’un des enseignements les plus importants du tremblement de terre et de l’épidémie de choléra est que les Haïtiens peuvent se sauver les uns les autres. Pendant les premiers jours de l’épidémie, lorsque les enquêtes scientifiques de l’origine du choléra etaient plus d’importantes, il n’y avait pas de plan pour une étude épidémiologique approfondie ni pour une comparaison de l’ADN du choléra en Haïti à ceux du Népal. Il a fallu la communauté scientifique internationale près d’un an pour faire son travail, et à chaque étape, il furent obligés a le faire a cause de la honte de voir les Haïtiens s’aider les uns les autres.

La preuve que l’ONU a apporté l’épidémie de choléra en Haïti est venu beaucoup trop tard, mais peut-être quelque chose proviendrait de cela, a part des publications et distinctions pour les chercheurs occidentaux. Lorsque le Conseil de Sécurité des Nations Unis considèra la prochaine mandat de la MINUSTAH, en Octobre de cette année, les Docteurs Renaud Piarroux, Frank Aarestrup, et Paul Keim devront se lever et expliquer pourquoi les soldats de la MINUSTAH doivent être immédiatement retirés d’Haïti afin de prévenir des épidémies nouvelles. Les scientifiques devront en outre proposer que les pays de la MINUSTAH fassent des réparations pour leur pollution des rivières et aquifères d’Haïti.

Au lieu de promouvoir les vaccins inutiles aux Haïtiens, l’ONU devrait indemniser les familles des victimes du choléra et financer la construction d’égouts et stations d’épuration à travers le pays en utilisant des haïtiens pour cette entreprise à tous les niveaux.

Marthe Enice Cassandre St. Vil: Haitian family needs our help

Mary — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 00:59:15 +0000

by Wanda Sabir

Marthe Enice Cassandre St. Vil lives in the vast tarp and tent camp in Champ de Mars, which used to be the grand central park alongside Haiti’s National Palace in Port au Prince. Twenty months after the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake that killed over 300,000 Haitians, some 630,000 are still displaced and homeless in camps under constant pressure of eviction. As tensions rise, conflict grows, and many residents accuse police and MINUSTAH (U.N.) soldiers of acting in league with “bandits.” – Photo: Wanda Sabir

In August 2010, with one of the leaders of a women’s organization in Port-au-Prince, an organization that supports women and girls who are victims of sexual violence since the earthquake and before, I met Cassandre, a young woman who has been raped. Cassandre lost her father in the earthquake; he was putting his daughter through university, so when he was killed, her dreams died too.

When I returned to Oakland on of all days, the Hon. Mosiah Marcus Garvey’s birthday, Aug. 17, 2010, I spoke to a friend of mine, Kamau Amen Ra about Cassandre, and he volunteered to support her in her dream to become an accountant. He has been paying her tuition for a year now. I took myself out of the picture and the two of them have grown close.

For several months Kamau has been telling me he wants to get housing for Cassandre and her mom and grandmother. I got in touch with a friend of mine, Jean Yvon Kernizan, whose home was turned into a clinic days after the quake. He also started a school at his home to help the children recover from the trauma of the earthquake. I visited his school – or after-school program – when I was there last year as well. It is in the mountains. He funds everything out of pocket. No American dollars have touched his work and programs.

CIMO (SWAT) U.N. police drenched residents, including small children, with teargas in the huge Champ de Mars camp on Sept. 14 to put down an anti-MINUSTAH protest sparked by the video-recorded rape of a Haitian teenage boy by Uruguayan soldiers. – Photo: Swoan Parker, Reuters

These are two individual stories.

There is so much suffering in Haiti. One can assist organizations, but the need is so great, people like Cassandre and her blind grandmother and sickly mother are often left out of the loop.

It costs between $1,600 and $2,000 to pay for an apartment for a year in Port-au-Prince. I have raised $120 of the total cost. If 200 people hear my call and give $20, I can send Cassandre money to move her family this weekend. It is hurricane season, which means in the camps, there is lots of water and chaos – wind and debris – which makes an unstable situation even more precarious.

Anti-MINUSTAH protest UN police teargas Champ de Mars Port au Prince 091411 by Frank Thorp

Money can be sent

• to Kamau via PayPal: kamenra@lycos.com or

• to me: Wanda Sabir, P.O. Box 30756, Oakland, CA 94621.

I will keep everyone posted on the monies raised. My goal is to send her the $1,600 to $2,000 by Friday, Sept. 29, 2011, no later than Oct. 2, 2011 – 14 days exactly.

Here are recent notes from Cassandre:

Sept. 15 (four days ago)

Hello! How are you Wanda? The situation is really bad at Champ de Mars, yesterday it happened something terible in this camp, there is a group of bandits and a group of Minustha who come into the camp, they use fire arms to shoot, my family was at Champs de Mars, my mother could not bear, she had a heart attack, we had to transport her to the general hospital, it was very hard, my grandmother is blind, it was very hard for her to support that. We don’t know when these criminals go back to hurt people in the camp, we have no other place to go, we are forced to stay in the camp.

Cassandre’s ailing mother hangs out the wash in the Champ de Mars tent camp. Following the anti-MINUSTAH protest put down by police with teargas Sept. 14, she had a heart attack but is recovering. – Photo: Wanda Sabir

So I know you want to help my family. I ask you please to think about how you will do to help our family as soon as possible because we really need a safe place to live.

Sept. 17 (one day ago)

Hi Wanda, my Mom is not too bad thanks to God, she was in hospital but now she is at home, a Champs de Mars camp, we are obliged to return to the camp which is full of problems because we have nowhere else to go. You are our only hope.

Watch my video interview with Cassandre from last August:

Bay View Arts Editor Wanda Sabir can be reached at wsab1@aol.com. Visit her website at www.wandaspicks.com throughout the month for updates to Wanda’s Picks, her blog, photos and Wanda’s Picks Radio. Her shows are streamed live Wednesdays at 6-7 a.m. and Fridays at 8-10 a.m., can be heard by phone at (347) 237-4610 and are archived on the Afrikan Sistahs’ Media Network.

Martelly still unable to appoint new prime minister

NatashaR — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:41:43 +0000

by Wadner Pierre

This poster, saying “Victory to the People,” was plastered all over Haiti by Michelly after he won the election, from which Haiti’s largest party by far, Lavalas, was banned, by a record small number of eligible voters. – Photo: Wadner Pierre

Port au Prince (IPS) – Almost three months since he was sworn in as the country’s president, Michel J. Martelly has already attempted to appoint two prime ministers to guide his government. Bernard Gousse, a minister of justice under the Gérard Latortue dictatorship (2004-2006), and businessman Daniel Rouzier were both rejected by Haitian lawmakers.

Rouzier was rejected by the lower chamber over technicalities. Gousse was rejected by a group of 16 legislators in the Senate because of his appalling human rights record. Under Gousse, the jails were filled with political prisoners – mostly people from poor neighborhoods where there was strong support for ousted former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The country is now suffering because there is no prime minister to form a new government to apply the program of the new president. When he campaigned, Martelly promised to send all Haitian children to school for free. The Haitian people are waiting for him to deliver on his promise in September when schools reopen their doors.

Martelly needs to have a prime minister approved, a huge challenge without a majority in parliament, if he has any intention of fulfilling this promise. According to the Haitian Constitution, when the president does not have the majority in the parliament, he has to choose the prime minister by consulting the presidents of both chambers. Martelly has already missed two occasions to do so. Some people blame his chief of staff, Thierry Mayard Paul, for his failure, while others say Martelly’s advisers are at fault.

Lawmakers have often reminded the increasingly frustrated president that he was elected last March with only 700,000 votes out of the 4.5 million people who were eligible to vote.

Three weeks ago, a group close to Martelly headed by Georges Sassine and Jackson Desir threatened to launch an operation named “Operasyon Granmoun Pa Jwe” – “Operation Adult Don’t Play” – to force the parliament’s hand. They claim that they want a prime minister that can put the nation together. “But we need a prime minister who can reconcile the nation,” said Sassine. “We will not stop until the ratification of a new prime minister.”

This move resembles the one launched against Aristide’s second government – 2000-2004 – which the Haitian elite named “Caravane Espoir,” or “Hope Caravan.” This led to the 2004 coup. Some of Martelly’s supporters have asked him to dissolve parliament. The question is what is the real intention of “Operasyon Granmoun Pa Jwe”?

Among Martelly’s advisers is 29-year-old Nicolas Duvalier, the son of former dictator Jean Claude Duvalier, who returned to the country recently and faces criminal charges.

Legal threats have also been made against Aristide. They are rumored to be financed by a sum of 8 million euros that the French government has made available to Haiti’s Ministry of Justice. Gousse would have enthusiastically taken on that project. Martelly’s administration had taken away the government car given to President Aristide, but returned it to him after an outcry by Aristide supporters.

Sen. Moïse Jean Charles, one of the most outspoken pro-Aristide members of the group of 16 in the Senate, criticized the behavior of the president in attempting to impose his preferred prime minister. In 2004, Charles was the elected mayor of Commune Milot and was among those in Northern Haiti who opposed the coup.

People are asking where Martelly wants to take the country. They are increasingly wondering whether Martelly is a puppet of his chief of staff. “Thierry (Mayard Paul) is Martelly’s right hand and he influences the president’s decision-making a lot, but he could not be the country’s next prime minister. He will not make it through, I think,” said a man who does some work for some of Paul’s friends and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, the division amongst Martelly’s team has made things more difficult for him. On Saturday, Aug. 6, Nancy Rock said on her radio show, with Gousse as a guest, that someone in Martelly’s team has undermined the president’s choice. “This person worked against Rouzier and Gousse as well,” she added. Gousse and Rock admitted that there is division amongst Martelly’s peers, but they argued that this division is all about economic interests, not a problem of color or poor and rich as many people might have believed.

Rock advised Martelly to take the necessary steps to get rid of this person. “President Martelly needs to get rid of this guy,” she said. “I am not going to cite any names, but people know who this person is,” she added. But Martelly seems unable to get his staff together to choose the next prime minister.

According to the senator of the Southeast, Edwin Zenny, “People are trumpeting the names of two presidential advisers, Daniel Supplice and Wilson Laleau.” Agence Haitienne de Presse, or AHP, reported on Aug. 17 that the name of Martelly’s chief of staff was on the table.

The group of 16 supposedly met last Friday to plan a new strategy in the event that Martelly unilaterally designates another controversial figure for the job.

Popular Haitian photojournalist Wadner Pierre is senior staff photographer for the Maroon and Wolf magazines at Loyola University New Orleans, where he is currently studying, and publishes with Inter Press Service, where this story first appeared. Visit his website, haitianalysis.com, and his blogs, wadnerpierre.blogspot.com and dominionpaper.ca/weblogs/wadner_pierre. On The Journey of a Haitian Photojournalist, you are sure to find photos by Wadner that will print themselves indelibly on your heart and can be purchased and displayed for others to enjoy. Wadner can be reached at nwanpi@gmail.com.

Wave of illegal, senseless and violent evictions swells in Port au Prince

NatashaR — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 22:37:01 +0000

by Bill Quigley

Demanding “Justice for people living under tents!” homeless earthquake survivors living in Camp Django at Delmas 17, mainly women, lay down across Delmas to block the road on Aug. 1, protesting their forced eviction. During the peaceful protest, internally displaced people (IDPs) from five other camps came out to show solidarity. The protestors demanded that President Martelly keep his promises and respect their basic human rights. – Photo: Gaetantguevara

Mathias O is 34 years old. He is one of about 600,000 people still homeless from the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti. He lives with his wife and her 2-year-old under a homemade shelter made out of several tarps. They sleep on the rocky ground inside. The side tarp walls are reinforced by pieces of cardboard boxes taped together. Candles provide the only inside light at night. There is no running water. No electricity. They live near a canal and suffer from lots of mosquitoes. There are hundreds of families living in tents beside him. This is the third tent community he has lived in since the earthquake.

The earthquake made Mathias homeless when it crushed his apartment and killed his cousin and younger brother. He and his wife first stayed in a park next to St. Anne’s Catholic Church. Then the family moved to what they thought was a safer place, Sylvio Cator stadium. They put up a tent on the lawn inside the stadium and stayed there for several months. The authorities then moved them just outside of the stadium so the soccer team could practice.

They lived in a tent outside the stadium with 514 other families for over a year, until they were ordered to leave in July 2011. Each family was told they had to leave and were given 10,000 Goudes (about $250 in U.S. dollars) to assist in their relocation. Where did the 514 families go? No one knows for sure. About 150 families stayed together and live under tarps beside Mathias. Some used the money to build new tarp shelters elsewhere and some used it for food. The rest? No one knows. No one is keeping track.

When I asked what Mathias would like to say to the human rights community, he said: “The life of the people living in the tents is not a human life. Our human rights are not respected. No institutions are taking care of us; we are the forgotten. We want people to remember us and help us to have the human life we should have. It’s not our choice to live this way. The situation of life brought us here. We hope to have a normal life. But the hope is very far from us.”

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported Aug. 19, 2011, that there are about 594,800 people living in about 1,000 displacement camps in Haiti. Most want to leave but have nowhere to go. Nearly 8,000 people have been evicted in the last three months. Their report concludes by saying, “With nearly 600,000 internally displaced persons still in camps, the scale of Haiti’s homeless problem remains daunting.”

Complicating the problem is the increasing wave of forced evictions happening in Haiti. These are evictions without any legal process, often by police, frequently accompanied by violence.

Landowners use armed police and private security to carry out evictions and scare people away. They rarely go to court because they usually cannot prove they own the land. So they resort to brute force to overwhelm the families. Police and private security use guns, machetes, batons and bulldozers to push people out.

The administration of President Michel Martelly has apparently given a green light to widespread violent demolition of camps without any legal process. Though the administration announced plans to relocate families from six camps, nothing has happened.

The Haitian human rights law firm, Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI), reports that before June, they were receiving several threats of forced evictions per month. Since June, the threats increased to several per week. Now they are receiving several reports of forced evictions every day.

Landowners use armed police and private security to carry out evictions and scare people away. They rarely go to court because they usually cannot prove they own the land. So they resort to brute force. Police and private security use guns, machetes, batons and bulldozers to push people out.

Dozens of human rights activists called on the United Nations to condemn these illegal evictions and to make Haiti impose a moratorium on illegal evictions until there are realistic plans to house the families being uprooted.

Heavily armed police and MINUSTAH soldiers arrived on the scene, but unlike many other eviction confrontations, the Aug. 1 protest ended peacefully, perhaps because residents of many camps came together in solidarity. – Photo: Gaetantguevara

These evictions are in defiance of a ruling by the Inter American Commission on Human Rights, which issued precautionary measures asking Haiti to cease illegal evictions. On Nov. 18, 2010, the IACHR expressed concern over forced evictions of the displaced and sexual violence against women and girls. Specifically, the IACHR wrote Haiti asking the government to “offer those who have been illegally expelled from the camps a transfer to places that have minimum health and security conditions, and then transfer them if they so agree; guarantee that internally displaced persons have access to effective recourse before a court and before other competent authorities; implement effective security measures to safeguard the physical integrity of the inhabitants of the camps, guaranteeing especially the protection of women and children; train the security forces in the rights of displaced persons, especially their right not to be forcibly expelled from the camps; and ensure that international cooperation agencies have access to the camps.”

Residents recently surveyed by BAI and the University of San Francisco said money given to them upon eviction was insufficient to relocate or pay rent anywhere. Small grants worth about $250 are not enough to build even the most basic 12-by-10-foot shack, with plywood walls, a corrugated metal roof and concrete floor – leaving many of those evicted without any shelter except to go put up a tarp in another displacement camp. No wonder 35 percent of them reported being the victims of physical harm or threats of physical harm.

The following are recent examples of illegal forced evictions – all have occurred since Martelly became president.

On May 27, 2011, at 6 a.m., Haitian National Police wielding machetes and knives stormed a camp in the Delmas 3 neighborhood destroying about 200 makeshift tents and forcing people to flee, according to Jacqueline Charles of the Miami Herald. There was no court order of eviction.

In early June, Haitian National Police showed up and began destroying tarps and tents of hundreds of families camped at the intersection of Delmas and Airport Roads. The police fired shots and swung batons as people protested in front of their camp. This was done without legal authority.

Later in June, at another camp in Delmas 3, truckloads of agents armed with machetes descended on another camp and dismantled it. After the tents were destroyed, a bulldozer showed up and leveled what was left. This too was without any legal process.

In a midnight raid on July 3, 2011, police and private security forces completely destroyed tents of about 30 families in Camp Eric Jean-Baptiste in the Port au Prince suburb of Carrefour.

On July 18, 2011, Haitian National Police entered the displacement camp in the parking lot of Sylvio Cator sports stadium and destroyed the tents and belongings of 514 families. There was no lawful process. People were given about $250 to pay for new shelters. Many told human rights monitors that they did not want the money; they wanted to stay but accepted the money, as they had no other options. These illegal evictions were condemned by the U.N. Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights.

On July 27, 2011, members of the Haitian National Police arrested, assaulted and ransacked tents of internally displaced people protesting against the illegal eviction of dozens of families at Camp Django. Camp residents were given about $125 for their destroyed shelters.

So, what should be happening?

The Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, co-chaired by former U.S. President Bill Clinton, just pledged $78 million to fund a housing plan for 16 districts in Haiti. But, as Haiti Grassroots Watch reports, even if all the planned repairs and construction of 68,025 units takes place, that is only 22 percent of what is needed since there are over 300,000 families and 600,000 people living in camps.

It is time for the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, the U.N., the U.S. and the international community to stand up for the human rights of the hundreds of thousands of people like Mathias. Housing is a human right. Using force to evict homeless survivors of Haiti’s earthquake from one spot to make them homeless in another place is illegal, senseless and violent. Mathias and his family deserve much more.

Bill Quigley is a law professor and human rights advocate at Loyola University, New Orleans. He is a long time Haiti advocate in his work with the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. Vladimir Laguerre helped with this article. You can reach Bill at quigley77@gmail.com.

Is Haiti’s church hierarchy failing in its mission? Bishop Louis Kébreau’s immoral advice to Martelly

NatashaR — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 23:17:07 +0000

by Wadner Pierre

Bishop Louis Kebreau walking in a religious march Dec. 8, 2011. – Photo: Wadner Pierre

Did Bishop Louis Kébreau, president of the Haitian Episcopal Conference, call on Haitian President Martelly to be ruthless and dictatorial?

In an article published on Aug. 11 by the Haitian daily newspaper, Le Nouvelliste, Bishop Kébreau, a close friend of President Martelly, urged him to put his “Sweet Micky pants on” so as to govern the country. Martelly’s administration has essentially not even begun to function since Parliament refused to accept two of his selections for prime minister.

The upper echelons of the Catholic Church in Haiti and the Vatican have a deplorable history of backing repression. The Vatican, virtually alone in the world, recognized the Cedras military dictatorship of 1991-1994. Recent WikiLeaks have exposed the Vatican’s behind the scenes encouragement of U.S. efforts to undermine democracy in Haiti prior to the 2004 coup. After the coup, the Vatican openly applauded it by saying there was “nothing to regret” about Aristide’s ouster.

To defend his remarks, Bishop Kébreau said on Radio Magik 9 that he was misinterpreted and that there was “no question of repression, no question of dictatorship.” But he added, “If we continue to undress the president we will go nowhere.”

It is extremely unlikely that Bishop Kébreau will be punished by his superiors for his openly partisan intervention in Haitian politics. However, it was Bishop Kébreau himself who supported a letter to suspend the late Father Gerard Jean-Juste in his sacerdotal function in 2006 while imprisoned by the Latortue dictatorship, no less.

The Haitian people, who had fought fiercely for his freedom, welcome their beloved Father Jean-Juste on his release in 2004 from his first stint in prison (above) and again on Nov. 26, 2007, when the charges against him were finally dropped (below). Cruelly punished by both the Haitian government and the church, he was imprisoned again in 2005 when President Latortue feared he would run for president in the 2006 election and he was stripped of his role as pastor of St. Claire’s, where he had fed hundreds of children daily. In prison, he fell gravely ill with leukemia and was eventually released to seek medical treatment in Miami. But the church cut off his health insurance and he died in 2009. – Photo below: Wadner Pierre

Father Jean-Juste was a vocal supporter of Aristide and was suspending from celebrating mass as punishment for being political. While human rights groups around the world, including Amnesty International, called for Jean-Juste’s release, the Catholic Church in Haiti decided that even more punishment was justified.

None of this is surprising for anyone who has followed the involvement of the church in Haiti’s political affairs even before the country’s independence in 1804.

As a former altar boy, I am very disturbed by the declaration of someone of high profile in the church like Bishop Kébreau; but I am not surprised, because powerful clerics like him have always fought against a democratic government in Haiti. They have always been on the side of the elite – about 5 percent of the population.

In December of 2007, while celebrating the 65^th anniversary of the consecration of Haiti to Our Lady of Perpetual of Help, Bishop Kébreau made a vague statement urging Rene Preval – then president – to deal with “social injustice.” Of course, Bishop Kébreau did not identify the cause of this “injustice.”

May the leaders of the Catholic Church become, one day, promoters of social justice, not social injustice and despotism. Amen.

Popular Haitian photojournalist Wadner Pierre is senior staff photographer for the Maroon and Wolf magazines at Loyola University, New Orleans, where he is currently studying and publishes with Inter Press Service. Visit his website, haitianalysis.com, and his blogs, wadnerpierre.blogspot.com and dominionpaper.ca/weblogs/wadner_pierre. On The Journey of a Haitian Photojournalist, you are sure to find photos by Wadner that will print themselves indelibly on your heart and can be purchased and displayed for others to enjoy. Wadner can be reached at nwanpi@gmail.com.

This is the trailer for “Harvest of Hope,” a documentary by Kevin Pina that is essential for understanding the roots of the current crisis in Haiti. The film dramatically captures seminal moments in the history of Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the Lavalas movement that swept him from the priesthood into the presidency.

This is the Bay View’s caption for this little video posted May 30, 2009, three days after the tragic death of Father Jean-Juste: “Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste, known lovingly as Father Gerry, the great Haitian freedom fighter, the priest who practiced liberation theology, who fed hundreds of children daily, who regularly challenged presidents and popes and who would have been president of Haiti had he not been jailed, thanks the San Francisco Bay View newspaper for beating the drum to help set him free. He joined the ancestors May 27, 2009, and all who loved him must fight more fearlessly and love more boundlessly to fill the void.”

Bye-bye, MINUSTAH!

NatashaR — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 00:19:55 +0000

Editors’ note: Axis of Logic first published this article in English on Aug. 15, and the Bay View followed on Aug. 17. Due to requests from Haitian readers and others, Dady Chery has translated her essay into French. Her translation into French follows the English version. – Les Blough, Axis of Logic editor, and Mary Ratcliff, SF Bay View editor

Note aux lecteurs de français : Beaucoup d’entre vous ont demandé de lire cet essai en français. La traduction française suit au dessous de la version anglaise. – Axis of Logic

A Spanish translation by Fernando Moyano published by Desacato follows the French translation. – SF Bay View

by Dady Chery

A month after the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake that killed nearly over 300,000 people, survivors, huddling together in camps with sheets for shelter, little food or water and drenched by heavy rain, were getting no help from the thousands of MINUSTAH occupation troops and call for their ouster. – Photo: Haiti Information Project

As one of his first measures in office, Brazilian Defense Minister Celso Amorim plans to conclude Brazil’s participation in the notorious United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). Various sectors of the Brazilian government, including Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, agree with Mr. Amorim, who says that the important thing now is to formulate an exit strategy.

Mr. Amorim was sworn in on Thursday, Aug. 4, and only took office the following Monday, but as early as Saturday he held a meeting at the Presidential Palace with Brazil’s Army commanders and joint chiefs of staff to discuss a possible draw down of the troops. According to one participant in this meeting, there was a “convergence of opinion” about the Brazilian troops.

It is appropriate that the Brazilians should be first to leave Haiti. After all, the insertion of U.N. troops into the country began as a Brazilian project in the early days of Lula’s presidency. It was part of the campaign by Brazil to prove its worthiness in matters of world security so as to earn a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. Mr. Amorim, then minister of foreign affairs, was one of the main architects of Brazil’s participation.

The troops started arriving in June 2004, shortly after Aristide’s kidnapping, to buttress the illegal administration that followed the coup. The first MINUSTAH commander, a Brazilian, complained of the pressure to use violence and resigned his position by fall 2005. The second commander, another Brazilian, committed suicide by January 2006.

The force has continued to grow, with the Brazilian contingent now numbering 2,160 men, although in Brazil this military adventure has been controversial from the start. Mr. Amorim attributes his sudden change of heart to Haiti’s “growing economy and gradual return to democratic normalcy.”

There are many reasons why MINUSTAH should go, but Mr. Amorim’s justifications do not qualify for my top 10 list below.

MINUSTAH continually harasses and humiliates Haitians. MINUSTAH’s favorite activities include pepper spraying Haitians and capriciously confiscating drivers’ licenses and computers.
Common criminals in MINUSTAH enjoy immunity from prosecution. Though over 100 troops have been expelled from Haiti for child prostitution and related charges, MINUSTAH soldiers have enjoyed immunity for most of their crimes, including numerous rapes and the suffocation in August 2010 of a Haitian teenager working on a Nepalese MINUSTAH base.
MINUSTAH subverts democracy. Together with the U.S., Canada and France, MINUSTAH fixed elections that excluded 80 percent of the Haitian electorate and brought a Duvalierist, Michel Martelly, into power in May 2011.
MINUSTAH interferes in Haiti’s political affairs. Former MINUSTAH head Edmond Mulet recommended that criminal charges be brought against Haiti’s legitimate president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, so as to keep him illegally out of Haiti.
MINUSTAH serves as an occupation force. MINUSTAH troops, together with Haitian paramilitaries, ambushed and gunned down over 4,000 members of Fanmi Lavalas – Aristide’s party – soon after Aristide was deposed in 2004 in a coup plotted by the U.S., Canada, France and Haiti’s elite.
MINUSTAH has operated as a large anti-Aristide gang. MINUSTAH conducted numerous raids on slums such as Cité Soleil so as to kill civilians who supported Aristide. In some of these raids MINUSTAH soldiers fired tens of thousands of rounds at dwellings and schools. (See the video below.)
MINUSTAH troops showed spectacular cowardice after the earthquake of January 2010. During the first 36 hours after the earthquake, the troops hardly assisted Haitians and instead searched for each other.
MINUSTAH harbors vandals and vectors of disease. In October 2010, MINUSTAH introduced a cholera epidemic into Haiti. So far, the epidemic has killed over 5,900 Haitians. MINUSTAH covered up the fact that several Nepalese soldiers arrived in Haiti sick with cholera and still lies about its role in the epidemic. As recently as Aug. 6, 2011, MINUSTAH was continuing to dump its fecal matter in Haiti’s rivers.
The presence of U.N. troops on Haitian soil is illegal. Haiti’s MINUSTAH is the only U.N. force in a country that is not at war.
The Haitian people despise MINUSTAH. Haitians at home and abroad, young and old, rich and poor, have made it known that they want MINUSTAH out of Haiti. Common epithets for the troops are “Volè kabrit!” (Goat thief!), “Kakachwet!” (Shitter!), “Koléra!” and “Pédofil!”

The U.N. is regularly updated about MINUSTAH’s crimes, which are well known to the great majority of Mr. Amorim’s compatriots. All know that Haiti was better off in 2004 when the troops first entered the country than in the months preceding the earthquake and they have loudly objected to their country’s participation in a foreign occupation.

Brazilian Defense Minister Celso Amorim

An especially eloquent example was Ricardo Seitenfus, who lost his post as the Brazilian representative to the OAS in Haiti soon after speaking up in an interview last December. Mr. Seitenfus had this to say:

“The U.N. system currently in place to prevent disputes is inappropriate for Haiti. Haiti is not an international threat. We are not in the midst of a civil war. Haiti is not Iraq or Afghanistan … But it looks to me as if, on the international scene, Haiti is paying mainly for its proximity to the U.S.

“Haiti has long been an object of negative attention from the international system. It took the U.N. to coalesce this power and transform Haitians into prisoners of their own island.”

But the Brazilian calls to withdraw from Haiti have fallen on deaf ears. The real reasons for the coming withdrawal are to be found in the current Brazilian politico-economic situation and a recent ruling by a Dutch court.

Since 2004, Brazil’s taxpayers have spent over R$1 billion [R$ is the symbol for the Brazilian real; currently, $1 equals R$1.59] on MINUSTAH. Last year alone, maintenance of the Brazilian troops in Haiti cost R$ 426 million: R$ 140 million for annual costs and other expenditures plus R$ 286 million for humanitarian aid sent after an earthquake.

In principle, the U.N. should reimburse these expenses, but in recent years the reimbursements have amounted to only 16 percent of the payments made by the Brazilian government. In addition, the salaries of Brazil’s MINUSTAH troops have exceeded R$ 41 million per year – but these costs are excluded from Brazil’s expenses on the mission because these individuals would be entitled to their pay if they were in Brazil.

The Brazilian government has long known about this bloodletting, of course, but it has grit its teeth and maintained the arrangement as a political bribe to the U.S. in return for a seat on the Security Council. In more than seven years, this seat has not materialized.

As high as the current costs of MINUSTAH might appear, there will likely be more to pay. In a landmark decision last month, a Dutch court ruled the Netherlands government liable for the failure of its U.N. soldiers to protect three Bosnian Muslim men from being killed by Serbs during the 1995 Sebrenica massacre. Until now, U.N. soldiers accused of crimes had been merely discharged. This decision allows the possibility of suing the countries participating in U.N. forces for the crimes of their soldiers.

The people of Cap Haitien, Haiti’s second largest city, protest the U.N. for bringing the scourge of cholera to Haiti. Just this month, on Aug. 6 and 7, MINUSTAH was seen once again dumping feces into a river that supplies drinking water – this time the Guayamouc River near Hinche. – Photo: Ansel Herz

Given Brazil’s role in the formation of MINUSTAH, the Brazilian government might be liable for all of MINUSTAH’s crimes. In any case, Brazilian troops in Haiti stand accused of the murders of Aristide partisans and numerous sexual assaults.

The notorious 2006 Cité Soleil massacre involving these troops was captured on the video provided below. People killed by high powered rifles and M50s fired from helicopter gunships included children, pregnant women and unarmed men at 4 a.m. as they slept in their beds. Twenty-four-year-old Lelene Mertina was shot inside her home and survived but lost her 6-month-old baby.

A young schoolteacher was shot and killed inside his home but, while dying, said he was shot from a helicopter gunship. The U.N. was fully aware of who they were killing but denied it despite photographic evidence (see the video provided below). The MINUSTAH attacks were retribution for mounting massive demonstrations by the people who were demanding the return of Aristide to Haiti.

Some Brazilian hardliners, such as a member of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Campinas –Unicamp – Geraldo Cavagnari, continue to say that “the troops should stay put because there is no risk and there are many things in play.”

Everybody understands this to mean that the Security Council seat might yet come and, besides, Haitians are harmless, so why not continue to parasitize them? Retired Brazilian Gen. and former MINUSTAH Cmdr. August Heleno has been more pointed in his warning to Amorim against giving the armed forces a “left-wing ideological imprint.”

The week before the U.N. attack there were several huge demonstrations in Cité Soleil demanding the return of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Residents believe that the U.N. justification for the attack, to arrest a base of kidnappers, was really a cover for collective punishment against the community for continuing demonstrations like these. Photo above: Haiti Proges, Photo below: Haiti Action (La semaine avant l'attaque de l'ONU il ya eu plusieurs grandes manifestations à Cité Soleil demandant le retour du président Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Les résidents croient que la justification de l'ONU pour l'attaque, l'arrestation d'une base de ravisseurs, était vraiment une couverture pour une punition collective contre la communauté pour des démonstrations comme celles-ci. - Action Haïti)

One suspects that Cavagnari and Heleno are unaware of the Dutch court decision or the fact that Haitians are not being so inoffensive these days. The introduction of cholera into the country immediately after the murder of 16-year-old Gerard Jean Gilles ignited such fierce battles between Haitians and U.N. troops that the U.N. had to call a curfew for its troops.

Countless protests have taken place at home and abroad, and the protest calls are gradually changing to demands for reparation. One proposal is that MINUSTAH’s current budget of $2.5 million per day should go toward compensating the cholera victims and providing potable water to Haitians. As we say in Haiti, “Ayibobo!” (Amen).

Dutch courts aside, in Brazil the political winds are now blowing in an entirely different direction. Reactionary voices like those of Heleno and Cavagnari are quieting down as the relatives of murdered leftists increasingly pressure their country to create a Truth Commission to investigate and punish the crimes of Brazil’s 21-year dictatorship. Already, three military commanders have been forced to resign. Indeed, Mr. Amorim owes his position partly to the ditherings of former Defense Minister Nelson Jobim about the Truth Commission.

Gone are the days when the wealthy owners of Brazil’s apparel companies such as ABIT and AFRABAS held their country’s coffers and politicians with such a firm grip that they could commandeer thousands of their citizens to guard their sweatshops abroad.

Only months before the earthquake, delegations of Brazil’s rich strutted along Port-au-Prince’s waterfront, together with Haitian sweatshop magnate Fritz Mevs and former U.S. President Clinton, dreaming of possible sites for their future West Indies Free Zone. But things fell apart since the earthquake, not only in Haiti but all around. The Brazilian Defense Ministry is being forced to trim its budget because the country’s growth has slowed.

Those of us who want to see Haiti regain its independence would do well to support the Brazilian efforts toward a Truth Commission and all projects everywhere to bring U.N. soldiers to account for their crimes. The search for truth has so far succeeded where much else has failed.

In Haiti, where “growth” typically means everything from sweatshop labor to slavery and “democracy” means everything from fixed elections to outright occupation, we could do with a little less growth and democracy and a little more truth right now.

Since Mr. Amorim seems to be at a loss for an exit strategy, I would like to suggest one: How about packing the bags of MINUSTAH’s troops, trucking them to Toussaint Louverture Airport and putting them on the next TAM flights to Rio?

The departure of the Brazilian troops should spell the beginning of the end for MINUSTAH. The Brazilians are its largest contingent, with more than a quarter of the total number of troops.

When Aristide returned to Haiti on March 18, 2011, huge crowds flooded into the grounds around his home, scaling the walls and covering the roof. Having spent weeks cleaning and restoring the house, they neither damaged nor took anything, simply wanting to show their love. – Photo: Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste (Lorsqu’Aristide est revenu en Haiti, des foules immenses se sont presentées tout autour de chez lui et ont escaladé les murs et couvert le toit de sa maison.)

The rest come from Argentina, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, Ecuador, France, Guatemala, Japan, Jordan, Nepal, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, the U.S. and Uruguay.

Since many of the crimes by these troops are well known and can be readily documented for lawsuits, these countries too will soon discover that their “peacekeeping” costs have become burdensome.

One is tempted to ask why South American states with presumably leftist and nationalistic governments, like Bolivia and Ecuador, support the occupation of Haiti. After all, Cuba and Venezuela have amply demonstrated how much more can be achieved by contributing medical doctors and public health workers, instead of soldiers, to Haiti.

But not everything needs to be said during this leave taking. It is better to show the remaining MINUSTAH members the door and advise they not slam it on their way out.

Dady Chery grew up at the heart of an extended working-class family in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She emigrated to New York when she was 14 and since then has traveled throughout the world, living in Europe and several North American cities. She writes in English, French and her native Créole and holds a doctorate. She can be reached at dc@dadychery.org. This story first appeared in Axis of Logic, where Chery is a columnist.

FRENCH TRANSLATION

Bye-bye, MINUSTAH!

par Dady Chery

Comme l’un de ses premières mesures, Celso Amorim, le Ministre de la Défense en Brésil envisage de conclure la participation du Brésil à la Mission des Nations Unies pour Stabilisation en Haïti (MINUSTAH). Des secteurs différents du gouvernement brésilien, y compris le ministère brésilien des Affaires étrangères sont d’accord avec M. Amorim, qui dit que l’important est maintenant de formuler une stratégie de sortie.

M. Amorim a prêté serment le jeudi 4 août et n’a pris ses fonctions que le lundi suivant, mais dès le samedi, il a tenu une réunion au palais présidentiel avec les commandants de l’Armée du Brésil et ces Joint Chiefs of Staff pour discuter un prélèvement de troupes. Selon un participant à cette réunion, il y avait une “convergence de vues” sur les soldats brésiliens.

Il est normal que les Brésiliens soivent les premiers à quitter Haïti. Après tout, l’insertion des troupes de l’ONU dans le pays a commencé comme un projet brésilien dans les premiers jours de la présidence de Lula. Cela faisait partie d’une campagne par le Brésil pour prouver sa compétence en matière de sécurité mondiale afin de gagner un siège permanent au Conseil de Sécurité de l’ONU. M. Amorim, alors ministre des Affaires étrangères, a été l’un des architectes principaux de la participation du Brésil.

Les troupes ont commencé à arriver en Juin 2004, à peine un mois après l’enlèvement d’Aristide, pour étayer l’administration illégale qui a suivi le coup d’Etat. Le premier commandant de la MINUSTAH, un Brésilien, s’était plaint de la pression à utiliser la violence et a démissionné de son poste en automne 2005. Le deuxième commandant, un autre Brésilien, s’est suicidé en Janvier 2006. La force a continué de croître, avec un contingent brésilien aujourd’hui de 2160 hommes, malgré qu’au Brésil cette aventure militaire a été controversée dès le début. M. Amorim attribue son changement soudain à la “croissance économique d’Haiti et son retour à une normalité démocratique.”

Il y a plusieurs raisons pour lesquelles la MINUSTAH devrait partir, mais les justifications de M. Amorim ne seraint pas admis à mon liste des dix premieres ci-dessous.

La MINUSTAH harcèle continuellement et humilie les Haïtiens. Activités favorites de la MINUSTAH comprennent attaquer les Haïtiens avec le spray au piment et confisquer capricieusement leurs permis de conduire et leurs ordinateurs.
Les criminels ordinaires de la MINUSTAH bénéficient de l’immunité. Bien plus que de 100 soldats ont été expulsés d’Haïti pour la prostitution des enfants et d’autres crimes liés à cela. Les soldats de la MINUSTAH ont bénéficié d’une immunité pour la plupart de leurs crimes, y compris de nombreux viols et l’étouffement d’un adolescent haïtien qui travaillait sur un camp népalais en août 2010.
La MINUSTAH subvertit la démocratie. Des élections organisées par les Etats Unis, le Canada, la France, et la MINUSTAH ont exclu 80% de l’électorat haïtien et ont rapporté un duvaliériste, M. Michel Martelly, au pouvoir en mai 2011.
La MINUSTAH interfère dans les affaires politiques d’Haïti. L’ancien chef de la MINUSTAH, Edmond Mulet a recommandé des accusations criminelles contre le président légitime d’Haïti, M. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, afin de le garder illégalement hors d’Haïti.
La MINUSTAH constitue une force d’occupation. Des soldats de la MINUSTAH, en collaboration avec des paramilitaires haïtiens, ont abattu dans une embuscade plus de 4.000 membres de la Fanmi Lavalas (le parti d’Aristide), peu après qu’Aristide ait été renversé en 2004 par un coup organisé par les États-Unis, le Canada, la France, et l’élite haïtienne.
La MINUSTAH a fonctionné comme une grande bande anti-Aristide. La MINUSTAH a mené de nombreuses attaques sur des bidonvilles comme Cité Soleil, afin de tuer des gens qui soutenaient Aristide. Dans certains de ces attaques, les soldats de la MINUSTAH ont tiré des dizaines de milliers de tours sur des logements et des écoles. (Voir la vidéo ci-dessous.)
Les soldats de la MINUSTAH a montré une lâcheté spectaculaire après le séisme du Janvier 2010. Au lier d’aider des Haïtiens pendant les premières 36 heures après le séisme, ces soldats se sont recherchés les uns les autres.
La MINUSTAH porte des vandales et des vecteurs de maladies. En Octobre 2010, la MINUSTAH a introduit une épidémie de choléra en Haïti. Jusqu’à présent, l’épidémie qui a tué plus de 5900 Haïtiens continue. La MINUSTAH a dissimulé le fait que plusieurs soldats népalais sont arrivés malades en Haïti avec le choléra et continue encore à nier son rôle dans l’épidémie. Même le 6 août 2011, la MINUSTAH continuait à déverser ses matières fécales dans les rivières d’Haïti.
La présence de soldats de l’ONU sur le sol haïtien est illégale. La MINUSTAH en Haïti est la seule force de l’ONU dans un pays qui n’est pas en guerre.
Le peuple haïtien dédaigne la MINUSTAH. Haïtiens à l’étranger ou chez eux, jeunes et vieux, riches et pauvres, ont fait bien savoir qu’ils veulent que la MINUSTAH se retire d’Haïti. Épithètes communs pour les soldats sont “Volè Kabrit!” (Voleur de chèvre!), “Kakachwet!” (cacateur!), “Koléra!” et “Pédofil!”

L’ONU est régulièrement mis à jour sur les crimes de la MINUSTAH, qui sont bien connus pour la grande majorité des compatriotes de M. Amorim. Tous savent qu’Haïti était meilleure en 2004 quand les premièrs soldats entraient dans le pays que dans les mois précédant le tremblement de terre, et les brésiliens se sont bruyamment opposés à la participation de leur pays dans une occupation étrangère. Un exemple particulièrement éloquent est celui de M. Ricardo Seitenfus, qui a perdu son poste comme Représentant du Brésil auprès de l’OEA en Haïti peu après avoir elevé sa voix dans une interview en Décembre. M. Seitenfus avait ceci à dire:

“Le système des Nations Unies actuellement en place pour éviter les conflits est inapproprié pour Haïti. Haïti n’est pas une menace internationale. Nous ne sommes pas en guerre civile. Haïti n’est pas l’Irak ou l’Afghanistan …. Mais il me semble que, sur la scène internationale, Haïti souffre principalement de sa proximité aux Etats-Unis Haïti et a été pour longtemps un objet de l’attention négative du système international. Il a fallu l’ONU pour transformer les Haïtiens en prisonniers de leur île.”

Mais les appels des brésiliens à retirer leur soldats d’Haïti ne se sont pas entendus. Les vraies raisons pour le retrait à venir se trouvent dans la situation politico-économique brésilienne et une décision récente d’un tribunal néerlandais.

Les contribuables des Brésiliens depuis 2004 pour la MINUSTAH ont dépassé R $ 1 milliard de reals. L’an dernier seulement l’entretien des soldats brésiliens en Haïti a coûté R $ 426 millions: R $ 140 millions pour les coûts annuels et d’autres dépenses, plus R $ 286 millions pour l’aide humanitaire envoyée après le séisme. En principe, l’ONU devrait rembourser ces dépenses, mais ces dernières années les remboursements ont atteint seulement 16% des versements effectués par le gouvernement brésilien. En outre, le salaire des soldats brésiliens de la MINUSTAH ont dépassé R $ 41 millions par an, mais ces coûts sont exclus des dépenses du Brésil sur la mission parce que ces gens auraient droit à leurs salaires s’ils étaient au Brésil. Le gouvernement brésilien a bien sûr compris depuis longtemps cette saignement, mais il a serré ses dents et maintenu l’arrangement comme un pot de vin politique aux États-Unis en échange pour un siège au Conseil de Sécurité de l’ONU. En plus de sept ans, ce siège ne s’est pas matérialisé.

Si le coût actuel de la MINUSTAH parait élevé, il y aura probablement plus à payer. Dans une décision historique le mois dernier, un tribunal néerlandais a conclu que le gouvernement néerlandais est responsable de l’échec de ses soldats de l’ONU à protéger trois hommes musulmans de Bosnie qui furent tués par les Serbes pendant le massacre Sebrenica en 1995. Jusqu’à présent, les soldats de l’ONU qui sont accusés de crimes sont simplement rejetés et renvoyés chez eux. Cette décision permet de poursuivre les pays participant à des forces de l’ONU pour les crimes de leurs soldats. Compte tenu du rôle du Brésil dans la formation de la MINUSTAH, le gouvernement brésilien pourrait être responsable de tous les crimes de la MINUSTAH. En tout cas, les soldats brésiliens en Haïti sont accusés de meurtres de partisans d’Aristide et de nombreuses agressions sexuelles.

La ville de Cap Haïtien, la deuxième ville d’Haïti. La protestation est dirigée contre les Nations Unies pour mettre fin au fléau du choléra en Haïti. Plus tôt ce mois-ci, le 6 et 7 août, la MINUSTAH a encore une autre fois versé des excréments dans une rivière qui donnait de l’eau potable – cette fois-ci la rivière Hinche Guayamouc.

Le tristement célèbre massacre du Cité Soleil en 2006 impliquant ces troupes a été capturé sur la vidéo ci-dessous. Des gens tués par des fusils de haute tension et M50 tirés des hélicoptères de combat incluaient des enfants, des femmes enceintes, et des hommes non armés à 4 heures du matin alors qu’ils dormaient dans leurs lits. Mertina Lélène une femme enceinte et agée de 24 ans a été abattue à l’intérieur de sa maison et a survécu, mais elle a perdu son bébé de 6 mois. Un jeune instructeur a été tué chez lui, mais en mourant il a dit qu’il a été fusillé d’un hélicoptère de combat. L’ONU était pleinement conscient de ce qui ce passait, mais il a nié tuer, en dépit des preuves photographiques. (Voir la vidéo ci-dessous.) Ces attaques ont été une rétribution de la MINUSTAH pour des grandes manifestations par les gens qui demandaient le retour d’Aristide en Haïti.

Certains extrémistes brésiliens, comme M. Geraldo Cavagnari, un membre du Centre des Etudes Strategiques à l’Université de Campinas (Unicamp), continuent de dire que “les soldats doivent rester sur place car il n’y a pas de risque, et il y a beaucoup de choses en jeu.”

Tout le monde comprend que cela signifie que le siège du Conseil de Sécurité puisse encore venir, et d’ailleurs, les Haïtiens sont inoffensifs, alors pourquoi ne pas continuer à les parasiter? M. Augusto Heleno, un général retraité brésilien et ancien commandant de la MINUSTAH, a été plus pointu dans son avertissement à M. Amorim de ne pas donner aux forces armées une “empreinte idéologique de gauche.” On soupçonne que Cavagnari et Heleno ne sont pas au courant de la décision du tribunal néerlandais, ou le fait que Les Haïtiens ne sont pas si inoffensif ces jours ci. L’introduction du choléra dans le pays immédiatement après le meurtre de Gérard Jean-Gilles, un garçon de 16 ans, a enflammé des batailles si féroces entre les Haïtiens et les soldats de l’ONU que l’ONU a dû appeler un couvre-feu pour ses soldats. D’innombrables manifestations ont eu lieu en Haïti et à l’étranger, et les appels de protestation changent progressivement à des demandes de réparation. Une proposition est que le budget actuel de la MINUSTAH de 2,5 millions de dollars par jour devrait aller vers l’indemnisation des victimes du choléra et pour fournir de l’eau potable aux Haïtiens. < > Comme on dit en Haïti, “Ayibobo!” (Amen!)

Tribunaux néerlandais à part, au Brésil, le vent politique souffle maintenant dans une direction totalement différente. Les voix réactionnaires comme ceux de Heleno et Cavagnari s’apaisent de plus and plus que les familles des gauchistes assassinés portent du pression sur leur pays pour créer une Commission de la Vérité pour enquêter et punir les crimes qui ont eu lieu au Brésil pendant ces 21 ans de dictature. Déjà trois commandants militaires ont été forcés de démissionner. En effet, M. Amorim doit sa position aux hésitations de l’ancien ministre de la Défense Nelson Jobim sur la Commission de la Vérité.

Finie l’époque où les propriétaires riches d’entreprises textiles du Brésil, comme ABIT et AFRABAS tenaient les coffres de leur pays et les politiciens avec une telle prise qu’ils pouvaient réquisitionner des milliers de leurs citoyens à garder leurs ateliers de misère à l’étranger. Juste quelques mois avant le séisme, des délégations des riches du Brésil pavanait au long du secteur riverain de Port-au-Prince, avec M. Fritz Mevs, un propriétaires d’ateliers de misère en Haïti, et l’ancien président américain Bill Clinton, rêvant de sites pour leur zone de libre échange aux antilles. Mais tout s’est écroulé depuis le tremblement de terre, non seulement en Haïti, mais partout. Le ministère de la Défense brésilien est contraint à réduire son budget, car la croissance du pays a ralenti.

Ceux d’entre nous qui veulent voir Haïti regagner son indépendance feraient bien de soutenir les efforts du Brésil vers une Commission de la Vérité et tous les projets du monde entier pour punir les soldats de l’ONU pour leurs crimes. La vérité a jusqu’ici réussi là où le reste a échoué. En Haïti, où la “croissance” signifie l’esclavage, et la “démocratie” des élections prévues pour une occupation etrangère, il serait mieux d’avoir un peu moins de croissance et démocratie, et un peu plus de vérité.

M. Amorim parait ne pas savoir comment sortir ses soldats d’Haiti. Je voudrais suggérer cette stratégie de sortie: l’emballage des sacs de vos soldats de la MINUSTAH, leur camionnage à l’aéroport Toussaint Louverture, et leur renvoyage à Rio par les permiers vols du TAM?

Le départ des soldats brésiliens devrait signifier la fin de la MINUSTAH. Les Brésiliens sont les plus nombreux d’entre eux, avec plus d’un quart du total des soldats.

Le reste provient de l’Argentine, la Bolivie, le Canada, le Chili, l’Equateur, la France, le Guatemala, le Japon, la Jordanie, le Népal, le Paraguay, le Pérou, les Philippines, la Corée du Sud, le Sri Lanka, les États-Unis, et l’Uruguay.

Les crimes de ces soldats sont bien connus et peuvent être facilement documentés pour les poursuivre, and leurs pays vont bientôt découvrir l’augmentation des coûts pour leurs soldats.

On est tenté de se demander pourquoi des pays sud-américains avec des gouvernements de gauche et nationalistes, comme la Bolivie et l’Equateur soutiennent l’occupation d’Haïti. Après tout, le Cuba et la Venezuela ont amplement démontré ce qu’on peut réalisé en Haïti avec des médecins et travailleurs de la santé publique, au lieu des soldats. Mais il n’est pas necessaire de tout dire pendant cette separation. Il est préférable simplement de montrer la porte aux membres de la MINUSTAH et leur conseiller de ne pas le claquer en partant.

Lire biographie, essais, poêmes et autres traductions par l’auteur haïtien, Dady Chery à l’Axis of Logic. Contactez l’auteur.

© Droit d’auteur 2011 par AxisofLogic.com. Ce matériel est disponible pour la réédition tant que réimpressions si une copie verbatim de l’article dans son intégralité est inclue, en respectant son intégrité. Les réimpressions doivent citer l’auteur et Axis of Logic comme la source originale, y compris un “lien direct” à l’article. Merci!

SPANISH TRANSLATION

Bye-bye, MINUSTAH!

Por Dady Chery

Traducido por Fernando Moyano

Posta Porteña

Como una de sus primeras medidas de gobierno, el ministro de Defensa brasileño Celso Amorim tiene previsto concluir la participación de Brasil en la notoria Misión de Estabilización de Naciones Unidas en Haití (MINUSTAH). Diversos sectores del gobierno brasileño, incluyendo el Ministerio brasileño de Relaciones Exteriores están de acuerdo con Amorim, quien dice que lo importante ahora es la formulación de una estrategia de salida.

Amorim tomó juramento el jueves, 4 de agosto y recién asumió el cargo el lunes siguiente, pero ya el sábado tuvo una reunión en el Palacio Presidencial con los comandantes y jefes de Estado Mayor del Ejército de Brasil para discutir un posible descenso del nivel de las tropas. De acuerdo con uno de los participantes en esta reunión, hubo una “convergencia de opiniones” acerca de las tropas brasileñas.

Lo más conveniente es que brasileños sean los primeros en salir de Haití. Después de todo la inserción de tropas de la ONU en el país comenzó como un proyecto de Brasil en los primeros días de la presidencia de Lula. Fue parte de la campaña de Brasil para demostrar su solvencia en materia de seguridad en el mundo con el fin de obtener un asiento permanente en el Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU. Amorim, entonces ministro de Relaciones Exteriores, fue uno de los principales arquitectos de la participación de Brasil.

Las tropas comenzaron a llegar en junio de 2004, poco después del secuestro de Aristide, para reforzar la administración ilegal que siguió al golpe. El primer comandante de la MINUSTAH, un brasileño, se quejó de la presión que se les hacía de recurrir a la violencia y renunció a su cargo en el otoño de 2005. El segundo comandante, también de Brasil, se suicidó en enero de 2006.

La fuerza ha continuado creciendo, con el contingente brasileño que ahora suman 2.160 hombres, aunque en Brasil esta aventura militar ha sido polémico desde el principio. Amorim atribuye su repentino cambio de humor sobre Haití al “crecimiento de la economía y el retorno gradual a la normalidad democrática”.

Hay muchas razones para qué la MINUSTAH deba irse, pero las justificaciones de Amorim no están en la lista de las 10 primeras, para mí, a saber:

La MINUSTAH continuamente acosa y humilla a los haitianos. Sus actividades favoritas incluyen rociar con gas pimienta a los haitianos y confiscar caprichosamente licencias de conducir y computadoras.
En la MINUSTAH los delincuentes comunes disfrutan de impunidad. A pesar de más de que 00 soldados han sido expulsados de Haití por prostitución infantil y cargos relacionados, los soldados de la MINUSTAH tienen impunidad para la mayoría de sus delitos, incluidas violaciones numerosas y la asfixia en agosto de 2010 de un adolescente haitiano que trabaja en una base de Nepal de la MINUSTAH.
La MINUSTAH subvierte la democracia. Junto con los EE.UU., Canadá y Francia, las elecciones la MINUSTAH decidió la exclusión del 80 por ciento del electorado haitiano, y puso a un duvalierista, Michel Martelly, en el poder en mayo de 2011.
La MINUSTAH interfiere en los asuntos políticos de Haití. El ex jefe de la MINUSTAH, Edmond Mulet, recomienda que se mantengan los cargos penales en contra del presidente legítimo de Haití, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a fin de mantenerlo ilegalmente fuera de Haití.
La MINUSTAH actúa como una fuerza de ocupación. Tropas de la MINUSTAH, junto con los paramilitares haitianos, han emboscado y asesinado a más de 4.000 miembros de Fanmi Lavalas – el partido de Aristide – poco después de que Aristide fue depuesto en 2004 en un golpe de Estado urdido por los EE.UU., Canadá, Francia y la elite de Haití.
La MINUSTAH ha operado como un destacamento más de las pandillas anti-Aristide. La MINUSTAH llevó a cabo numerosas redadas en barrios pobres como Cité Soleil para matar a los civiles que apoyaban a Aristide. En algunos de estos incursiones los soldados de la MINUSTAH dispararon a decenas de miles de personas en las viviendas y escuelas. (Vea el vídeo en:
Tropas de la MINUSTAH mostraron una espectacular cobardía después del terremoto de enero de 2010. Durante las primeras 36 horas después del terremoto, las tropas no prestaron asistencia a haitianos, en vez de ello se ocuparon en perseguirlos uno a uno.
La MINUSTAH introduce vándalos y vectores de enfermedad. En octubre de 2010, la MINUSTAH ocasionó una epidemia de cólera en Haití. Hasta el momento, la epidemia ha matado a más de 5.900 haitianos. La MINUSTAH encubrió el hecho de que varios soldados nepaleses llegaron a Haití enfermos con cólera y todavía sigue mintiendo sobre su papel en la epidemia. Incluso ahora, el 06 de agosto 2011, la MINUSTAH sigue volcado su materia fecal en los ríos de Haití.
La presencia de tropas de la ONU en suelo haitiano es ilegal. La MINUSTAH en Haití es la única fuerza de la ONU en un país que no está en guerra.
El pueblo haitiano desprecia a la MINUSTAH. Los Haitianos en el país y en el extranjero, jóvenes y viejos, ricos y pobres, han hecho saber que no quieren a la MINUSTAH en Haití. Epítetos comunes para las tropas son “Vole kabrit” (ladrón de cabras!), “Kakachwet” (Cagador!), “Kolera” y “Pédofil!”

La ONU está al tanto de los crímenes de la MINUSTAH, que son bien conocidos por la gran mayoría de los compatriotas del Sr. Amorim. Todos ellos saben que Haití estaba en mejor situación en 2004 cuando las tropas entraron por primera vez el país, que en los meses anteriores al terremoto, y tienen una fuerte oposición a la participación de su país en una ocupación extranjera.

Un ejemplo especialmente elocuente fue Ricardo Seitenfus, quien perdió su puesto como representante de Brasil ante la OEA en Haití poco después de hablar en una entrevista el pasado mes de diciembre. Seitenfus dijo lo siguiente:

“El actual sistema de Naciones Unidas para evitar conflictos no es apropiado para Haití. Haití no es una amenaza internacional. No estamos en medio de una guerra civil. Haití no es Irak o Afganistán … Pero a mí me parece como si en la escena internacional, Haití estuviese pagando por su proximidad a los EE.UU. Haití ha sido objeto de una atención negativa por parte del sistema internacional. Se usó a las Naciones Unidas para formar una coalición de poderes y transformar los haitianos en prisioneros en su propia isla. “

Sin embargo, los llamados para que Brasil se retirase de Haití han caído en oídos sordos. Las verdaderas razones de la próxima retirada se encuentran en la situación político-económica brasileña actual y en un reciente fallo de un tribunal holandés.

Desde 2004, los contribuyentes de Brasil han tenido que pagar más de mil millones de Reales [600 millones de dólares] para gastarlos en la MINUSTAH. Sólo el año pasado, el mantenimiento de las tropas brasileñas en Haití costó R $ 426 millones, 140 millones los costos anuales y otros gastos, más 286 millones para la ayuda humanitaria enviada después del terremoto.

En principio, la ONU debería reembolsar estos gastos, pero en los últimos años los reembolsos ascendieron a sólo el 16 por ciento de los pagos efectuados por el gobierno brasileño. Además, los sueldos de las tropas de la MINUSTAH de Brasil han superado los R $ 41 millones por año – pero estos costos no se cuentan en los gastos de la misión brasileña porque estas personas igual tendrían derecho a su salario si estuviesen en Brasil.

El gobierno brasileño ha sabido todo sobre este derramamiento de sangre, por supuesto, pero tiene una venda en los ojos y mantiene el acuerdo, un soborno político de los EE.UU. a cambio de un asiento en el Consejo de Seguridad. En más de siete años, esta plaza no se ha materializado.

Aun siendo tan alto como el costo actual de la MINUSTAH, es probable que haya que pagar más. En una decisión histórica el mes pasado, un tribunal holandés dictaminó que el gobierno de los Países Bajos fue responsable del incumplimiento de sus soldados de la ONU en proteger a tres hombres musulmanes bosnios de ser asesinados por los serbios durante la masacre de Sebrenica 1995. Hasta ahora, las acusaciones contra soldados de la ONU por sus delitos han sido pasados por alto.

Esta decisión abre la posibilidad de demandar a los países que participan en las fuerzas de la ONU por los crímenes de sus soldados.

El pueblo de Cap Haitien, la segunda ciudad más grande de Haití, la protesta es contra las Naciones Unidas para acabar con el flagelo del cólera en Haití. Este mismo mes, el 6 y 7 de agosto, la MINUSTAH se vio una vez más vertiendo las heces en un río que abastece de agua potable – esta vez el río Guayamouc cerca de Hinche.

Teniendo en cuenta el papel de Brasil en la integración de la MINUSTAH, el gobierno brasileño podría ser responsable de todos los crímenes de la MINUSTAH. En cualquier caso, las tropas brasileñas en Haití están acusados de los asesinatos de los partidarios de Aristide y numerosas agresiones sexuales.

La tristemente célebre masacre de 2006 Cité Soleil con participación de estas tropas fue captada en video (ver: ). Personas asesinadas por fusiles de alta potencia y M50S disparados desde helicópteros de combate, incluidos niños, mujeres embarazadas y hombres desarmados a las 4 am mientras dormían en sus camas. Mertina Lelene de veinticuatro años recibió un disparo en su casa y sobrevivió, pero perdió su bebé de seis meses de edad.

La semana antes del ataque de Naciones Unidas había varios grandes manifestaciones en Cité Soleil exigiendo el retorno del derrocado presidente Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Los residentes creen que la justificación de “arrestar a una base de secuestradores” era una excusa para un castigo colectivo contra la comunidad por manifestaciones como éstas.

La introducción del cólera en el país ocurrió justo después del asesinato Gilles Gerard Jean de 16 años de edad, que desencadenó feroces batallas entre haitianos y tropas de la ONU. Innumerables protestas han tenido lugar en el país y el extranjero, y se están transformando en demandas de reparación. Una propuesta es que el presupuesto actual de la MINUSTAH de $ 2,5 millones por día se destine a la indemnización de las víctimas del cólera y el suministro de agua potable a los haitianos. Como decimos en Haití: “Ayibobo” (Amén).

En Brasil los vientos políticos están soplando en dirección completamente diferente a las voces reaccionarias, junto con la presión de los familiares de los asesinados en los 21 años de la dictadura, que presionan para crear una Comisión de la Verdad para investigar y castigar los crímenes. Ya hay tres mandos militares se han visto obligados a renunciar. De hecho, Amorim debe su posición en parte a la resistencia del ex ministro de Defensa, Nelson Jobim, a la Comisión de la Verdad.

Aquellos de nosotros que queremos ver a Haití recuperar su independencia debemos apoyar los esfuerzos de Brasil hacia una Comisión de la Verdad y todos los proyectos en todas partes para que soldados de la ONU den cuenta de sus crímenes.

En Haití, donde “crecimiento” significa trabajo esclavo y “democracia” elecciones fijadas por la ocupación directa, queremos hoy un poco menos de “crecimiento” y un poco más de democracia y verdad.

Si Amorim está buscando una estrategia de salida, me gustaría sugerirle: ¿Qué hay neter las tropas de la MINUSTAH en bolsas de embalaje de, transportarlas por carretera al aeropuerto Toussaint Louverture y mandarlas a Río en los vuelos de TAM?

La salida de las tropas brasileñas debe significar el principio del fin de la MINUSTAH. Los brasileños son su mayor contingente, con más de una cuarta parte del número total de tropas.

El resto proviene de Argentina, Bolivia, Canadá, Chile, Ecuador, Francia, Guatemala, Japón, Jordania, Nepal, Paraguay, Perú, Filipinas, Corea del Sur, Sri Lanka, los EE.UU. y Uruguay. Como muchos de los crímenes cometidos por estas tropas son bien conocidas y pueden ser fácilmente documentados en juicios, estos países también descubrirán pronto que su “mantenimiento de la paz” se ha convertido en una carga.

Uno se puede preguntar por qué los países sudamericanos con gobiernos supuestamente de izquierda y nacionalistas, como Bolivia y Ecuador, apoyan la ocupación de Haití. Después de todo, Cuba y Venezuela han demostrado ampliamente cuánto más se puede lograr mediante la contribución de médicos y trabajadores de salud pública, en vez de soldados, a Haití.

Pero no todo tiene que ser dicho en esta despedida. Es mejor mostrarles la puerta a los miembros restantes de la MINUSTAH y a pedirles que no den un portazo a su salida.

Dady Chery se crió en el seno de una numerosa familia de trabajadores en Port-au-Prince, Haití. Emigró a Nueva York cuando tenía 14 años y desde entonces ha viajado por todo el mundo, vivido en Europa y varias ciudades de Norteamérica. Escribe en inglés, francés y su créole nativo, tiene un doctorado. Se la puede contatactar adc@dadychery.org. Este artículo fie publicado en Axis of Logic, donde Chery es columnista.

Haiti: Medics and Lavalas supporters in Port-au-Prince celebrate birthday of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide

NatashaR — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 20:09:21 +0000

Photos and article by Wadner Pierre

Doctor at the free medical clinic in Port-au-Prince - Photo: Wadner Pierre

On July 15, 2011, to mark the 58th birthday of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a gathering of volunteer medical doctors and nurses provided a free medical clinic in Port-au-Prince. This year was special because of the return of Haiti’s first democratically elected and twice ousted president. Returning along with him were his two daughters and former first lady Mildred Aristide – a long time champion of the fight against AIDS in Haiti.

As thousands of locals from the capital’s poorest slums as well as activists from the Lavalas movement congregated inside the Aristide Foundation, hundreds took part in medical exams. Medicines and food were also provided.

Work such as this has been going on for years. The foundation’s Soulaje Lesprit Moun project has worked in seven camps to organize discussion and mutual aid groups. When the resources are available, the foundation has held mobile medical clinics in a number of camps.

The foundation’s university, UniFA, is re-launching its medical school in fall. The medical school, Haiti’s first low-cost medical university geared toward the poor majority, aiming to keep its graduates inside the country, was shut down with the coup of 2004.

As Harvard professor and physician Paul Farmer explains in his recently published “Haiti after the Earthquake,” UniFA’s medical school “was one among many worthy efforts shuttered by the 2004 coup.” He explains how Cuban and Haitian volunteers have been at the forefront of building a sovereign low-cost sustainable medical project for the country. The program was set up in a manner very different than most NGO or high cost educations abroad leading to brain drain, where educated people leave the country never to return.

Free medical clinic, July 15, Port-au-Prince - Photo: Wadner Pierre

Farmer explains how, by 2003, his organization Partners in Health “with Cuban colleagues and the Aristide Foundation” together launched “a new medical school that would focus on improving the health of the Haitian poor, especially in rural areas,” adding that “the great majority of Haiti’s health professionals worked in Port-au-Prince.”

On July 15, supporters and organizers of Lavalas spoke about the many projects they had worked on in the past and the goals they had for the future. Most of the medical doctors present had begun their education at UniFA and passionately advocated for its ongoing renewal.

Standing in a line, one local resident explained, “Hundreds of us have seen doctors and we were able to get medications for free and dry food too.” Speaking to a video camera, one happy lady said: “Happy birthday to you, President Titid [‘little priest’ is Aristide’s nickname among the masses]. We are happy that you are here in your country with us. We have not demonstrated in the streets today; instead we are together here receiving care.”

A Haitian patient in line for free treatment stopped to address the camera - Photo: Wadner Pierre

According to Toussaint Hilaire, an organizer with the foundation, members of Fanmi Lavalas were gathering at the foundation throughout the day to hold meetings. A few days prior, a number of Lavalas organizers, activists as well as some former Fanmi Lavalas politicians met at the foundation to discuss. “It was great time for many who had not seen each other for a long time … It was also a time for them to share. They’ve come together to show their solidarity and their support for President Aristide and the Fanmi Lavalas party,” Hilaire said.

Hilaire explained that “President Aristide is conscious of the situation of the population after the Jan. 12 earthquake and he asked us to organize activities that have social and educative aspects, like a mobile clinic, to mark his birthday.” Aristide and other leaders of the popular movement have been holding many small gatherings, meeting with people from the earthquake camps and across the country, hearing about the difficult times over the last year.

Marclange Jean, a native of Northeastern Haiti, was one of the doctors who dedicated his time to serving the poor throughout the day. With a broad smile on his face, Marclange explained: “Today, I want first to thank Dr. President Aristide and wish him Happy birthday. Today, if we can be here to serve our population, it is thanks to President Aristide.”

One group of Fanmi Lavalas members explained how the mobile medical clinic was a clear example of the continuity of the Lavalas Livre Blanc – the White Book – titled “Inverstir dans l’Humain” – invest in the human. “What you see today is the continuity of the Livre Blanc of Fanmi Lavalas which promotes a broad investment in humanity,” observed former Lavalas Legislator Nahoume Marcellus, a native of Cap-Haitian.

Marclange Jean - Photo: Wadner Pierre

Pradel Casseus, a 48-year-old and member of Fanmi Lavalas, said: “Today is great day for us. We see that doctors are all around the foundation. We are so very happy. This foundation is a place where everyone is welcome. It is for all of us.”

While it has faced many difficulties, it is one of many institutions started by Lavalas to promote a sustainable and locally run model of development. Residents also point to the Village de la Renaissance and other construction projects in the slums that were built up by social investment programs under the Lavalas governments, surviving the January 2010 earthquake.

Casseus and many others at the foundation complained about the new President Michel J. Martelly. Most were particularly upset with his choice of Bernard Gousse as his potential prime minister. Casseus stated: “As chief of state, President Martelly should not choose Bernard Gousse as the country’s next prime minister. Mr. Gousse is a criminal. He killed a lot of Lavalas militants and pro-democracy organizers when he was minister of justice after the Feb. 29 coup.”

While celebrating the 58^th birthday of former President Aristide, his supporters believe his presence in the country is being felt. They say that Haiti needs all of her children and all of her good friends to come together to rebuild. But they need to rebuild in a way that will empower the poor in a way that will create long-term institutional structures promoting the health and happiness of Haiti’s majority.

Watch this video on the Aristide Foundation

Popular Haitian photojournalist Wadner Pierre is senior staff photographer for the Maroon and Wolf magazines at Loyola University New Orleans, where he is currently studying, and publishes with Inter Press Service. Visit indiegogo.com/twadhaiti to help him reach his fundraising goal for his trip to Haiti to investigate and write about social justice work in the aftermath of the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake. Also visit his website, haitianalysis.com, and his blogs, wadnerpierre.blogspot.com and dominionpaper.ca/weblogs/wadner_pierre. On The Journey of a Haitian Photojournalist, you are sure to find photos by Wadner that will print themselves indelibly on your heart and can be purchased and displayed for others to enjoy. Wadner can be reached at nwanpi@gmail.com.

Haiti: the next round

Christine — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 23:07:07 +0000

by Robert Roth

The indomitable spirit of Haiti burns in the eyes of three little boys memorialized by the camera of one of Haiti’s greatest photojournalists, Wadner Pierre. The boys must wonder, though, whether the greed of U.S. corporations and NGOs and their eagerness to steal Haitians’ labor and resources will dash their hopes. – Photo: Wadner Pierre

On March 18, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his family returned home from a seven-year forced exile in South Africa – an exile brought about by the violent U.S.-orchestrated coup in 2004. Up until the last minute, the U.S. government tried to stop the return, with President Obama going so far as to place a last-minute call to President Zuma of South Africa.

In a speech at Toussaint Louverture airport in Port-au-Prince, Aristide commented on the undemocratic elections then taking place in Haiti. He stressed the need for including all Haitians in the political process of the country, including his party, Fanmi Lavalas, the most popular in the country.

“The problem is exclusion. The solution is inclusion. Exclusion of Fanmi Lavalas is the exclusion of the majority. And the exclusion of the majority is like cutting off the very branch we are all sitting on – every Haitian without exception – because every person is a human being, so the vote of every person counts.”

Thousands of Haiti’s poor followed his car as it moved from the airport through the streets of Port-au-Prince and towards his house. Then a roar erupted and thousands of people climbed over walls, rushed past security and engulfed the courtyard. They were exuberant, singing and chanting for hours: “Welcome back, Titid. Welcome back, schools. Welcome back, hope.” “Lavalas: We bend but do not break.”

It was a beautiful moment, made possible by years of sacrifice and effort by Haiti’s grassroots movement, aided by a determined international solidarity campaign. For those who had doubted that Aristide’s return was possible – and there were many, both within and outside of Haiti – it showed, once again, the power of the people.

Aristide’s return demonstrates Haiti’s independent will and self-determination. He brings back a deep, abiding respect for the poor of Haiti and a belief in their intelligence, their wisdom and the justice of their demands. His return challenges the racist notion that the poor of Haiti can only look to the U.S., the U.N. and the NGOs for relief and development. This is why he is loved and this is why he is feared.

For those who had doubted that Aristide’s return was possible – and there were many, both within and outside of Haiti – it showed, once again, the power of the people.

Aristide has made clear that his focus will be education. Haiti’s education system has always enforced the system of social apartheid – completely eliminating the poor while building up a small elite. During the Lavalas administrations, more schools were built in Haiti than in its entire history. Adult literacy programs – often led by women – reduced the illiteracy rate.

When the Aristide Foundation’s University (UniFA) opened a medical school in 2001, it recruited students from the poorest communities throughout Haiti, each of whom committed to return to their communities upon graduation. These were revolutionary initiatives in a country whose elite despise the poor and have worked for generations to keep them away from any form of literacy or higher education. It was no accident that U.S. and U.N. forces drove students out of the campus after the 2004 coup and turned the building into a military barracks.

Even with limited resources, Aristide’s return will generate the impetus to reopen the medical school. The Aristide Foundation’s continuing work among youth – a Youth League has begun, with over 1,000 young people meeting at the foundation a few months ago – reflects a growing mobilizing of a new generation of activists, whose dynamism will be needed in this next phase of Haiti’s development. And, given a little time, the thousands of dedicated grassroots organizers, whose work has never ceased in all these years of repression and occupation, will surely regroup and make their demands heard.

The task is daunting. Aristide returns to a colonized country. Bill Clinton has set up an Interim Recovery Commission that is now sitting on over $10 billion. USAID is pouring money into U.S.-based NGOs that pay more for staff than they do for projects.

Construction companies are lining up to bid for earthquake rubble removal contracts. Cholera – brought to Haiti by U.N. forces from Nepal – has spread throughout the country, with recent reports citing 800,000 cases. A seemingly permanent foreign MINUSTAH occupation patrols the streets, with their blue helmets and pointed guns.

As if to rub salt into the wounds, there is the new president, Michel Martelly. A kompa singer and long-time proponent of Jean-Claude Duvalier, Martelly worked with the dreaded FRAPH death squads that killed over 5,000 people in Haiti after the first coup against Aristide in 1991.

He has made the reestablishment of Haiti’s hated military a priority of his administration. In the past, he has called for a ban on “all strikes and demonstrations.” In a revolting video released right before the election, Martelly called Lavalas members “faggots” and threatened sexual violence against Aristide. Some of his chief aides had warned that “the country would burn” if he were not selected.

In the end, Martelly was selected by only 17 percent of eligible Haitian voters. With Fanmi Lavalas excluded and two right-wing candidates running, the vast majority of Haitians stayed away, refusing to lend credibility to the charade. The percentage of voters who turned out was the smallest in 60 years for any presidential election in the Americas.

Right after his election, Martelly obediently traveled to Washington, where he met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who declared that the United States was with him “all the way.” He then made the rounds with officials of the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the chair of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was later arrested for attempted rape in New York. After the discussion with Strauss-Kahn, Martelly beamed and announced that “the meeting had gone well.” Of course it did. The vultures are hovering over Haiti.

Consider the recent deal brokered by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with South Korean garment giant, Sae-A Trading Co., which will soon become Haiti’s largest private employer. Sae-A is building a 617-acre “free trade zone” near the northern city of Cap-Haitien. It plans to employ 20,000 workers and pay them only two thirds of Haiti’s minimum wage. USAID is contributing $124 million, the Inter-American Development Bank $100 million, and Sae-A will put in $78 million.

South Korean garment giant, Sae-A Trading Co., plans to employ 20,000 workers and pay them only two thirds of Haiti’s minimum wage.

The planned industrial park will supply Wal-Mart, Target, Kohl’s and other major U.S.-based retailers. When confronted with questions over the deal – including whether the new factories will be sweatshops – Hillary Clinton dismissed all concerns, declaring, “Haiti is now open for business.”

The Sae-A project is just one part of the structural adjustment plan now being consolidated in Haiti. Known as the “death plan” in Haiti, it involves privatization, new contracts for elite import-export barons and continued limits on social investment – all combined with targeted repression of grassroots organizations.

In one particularly frank analysis, U.N. economic advisor Paul Collier highlighted the new possibilities for investment in Haiti: “Due to its poverty and relatively unregulated labor market, Haiti has labor costs that are fully competitive with China, which is the global benchmark.”

Taking note, Coca-Cola has expanded its Haiti operations, through its “Hope for Haiti” mango drink. Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, which didn’t even have the decency to postpone its post-earthquake Haiti tours, has received funding from USAID to multiply its tourist operations in northern Haiti, training Haitians to be “hospitality workers.” And energy companies are lining up to grab contracts to dig up the country in order to exploit Haiti’s vast mineral wealth.

Yet, despite decades of repression, the popular movement in Haiti remains active and alive. Women’s organizers are right now supporting market women through low-interest micro-credit programs. Human rights workers continue to demand the release of political prisoners and expose the horrific conditions within Haiti’s prisons.

Progressive radio stations have taken great risk to denounce Martelly and the sham elections. The popular church (ti legliz) continues its work among peasants throughout the countryside. Young people have flocked to the Aristide Foundation by the thousands for education and training. And the reopening of the medical school is on the horizon.

All of this demands international solidarity. As we take a breath and celebrate Aristide’s hard-fought-for return, we know that the work continues. Hopefully, we are all ready for this next round.

Robert Roth is a co-founder of Haiti Action Committee and a board member of the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund. He was in Haiti for President Aristide’s return. A version of this article originally appeared in the Summer 2011 Newsletter of the Ecumenical Peace Institute.

Why Bernard Gousse should not be Haiti’s next prime minister

Mary — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 23:24:16 +0000

by Wadner Pierre

Haiti’s former Minister of (In)Justice Bernard Gousse, the choice of Haiti’s President Michel Joseph Martelly to be the country’s next prime minister, is well known amongst the masses in Haiti for his criminal record. The July 6 Miami Herald cites his “’God awful’ reputation as Haiti’s top law enforcement official.” – Photo: Wadner Pierre, 2009

In 2004, I was in Haiti living under the injustice Bernard Gousse inflicted on his own people while serving the Haitian elite and the “international community.” Like many of Gousse’s victims, I was driven into hiding after the arrest of the late Father Gerard Jean-Juste, a prominent Lavalas leader and human rights activist. Under the dictatorship of Gerard Latortue, Gousse ran the Ministry of Justice – an injustice machine that filled Haitian jails with political prisoners, usually targeting the most vulnerable.

Here are seven reasons why Gousse shouldn’t be Haiti’s next prime minister:

1) Gousse became the minister of justice after the 2004 coup against Haiti’s democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Gousse was considered one of the most powerful men in the U.S-backed regime that ruled from 2004 to 2006.

2) Among the people illegally jailed by Gousse were Fanmi Lavalas officials under Aristide such as former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, former Minister of Interior Joselene Joceleme Privet and former legislator Amanus Maette. The allegations against all of them were shown to be completely baseless. In the case of Neptune, the illegality was so egregious that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) ordered the Haitian government to pay Yvon Neptune reparations.

3) With Gousse’s enthusiastic support, the Haitian National Police, backed by U.N. troops, launched murderous raids on communities where support for Aristide was very strong, such as Cite Soleil.

The Miami-based Haitian grassroots organization Veye-Yo calls for the arrest of Bernard Gousse for the killing of Haitian people at a 2009 protest outside the Trump Plaza Hotel in North Miami Beach, where Gousse was attending the Haitian Diaspora Annual Congress. This protester’s shirt features a photo of the beloved priest and political leader Father Gerard Jean-Juste, founder of Veye-Yo, who died not long after his release from imprisonment in Haiti at the hands of Gousse. – Photo: Wadner Pierre

4) Since 2009, a Miami-based Haitian human rights group, Veye-Yo, founded by the late Father Jean-Juste, has called for the arrest of Bernard Gousse.

5) Gousse’s crimes occasionally attracted some notice in the corporate press. Below are some examples:

“Once again, one man has become the center of a political storm that threatens to foil this country’s uphill struggle for stability,” wrote Ginger Thompson in the June 16, 2005, New York Times article, “How Haiti’s Future May Depend on a Starving Prisoner.”

“Gousse also has been accused of ignoring alleged atrocities by police against pro-Aristide slum dwellers,” wrote Stevenson Jacobs in the June 16, 2005, Associated Press article, “Interim Justice Minister Resigns.”

However, his crimes are best documented in “Haiti Human Rights Investigation: November 11-21, 2004,” a very detailed report by Thomas Griffin of the University of Miami School of Law.

A year after his July 2004 arrest, Yvon Neptune, Haitian prime minister under President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, had still not been charged and had undertaken a series of hunger strikes in protest. New York Times writer Ginger Thompson reported: “When a visitor went to the two-story house where Mr. Neptune is being held, the former prime minister could not lift his bony body off a foam mattress on the floor of his cell. … ‘I feel weak,’ he said barely above a whisper.” The Times story noted, “On Tuesday, Justice Minister Bernard Gousse resigned, a move that may clear a final obstacle to Mr. Neptune's release.” – Photo: Thony Belizaire, AFP

6) The scale of the crimes committed by the Latortue dictatorship – in which Bernard Gousse played a major role – were revealed by a scientific study published by the Lancet Medical Journal in 2006. The study estimated 4,000 political killings perpetrated by Latortue’s securities forces and its armed allies.

7) There can be no true reconciliation without justice. The choice of Bernard Gousse is a clear signal that the rights of the Haitian people will continue to violated under the Martelly administration.

If Haiti’s current President Michel Martelly is not a U.S. puppet, he should arrest Gousse rather than appoint him as the head of his government. Anyone who has followed the situation in Haiti can see that Haitian people – in fact, anyone – deserves better than Bernard Gousse.

Wadner Pierre

Popular Haitian photojournalist Wadner Pierre is senior staff photographer for the Maroon and Wolf magazines at Loyola University New Orleans, where he is currently studying. Visit indiegogo.com/twadhaiti to help him reach his fundraising goal to return to Haiti this summer to investigate and write about social justice work in the aftermath of the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake. Also visit his website, haitianalysis.com, and his blogs, wadnerpierre.blogspot.com and dominionpaper.ca/weblogs/wadner_pierre. On The Journey of a Haitian Photojournalist, you are sure to find photos by Wadner that will print themselves indelibly on your heart and can be purchased and displayed for others to enjoy. Wadner can be reached at nwanpi@gmail.com.

San Francisco Bay View » Haiti and Latin America

Poor little rich Haiti to be fleeced of copper-silver-gold via Caracol deep-water port

If this mining plan is given a green light while Haiti is under foreign occupation, it will permanently strip the country of much of its mineral, cultural and ecological wealth.

These highly concentrated deposits of copper, silver and gold should reasonably represent a new found wealth for Haiti at a time of dire need of resources for the country’s reconstruction. But if the DR is to serve as an example, Haiti will not benefit from its minerals.

The textile factories’ contributions to the degradation of Caracol Bay should be trivial compared to the damage from opencast gold mining and construction of a deep-water port.

Update

Recommendations from Haiti Chery

Related Posts

Paramilitary gangs join UN force in preying on Haitian population

Despite the U.N.’s record of rapes, child prostitution, trading of food for sex, and killings by gunfire and cholera, this organization still claims to be indispensable for safety and democracy in Haiti.

Background

Related Posts

The character assassination of Samba Boukman

This revisionist attempt at trying to portray community and political activists as violent gang leaders and violent criminals was employed in the run-up to Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s ouster in 2004 and gained momentum in the years afterwards.

Notes

Related Posts

Tribute to Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste

On Saturday, March 3, 4-6 p.m., Haiti Action Committee invites you to an afternoon of solidarity with the Haitian people to mark the eighth anniversary of the Feb. 29, 2004, coup d’etat, dedicated to the memory of Jean Ristil Jean-Baptiste, at La Pena Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley

It wasn’t Jean Ristil’s fault that he scared you to death always facing danger so directly – going where angels fear to tread. Not his fault he had to feed and provide for so many who would otherwise go hungry in NGO-occupied Haiti.

For more information

Related Posts

Haiti’s elected mayors illegally replaced by presidential appointees

In fact, this move was meant to dismantle local governments so as to confiscate resources such as commons lands and waters.

We are thrown back to a time as insane and criminal as that of previous dictatorships, when their stooges, to reap the benefits from the exercise of unbridled power, managed to see conspiracies everywhere.

In Ganthier, a border town that is coveted as a base for a legion of NGOs, including Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti, a wealthy family with its own police force took over 9,000 acres of commons land so as to sell it to local police and corrupt government officials.

The persecution of the mayors, a larcenous and unsubtle bid at a return to dictatorship, is a reminder that Haiti’s municipal executives currently constitute the country’s most legitimate government.

Rather than the dismissal of the mayors by the executive, a move by an association of legitimately elected mayors to dismiss and replace a foreign-picked executive branch would be closer to the spirit of the 1987 Constitution, which sought to decentralize power and promote national sovereignty.

References

Comment by Pierre Labossiere, co-founder of the Haiti Action Committee

Related Posts

For a revolutionary Black History Month

The point? People make history by mass movements, and masses make and sustain revolutions – often against “leaders” whose every instinct is to betray them.

The Haitians did what no “slave” army had ever done in modern or ancient history. They defeated an empire.

Related Posts

Haiti: Seven places where the earthquake money did and did not go

Almost none of the money that the general public thought was going to Haiti actually went directly to Haiti.

They documented in January 2010 that 33 cents of each of these U.S. dollars for Haiti was actually given directly back to the U.S. to reimburse ourselves for sending in our military.

Overall the U.S. had awarded $194 million to contractors, $4.8 million to the 23 Haitian companies, about 2.5 percent of the total. The U.N. documented that only four tenths of 1 percent of international aid went to Haitian NGOs.

Less than a month after the quake hit, U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Merten sent a cable titled “THE GOLD RUSH IS ON” as part of his situation report to Washington.

Nearly two years after the quake, less than 1 percent of the $412 million in U.S. funds specifically allocated for infrastructure reconstruction activities in Haiti had been spent.

A “Haiti First” policy could strengthen public systems, promote accountability, and create jobs and build skills among the Haitian people.

Related Posts

Aid as a Trojan horse: On the anniversary of the Haitian earthquake

We lived sustainably, with color and panache

Things dear to the Haitian soul were valued – things that could not be bought.

Some lyrics from a traditional song

A country of small entrepreneurs

Local, organic, fresh and in season

Custom-made clothes and shoes

Clean water

Latrines

Schools

Haitian hunger is a natural result of aid policy

The aid required that Haiti’s economy be changed from a sustainable domestically-oriented economy into an export-led economy – to benefit the U.S. The motivations for foreign aid to Haiti remain the same today.

Currently, less than 40 percent of the food for Haitian consumption is produced locally; as recently as 1986, this was 80 percent.

Government-steered ‘non-governmental organizations’

The earthquake has hurt Haiti, but capitalism has hurt it more.

References

Related reading

Related Posts

Report from Haiti: Where’s the money?

Related Posts

What happens in Haiti doesn’t stay in Haiti

Ten percent of the budget for U.N. peacekeepers is spent on Haiti – a small country that is not at war – to train foreign troops for future warfare against their own civilians.

Related Posts

The uses of Haiti’s poor children: Guinea pigs for cholera vaccines

Vaccines are not recommended to those entering areas where cholera is endemic because clean water and good hygiene are best, and cholera vaccines are demonstrably unreliable.

Less than a month ago, the World Health Organization (WHO) continued to argue that cholera vaccines are unnecessary.

Hardly anything is known about the effects of vaccines on endemic cholera. So this vaccination campaign is actually an experiment designed to test just this, and Haitian children will be the guinea pigs.

Related Posts

Why it took 11 months instead of three weeks to show that Haiti’s cholera is Nepalese

A tale of noble and ignoble scientists, Harvard and the U.N.

The only reason it took so long to discover that Haiti’s cholera came from Nepal is because scientists had until now not bothered to compare the cholera from Haiti to cholera from Nepal.

Science, universities, corporations and profits

Dr. John Mekalanos and his corporate interests

It took the international scientific community nearly a year to do its job, and at every step it had to be shamed into it by Haitians determined to help each other.

The scientists should additionally propose that MINUSTAH countries make reparations for polluting Haiti’s rivers and aquifers.

Onze Mois Au Lieu de Trois Semaines Pour Montrer Que le Choléra en Haïti Provient Du Népal

La seule raison pour laquelle il a fallu si longtemps pour découvrir que le choléra en Haïti provenait le Népal est parce que les scientifiques n’avaient jusqu’à présent pas pris la peine de comparer le choléra en Haïti aux choléra du Népal.

Sciences, Universités, Compagnies, et Profits