NEWS IN RELATION TO HAITI ON 30.12.10

 

NEWS IN RELATION TO HAITI

 

 

Swedish SVT: HAITI: ALMOST 3,000 DEAD AS A RESULT OF CHOLERA

 

2,901 have died due to cholera according to Haiti's health ministry.

 

The number of deaths per day is now the highest since the cholera outbreak in mid-October. On 19.12.10 100 died. The highest number of deaths in one day in November was 80.

 

150,000 have been infected.

NEWS ON 31.12.10 in relation to natural disasters

 

NEWS ON 31.12.10 in relation to natural disasters

 

 

German ZDFtext: ALREADY MORE THAN 3,300 CHOLERA DEATHS IN HAITI

 

The cholera death toll in HAITI has risen rapidly. Up to 26.12.10 as many as 3,333 cholera deaths have been recorded according to Haiti's Health Ministry. Almost 150,000 have been infected since the cholera outbreak. Each day more than 30 people die due to cholera according to information given.

 

Cholera broke out in central Haiti in mid-October - and that was for the first time in more than 100 years. Despite massive information campaigns, many Haitians in the countryside do not know how to act in the case of infection.

NEWS IN RELATION TO HAITI ON 5.1.11

 

NEWS IN RELATION TO HAITI ON 5.1.11

 

Updated Number of Cholera deaths in Haiti as on 29.12.10: 3,481 according to the Haitian Health Ministry and the number of infected was 157,300 since the cholera outbreak 10 weeks ago.

 

Each day more than 22 die due to cholera which is less than earlier when the number of cholera deaths per day was 60. Experts think that far more Haitians have died and are infected than stated by the Haitian authorities.

 

Despite extensive campaigns many Haitians do not know what to do if infected.

NEWS on 6.1.11 IN RELATION TO HAITI

 

NEWS on 6.1.11 IN RELATION TO HAITI

 

Danish TV2 TTV + LIVE: THOUSANDS RAPED IN HAITI

 

 

Rape has become an increasing problem in HAITI since the earthquake on 12.1.10. This appears from an AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL report.

 

Apart from the grief following the loss of family members and property / home, many women and girls in the camps go to sleep every night fearing sexual assaults.

 

The number of rape victims can be counted in thousands according to Amnesty International.

 

It was bad enough before the earthquake when 50 rapes where reported each day - but after the earthquake the number of rapes has exploded.

 

 

Swedish SVT: HAITI: According to OXFAM ONLY 5% of the debris has been removed - here almost one year after the devastating earthquake. The reason for this is hesitation and delays despite promises aid from the outside world!

AMNESTY International has published a report on RAPES in HAITI - 6.1.11

 

AMNESTY International has published a report on RAPES in HAITI - 6.1.11

 

http://www.care2.com/causes/womens-rights/blog/hundreds-of-women-and-girls-raped-in-haitian-refugee-camps/

 

Hundreds of Women and Girls Raped in Haitian Refugee Camps

 

posted by: Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux

 

A year after the Haiti earthquake, Amnesty International reports that women and girls in Haitian refugee camps, where more than a million people still live, remain vulnerable to predators and armed gangs, who have perpetrated hundreds of rapes, even on children as young as four or five. These women are particularly likely to experience sexual assault because of the lack of security in refugee camps, and their attackers are even more likely to go unpunished.

 

Although sexual violence was fairly widespread in Haiti before the earthquake, the breakdown of the country's infrastructure and justice system made it much more difficult for rapists to be caught or punished. Rapists act with reckless abandon, even "ripping through tents with knives and razor blades."

 

"Most of the women told us that they don't go to the police because they don't think it's worth it," the author of the report, Gerardo Ducas, told the BBC. And needless to say, there are few resources for women who have been raped, so they must suffer the trauma of the attack alone.

 

The women's tragic stories speak for themselves, and show the extent of the sexual violence crisis in Haiti. One woman said that she and a friend were bound, gagged and sexually assaulted in front of their children; another woman was raped soon after giving birth to her child.

 

"I cried, I yelled, but nobody came, there was nobody," she said. "After they finished, they beat me. They beat me so much that you can see scars on my skin and my knee."

 

A fourteen-year-old girl was raped when she went to the toilet. “A boy came in after me and opened the door. He gagged me with his hand and did what he wanted to do…He hit me. He punched me. I didn’t go to the police because I don’t know the boy, it wouldn’t help. I feel really sad all the time…I’m afraid it will happen again," she said.

 

Amnesty International has repeatedly asked the international community to improve security in the camps and ensure that police have the power to apprehend rapists. But they also point out that for any long-term solution, women in the camps have to be involved. We can only hope that this new report highlights the desperate need for action on behalf of the women in Haitian refugee camps.

Situation report from Haiti 8 months after the 12.1.10 earthquake

 

In the spoiler below you will find Part I of a situation report from HAITI 8 months after the devastating earthquake on 12.1.10

 

 

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/haiti-rape-earthquake-mac-mcclelland

 

AFTERSHOCKS: WELCOME TO HAITI's RECONSTRUCTION HELL

 

Dispatches from the tent cities, where rape gangs and disaster profiteers roam.

 

— By Mac McClelland

 

January/February 2011 Issue

 

When Alina happened upon a group of men—too many to count—raping a girl in the squalid Port-au-Prince camp where she and other quake victims lived, she couldn't just stand there. Maybe it was because she has three daughters of her own; maybe it was some altruistic instinct. And the 58-year-old was successful, in a way, in that when she tried to intervene, the men decided to rape her instead, hitting her ribs with a gun, threatening to shoot her, firing shots in the air to keep other people from getting ideas of making trouble as they kept her on the ground and forced themselves inside her until she felt something tear, as they saw that she was bleeding and decided to go on, and on, and on. When it was over, Alina lay on the ground hemorrhaging and aching, alone. The men were gone, but no one dared to help her for fear of being killed.

 

"We had this rape problem before the earthquake," Yolande Bazelais tells me. She is the president of FAVILEK (the Creole acronym stands for Women Victims Get Up Stand Up), an organization founded by women who were raped (PDF) during the 1991 coup that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. We're sitting under a blue tarp in the driveway of another NGO's office, because FAVILEK doesn't have one, with four of the other founders and my translator, Marc. He works with FAVILEK sometimes, running rape-related errands, taking victims like Alina to the hospital or the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), an international lawyers' group, for legal support. "Now," Bazelais says, "we have double problems."

 

It's a terrifying statement, considering that a survey taken before the earthquake estimated that there were more than 50 rapes a day just in Port-au-Prince, based on just the reported rapes—and more than half of the victims were minors. That's how it's been for as long as anyone can remember, with the perpetrators ranging from neighbors to street thugs to, as the FAVILEK founders can attest, police and paramilitaries who use rape as a tool of intimidation and terror.

 

But nearly a year after the 7.0 earthquake that shook some 280,000 buildings to the ground and killed or maimed nearly twice that many people, FAVILEK's insufficient resources are stretched thinner than ever. The organization says that displacement camps are hornet's nests of sexual violence.

 

The French military policemen hanging around my hotel say the same thing. They are soldiers of MINUSTAH, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, and their faces darken when they talk about the camps. "Every day it is like this: fighting, a lot of violence, murder, a lot of rape," they say, shaking their heads. "A lot of rape." A 43-page report by the IJDH says so, too, with a pile of testimonials like Alina's. And there's Marc, whose phone is always ringing, who's "like an ambulance" because "people are always calling me to say someone got raped"—like the woman calling about her teenage daughter today. Marc, who waves at somebody on the street as we drive around Port-au-Prince and yells, "I used to work with that guy!" then explains that the guy quit immediately because he really didn't want to hear about five-year-olds being raped. FAVILEK gets three or four calls a week about new cases, and that's just from the dozen camps the organization attempts to cover. There are 1,300 camps in all.

 

It's the first thing you see when you step out of Toussaint L'Ouverture International Airport: just across the street, a sea of tarps held together with sticks and strings, white plastic and blue plastic and gray plastic side by side by side under the glaring sun. Maybe there are some clothes drying in the very narrow paths between shelters. Probably there are people bathing in the open. The bigger settlements sport walls of portable toilets. Within Port-au-Prince, every spare patch of land from the airport to anywhere is covered in tent settlements. More than a million people live like that, no lights, no security. The tent cities are hot, hungry, and packed, and tension is the only thing in town being built.

 

The FAVILEK founders say they need two agents in each of the 1,300 camps instead of a dozen total. And even if they had the agents, and could pay them, which they can't, they'd still need the resources to help the victims. The other day, a woman was raped and choked nearly to death. She called to say she was in hiding, but FAVILEK couldn't help her—it doesn't have any funds to pay for moving her someplace safe. Nor could it cover the cost of, say, anxiety medication for Alina, who says, "I have heart palpitations and sometimes I begin to shake uncontrollably." We sit outside in metal folding chairs, the FAVILEK founders swatting mosquitoes off my bare ankles as they tell me how it's a struggle even to take care of their own: Last night yet another agent's tent was ripped down by pro-rape thugs.

 

Not that these women, now in their forties and fifties, survivors all, are easily intimidated. One of them had her legs smashed in addition to being raped. One was shot. She gets frustrated at some point while I'm asking questions and says, "We meet with white people, and white people, and white people." She starts raising her voice, and two of the other four put their hands out to calm her, literally holding her back, but smiling knowingly. White people make promises but nothing ever ever happens, she says. She is tired. She is exhausted. At least they could have given us an office. And if you, white girl, think you're actually going to make yourself useful, I'll give you my goddamn email address...

 

They have gotten some whistles donated, at least, one of the other women says; they're effective sometimes. I don't bother asking if the cops are trying to help prevent rape, because all of 18 rape cases were brought before a judge in Port-au-Prince in 2009. Earlier today, Marc and I went to pick up an activist from camp because an "escapee"—a prisoner who was released from his cell during the quake—threatened to shoot her and some of her coworkers for standing up for rape victims, and when she went to file a complaint with the police, the officer said, "He should've killed you all." Earlier today, Marc and I drove past a man in a blue button-down shirt who was identified by a victim as a rapist, and Marc tore around the block and jumped out to go collect the license-plate number of the shiny SUV the man was getting into, but then Marc said he didn't know what he was going to do with it, because a guy who drives a car like that is probably friends with cops.

 

Earlier today, a female doctor turned to me during a consult with a rape victim and demanded: Do I understand the situation? Do I understand that this is what happens to girls like this one, who have children but are not married? That this isn't one of those tragedies, like when an innocent girl is raped?

 

But what about the government or the UN? I ask the FAVILEK founders. What about the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission led by the country's prime minister and Bill Clinton? Do they have any kind of plan for protecting the women in the camps?

 

Marc's translating services are rendered moot when five heads shake instant hard "no"s.

 

"I'M BLACK, and Haitian, and I wouldn't go where you're going right now, in the dark," Marc says when we're on our way to the Petionville golf course on the eastern edge of Port-au-Prince. Well, it used to be a golf course. Now it's packed with 55,000 homeless people and is known as "Sean Penn's camp," because the actor's aid group, J/P HRO (Jenkins/Penn Haitian Relief Organization), runs it.

 

We've had this plan for Marc to drop me off here to meet someone all day. So his sudden concern about my getting out of the car is a little unsettling.

 

"I'm sayin', there's a reason all the aid organizations get their people outta there by like six," Marc explains. But when I resist blowing off the meeting, he allows that this camp might be a little safer than others.

 

Daniel, my new friend who lives here and invited me over, says the same reassuring thing when I meet him on a busy side street, across from the Planet Creole radio station, and we start walking into camp, which unlike most of the others is lit by a few floodlights on impossibly high poles. I squint into the glare as Daniel leads me toward his house. "Did I call it a house? I'm sorry, should I say tent?" he says, and laughs. He leads me past row after row of stick-supported plastic until we arrive at our destination. "And here we are," he says in near-perfect English. He spent some time in the States, before getting deported. "My piece of Tent City."

 

But "tent" isn't accurate, either. Daniel's shelter, like the rest, is several sheets of sturdy plastic cobbled together. The ceiling is uneven, low, and leaky. The shelter is built on a steep dirt slope. Daniel says water gets in from all directions when it rains. And oh, how it rains: hard monsoon-season buckets pouring in through gaps in the roof and the sides, the earth floor liquefying, a mud flood forming under the higher-up rows of lean-tos until it collapses under its own weight and slides fast downhill into the tents pitched below. That's the kind of water the displaced have got too much of: the kind that keeps people standing all night, so as not to wake up drowning.

 

Inside Daniel's place, the only source of light is a flashlight aimed at the gray tarp overhead. The dim beam illuminates the USAID decal printed on it—which announces the gift as FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE—but little else. While I wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, a child materializes at my left thigh.

This is my daughter, Melissa," Daniel says. "She's 10."

 

"Est-ce que je peux te donner un bisou?" she asks barely audibly. I sense the outline of braids in her silhouette, but can't be sure.

 

"Bien sûr," I tell her, she is welcome to give me a kiss, and I bend down to accept it, supersoft and tiny against my cheek. Daniel turns a bucket upside-down to offer me a seat. Everyone else gets on the floor, where Daniel has laid down some ceramic tiles he got from a religious charity he used to work for. There is just enough room for us four to sit; my shoulder touches Daniel's fiancée's; my feet touch his feet. Melissa lies across Daniel's lap.

 

"Fortunately," he says, "it's not that hot in here right now."

 

I nod. All our arms are slick and our faces are running with sweat. But "that hot" means as hot as it is during the day, when being under the plastic is like being in an oven, when I become so woozy and oppressed in the tents that I find myself either forgetting or reluctant to suck more hot air into my lungs.

 

Daniel is starting an organization called Redeem for Handicap. He talks about how when US soldiers set up in this camp after the quake, he helped run errands for them. He helped deliver babies. He did whatever he could to aid the aiders. But the Army is gone, and though Penn assures me that J/P HRO is in it for the long haul, Daniel's friends who work in the camp have heard that most of the other aid organizations will leave soon. "Already, it's been five months since we've gotten any food," he says. But they do have water in the camp now; you can fill up buckets at pumps. It used to make him really sick, and sometimes the bleach taste is quite strong.

 

Why? Daniel asks me. Am I thirsty? There's water that's better for drinking, but that's only for sale.

 

I am thirsty, but I hesitate to drink anything because Daniel doesn't want me to use the communal portable toilets. It's only eight o'clock, but it's dark, and plenty of gals before me have been assaulted on that trip to the bathroom. Also, "The toilets aren't used properly, and you might get a disease you aren't interested in catching," Daniel laughs.

 

That's why everything smells like urine. To avoid the communal toilets, Daniel's family uses a bucket in a corner. The three of them keep their plastic-walled hovel fantastically neat, and empty the bucket often, but at some point I inhale sharply and breathe in too much of its stink. I puke into my mouth, and pretend I didn't. I suggest that we go for a walk.

 

Outside, it's clear that plenty of other residents are improvising bathroom facilities, too. The air is still, and within seconds my nose and throat are coated with the reek of hot rotting shit. "People have a lot of needs here," Daniel tells me while I repeatedly spit as inconspicuously as possible.

 

"There's a lot of amputees because of the earthquake, right?" I ask, looking for my footing on the steep muddy trail. "How do they get around here?"

"Yeah, that's a problem," he says.

 

But he points out that the amputees are hardly the only ones struggling. There's a lady who lives right over here who lost her husband, Daniel gestures. She's got kids, and she's too sick to work, and she hasn't eaten in a week. And this tall smiley fellow now shaking my hand is difficult to understand because he's deaf from rubble that fell on his head. He needs a hearing aid. But Redeem for Handicap, or any other organization, can't raise money from the international community without a website...

 

The camp buzzes: people gathering in the wider paths, vendors cooking hot dogs and selling water, people who have run long electrical cords to steal power to play an awful remake of "We Are the World" over the steady, chattery thrum. It's early on a Friday night, but the noise is starting to die down, Daniel points out. People have to wake up early, lest they roast to death in their plastic ovens once the sun rises.

 

Suddenly, a skinny guy comes tearing up the path. He's asking Daniel, he's asking some guy behind Daniel, he's asking everyone nearby frantically: What should he do? Some thugs are threatening his family because they want the space and piece of tarp his family occupies. The thugs say they will set it all on fire if he doesn't move his family out. Is there anyone to talk to? Can he find a cop around here or what?

 

You can't go anywhere in Port-au-Prince without seeing MINUSTAH soldiers. They do have a presence in this camp—those French MPs at my hotel had spent their day breaking up a fight among camp dwellers who cut open the side of a USAID tent here to rob it, just as gangs of rapists slice through the sides of tents all over the city to steal a woman, easy as pie. People complain that the troops don't do much to actually protect camp residents, or any Haitians; when the UN renewed its peacekeeping mandate in October, people rioted. Though Penn fought for and got a police substation in this camp, we haven't passed any police or soldiers or security on our long lap around it. Daniel suggests to the panicked man where the blue helmets might be. The man goes running down the path in that direction. I wonder if he's going to find them. If he does, I wonder how he's going to tell them what's going on; European, South American, and African MINUSTAH troops don't speak Creole, and do not come with translators.

 

"You won't find Haitian police in the camps because they're at your hotel," Marc jokes when I get back into his car a couple of hours later. And indeed, when we drive back to the Hotel Oloffson, through a couple miles of traffic that's a little less crazy this late at night, past intermittent houses that have been reduced to rubble, skirting piles of debris in the road, several men in uniform are standing guard at the high gate. Behind it, up a steep driveway, the hotel's pretty white face, a Gothic gingerbread mansion rising from among palm and pine trees. The open-air restaurant we sit down at on the front balcony is low-lit, populated with foreign and elite Haitian drinkers and diners, gorgeous. The conversation at my table? Less comforting.

 

Marc is explaining that when he finishes law school in two years, he wants to go into human rights advocacy. And he's venting that making a difference, or getting justice for women, is going to be hard to do without a functioning government and the court system and reeducation and things that'd eventually go with it. He, like other people, finds it hilarious when I ask if having new people in power after Haiti's elections is going to lead to a less corrupt, safer country. And he, like everyone else, insists that to avoid crimes against women, they first and foremost have got to be moved out of those tents, where anyone can see that there are women alone, women bathing in public because there's no place else to do it, women whose husbands or fathers died in the quake. But "There is no plan!" Marc exclaims, gesturing off the hotel's front porch in the direction of one of the camps, just across the street. "You need money to get your house fixed after the quake, and most of the people in there don't have the money. And if they get the money, they don't want to spend it on their house because they think the government is going to help them with a housing plan. But there is no government. And there is no plan!"

 

"A lot of people think people are going to be in those camps for decades," I say. "Do you?"

 

"Probably! This is eight months after the quake, and it's just gotten worse.""You know, they still don't have a comprehensive plan for rebuilding New Orleans. Do you remember Hurricane Katrina? That was five years ago," I say, holding up all the fingers on my right hand for effect. "Did you know that there are whole neighborhoods there that are still destroyed, where it looks like the storm was five weeks ago?"

 

Marc's eyes widen. "Really?" Yes, really. "In the United States?" He stares at me for a moment, then starts shaking his head. "That's crazy," he says. He shifts agitatedly in his chair and starts to say something else but gives up; he shifts and opens his mouth and gives up again. He goes back to head shaking, and I go to wondering why I said that, and then we drink in silence.

 

HOWEVER MUCH of a drag I may have been on Marc last time we hung out, boy am I happy to see him when he comes to pick me up three days later. The day before our reunion, a different driver told me he was taking me one place and then took me someplace else, a place in the middle of no place, where he got me into an apartment under false pretenses, closed me in, cornered me, and told me, when my BlackBerry beeped, that it must be my father calling to tell me to watch out, because I was about to get kissed. This morning, I am looking forward to not having to very carefully talk my way out of a scenario like that, then tolerating passenger-seat pawing as politely as I can bear, so as not to set the driver off while he's busy telling me that he won't emigrate after finishing his college degree because although life is better in the United States, this is the best time to become a businessman in Haiti, what with all the rebuilding that needs to be done.

 

 

 

Part II in the next post.

Situation report on Haiti 8 months after the earthquake

 

In the spoiler below you will find Part II of a situation report from HAITI 8 months after the devastating earthquake on 12.1.10.

 

 

 

"What now, partner?" Marc asks me.

"Let's go to Corail."

 

No Haitians who've been there have anything nice to say about the tent city of Corail Cesselesse. It sounds apocalyptic, even, a too-long string of syllables, alliterative and meaningless. Cesselesse. Abscess. Cesspool. "They moved all those people out in the middle of the desert," Marc said about it the first time it came up. "Like Moses or some shit."

 

It takes two hours in traffic to get from the capital to this "model" displacement camp sprawled out under clouds at the foot of a green mountain range. And at first glance, it does look not so bad; the tents are actual tents, like little greenhouses, with a few feet of actual space in between them, even a few tiny prefab housing units under construction. That's if you're glancing at it like I am—like a person who doesn't know better. The second we get out of the car, Marc shakes his head. "There're no trees here."

 

It's dusty. Shadeless. The sun reflects relentlessly off the white tents and the white gravel laid between them. As we walk into the camp, the big and often sharp stones hurt my feet. And I, unlike the thousand naked babies walking around, have shoes on. This land is part of a plan—pushed by President René Préval (PDF) and facilitated by NGOs—to get people out of unstable, teeming, and still very ruined Port-au-Prince. This land is owned by a Haitian corporation, Nabatec, whose president happened to be appointed by the Haitian government as chief relocation adviser. For allowing its land to be used, Nabatec receives government compensation, and it just so happens to have enticed foreign companies, like a South Korean garment corporation, to build factories here. Activists worry that with Haiti's horrifying labor conditions, they're certain to be sweatshops. Not that Haitians here wouldn't be happy for the jobs. They haven't got much else going for them.

 

"We know the news reports that everything is great out here," one man yells when Marc tells him I'm press. "They say we have everything we need. But we have nothing but misery." He moved here from a Port-au-Prince camp several months ago because he says the International Organization for Migration—a multilateral group that works with governments on displacement issues—promised them they'd get food aid. The IOM, which did transport the people, says it said no such thing; President Préval banned comprehensive food aid in the country back in March because it's bad for local economies. (See "Aiding or Abetting.") Everyone can agree on one thing: that the location chosen by the chief relocation adviser blows. There are no trees. When it rains, the gravel floods.

 

Over there are tanks that Oxfam fills with treated water, but the people believe it can make you sick. The women are getting woman infections; everyone assumes the water is responsible for that, too. The NGOs—American Refugee Committee runs the camp; Oxfam and World Vision have a presence—know people think the treated water is unsafe, and wish the Haitian companies selling water to camp residents would stop telling them that; though complaints about the chlorine taste are legitimate, the other issues are signs of serious, unrelated health problems. And as if the water companies hadn't done enough damage, their trucks that lap the camp selling "safer" hydration play a monophonic pan-flute rendition of "My Heart Will Go On."

 

There's not a lot of money to buy the water with, of course. "They said there would be cash for work here. But the programs last a couple weeks, and then they're over. There's no work out here." The whole time we've been talking, in front of this low, rounded tent, the man has been holding a little bar of soap. He notices it anew and explodes: "I just bought this on credit!"

 

I've acquired a pantsless toddler, who has attached himself to my left hand with the hand he doesn't have stuffed in his mouth and follows me and Marc when we leave the man. As we continue on, a scuffle breaks out around my right leg; two children are fighting over which one gets to hold onto my right fingers. One child satisfies herself by grasping my watch. They flank me wordlessly as I walk, another contingent of five or six following behind, and stand by while residents holler at me that the rainstorms are still terrifying out here, and I should hear the wind whip down the mountain into the canvas. The prefab houses leak. They'll only last for three years, anyway. And after three years, I ask them? Everybody shrugs.

 

"YOU'RE HERE at a horrible time," my new buddy Mike says over cocktails at the Hotel Oloffson. He likes me because I remind him of the United States, where he was born. I like him because he's not the kind of rich Haitian man who drinks at the hotel and then feels it's okay to knock on my door late at night, or tells me at the bar I should have sex with him because he's the nice sort of guy who loses an erection when a woman starts to fight him off.

 

But Mike's made a bold statement, since many of his business associates have long kept their wives and kids in the safer Dominican Republic or United States, and since Mike's had a .45 tucked under his clothes for the whole 14 years since he joined his mother's family here. Whenever he travels to and from America, he has a hard time readjusting to Haiti. "But, you know, I put my horse blinders back on, and move on with my life."

 

I've called him out for these horse blinders in an article online. He's read my criticism of his and other local fancypants' failure to visit the displacement camps they drive past 47 times a day and their insistence that I spend more time at the beach. Now, he rightly calls me out for being an uppity bitch. Do I, like, wander into homeless shelters back in San Francisco because of my unceasing duty to expose humanitarian problems? "I enjoy the life that I have here, even though the city sucks," Mike says. "These are the headaches that come with the country."

Headaches like his friend's wife getting kidnapped from her house a few nights ago. The kidnappers demanded ransom; the cops who responded to the house call recommended paying it and left; money was exchanged, and now she's back with her family. "They didn't rape her," Mike says. "Can you imagine?" At this point, in this country, I really can't imagine someone not getting raped under those circumstances, no.

 

Richard Morse—hotel manager/Haitian-American musician/long-white-braid-wearer/friend of Jimmy Buffett/Huffington Post blogger/popular Twitter user @RAMhaiti—appears at our table to discuss this case. He and Mike are mumbling about a guy who was in here the other night, who seemed to know too much about the kidnapping to not have been involved. Richard turns his tall frame and friendly rosy cheeks in my direction after I watch the men conspire for a few minutes.

 

"I may sound paranoid, Mac, but you can be paranoid, or you can be killed." His tweets are often similarly ominous and vague. "People die around here. I've had my entire staff held in the kitchen at gunpoint." Anyhoo, he's got a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue that needs opening. Does Mike want a glass?

 

"She does," Mike says, pointing at me because I'm sitting here drinking Black like a sucker. He turns back to me when Richard leaves. "You know, before the quake, everyone said what Haiti needed was a bomb dropped on it so people would fix it. Obviously we were wrong. No one's ever gonna fix this. But I love it in this country. I don't know why. You need to get out of the city sometimes. That's why I live in the mountains. Up there, it's peaceful, beautiful. You"—and here he's referring to people in general, but also his creeping awareness that my nightly blind drunkenness is less good party-gal fun and more response to distress—"need a break."

 

I've just gotten back from one, actually. I spent the last two days in the Central Plateau, up in the northeast. It's not the gated mansions in the hills rimming the capital that Mike is talking about—it is in fact the poorest piece of the poor country—but it's a three-hour drive and another planet away from Port-au-Prince. No city grit or rubble dust, no New Delhi-style traffic; the scenery surrounding the winding, bone-crunching roads sometimes looks like New Zealand, green and rolly with distant cloud-shrouded mountains.

 

Not that the earthquake left the area entirely untouched, of course: It's now home to a massive influx of displaced people from Port-au-Prince who are exhausting the already scarce resources of the area. In response, US-based global aid agency Mercy Corps is running cash-for-work programs up there. When Haitian and visiting American staffers went to survey the progress, I tagged along.

 

You never know what's going to happen when you say "aid" in Haiti. A Haitian in a camp might rail about the lack of desperately needed supplies in his state-of-emergency life. A Haitian at a fabulous hotel bar might tell you that some of his employees milk the aid system though they're paid well and don't live in camps, or that there's this one flip-flop vendor he knows who was put out of business when a bunch of NGOs started distributing flip-flops after the quake. Some activists and economists say that although more people will die in the short term if all aid is terminated, leaving the country to work itself out could do enormous good, eventually. Anyone who's aware of it would probably criticize the bureaucratic slog that has kept the $1.15 billion in reconstruction aid the US promised from being delivered, and the hold Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has on further proposed rebuilding funds. A leader of the Haitian Platform to Advocate Alternative Development will definitely fume that aid is just another self-serving interference on the behalf of foreign interlopers, who are hijacking rebuilding plans for this country, and Haitians need to be in control of their own destiny. And if you don't believe they can handle that, you can just remind yourself that in 1804 they singlehandedly overthrew the French, which is—lest you forget—why America came to acquire that little thing called the Louisiana Purchase.

 

Mercy Corps' cash-for-work participants in the Central Plateau don't weigh in on these philosophical issues, but they seem pretty pumped to have jobs. I watch the NGO's visiting public information officer, Lisa Hoashi, chat up men and women holding shovels by the side of the dirt road they are building. One 24-year-old hadn't had a job in who knows how long, and he finds it very satisfying to work, even if it is only for 30 days. The local program supervisor admits that people call Mercy Corps "daddy"—like Haitians call Bill Clinton "governor" or "president"—because it made possible a road that the town had been asking the government to build for years. Another lady is glad to be able to send some of her kids to school with her wages; she hopes someday to be able to send all of them. Between this road-building initiative, and a forthcoming ag program, and the Kenbe-La ("hang in there") program—which distributes vouchers for locally produced rice, oil, and beans in exchange for work—Mercy Corps is attempting to both alleviate immediate misery and foster long-term sustainable development. The hope is that the crop-management training or increased ease of getting around will evolve into a better standard of living even after the aid workers leave.

 

But the participants have their concerns. "Is there anything you want to ask me?" Hoashi asks each of her interviewees when she's finished. Every single person comes up with the same worried question, and I hear it asked again days later at a training for elementary school teachers dealing with kids suffering from post-quake PTSD ("My students are very afraid of noise. Any rumbling truck passing by shakes them up..."): "How long does Mercy Corps plan on staying in Haiti?" How long before the other NGOs pull out? How long before the magazine writers and CNN hosts stop coming?

 

THE SKY OPENS UP fast and spectacularly in Haiti. One minute you're sitting in dusty, broiling traffic; then Mike's big shiny Mitsubishi pickup is being assaulted by wind-ripped leaves and hard-driving rain. At a stop, another American journalist and I press our faces against the passenger-side windows and stare at the displacement camp to our right, close enough to toss something in. The tarps are being torn from their tethers by the gusts.

 

It only rains for 10 minutes. Still, there are rivers of water and garbage running through the streets. Huge branches litter the road. ("Jesus!" Mike says. "Even the trees are built wrong in this country!") The power's out at the hotel, which happens with some frequency, but this time, it's not coming back on anytime soon. It's got to be 100 degrees in my room without an air conditioner or a fan. Between the last week and a half of recurring rape nightmares and the possibility that a drunk patron who comes knocking at my hotel cottage will see the looser security, I'm too scared to open my windows or balcony door. I can't imagine what it must be like in those unsafe, airless hotbox tents.

 

At least five camp dwellers in Port-au-Prince died in the storm. Thousands of shelters were destroyed. When I go see Daniel a couple of days later, he shows me that his was one of them. The back half of his "house" is a collapsed little pile of plastic; inside, under the remaining shelter, everything—clothes, sheets—is soaking wet. His fiancée is wiping and wiping at their ceramic tiles, but when anyone moves, more mud oozes up from beneath. "I guess it's actually good we don't have electricity in camp," Daniel says. "All that floodwater and all these people, with downed wires?" He keeps saying he's not sure which, but it must have been a hurricane or a tornado, and I keep telling him it wasn't even either. Just a rain shower.

 

His daughter Melissa is less radiant today. The storm terrified her, Daniel explains. Would that that were the scariest threat to her here. At 10, she wouldn't be the youngest reported rape victim from the camps. Not by eight years.

 

"She was shaking like a leaf," Daniel says as Melissa sits on rumpled fallen tarp, legs tucked up under an oversize white T-shirt.

 

She was shaking like Alina starts shaking when she least expects it. Like Alina, and the schoolchildren who break for the door at the rumble of a garbage truck. And Marc, who could hardly control his voice when he called to say that a woman died while waiting two weeks in the hospital for a doctor to see her. And an anti-rape activist who spoke from under a tarp that headquartered her organization, before they had to move because of death threats. "The way you saw the earth shake," she said, "that's how our bodies are shaking now."

 

This piece was supported in part by contributions from the Spot.Us community.

 

Mac McClelland is Mother Jones' human rights reporter, writer of The Rights Stuff, and the author of For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question: A Story From Burma's Never-Ending War

 

 

News on 7 December 2011 in relation to HAITI

 

Please find in the two previous posts Part I and Part II of an interesting and long situation report on HAITI 4 months ago describing life in tent camps where women live in fear of being raped by gangs and describing the conditions for the Haitians in the rainy season etc.

 

 

News on 7 December 2011 in relation to HAITI

 

 

Swedish SVT: UNICEF: HAITI's CHILDREN ARE LIVING IN CHAOS

 

After reports of stagnant rebuilding & reconstruction in quake-hit HAITI and sexual assaults in the tent camps, UNICEF (UN's organization for children) reports that Haiti's children are in a very difficult situation.

 

One year after the disaster, 380,000 children remain homeless.

 

Only one quarter of the lone children have been reunited with a parent or a relative.

 

More than half of the children do not go to school.

 

1.2 million children are to a high degree exposed to diseases and threats of (sexual) violence.

Cholera in Haiti: Causes and Containment Efforts

 

http://www.care2.com/causes/human-rights/blog/cholera-in-haiti-causes-and-containment-efforts/

 

Cholera in Haiti: Causes and Containment Efforts

posted by: Laura B.

 

By Kyna Rubin, SOS Children's Villages

 

More than 125,000 Haitians have been infected and more than 3,200 killed by the nation's cholera epidemic, according to The Seattle Times. The disease, which flared up in October 2010 and is expected to grow in the next year, hadn't been present in Haiti for 50 years.

 

The bacterial infection comes from water and food contaminated by human feces. Its appearance in Haiti has been blamed on infected Nepalese peacekeepers stationed at a U.N. camp near Mirebalais, in central Haiti. Fueling this theory was the November 1st presentation of lab test results by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the Haiti government revealing that Haiti's recent cholera strain "is most similar to strains found in South Asia." According to the CDC, however, more work is needed to confirm the origin of Haiti's cholera strain.

 

Some scientists have told SciDev.Net that atmospheric changes brought by La Niña, together with the post-earthquake drop in water quality and sanitation, are a more likely explanation for the cholera trigger.

 

Working to Stem the Spread

 

Whatever the precise cause of the scourge, nongovernmental groups providing earthquake relief to Haitian families and children have been engaging in education campaigns to get residents to use latrines rather than defecate in fields, wash their hands, drink treated water, and seek medical help at the first symptoms of the disease. Some organizations are using catchy songs to encourage proper hygienic practices.

 

Since the cholera outbreak last fall, SOS Children's Villages has been carrying out cholera-awareness campaigns in all of its facilities including its two Children's Villages in Santo and Cap Haitien, SOS schools, and in a range of communities in which the organization works to bolster vulnerable families. SOS demonstrations of proper handwashing have become so widespread that, according to an SOS field report, Haitians now talk about "the dirty hands illness." SOS has also distributed chlorine tablets for water and installed water filters.

 

Sadly, recent violence sparked by the disputed election has hindered cholera prevention efforts. Working under very challenging conditions, SOS and other groups nonetheless persist in their work to promote good hygiene.

News on 10.1.11 in relation to HAITI

 

NEWS on 10.1.11 in relation to natural disasters:

 

 

German ZDFtext: ABOUT 1/4 OF EU's PLEDGED HAITI AID MADE AVAILABLE TO HAITI

 

Almost one year after the HAITI earthquake, the European Union and its member states have paid / made available 1/4 of the pledged aid - almost 332 million Euro out of the pledged 1.2 billion Euro until the end of 2010 according to the EU Commission in Brussels (Bruxelles).

 

1.5 million inhabitants became homeless due to the earthquake. In the reconstruction phase a cholera epidemic broke out. More than 3,600 Haitians have died from cholera.

Danish DR1: PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IN HAITI CLOSE TO DEADLOCK

 

HAITI's approaches a serious political crisis. Election observers from the Organization of African States (OAS) have recommended that the candidate of the current president should pull out of the election = withdraw from the second election round. President Réné Préval said that so far he had "not had the time" to receive the report from the election observers. That means that the report including the recommendation is not yet official. This means that the election authorities cannot incorporate the report's recommendations in their final decisions in relation to the second round of the presidential election.

 

 

German ZDFtext: THE EUROPEAN UNION WANTS MORE DEVELOPMENT AID FOR HAITI

 

One year after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, the EU has stressed the necessity of more development aid. The EU Commissioner Kristalina Georgiewa: "The greatest problem is the lack of institutions and a good governance". Instability in Haiti prevents the aid from reaching the needy Haitians.

 

 

German ZDFtext: UPDATE OF THE SITUATION ONE YEAR AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE IN HAITI

 

One year ago - on 12.1.10 - a devastating earthquake shook the Caribbean state of HAITI. Between 230,000 and 300,000 (I have also seen the figure 330,000) Haitians died, and more than 100,000 buildings were destroyed.

 

The Haitian economy has been reduced by 7% since the earthquake.

 

More than 1 million survivors including 380,000 children are still living in 1,200 tent cities and tented camps.

 

More than 3,700 Haitians - according to Haiti's Health Ministry: 3,732 until the beginning of January 2011 - have died due to cholera which broke out in Mid-October.

 

More than 155,000 are currently infected.

 

According to Haiti's Health Ministry: More than 178,400 have been infected since the outbreak of the cholera epidemic 10 weeks ago.

 

13 people die per day due to cholera.

 

International experts believe that the actual figures of deaths and infected Haitians are much higher.

 

 

German ZDFtext: DONATIONS AND AID FOR HAITI

 

The Americans alone have donated more than 1.4 billion dollar to help the survivors and to set Haiti on its feet again. During a donor conference in new York, Haiti was pledged 4.6 billion dollar until the end of 2011. According to UN information, not even 2/3 of the pledged funds have arrived.

 

 

UNICEF information:

 

UNICEF and its partners equipped 720,000 children with school material.

 

15,000 school teachers were trained / provided.

 

72 cholera centres were equipped with tents and medicaments.

News on 12.1.11 in relation to natural disasters

 

HAITI: US president OBAMA appeals to the world community to live up to its aid pledges (German ZDFtext)

 

Haiti's death toll has risen to 316,000. (Danish DR1)

 

The death toll after the devastating earthquake in HAITI one year ago has been upgraded from 250,000 to 316,000. Haiti's Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said this at a press conference held in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince by Haiti's temporary Reconstruction Commission chaired by former US president Bill Clinton and himself.

 

Swedish SVT: Thousands of white-clad Haitians participated in the central memorial service in the ruins of Port-au-Prince's cathedral for the 316,000 earthquake victims. UN envoy Bill Clinton and the Haitian hiphop star Wyclef Jean were present. Businesses, schools and authorities were closed today. The ceremonies culminated in one minute of silence at 16:53 local time (22:53 central European time), i.e. the time of the devastating magnitude 7.0 earthquake one year ago, i.e. on 12 January, 2010.

 

TV2, News / live: Today, the Secretary-General of Danish Red Cross, Ladekarl, criticized the UNITED NATIONS because of the lack of progress in Haiti since the earthquake one year ago. 1 million Haitians are still living in makeshift tents. Ladekarl fears that 800,000 Haitians will have to live their lives in makeshift camps if the WORLD COMMUNITY does not intervene. He also blames the BUREAUCRACY - Danish Red Cross has got several ambulances, but these cannot be used without number plates (license plates), and that takes a lot of time! Then there is the POWER STRUGGLE between the presidential candidates after suspicion of election fraud.

 

The UN and the aid agencies are cooperating with the government. This is a problem as the government is corrupt.

 

Bill Clinton said that only 60% of the pledged aid arrived in 2010.

 

Reconstruction is stagnant and a failure.

 

HAITI will be depending on emergency aid for many years.

An informative, but saddening article on Haiti and Aid for Haiti

 

In Haiti, Corporations Profit While People Suffer

 

 

One year after an earthquake devastated Haiti, much of the promised relief and reconstruction aid has not reached those most in need. In fact, the nation's tragedy has served as an opportunity to further enrich corporate interests.

 

The details of a recent lawsuit, as reported by Business Week, highlights the ways in which contractors -- including some of the same players who profited from Hurricane Katrina-related reconstruction -- have continued to use their political connections to gain profits from others' suffering, receiving contacts worth tens of millions of dollars while the Haitian people receive pennies at best. It also demonstrates ways in which charity and development efforts have mirrored and contributed to corporate abuses.

 

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wlu82IL6Veg&feature=player_embedded]YouTube - Haiti's unspent billions examined[/ame]

 

Lewis Lucke, a 27-year veteran of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) was named US special coordinator for relief and reconstruction after the earthquake. He worked this job for a few months, then immediately moved to the private sector, where he could sell his contacts and connections to the highest bidder. He quickly got a $30,000-a-month (plus bonuses) contract with the Haiti Recovery Group (HRG).

 

HRG had been founded by AshBritt, Inc., a Florida-based contractor who had received acres of bad press for their post-Katrina contracting. AshBritt's partner in HRG is Gilbert Bigio, a wealthy Haitian businessman with close ties to the Israeli military. Bigio made a fortune during the corrupt Duvalier regime and was a supporter of the right-wing coup against Haitian president Aristide.

 

Although Lucke received $60,000 for two months' work, he is suing because he says he is owed an additional $500,000 for the more than 20-million dollars in contracts he helped HRG obtain during that time.

 

As CorpWatch has reported, AshBritt "has enjoyed meteoric growth since it won its first big debris removal subcontract from none other than Halliburton, to help clean up after Hurricane Andrew in 1992." In 1999, the company also faced allegations of double billing for $765,000 from the Broward County, Florida school board for clean-up done in the aftermath of Hurricane Wilma.

 

AshBritt CEO Randal Perkins is a major donor to Republican causes and hired Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour's firm, as well as former US Army Corp of Engineers official Mike Parker, as lobbyists. As a reward for his political connections, AshBritt won 900 million dollars in Post-Katrina contracts, helping them to become the poster child for political corruption in the world of disaster profiteering, even triggering a congressional investigation focusing on their buying of influence. MSNBC reported in early 2006 that criticism of AshBritt "can be heard in virtually every coastal community between Alabama and Texas."

 

The contracts given to Bush cronies like AshBritt resulted in local and minority-owned companies losing out on reconstruction work. As Multinational Monitor noted shortly after Katrina, "by turning the contracting process over to prime contractors like AshBritt, the Corps and FEMA have effectively privatized the enforcement of Federal Acquisition Regulations and disaster relief laws such as the Stafford Act, which require contracting officials to prioritize local businesses and give 5 percent of contracts to minority-owned businesses. As a result . . . early reports suggest that over 90 percent of the $2 billion in initial contracts was awarded to companies based outside of the three primary affected states, and that minority businesses received just 1.5 percent of the first $1.6 billion."

 

Alex Dupuy, writing in the Washington Post, reported a similar pattern in Haiti, noting that "of the more than 1,500 US contracts doled out worth $267 million, only 20, worth $4.3 million, have gone to Haitian firms. The rest have gone to US firms, which almost exclusively use US suppliers.

Although these foreign contractors employ Haitians, mostly on a cash-for-work basis, the bulk of the money and profits are reinvested in the United States." The same article notes that "less than 10 percent of the $9 billion pledged by foreign donors has been delivered, and not all of that money has been spent.

 

Other than rebuilding the international airport and clearing the principal urban arteries of rubble, no major infrastructure rebuilding -- roads, ports, housing, communications -- has begun."

 

 

The disaster profiteering exemplified by AshBritt is not just the result of quick decision-making in the midst of a crisis. These contracts are awarded as part of a corporate agenda that sees disaster as an opportunity, a tool for furthering policies that would not be possible in other times. Naomi Klein exposed evidence that, within 24 hours of the earthquake, the influential right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation was already laying plans to use the disaster as an attempt at further privatization of the country's economy.

 

Relief and recovery efforts, led by the US military, have also brought a further militarization of relief and criminalization of survivors. Haiti and Katrina also served as staging grounds for increased involvement of mercenaries in reconstruction efforts. As one Blackwater mercenary told Jeremy Scahill when he visited New Orleans in the days after Katrina, "This is a trend. You're going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations."

 

And it's not just corporations who have been guilty of profiting from Haitian suffering. A recent report from the Disaster Accountability Project (DAP) describes a "significant lack of transparency in the disaster-relief/aid community," and finds that many relief organizations have left donations for Haiti in their bank accounts, earning interest rather than helping the people of Haiti. DAP director Ben Smilowitz notes that "the fact that nearly half of the donated dollars still sit in the bank accounts of relief and aid groups does not match the urgency of their own fundraising and marketing efforts and donors' intentions, nor does it covey the urgency of the situation on the ground."

 

Haitian poet and human rights lawyer Ezili Dantò has written:

 

"Haiti's poverty began with a US/Euro trade embargo after its independence, continued with the Independence Debt to France and ecclesiastical and financial colonialism. Moreover, in more recent times, the uses of US foreign aid, as administered through USAID in Haiti, basically serves to fuel conflicts and covertly promote US corporate interests to the detriment of democracy and Haitian health, liberty, sovereignty, social justice and political freedoms. USAID projects have been at the frontlines of orchestrating undemocratic behavior, bringing underdevelopment, coup d'etat, impunity of the Haitian Oligarchy, indefinite incarceration of dissenters, and destroying Haiti's food sovereignty essentially promoting famine."

 

Since before the earthquake, Haiti has been a victim of many of those who have claimed they are there to help. Until we address this fundamental issue of corporate profiteering masquerading as aid and development, the nation will remain mired in poverty. And future disasters, wherever they occur, will lead to similar injustices.

News in the eve of Sunday, 16.1.11 in relation to HAITI

 

Late news in relation to HAITI on SUNDAY 16.1.11, post II SUNDAY

 

 

News feature from Danish DR1 at 21:10 central European time:

 

There was something about HAITI which could partly explain the state of affairs in HAITI.

 

In 1985 HAITI wanted a foreign loan - and to get it, the people in power supported imports of US rice.

 

The price of MIAMI rice was and is much cheaper than rice produced in Haiti (200 vs. 500 - not sure of the currency).

 

The poor population had no other choice than to buy and eat the cheap MIAMI rice even though the Haitian rice was better - but also clearly the most expensive.

 

This meant bad times for Haiti's rice production and Haiti's farmers who became even poorer.

 

Bill Clinton has said that he was sorry for his country's conduct. He admitted that his administration's policy benefitted US farmers and NOT Haiti's population.

 

The prices for food are very high in HAITI so many Haitians have to go to bed hungry. Sometimes the adults try to give the hungry, crying children salt water in the hope that they will fall asleep.

Unexpected news in relation to HAITI on 17.1.11

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11943820

 

17 January 2011 Last updated at 01:46 GMT

 

'Baby Doc' Duvalier returns to Haiti from exile

 

 

The former president of Haiti, Jean-Claude Duvalier, has returned to the country, 25 years after he was overthrown by a popular revolt.

 

Mr Duvalier, 59 - also known as "Baby Doc" - arrived on a flight from France, where he has been living in exile.

 

He said he had come back "to help the people of Haiti" following last year's devastating earthquake.

 

His return comes at a time of political uncertainty over disputed presidential elections.

 

Wearing a dark suit and tie, Mr Duvalier was greeted by a small group of supporters when he stepped off an Air France flight at Port-au-Prince airport.

 

Jean-Claude Duvalier was just 19 when he inherited the title of "president-for-life" from his father, the notorious Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, who had ruled Haiti since 1957.

 

He is accused of massive corruption, repression and human rights abuses during his 1971-1986 rule.

 

Critics allege he embezzled millions of dollars from the impoverished Caribbean nation, a charge he denies.

 

Voodoo cult

Like his father, he relied on a brutal private militia known as the "Tontons Macoutes," which controlled Haiti through violence and intimidation.

 

"Papa Doc" reinforced his power with a fearsome personality cult based on Haiti's traditional voodoo religion, but "Baby Doc" was regarded as more of a playboy.

 

In 1986 he was forced to flee into exile by a popular uprising, as well as diplomatic pressure from the US.

 

Since then, he has lived in France, although he was never granted formal political asylum.

 

In a radio interview in 2007, he asked the Haitian people for forgiveness for "errors" made during his rule.

 

A small group of Duvalier loyalists have been campaigning to bring him home from exile.

 

His return to Haiti came on the day the country was supposed to hold the second round of elections to choose a successor to outgoing president Rene Preval.

 

But the vote has been postponed because of a dispute over which candidates should be on the ballot paper.

 

Provisional results of the 28 November first round provoked violent demonstrations when they were announced in December, and most observers said there was widespread fraud and intimidation.

 

Haiti is also struggling to recover from a the massive earthquake a year ago which killed more than 250,000 people and left the capital, Port-au-Prince, in ruins.

Thank you so much for your updates Nancy, as always.

 

I don't post on the forum anymore, as a rule, but I have to say something here.

 

Huge quantities of money have been raised by charities.

 

Equally huge sums of money were long ago pledged by foreign governments.

 

Neither funds are properly getting through to the people on the ground.

 

The last article I read said that people in Haiti have no no jobs, and so no way to earn money to feed or clothe their families.

 

But the local government, the international community, and aid agencies, have had a lot of this money since the disaster struck.

 

If they would only pay people to build things and to reconstruct there would be no problem. If the money runs out, we will get more. But what has already been raised is not even being used :cry:

 

I would suggest that this is a crime against humanity...

 

Nancy, please let us all know if there is anything we can do, here on this thread.

Thank you so much for your updates Nancy, as always.

 

I don't post on the forum anymore, as a rule, but I have to say something here.

 

Huge quantities of money have been raised by charities.

 

Equally huge sums of money were long ago pledged by foreign governments.

 

Neither funds are properly getting through to the people on the ground.

 

The last article I read said that people in Haiti have no no jobs, and so no way to earn money to feed or clothe their families.

 

But the local government, the international community, and aid agencies, have had a lot of this money since the disaster struck.

 

If they would only pay people to build things and to reconstruct there would be no problem. If the money runs out, we will get more. But what has already been raised is not even being used :cry:

 

I would suggest that this is a crime against humanity...

 

Nancy, please let us all know if there is anything we can do, here on this thread.

 

 

Thanks for your response, PETE. It is appreciated as always.

 

Your idea (in yellow in the QUOTE above) about paying people to build things and to reconstruct is very good and constructive.

 

Because something must be done! And your suggestion seems like a step forward.

 

 

I remind of the hopeless, current situation in HAITI:

 

The population is starving with no jobs and not much help. It looks like the survivors must live in makeshift shelters / tents for decades.

 

The government is corrupt and now also paralyzed after being caught in election fraud.

 

BABY DOC - a former corrupt and unpopular dictator who was finally overthrown - has returned to the country "to help the population"!

 

The aid agencies have lots of money on bank accounts earning interest. I guess that they are waiting for a new, less corrupt government in the future - they have had bad experiences with a very corrupt administration making it difficult, if not impossible to act - (it takes years just to get licence plates for ambulances).

 

 

Based on the present situation in HAITI, I think that your suggestion is a very constructive approach to move forward.

 

 

You have asked what COLDPLAYERS can do in the present situation.

 

So far I think that it is important that we do not forget HAITI.

 

And I will keep you informed of the situation in HAITI by continuing to post in these HAITI threads."

 

YOU can contribute by to POSTING SUGGESTIONS and IDEASand by reading UPDATES of the situation in Haiti .

NEWS ON 17.1.11 IN RELATION TO HAITI

 

NEWS ON 17.1.11 IN RELATION TO HAITI

 

 

http://motherjones.com/rights-stuff/2011/01/baby-doc-duvalier-haiti-return

 

BABY DOC IS BACK - By Mac McClelland / | Sun Jan. 16, 2011 6:31 PM PST

 

 

It sounded like a wild rumor when it circulated earlier today, but tonight, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier landed in Haiti after a quarter-century of exile. The word from Duvalier is that he's come to help his country. According to everyone on the street and on the radio, the Americans and the French conspired to bring him here to upset current president René Preval, who's been accused of fixing his country's recent elections.

 

The former dictator was greeted at the Port-au-Prince airport with cheering and celebratory chanting. Why were such huge crowds so happy to see the raping, murdering, plundering leader who was ousted in 1986 after a popular revolt? "He is our greatest president!" men around me yelled. My 53-year-old translator, Sam, concurred. "Things have never been as good as when he was here," he said. "The only thing that was worse was we couldn't talk about politics because he was a dictator, but everything else is much worse now."

 

No one knows what Duvalier will say at his press conference scheduled for tomorrow, nor what effect his return will have on the impending run-off elections. But the news has inspired happy revelers in the streets who seem to think something exciting is about to happen. As Sam put it, "I don't know what's going to happen. But this will definitely reshuffle the deck."

 

UPDATE: Monday morning, journalists waited outside Baby Doc's Port-au-Prince hotel for a rumored press conference, only to be told several hours later by the former Haitian ambassador to France that "the president has no time to talk to the press today." Despite reports that the exiled leader would be in town for only three days, the ambassador said there is no estimate for the length of his stay. The date and time of a press conference will be announced tomorrow.

 

 

Danish TV2 News: SUNDAY NIGHT 59-YEAR-OLD FORMER DICTATOR JEAN-CLAUDE "BABY DOC" RETURNED TO A HAITI CHARACTERIZED BY POLITICAL CHAOS

 

Baby Doc said that he had "come to help Haiti's population", and that he would participate in Haiti's rebirth.

 

Baby Doc has lived in exile in France for almost 25 years - since he was overthrown in 1986.

News on 18.1.11 in relation to HAITI

 

News on 18 January 2011 in relation to HAITI

 

 

Danish DR1 + TV2 news and Swedish SVT and German ZDFtext:

 

IN HAITI, THE FORMER DICTATOR "BABY DOC" WAS ARRESTED AND CHARGED WITH CORRUPTION

 

Earlier today, an analyst said that Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier's arrival in Haiti might worsen the situation in the tried, very poor country.

 

And Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch advocated for the arrest of the former dictator so that he could be charged with murder and torture committed by his militsia Tonton Macoutes during Duvalier's 15 years in power starting in 1971 when he succeeded his father Francois Duvalier who had won an election in 1957 and then created a terror regime costing ten thousands of human lives. Baby Doc's rule was characterized by corruption and enrichment of himself and his family. After week-long hunger revolts in 1986 the hated Duvalier fled to France where he has lived in exile for 25 years.

 

"Baby Doc" was arrested at the luxurious hotel Karibe in Port-au-Prince one day after his return to HAITI after 25 years in exile. He was charged with corruption, theft and abuse of public funds - crimes committed during his 15 years in power. Charges have been brought against him, said the Chief Prosecutor Aristidas Auguste in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

 

An investigating magistrate will examine the charges and then decide whether legal proceedings (a lawsuit) should be instituted (initiated) against Baby Doc.

 

According to the organization Transparency International which investigates corruption in the world, Baby Doc stole at least 300 million dollar during his years in power.

News in relation to HAITI on 19.1.11

 

NEWS IN RELATION TO HAITI ON 19.1.11 including a HAITI-related article sent to me by Care2 causes

 

 

Former Dictator "Baby Doc" Returns to Haiti. Why?

 

posted by: Shannon M

 

You have to wonder what accursed star Haiti was born under.

 

The island nation has always been politically fragile. During its fraught history, it has faced war, disease, famine and brutal dictatorships.

 

The last 12 months alone saw Haiti crumble under a devastating earthquake which left thousands dead and hundreds of thousands homeless and vulnerable.

 

A cholera epidemic has subsequently claimed thousands more lives. The Haitians' common belief in the power of voodoo and the occult has led to an atmosphere of distrust, especially towards foreign workers in the country trying to provide aid.

 

A recent election that brought with it the hopes of newfound political stability resulted in no clear victor among accusations of widespread corruption, leaving a power vaccuum and an uncertain political future in a country that desperately needs strong leadership.

 

So when in to this maelstrom flies Haiti's deposed former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, returning to the country from which he was thrown out in 1980, it raises the question of why now?

 

Baby Doc became ruler of Haiti at age 19 upon the death of his father, Dr. Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier. Papa Doc was elected President of Haiti in 1957 and following several years of increased influence and corruption, declared himself President for Life in 1964.

 

Duvalier was one of the most repressive and corrupt dictators of modern times, using violence and intimidation to keep any political opposition in line. Baby Doc Duvalier inherited the Presidency for Life in 1971 and while his presidency was not as brutal, his neglectful policies led to widespread hardship and directly led to the massive prevalence of AIDS in the island nation.

 

Duvalier was forced to resign in 1987 after years of protests finally culminated in a military uprising, but Haiti's fortunes fared little better under successive governments, including that of Jean Bertrand Aristide, who was also forced into exile after being overthrown through revolution.

 

Human rights abuses have consistently been recorded up to and since the 2010 earthquake, hunger and homelessness persists and violence is common.

 

Hundreds of thousands still live in refugee camps, with little hope of rebuilding their homes or lives.

 

So why has Duvalier returned? Is it in the hopes of influencing the fractured Haitian populous to follow a specific presidential candidate of his choosing? Or, more worryingly, is it an attempt to rehabilitate his image and present himself as a viable leadership option to an exhausted and overwhelmed populus?

 

It's entirely possible that the Haitians of today, many of whom cannot remember living under Duvalier's rule, would welcome a historical figure seemingly sent from the past to save them and provide leadership in a time where none seemingly exists. And if this is the case, would the international community allow such a reviled ex-leader to return?

 

At no time in recent history has Haiti been in such crisis. The arrival of a former dictator in the country is an extremely worrying development. What is next for Haiti is largely up to the foreign community, but allowing a former dictator to seize power would be disastrous for a country already struggling to rebuild.

 

 

Danish DR1 and Swedish SVT: BABY DOC HAS BEEN RELEASED, BUT HE IS STILL CHARGED WITH CORRUPTION, THEFT OF HUNDREDS OF MILLION DOLLAR AND ABUSE OF PUBLIC FUNDS

 

An investigating magistrate is to decide whether he will institute legal proceedings against Haiti’s former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier aka. Baby Doc.

 

On Sunday 16.1.11, Baby Doc returned to HAITI after 25 years in exile abroad (in France). Tuesday, he was arrested at his hotel in Port-au-Prince and questioned for 6 hours.

 

Baby Doc’s lawyer says that Baby Doc har been asked to be available for the judiciary. The lawyers think that the charges are without sufficient substance to start legal proceedings.

 

According to a French diplomat, Duvalier had booked a flight back to France some time Thursday.

 

Duvalier’s return makes the difficult political situation after the disputed presidential election in 2010 even more difficult.

 

 

Danish TV2 News: 185,000 CHOLERA INFECTED HAITIANS

 

The number of cholera infected Haitians has risen to 185,000 one year after the devastating earthquake on 12.1.10. The epidemic has cost 3,790 deaths. This info was given by The Danish Statens Serum Institut in its latest edition of EPI-NYT (translation: EPI-News).

 

The first case of cholera in Haiti was recorded at the end of October 2010. Since then the disease has spread to the capital, Port-au-Prince and the neighbouring Dominican Republic. 5 cases of cholera have been recorded in Florida in the USA.

 

 

Danish TV2 News: BABY DOC WANTS TO BECOME HAITI’s PRESIDENT AGAIN

 

Jean-Claude Duvalier aka. Baby Doc will try a comeback more than 20 years after he was forced away from Haiti where he had been a dictator. This information was given by one of his allies after the former dictator’s announcement that he intends to stay in Haiti. Baby Doc arrived in HAITI a few days ago after many years’ exile in France.

 

“We have to annul the presidential election and hold a new election where Duvalier can participate. He will win the election”, says Duvalier’s spokesman, Henry Robert Sterlin.

Unfortunately, when things go sour, people often look to some iconic figure from the past when economic times were relatively better, and the main city was not flattened, people's lives were not in such disarray. Unemployment. hunger, and frustration can lead people to make decisions for leaders which in the end may only do them more harm, simply because they are searching for change, and a "savior" to come help them.

Jean Claude Duvalier AKA "Baby Doc", perhaps the notorious murder of many political enemies, and in the lineage of a virtual dictatorship, is probably not the answer.

I need to do some more research - where are the U.N. elections monitors? What would it take to get an honest answer or an honest election there and soon? Seems like a place desperately in need of election monitors, and I hope for everyone's sake, Duvalier is tried for the alleged crimes, which at this point sound more like an academic matter, but for the sake of justice, he certainly deserves a fair trial. Either way, the trend of elected presidents declaring themselves "president for life" isn't the answer; and putting too much power in the hands of the president seems to be a big problem in Haiti's government - legislative branches are there to check and balance Presidential powers, not rubber stamp all decisions!

But as far as the aid agencies goes, why the money isn't being spent remains a mystery to me as well - perhaps the level of corruption in both contractors and government posts hinders the release of much needed funds to rebuild, or perhaps it's what the police there seem to be saying - a combination of a lack or the rule of law, plus nobody seems to have a plan - is this the case? Even so, can't the aid agencies simply go ahead and rebuild, or provide truly durable temporary shelters with Haitian's providing their own labor to reconstruct their nation? The holdup is mind-boggling.:inquisitive:

Lacking a stable government or a governing coalition, and the disaster disarray may be two factors, but it has been a year, and usually government bureaucracies run themselves regardless of who's in office, as long as there is funding - perhaps corruption then is the main culprit.

I can't help but wonder if it has more to do with outside forces (corporate interests) trying their most to influence outcomes for their bottom lines - disaster profiting is one definite problem of corruption pioneered by certain American reconstruction firms, it makes me wonder if this is miring the political scene in quicksand?

I know one problem is the battle over control of land - apparently overlapping titles, so some of the supposed government land where tent cities are built is contested, and those who lay claim return to remove tents people put up. One would think that in an emergency situation, civility would allow people a place to stay for the time being at least - so it seems to me logical to put land claims on hold for the time, while people are adequately housed.

>If simple, wind-resistant, cool shelter that can handle the hurricanes, never fail in earthquakes, and reflect the intense tropical sun is required, there are a multitude of options, from Yurts to Steel Buildings to Quick-Build Pre-fab Homes.. I thought the Yurt design would be particularly suitable for Haiti because it's simple and quick to construct yet very sturdy, highly wind resistant (works well in windy Mongolia), portable, inexpensive, and quite comfortable. If one were to simply dig 3 foot (one Meter) holes and sink down some concrete tubes which project above the ground a ways, pour concrete in, and set some anchor bolts as simple bases for the platforms to build the Yurts, the costs would be minimal, the structures safe from floods and moisture, and then if needed to be moved, the amount of material losses would be minimal.

Haitians skilled in sewing and working with fabrics could then construct the kits from basic materials (fabrics, heavy threads, wood slats or bamboo sections, etc.), and construct the platforms, make the doors, etc. The fancy versions available here in the U.S. are quite nice (example: Pacific Yurts-Yurt FAQs

)

But the basic structure needn't be so fancy, as long as it were safe, solid, dry, cool, and reliable in case of torrential rains or suddenly shaking ground. Given the slow rate of change in Haiti, having durable portable structures like these might be the answer for many, since it could be years before quality homes are built in sufficient quantity for the bulk of Haiti's citizens. Plus, they're inexpensive, especially if built right there in Haiti = affordable to the average Haitian, and would allow the aid agencies to spread their effective help much further.

What would it take to get things going there??

News on 20.1.11 in relation to HAITI

 

Thanks for sharing your constructive ideas in relation to HAITI with us, CHUCK.

 

I think that the aid agencies are frustrated due to the bureaucracy in HAITI. According to them, it takes months to get a licence plate to a vehicle. Due to their frustration and scepticism they do not release all the funds / money right away, but wait - for better times with a new government and system, maybe. I do not know whether they see chances of a better system / government in the near future - but maybe they are waiting for that miracle to happen.

 

 

NEWS IN RELATION TO HAITI:

 

Danish text-TV: BABY DOC DECLARES THAT HE HAS NO INTENTION OF BECOMING HAITI's PRESIDENT

 

Haiti's former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier denies rumours reported in the national and international press that he intends to regain power in the poor Caribbean state.

 

The rumour was spread by someone claiming to be his spokesman, and there were references to scenarios in relation to the election process in HAITI.

 

Baby Doc's announcement was read loud by his girlfriend Veronique Roy.

 

 

German ZDFtext: FORMER PRESIDENT ARISTIDE WILL RETURN TO HAITI

 

After almost 7 years in exile in SOUTH AFRICA, Aristide is prepared to come to Haiti - "today, tomorrow, any time".

 

Aristide was deposed in 2004 and he was transported out of HAITI in a US plane. His party Fanmi Lavalas had always insisted on his return.

 

Aristide is still very popular in HAITI.

An article about Duvalier and Baby Doc, 2 former presidents in HAITI

 

An article in relation to Baby Doc & Aristide, 2 former presidents in HAITI

 

Haiti's "Baby Doc" accused of crimes against humanity

 

(Reuters) - Four Haitians, including a former United Nations spokeswoman, filed criminal complaints on Wednesday against former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, accusing him of crimes against humanity including torture.

 

The filings came a day after Duvalier was briefly detained and charged by a Haitian state prosecutor with corruption, embezzlement and other alleged crimes during his 1971-1986 rule in the impoverished Caribbean nation. He returned unexpectedly to Haiti on Sunday from 25 years of exile in France.

 

Michele Montas, the former spokeswoman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said she and three other Haitians who were jailed during Duvalier's rule filed the complaints with a Port-au-Prince prosecutor.

 

"There are grounds not only to judge him for economic crimes but also for human rights abuses," she said.

 

Duvalier's return convulsed politics in Haiti, which is grappling with a dispute over a disputed presidential election in November and a cholera epidemic that killed more than 3,800 people. The Western Hemisphere's poorest state is still recovering from a devastating 2010 earthquake.

 

Adding to the potential for upheaval in Haiti, former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who spearheaded a pro-democracy movement under Duvalier before becoming Haiti's first freely elected leader in 1990, on Wednesday expressed his own desire to return from exile in South Africa.

 

"The people of Haiti have never stopped calling for my return," said Aristide, in a statement issued by his aides. "As far as I am concerned, I am ready. Once again I express my readiness to leave today, tomorrow, at any time." he said.

 

A firebrand former Roman Catholic priest, ousted by a 2004 rebellion involving former soldiers, Aristide remains wildly popular in his homeland. His Haitian passport has expired, his aides said, but Aristide said he hoped an agreement by Haitian and South African authorities could permit his return.

 

Duvalier, who fled Haiti in 1986 to escape a popular uprising, waved and blew kisses to a crowd of supporters on Wednesday from a balcony at a luxury hotel in Port-au-Prince where he is staying. Prosecutors say he is "at the disposition of judicial authorities."

 

Montas, a journalist in Haiti, was forced into exile in the early 1980s after Duvalier closed a radio station owned by her late husband, Jean Dominique.

 

A lawyer for Duvalier told reporters the former strongman intends to remain in Haiti and rejected the charges filed against him by the prosecutor as politically motivated.

 

"There was no file, no warrant, no infraction, nor crime," lawyer Reynold Georges said. "I say clearly it is the (Haitian) government who is behind all of this," he added without elaborating.

 

PLUNDERED STATE COFFERS

 

The 59-year-old former leader, the son of feared dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, was notorious for his crackdown on dissent and opposition. Critics and rights groups say thousands of his opponents were killed and tortured at the hands of a secret police force known as the Tonton Macoutes.

 

"Anyone who was in any way independent from the regime was systematically arrested and killed," Montas said.

 

Three other people, Claude Rosiers, Alix Fils-Aime and Nicole Magloire, also lodged separate lawsuits, Montas said.

 

Under Haitian law, the graft charges brought by the prosecutor will be investigated by a judge who must decide whether the criminal case should move forward.

 

Haitian authorities previously accused Duvalier and his family of plundering state coffers of several hundred million dollars and hiding the money abroad. There have been moves in Swiss courts to recover some of the money.

 

Duvalier's lawyer Georges cited investigations in France and Switzerland that were closed and failed to implicate Duvalier in any wrongdoing.

 

"The Haitian state cannot come back to cases that are already finished," he said. "It's been more than 25 years since any complaint has been filed. It appears they are improvising some complaints."

 

Duvalier has been vague about what prompted him to come home. He said he returned to show solidarity with the people of Haiti and play a role in his country's "rebirth."

 

But his return has drawn criticism from the United States and many European governments who say it has only deepened political uncertainty in Haiti.

 

(Writing by Kevin Gray; Editing by Pascal Fletcher and David Storey)

News on 21.1.11 in relation to HAITI

 

Swedish SVT: JUDGE: BABY DOC NOT ALLOWED TO LEAVE HAITI

 

Haiti’s former dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier is not allowed to leave HAITI according to a judge. Baby Doc surprised everyone when he returned to Haiti last Sunday after 25 years in exile in France.

 

Duvalier was arrested and questioned for several hours before he was released Tuesday. He was accused of theft of Haiti’s funds and of corruption, and he is suspected of being responsible for torture during his 15 years in power.

A court will decide if there is evidence enough for a trial.

 

Duvalier fled Haiti in 1986.

News on 22.1.11 in relation to HAITI

 

NEWS ON 22.1.11 IN RELATION TO HAITI

 

 

Danish DR1 and Swedish SVT: BABY DOC REGRETS HIS DICTATORSHIP

 

In his first official announcement (yesterday, 21.1.11) since his return to HAITI, former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier explained that he returned to Haiti from his exile (in France) to show his SOLIDARITY WITH HAITI and to help the hard-hit country to RECONCILIATION.

 

"The most important thing for me is to be together with you. I'll take this opportunbity to express once again my great sorrow to my countrymen who say - rightly - that they are victims of my government."

 

Duvalier is said to have been stopped yesterday when trying to leave HAITI where preparations are made for a trial against him for violation of human rights.

 

 

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12257420 /

22 January 2011 Last updated at 01:26 GMT

 

DUVALIER IN HAITI: 'BABY DOC' CALLS FOR RECONCILIATION

 

Former Haitian leader Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier has called for NATIONAL RECONCILIATION in his most extensive speech since he returned to the country on Sunday after 25 years in exile.

 

He said his SURPRISE RETURN had been prompted by last year's earthquake and his desire to HELP REBUILD the country.

 

Mr Duvalier also wanted "to express deep sorrow for all those who say they were victims of my government".

 

He is being sued for torture and other crimes against humanity.

 

The lawsuit was filed on Wednesday by a former United Nations spokeswoman, Michele Montas, and three Haitians who were jailed during Mr Duvalier's 1971-1986 rule.

 

Ms Montas said she had lodged lawsuits for arbitrary detention, exile, destruction of private property, torture and moral violation of civil and political rights.

 

POLITICAL FUTURE?

 

State prosecutors have also charged Mr Duvalier with theft and misappropriation of funds during his time as president-for-life.

 

One of his lawyers said he was planning to stay in Haiti despite the charges, and might also get involved in politics.

 

Speaking in French and Creole at a news conference in a rented guest house, Mr Duvalier said he hoped for a rapid resolution to the political crisis in Haiti.

 

He arrived on the day Haiti was supposed to hold a second round of elections to choose a successor to outgoing President Rene Preval.

 

That vote has been postponed because of a dispute over which candidates should be on the ballot paper.

 

Provisional results from the first round on 28 November provoked violent demonstrations when they were announced, and most observers said there was widespread fraud and intimidation.

 

Jean-Claude 'Baby Doc' Duvalier

 

• Takes over presidency aged 19 after death of his father Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier in 1971

 

• Calls himself "president-for-life"

 

• Popular protests force him to flee to France in 1986

 

• Accused of corruption and rights abuses that prompted more than 100,000 Haitians to flee the country

 

• Asks Haitian people for forgiveness for "errors" in 2007 radio interview

 

 

Swedish SVT: MONEY CAN BE THE REASON FOR DUVALIER'S RETURN TO HAITI

 

Human rights activists and experts believe that "Baby Doc" Duvalier's return to HAITI was a manoeuvre to prevent the confiscation of the 5.7 million dollar frozen on Duvalier's bank account in Switzerland.

 

In February 2011, a new law in Switzerland authorizes the authorities to confiscate Duvalier's frozen funds and donate them to HAITI. One requirement is that it has not been possible to put him on trial in Haiti.

 

By returning to HAITI Duvalier may have attempted to avoid that the requirement (condition) is fulfilled and reclaim the millions.

 

 

MY COMMENT: I think that the above is likely to be the true reason for Duvalier's return. But how cynical of him to claim that he returned to Haiti to SHOW his SOLIDARITY with Haiti's population. Because by returning to Haiti, it seems that he might be able to keep the millions of dollar frozen on his Swiss bank account - money that HAITI so badly needs.