Michael Deibert's Haiti Blog

Notes on Red and Black in Haiti

2011-12-22T21:29:00.011-05:00

Notes on Red and Black in Haiti

By Michael Deibert

Small Axe 36 • November 2011 • Michael Deibert | 157

Red and Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict, and Political Change, 1934–1957

Matthew J. Smith

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,

304 pages

$26.95

I

One of my earliest memories of visiting Haiti in the mid-1990s was a trip I took along with a street-hailed cab down to the area near Port-au-Prince’s waterfront where Haiti’s parliament and the old American embassy were located. Being new to the city, I had nowhere in particular in mind that I wanted to see, save for a general idea of arriving at some point at the Episcopal Cathédrale Sainte Trinité to survey the stunning indigenous Biblical murals painted there by artists such as Wilson Bigaud and Philome Obin decades before.

Strolling away from Haiti’s parliament, the Palais Législatif, under a blazing Caribbean sun, I walked through a wide plaza fluttering with the flags of the member countries of the United Nations, a holdover from the time when Haiti hosted a lavish bicentennial exposition from December 1949 until April 1950 to celebrate the two-hundredth anniversary of the founding of Port-au-Prince.

Beyond the plaza, I came eventually to a grassy bluff facing the Bay of Port-au-Prince. There, its walls and foundations broken, graffitied, and chipped away, its grass trampled, and homeless legions sprawling passed out or lounging all around its circumference, I found the tomb of Dumarsais Estimé, the president who governed Haiti during the time of the exposition.

The derelict, melancholy appearance of the tomb—Estimé’s second resting place since being reinterred here by the dictator François Duvalier in 1968—said much about Haiti’s supposed ongoing state of revolution in the years since Estimé served as Haiti’s president from August 1946 until May 1950. Though we did not know it at the time, after the return of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide by a US-led multinational military force in 1994 and the inauguration of René Préval as his successor a year and a half later, Haiti was setting up for another one of the violent, chaotic showdowns that have defined its intense political culture for two centuries, this time one that would result in Aristide’s overthrow and exile in 2004.

At that moment in downtown Port-au-Prince, as since, looking at the crypt that held the mortal remains of one of Haiti’s great leaders I was reminded, as I often am when observing politicians, of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s 1818 sonnet Ozymandias, in which the poet tells of observing the ruined statue of a king in the desert, bearing the inscription “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!,” as “the lone and level sands stretch far away.”

II

Among outsiders unschooled in Haiti’s byzantine political and social legacies, the history of the Caribbean nation often appears to be little more than a handful of moments of hope-tinged tumult punctuated by long stretches of disappointment and ruin.

Haiti’s historic 1804 defeat of Napoleon’s forces and the country’s 1915–1934 US military occupation have been reasonably well covered, as has been the twenty-nine-year family dictatorship of François Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude Duvalier. The 1990 election of priest-turned-politician Aristide, the coup against him the following year, the military operation to reinstate him, and his subsequent overthrow and exile ten years later are eras that have all fallen under the gaze of foreign observers, who have commented on them with varying degrees of interest and expertise. Aside from these moments, foreign commentators on Haiti rouse themselves only in brief, strobe-light flashes of concentration, with each moment of focus treated as if it was a unique and singular event in what has in fact been a tortuously entwined history.

To those who travel the length and breadth of Haiti, chatting with its people in Kreyol in the back of sweltering tap-taps and in its hardscrabble peasant fields, one quickly realizes that the events that occurred during the long interims between these dramatic moments have also played a key role in determining the country’s history, perhaps even more so that the more-familiar moments. It was during these interims, we find, that the seeds of later events were first planted. Haitian historians such as the late Roger Gaillard have long known this, but it is a salient fact of Haiti’s political history that seems to have escaped many foreign commentators on the country.

This is why, with Red and Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict, and Political Change, 1934–1957, the young Jamaican historian Matthew J. Smith brings a welcome new aspect to much of the recent writing on Haiti: genuine scholarship. [1] Covering a pivotal and heretofore largely ignored two decade period in the nation’s development with a wealth of primary sources, Smith’s book shows us, with great import, that the struggle throughout Haitian history to form something resembling a responsive and decent government for its citizens was not just something debated in the realm of a series maximum leaders, but the heritage of a collective struggle made up of actors from different strata of Haitian society, the complex intermingling of which Smith does an admirable job of trying to disentangle.

In a small, poor country where few people can speak or write English proficiently, foreign observers of both the left and the right seem to feel that they have found the perfect canvas on which to outline their own theories and agendas, no matter how little time they have spent in Haiti or how irrelevant their theories may be to the struggles of Haitians as a whole. Academics with political agendas as diverse as Lawrence Harrison and Peter Hallward, callow commentators such as the Center for Economic and Policy Research’s Mark Weisbrot and author Naomi Klein, and fulminating media demagogues such as Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson have all been guilty over the years of expounding upon Haiti from a position of ideologically motivated ignorance, and their often dilettantish and disrespectful approach is what makes Smith’s book so valuable: it approaches Haiti as a nation like any other, with a deep and rich history worthy of rigorous analysis as opposed to simple, shrill sloganeering. [2]

Though the 1915–1934 US occupation of Haiti happened for a number of reasons, it is hard to overstate just what a dismal, sanguinary level Haitian politics had sunk to preceding it. In the four years before the invasion, no less than five Haitian presidents had been forced from office either by assassination or by coup d’état. While the occupation succeeded (at the dear price of Haiti’s sovereignty) in somewhat bringing the country’s political violence to heel, it did little to address the long-standing tensions and enmities in Haitian society, which briefly receded in the anti-occupation activities of such groups as the Union Patriotique, only to quickly resurfaced once the foreigners had gone away. Smith nevertheless characterizes the post-occupation era then at hand as “Haiti’s greatest moment of political promise. . . . At its outset, black consciousness and an intense cross-class nationalism produced a rare opportunity for lasting political change”.

It was an intellectual and cultural hothouse over which former Port-au-Prince mayor Sténio Vincent, a nationalist who cut his political teeth with the Union Patriotique, presided. Years later, witheringly alluded to by the writer Jacques Stephen Alexis as “an aging Casanova preserved in alcohol,” despite his anti-occupation credentials, Vincent, upon elevation to the presidency, quickly became one of Americans’ closest allies in the region, even as he dissolved Haiti’s legislature in 1935 and ran virtually unopposed in corrupted presidential
elections in May 1935.

Using increasingly thuggish methods in his quest to cling to power, Vincent pushed the political discourse that had been reinvigorated by the occupation to find its outlet in other areas. In exploring the links between Haiti’s cultural development and its political struggles, Smith wisely gives due to a nation that has given the Caribbean arguably its richest intellectual tradition, examining in detail the connections between intellectual and activist discourse in a political landscape that is often reduced by outsiders to mere populism. In one of the many ironies found in Haiti’s history, in the Haiti of the 1930s the appeal of Communism was chiefly to the country’s foreign-educated elite, who returned home determined to try and change what the Haitian writer and diplomat Frédéric Marcelin had in 1904 called the country’s tradition of “civil strife, fratricidal slaughters, social miseries, economic ignorance and idolatrous militarism.”

Jacques Roumain, whose 1943 novel Gouverneurs de la Rosée remains one of the most moving portraits constructed of Haitian peasant life, despite his own bourgeois background became a committed Communist during this time, founding, along with Georges Petit, the Parti communiste haitien (PCH) in 1934 under the slogan “Color is nothing, class is everything.”

Cutting through facile appeals to nationalism characteristic of Haiti’s political class, the PCH’s first national program, L’analyse schematique, dismissed such discourse by concluding that “the arrival to power of the Nationalists [i.e., Vincent] began the process of decomposition of nationalism,” going on to witheringly characterize Haiti’s bourgeois politicians as “valets of imperialism and cruel exploiters of the workers and peasants."

Among the other important historical figures of the Haitian left that Smith rescues from obscurity is Max Hudicourt, a gifted orator and the scion of a well-regarded family from the southern city of Jérémie who could nevertheless move easily among Haiti’s impoverished majority. Jailed with Roumain for his political activity though not a communist himself, Hudicourt would die prematurely under mysterious circumstances from a gunshot wound in 1947. However, in post-occupation Haiti, as the opposition of the largely bourgeois radical left attempted to apply the tenets of global Communism to Haiti’s reality, a handful of black intellectuals were drinking at an altogether different well for inspiration.

Looking to the writer and ethnologist Jean-Price Mars, whose 1928 book Ainsi parla l’oncle was a landmark in the négritude movement in the French-speaking Caribbean, the group referred to themselves as the Griots, after the traditional storytellers of West Africa. Rather than looking to European social-political models to address Haiti’s myriad problems, they instead “demanded a greater incorporation of folk practices, especially vodou, in national life . . . [arguing] that the country’s most basic problem since independence [was] the constant exploitation of the majority of the black inhabitants by a small privileged [mulatto] elite."

Among the Griots' number was a young doctor whom Price-Mars had taught as a student years before named François Duvalier. Arguing that “cultural authenticity defined all other aspects of social life” (ibid.), the Griots concluded that the Europhile outlook made it impossible for mulatto elites such as the Communists to understand the needs of a black country, hence Haiti’s chronic underdevelopment.

In these early years after the occupation, that “greatest moment of political promise” provided outlines of what will become the template of Haiti’s future political dynamic: a ruler with authoritarian tendencies trying to simultaneously bully, corrupt, and seduce opponents into supporting him as he faces a fractured political class made up of left-wing social democrat, right-wing, and populist parties with often negligible levels of public support, while an often avaricious and irresponsible upper class looks on and influences events as best they can when it suits them. Complimenting this situation, then as now, is Haiti’s complicated relationship with the neighboring Dominican Republic, for three decades under the explicitly fascist rule of Rafael Trujillo, and the shifting foreign policies of the United States, which gradually transformed from a Cold War–era doctrine of Communist containment to a neoliberal doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism that did little to stem Haiti’s economic free-fall.

When Vincent was succeeded by Elie Lescot, a consummate political survivor and opportunist, the elite’s grip on the nation’s political and economic mechanisms was thrown into the starkest relief since the end of the occupation. Lescot had served under the occupation-era government of Louis Borno as well as that of Vincent, often in politically sensitive posts such as Minster of the Interior, Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, and Ambassador to the United States, but nevertheless he appears have placed too much faith in the ability of his powerful friends to save what soon became an explicitly colorist dictatorship. In a precursor of other half-baked schemes decades later, the United States sponsored the Société haitiano-américaine de dévelopment agricole (SHADA) in an ill-fated attempted to cultivate rubber in Haiti in an effort that ended up alienating the very peasants it was designed to help.

The overthrow of Lescot—the Revolution of 1946—was an extraordinarily significant moment for Haiti which has thus far received scant attention from foreign scholars writing on the country. Here, Smith presents the time in its full complexity, with important roles played by the Communist left, student groups, and, memorably, French surrealist André Breton in helping to topple a regime. Though Roumain—who had died two years before, at the age of thirty seven—had accepted a minor diplomatic post from Lescot, his writing was nevertheless hugely influential with the young revolutionaries, at the forefront of whom was another one of Haiti’s greatest writers, fifteen years younger that Roumain himself. Jacques Stephen Alexis, who would go on to pen such pivotal Haitian works as Compère Général Soleil and L’espace d’un cillement, made his first appearance in Haiti’s politician conscience during this time, a political commitment which would result in his murder by Duvalierist henchmen after an ill-fated attempt to invade Haiti with some like-minded compatriots in 1961. [4]

Duvalier himself flits in and out of the story of the years before his ascendancy, helping to gradually hone the idea of négritude into noirisme, which the Communists and Marxists, many of them of more comfortable backgrounds than those of the noiristes themselves, viewed as little more than a cover by which the black middle class could seize power. After the fall of Lescot, the two sides stood with daggers drawn, the noiristes depicting Haiti’s radical left as bourgeois usurpers and the left depicting the noiristes as reactionary demagogues with fascist tendencies. And watching all, the Haitian military, personified by the slippery soldier-politician Paul Magloire, serving many Haitian presidents but beholden to none of them.

In my own book, Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti, I argued that much of modern Haitian political history began with Dumarsais Estimé, who stepped into the political maelstrom described above and served as Haiti’s president from August 1946 until May 1950.5 Estimé has indeed been, as Smith writes, “one of the most misunderstood heads of state in Haitian history” (110), despite featuring quite prominently in Island Possessed, the autobiography of the American dancer Katherine Dunham, who lived in Haiti and was Estimé’s lover for a time, and being touched on, glancingly, in a number other histories of Haiti.

Born in Verettes in the Artibonite Valley, Estimé was a former schoolteacher who had risen up the ladder of Haiti’s political establishment to serve in the Chamber of Deputies and, eventually, in the Vincent government. When voted by Haiti’s parliament to become the country’s new president, he was the first black president of post-occupation Haiti. Though not exactly a noiriste himself, Estimé drew his political base from the country’s disenfranchised black majority and sought to ameliorate the suffering by raising Haiti’s minimum wage, by expanding schools and social services, and by creating a series of public-works projects for the chronically unemployed Haitian labor force. Existing as he did outside of Haiti’s traditional political structures, though—representing the black underclass without being a noiriste, speaking for the disenfranchised while shunning the radical left, at odds with the military and the country’s economic elite—Estimé could never have expected an easy ride while in office and indeed did not get one.

“Progressive Haitians expected a revolution with Estimé,” Smith writes. “What they got was a period of unsustainable hope rife with color resentment, ideological polarization and a bitter, occasionally violent struggle for political power among forces inside and outside the government."

With members of the black intelligentsia filling virtually every cabinet post in his government, and with his deep understanding of the struggles of the country’s long-disenfranchised peasant majority, Estimé provided a brief tenure that in retrospect represents a far more genuine attempt by Haiti’s often-cannibalistic political system to come to terms with the needs of its citizens than the far-more-heralded, corrupted, violent, and compromised dual truncated terms of Jean-Bertrand Aristide decades later.

Indeed, the chief flaw of Smith’s book is perhaps that it too intensely focuses on the political machinations in Haiti’s capital, largely ignoring its vast countryside, where armed opposition to the US occupation in the forms of rebellions led by Charlemagne Peralte and Benoit Batraville was strongest, and where the independence of peasants remains a thorn in the side of the capital’s political class to this day. The great untold story of the last decades in Haiti is of the country’s peasantry and the way their lives have continued in recent decades—despite the political battles raging in the capital, despite the failed SHADA program, despite a disastrous program in the early 1980s, funded by the United States and Canada, that succeeded in destroying the 1.2 million Kreyol pigs, and despite the Aristide government’s duplicitous 1995 decision to cut tariffs on rice imports to the country from 35 percent to 3 percent. Largely abandoned by all but a handful of grassroots peasant organizations such as the Mouvman Peyizan Nasyonal Kongrè Papay and Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan, the Haitian peasantry have somehow, against all odds, managed to survive.

Estimé’s attempts to reassert Haiti’s control over its own economy in the face of US economic interests met with a predictably vitriolic response at a time when Washington seemed unable to differentiate any labor or social movement from one that was Communist or Communist-inspired, a particular irony in Haiti, since Estimé would go so far as to outlaw the PCH in 1948.

Representative though it was, Estimé’s government also proved short-sighted on some key matters. Gestures such as the nationalization of Haiti’s banana industry in 1947, while appealing on an emotional level, were so badly managed that United Fruit, the company that had dominated Haiti’s banana industry prior to that time, was back at the helm by 1949, with Haitian banana shipments being used to pay off the massive debt accrued over the two years of state control. Estimé also had the questionable claim to fame of bringing to the center of political power for the first time the particular political skills of François Duvalier, then a young official from Port-au-Prince politician Daniel Fignolé’s Mouvement des ouvriers et paysans (MOP). Duvalier served as Estimé’s director of public health, and continued on in the government after Fignolé, his ostensible boss, resigned.

We see under Estimé, as under Duvalier and Aristide years later, the emergence and gradual expansion of a nouveau riche black political and economic class that benefited from what had often been the prerogative of the traditional elite: political nepotism and corruption. It was a slow transformation and opening of what continues to be a broken political system, but it nevertheless allowed the country’s black majority, in very rare instances, to take a few steps toward access to greater political and economic influence in Haiti, even though those left outside, that is, the majority of Haitians who remained both black and poor, continued to be as disenfranchised as ever. These complex intersections of class and race and political and economic power are among the areas that most often trip up novice commentators on Haiti and it is refreshing to see Smith spend some time examining them.

We now know that the political fortunes of Estimé, like those of his chief rival Fignolé, were doomed amid the splintering of the diverse coalition that helped oust Lescot in 1946, a disintegration in which we find precursors of the violent fraying the occurred after the toppling of the Duvalier dictatorship four decades later. As relations between Estimé and Fignolé turned poisonous, the radical Left, never taken in by appeals to race-based politics, remained deeply hostile to the Estimé government.

As was their wont, the Americans mistook Fignolé’s fiery oratory for that of a communist and were fearful of the MOP’s considerable organizational capacity. Hand in hand with oppressing the MOP, Estimé in turn outlawed the PCH in 1948 and attempted to institute constitutional revisions that would allow him to succeed himself as president in the summer of 1949, provoking a violent student and labor strike the likes of which had helped topple Lescot and would help topple the second Aristide government in 2003/2004. Following Estimé’s ouster by the army the following year, Paul Magloire, the more-or-less unchallenged head of Haiti’s military, ruled from December 1950 until December 1956. This ushered in a period that observers sometimes nostalgically reminisce as a “golden age” for Haiti, a characterization that overlooks the deep sense of bitterness and betrayal that Estimé’s supporters nursed as the country was ruled by a military dictatorship viewed by many as little more than a tool of the elite. Magloire was quite willing to use violence to crush dissidents, particularly among the left and the press and, far from creating a sense of détente between Haiti’s competing political factions, tensions between them continued to fester, culminating, after Magloire’s ouster, with the assumption of the presidency by François Duvalier in October 1957 after a violence-wracked ballot. Smith’s book leaves us on the cusp of the advent of one of the most brutal dictatorships the Americas have ever seen, but, as Smith demonstrates, François Duvalier did not arise out of a vacuum; he was indeed molded and shaped by the political jockeying the occurred after the United States departed in 1934.

III

I write these lines almost two months to the day after an massive earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince and its environs and left untold tens of thousands dead in its wake. Haiti’s Palais National, which so many successive leaders have struggled to control, lies in ruins, as does the Cathédrale Sainte Trinité, while the Palais Législatif is badly damaged. It is an event that may ultimately prove nearly as pivotal, in its own way, as the overthrow of the French in 1804 in that it has laid bare many of the brutal inequalities and contradictions in Haitian society as never before (as well as the international community’s relationship with the country) and completely reordered the balance of power in what is now a truly stricken land. Haiti’s political class, whose previous battles Smith has detailed so masterfully in his book, has never appeared more unable to meet the needs of its people, even the most basic need of personal physical security. As I traveled throughout the stricken capital and to the countryside in the days after the earthquake, the call I heard again and again from people in markets, in tap- taps, and in tent camps was for a US military coordination of relief efforts in the country, a call that would doubtless stun and sadden the nationalists, were they still alive, that Smith writes about in a book. It is a melancholy statement on how far the Haitian people’s faith in their political class has fallen.

The dysfunctional nature of Haiti’s politics cannot be blamed on a single source; it is rather the product of decades of political and economic miscalculation and ill intention on the part of both Haiti’s leaders and the international community. Because far too much commentary on Haiti at present emanates from the voices of poorly informed ideologues, with little back- ground in Haiti’s tortured political history and even less understanding of and respect for its often politically-charged cultural and artistic traditions, books such as Smith’s Red and Black in Haiti will provide an invaluable sense of historical perspective as foreigners with an interest in helping Haitians on their road to building a responsive, human state wonder how best to aid the country. It is time to disregard forever the ahistorical, irresponsible approach with which foreigners so often approach Haiti, and time for them to try to solemnly educate themselves about its history before presuming to lecture the Haitians themselves on what they should do. Red and Black in Haiti is an invaluable contribution to that end.

Miami, March 2010

1 Matthew J. Smith, Red and Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict, and Political Change, 1934–1957 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). Hereafter cited in the text.

2 For further thoughts on this phenomenon, see Michael Deibert, “Thoughts on Recent Haiti Commentaries,” Michael Deibert’s Blog, 9 February 2010, http:// michaeldeibert.blogspot.com/2010/02/thoughts-on-recent-haiti-commentaries.html.

3 Robert Debs Heinl and Nancy Gordon Heinl, Written in Blood: The Story of the Haitian People, 1492–1995 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1996), 313.

4 Despite not focusing exclusively on the topic, Alexis’s 1955 novel, Compère Général Soleil (Paris: Gallimard, 1955) translated into English by Carrol F. Coates as General Sun, My Brother (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1999), still contains what is perhaps the most scathing and accurate depiction of Haiti’s political class that has been written to date.

5 Michael Deibert, Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti (New York: Seven Stories, 2005).

Michael Deibert is a journalist, author, and visiting fellow at the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies at Coventry University. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, the Miami Herald, Le Monde diplomatique, and Folha de São Paulo, among other publications. In his role at Coventry University, he aids the center in its mission to increase and sustain dialogue on international peacebuliding and development issues, with a particular focus on Africa and Latin America. He is the author of Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti (2005).

Sonia Pierre 1963-2011

2011-12-04T23:38:00.000-05:00

Sonia Pierre, you were the greatest patriot that the Dominican Republic could ask for, one of the greatest advocates for human rights in the Americas and a hero to us all. Your work and your example live on. Domi byen, fanm vanyan.

Lyonel Trouillot, écrivain de la colère

2011-11-04T15:18:00.002-04:00

Littérature

Lyonel Trouillot, écrivain de la colère

04/11/2011 à 19h:54

Par Tshitenge Lubabu M.K.

Jeune Afrique

(Read the original article here)

Les lecteurs de l’écrivain haïtien Lyonel Trouillot ont cru jusqu’au bout que le Goncourt 2011 allait lui être décerné. Tel n’a pas été le cas. Mais sa sélection a permis d’attirer l’attention sur son œuvre dont l’engagement est le credo inaliénable.

« On fait tous de la surenchère. Quel que soit le pays, il y a toujours un écart entre le jour de la fête nationale et le reste de l’année, entre les discours officiels et le parler tremblé de la vie quotidienne, entre les cartes postales et les vies de chien du commun des mortels. Ne viens pas me raconter que chez toi tout est beau. Que tous y sont heureux ». Cette citation tirée de La Belle amour humaine, le dernier roman de Lyonel Trouillot qui lui a valu d’être, jusqu’au 2 novembre, sur la liste des quatre finalistes du prix Goncourt, semble à elle seule résumer la fougue de son auteur qui s'y trouve tout entier. Homme en colère, qui n’accepte ni l’indifférence des siens face à la paupérisation du plus grand nombre, ni l’arrogance de ceux qui, parce que nantis ou se croyant tels, s'autoproclament conscience du monde, prompts à juger sans apporter de solution à l’égoïsme humain, à l’exploitation de l’homme par son semblable et à la déliquescence du monde qui les entoure.

Le 31 décembre, Lyonel Trouillot aura 55 ans. Sa carrière littéraire, dont la première œuvre a été publiée en 1979, compte à ce jour dix-sept titres, allant de la poésie au roman. Sa particularité : il écrit aussi bien en français qu’en créole haïtien. Dès le départ, il a choisi sa voie sans la moindre équivoque : l’engagement, c’est-à-dire la dénonciation des laideurs de son île, de son peuple, dont l’histoire est à la fois grandiose et triste. C’est à Haïti, nul ne peut l'oublier, que, pour la première fois dans l’Histoire de l’humanité, un peuple d’esclaves a vaincu l’armée du maître et arraché son indépendance. Mais la geste grandiose de Toussaint Louverture se transformera, pendant deux siècles, en tragédie-comédie.

"Écrire avec Haïti"

Balloté entre oppression interne, occupation et ingérence extérieures, Haïti n’a cessé de souffrir dans sa chair. Pour Trouillot, point n’est besoin de réécrire l’Histoire. Il faut l’assumer. Combattre, surtout, pour l’avènement d’un pays plus juste, plus fraternel, plus humain, plus solidaire. Il n’est point question, affirme-t-il, « d’écrire sur Haïti, mais avec Haïti, un pays qui se débat pour produire une belle histoire alors qu’il est du côté le plus sombre de l’Histoire ».

Pourtant, Trouillot n’est pas ce qu’on peut appeler un fils du peuple. Un père professeur de droit et bâtonnier à Port-au-Prince, plutôt bien vu du régime de François Duvalier. Une mère infirmière. En 1970, un an avant la mort de Duvalier, Trouillot se retrouve aux États-Unis, principale terre d’exil de milliers de ses compatriotes. Il revient néanmoins sur son île cinq ans plus tard. Objectif : jouer un rôle actif afin de contribuer à la chute du régime de Duvalier fils, alias Bébé Doc.

S’il étudie le droit, tradition familiale oblige, il se plonge dans la littérature. Il lit, certes, mais il écrit surtout des poèmes dans lequel il distille toute la subversion qui l’anime. Il le jure : « Il n’y a d’écriture que politique ». En 1980-1982, Trouillot se retrouve à Miami. Mais il ne tarde pas à regagner Haïti. Pour lui, être sur le terrain est fondamental. Et depuis, il ne cesse de se battre - en s'engageant par exemple dans le Collectif NON, qui réclame le départ de Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Dans sa quête d'homme et d'écrivain, maniant une écriture dense et poétique, il se révèle comme un véritable maître de la parole dont l’ambition, la seule, est de rendre la complexité de son île. Une île qui doit tendre les bras à l’espoir.

Le Député Arnel Bélizaire sur une liste d’évadés de prison recherchés

2011-10-26T08:47:00.000-04:00

Le Député Arnel Bélizaire sur une liste d’évadés de prison recherchés

Le chef a.i du parquet de Port-au-Prince, Félix Léger, ordonne à la police judiciaire d’arrêter n’importe où et de conduire en prison le parlementaire et huit autres individus recherchés pour meurtre, kidnapping, viol et vol ; en voyage en France, le représentant de la circonscription de Delmas/Tabarre rejette en bloc les accusations du parquet qui seraient fondées, selon le Réseau national de défense des droits humains (RNDDH)

Publié le mardi 25 octobre 2011

(Read the original article here)

Le commissaire du gouvernement a.i de Port-au-Prince, Me Félix Léger, a transmis à la direction centrale de la police judiciaire (DCPJ), avec ordre de les arrêter immédiatement, une liste très sélective de neuf individus identifiés comme des « évadés de prison » parmi eux, le Député Arnel Bélizaire dont le parquet réclame parallèlement la levée de l’immunité parlementaire.

Clairement identifié par ses anciens numéros d’écrou PN 04-10-100 et PN 05-07-020, Arnel Bélizaire est accusé de meurtre et détention illégale d’armes à feu, selon une correspondance adressée en date du 21 octobre au chef de la DCPJ, Godson Aurélus.

Me Léger, qui affirme que l’offensive lancée vise à capturer tous ceux qui se sont évadés du Pénitencier National, la prison civile de la capitale, les 29 février 2004, 19 février 2005 et 12 janvier 2010, en relation avec la « perpétration de nouveaux crimes » et la « réévaluation des dossiers des condamnés, inculpés et prévenus » en cavale, exige de la police judiciaire qu’ils soient « recherchés, appréhendés et déposés en prison ».

Outre M. Bélizaire, on retrouve sur la première liste du parquet de Port-au-Prince -qui devrait être suivie d’une seconde ce jeudi- huit autres individus accusés ou déjà reconnus coupables de meurtres, viol, séquestration et enlèvement et vol à mains armées et association de malfaiteurs. Les autres noms mentionnés sont ceux de Yves Jean Charles, Michel Jean, Sergot Charléus, Jean Pierre Rilien Jules, Robenson Mervil, Edzaire Bellabe, Bourjo Jordany, Dubuisson Bien-Aimé et de Valdo Jean.

Ce dernier avait été condamné en août 2008 aux travaux forcés à perpétuité pour l’assassinat de la jeune présentatrice de télévision et actrice de cinéma, Ginoue Mondésir, massacrée en 2006 par le forcené qui n’était autre que son petit ami fou de jalousie.

En conflit ouvert avec le Président Michel Martelly, le Député Bélizaire, qui séjourne actuellement en France, a catégoriquement rejeté lundi sur les ondes de Radio Kiskeya les accusations portées contre lui et soutenues par une organisation haïtienne des droits humains, le Réseau national de défense des droits humains (RNDDH).

Le président de la Chambre basse, Sorel Jacinthe, et plusieurs autres Députés ont dénoncé une tentative de mainmise du pouvoir sur l’appareil judiciaire dans cette affaire et écarté l’idée de donner suite à la procédure engagée en vue de faire lever l’immunité de leur collègue.

Au lendemain d’une réunion orageuse avec des parlementaires et qui avait dégénéré en invectives contre Arnel Bélizaire, Michel Martelly avait menacé de devenir cynique et annoncé son intention de traquer les repris de justice et évadés de prison qui, dit-il, se sont réfugiés au Parlement. spp/Radio Kiskeya

Rencontre President Michel Martelly & Jean-Claude Duvalier

2011-10-13T12:00:00.000-04:00

Rencontre President Michel Martelly & Jean-Bertrand Aristide

2011-10-13T11:58:00.000-04:00

Des centaines de paysans marchent à Jacmel pour le respect du droit au logement et à la terre

2011-10-05T12:31:00.001-04:00

Sean Penn Responds to Rolling Stone’s Haiti Story

2011-10-03T13:34:00.004-04:00

Sean Penn Responds to Rolling Stone’s Haiti Story

By Sean Penn

(Read the original article here)

Editor’s note: In RS 1137, we published “Beyond Relief,” a report that examined the failure of international efforts to rebuild Haiti following last year’s devastating earthquake. Sean Penn, a leader in the reconstruction effort, sent us a lengthy and passionate critique of the story. His full letter is presented here. To read our response, click here.

Shame on me. It is not narcissism that leads me to this statement, for I have no shame in recognizing the well-populated club in which I now see I can count myself as having been a member for most of my adult American life. As a person invested in, and having benefited from, the film industry since about 1980, of course, I’d had some peripheral awareness years ago that filmmaker Jonathan Demme was a voice in our own wilderness screaming, “There is a country of people down here in total poverty (call that: no emergency rooms when their children are sick with fever) only a one-and-a-half-hour flight from Miami Beach!” “Come on, Johnny!” I thought, “don’t gimme no cause célèbre!” It took a fluke of timing and a major fucking earthquake, some 30 years later, to rattle my cage, while some 230,000 Haitian men, women and children were rattled to a sudden and horrible death for no reason but poverty and neglect. “Come on, Seany, give it up for Johnny’s cause célèbre!” So while the most accessible way for me to approach what follows is largely to personalize it, it is by no means personal. This is simply shame . . . shared. And pragmatic hope . . . encouraged.

When the United States military pulled up stakes after their 22,000-strong peak deployment of approximately three months of assistance following the 2010 Haiti earthquake, it would be the first time in generations that the Haitian population would say their goodbyes to U.S. troops with a “five-fingered” wave. Under the leadership of Lt. Gen. Ken Keen, their humanitarian mission was not only performed with great humanism, but left behind the map to a logistical and decisive approach for emergency-relief success – a map that may well have been advisory in the building of sustainable development. Among those who shared in, or inherited, that position of leadership were the government of Haiti (GOH) and the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). There was also an assortment of international non-governmental organizations (NGO), all depending on the support and faith of nation donors and private investment. Many of these organizations had a presence prior to and during the earthquake, and many lives of their heroic colleagues were tragically lost to the quake itself.

Within the two most politically significant organizations that suffered such losses, the GOH and MINUSTAH, both lost not only close friends and loved ones, but also many in primary positions of leadership. Despite that, most in Haiti with whom I have worked, initially as founder/country director and later as CEO of J/P Haitian Relief Organization, continued to offer extraordinary skills, experience and passionate commitment. As with any disaster, organizations large and small will always find themselves traveling a virtual mine field of bureaucracy and unforeseeable challenge. Note that reconstruction at Ground Zero did not even begin until five years following the 9/11 disaster, and only in recent months has there been any visual progress made. Also, with the exception of schools built under the leadership of Paul Vallas, now a J/P HRO board member, not a single public building has been rebuilt in hurricane-damaged Louisiana. Sadly, in many cases, the greatest challenges come from within, and in such a mine field are patience, decisiveness, coordination and collaboration – the four balls of a juggler, not mutually independent, but each necessarily and singularly fierce.

Haiti’s most recent earthquake measured 1 million on the magazine-sale scale. That’s fierce too. The August 18th issue of Rolling Stone magazine had hit the stands, its cover boasting a photo of four bearded men, the death of Amy Winehouse and the Rupert Murdoch scandal feature – a story that by rights should have called upon all self-respecting journalists at News Corp. to instantly resign in protest as their bosses reign over the destruction of journalistic ethics, quality and law. But it is not the four beards, the untimely death of a talented young singer or the gangsterism of Rupert Murdoch where Rolling Stone is shaking the most fragile ground, or risking its own journalistic ethics. It is in its special report, “Beyond Relief,” by contributing editor Janet Reitman. The piece is an intended indictment of post-2010 earthquake relief, reconstruction and development efforts in Haiti, describing them as a “disaster of good intentions.”

I picked up a copy of the magazine off the rack during a layover at Miami International Airport. I had taken a red-eye flight from Los Angeles for my return to Port-au-Prince. At that point, our own predominantly Haitian-staffed NGO, J/P Haitian Relief Organization, was continuing to sweat and sacrifice, as the staff had apparently not yet received the Rolling Stone cover verdict that their work side by side with so many others and so many international organizations and those of their fellow Haitians had “failed.” They were also to be a bit shaken that such a message had been sent by Rolling Stone to donors at such a critical turning point in Haiti’s potential future.

For our own part, J/P HRO’s engineering crew had re-established entire neighborhoods, removing over 120,000 cubic meters of rubble and demolishing hundreds of irreparable buildings, much of that rubble recycled and trucked into the slum of Cité Soleil to be used as fill beneath three new schools in assistance to the Digicel school project (mentioned in the Rolling Stone article). Our medical teams and clinics had treated over 115,000 patients, and pushed by truck and helicopter over 100 metric tons of cholera meds throughout the country, including mountainous regions so remote that inhabitants had never seen a white face before. Our school of 260 children was advancing, and we had ultimately helped to relocate over 30,000 people from camps to homes while coordinating camp services as management in that same period. We have trained and employed 250 Haitians on staff, as well as many hundreds of additional jobs our programs created, both through cash-for-work and cash-for-production programs. All of this principally funded by private donors.

As I sat in the terminal, pulling the foil from a packet of mints before retrieving the magazine from the vendor-stamped plastic bag, I did not know that none of our progress, nor those extraordinary accomplishments of other top organizations, including the GOH and the Clinton Foundation (maligned in Reitman’s piece by an unnamed source), would be acknowledged. I boarded my flight to Haiti, clipped on my safety belt and began turning the pages of Rolling Stone.

I am a reader of Rolling Stone. Full disclosure: I once published a short piece in the magazine and have been featured on its cover a few times. My experience in general is that the reporting in Rolling Stone tends to be at least reasonably accurate, quite often stellar, and, more consistently than most, can claim to having broken major stories with a quality of writing that would challenge any magazine of its kind. Janet Reitman is herself a polished writer, a bright woman and, I believe, a well-intended one. But Ms. Reitman has stepped into the wrong wheelhouse here. I myself, by quirk of fate, have been one of the most active (and often critical) voices of relief efforts in Haiti, and in my view, subject as it is to the reader’s judgment, it is her article that is a “disaster of good (journalistic) intentions.”

Reitman had the right idea in her instinct that the complexities of the situation had bred great dysfunction in the relief and redevelopment effort. But what might have been an important and revelatory piece on bottlenecks and accountability shortfalls, accomplishments, failure, crimes, misdemeanors and transparency, Haitian needs and the insight into paths forward inadvertently becomes a damaging orgy of presupposed bias, along with unbalanced and consciously woven attributions for effect, but at the high cost of fact. This distillation of snowballed half-truths perilously threatens to dissuade donorship while bolstering reluctance and excusability on the parts of governments and NGOs alike to release already appropriated funds at this, Haiti’s most hopeful hour for progress since the earth shook. Now, an August 24th blog by Felix Salmon has lifted verbatim from Ms. Reitman’s flawed text to independently claim and regurgitate her erroneous assertions. My finger is in the dike.

So here’s the thing: There are two primary themes in the world of international relief dynamics: one is emergency relief, the other sustainable development. The disaster of Ms. Reitman’s journalism here is that, though seemingly with the best intentions, and certainly peppered with legitimate critique, she came to Haiti for a brief one week, nine months before her article was released. Indeed, just as cholera had begun to spike, and where those she spoke to were likely on edge, and in an environment where scapegoating was at a premium. In her predisposition to indict the frustrating and seemingly static nature of relief efforts, she stepped into a cesspool of “experts,” some representing emergency relief, others entrenched in theoretical development, and a very few who actually sought, or practically applied themselves to, the notion of bridging the two.

In the first two groups she would find relief careerists all too willing to offer themselves as the poles for her polarizing story that borders on fiction. Typically, those both in government or representatives of NGOs who actively work in the field were willing to speak to Ms. Reitman on the record. Sadly, it is they who would be punished most for their honesty, as their comments were re-contextualized to support a story built principally on the complaint-culture predisposition of an uninformed public. I was among those (though least at risk of going undefended, here proven) who gave on-the-record accounts. I spent hours, both in person in Haiti and on the telephone with Ms. Reitman, followed by a 20-minute session with her Rolling Stone-assigned “fact checker.”

To give some examples of the way in which my own words were spun, I will begin with this: Indeed, as Reitman asserted, I was closely involved and advocated strongly for what became the first, and ultimately a very controversial, relocation. This relocation of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) living in a vulnerable tent camp on the Delmas-Bourdon border, which our organization managed in coordination with the International Organization of Migration (IOM). By “managed,” we mean the lead NGO coordinator and international project advocate on behalf of the families living there. This relocation involved moving 5,000 persons (or 1,200 families) off the side of a hill that the United Nations had declared the most vulnerable IDP camp to threat of death by flood or mudslide in the country. That assessment was shared by engineers of the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Navy Seabees, and virtually every engineer of every partner NGO with whom we work. A drainage mitigation plan was drawn up, and we set out to accomplish it. Among the 60,000 internally displaced persons in the camp at the time, if 5,000 were not relocated, 32,000 people would have been left in harm’s way. That is a fact.

What made the relocation ultimately controversial was the location and habitat condition of the alternate camp that was planned, surveyed and managed by other organizations after that location had been selected by the GOH on land they had claimed by eminent domain. The area was not selected, as misreported in Ms. Reitman’s piece, “after Penn and Keen met with U.S. and Haitian officials.” In fact, the only part that Lt. Gen. Keen or I played in that was in our mutual and staunch advocacy that safe alternate areas of relocation, with services and material support, be provided. Furthermore, her contention that the lieutenant general and I would have been meeting with “U.S.” officials to designate a location seems written with the intention of bolstering the myth that the U.S. relief mission was, in some way, an intrusion on Haiti’s sovereignty. The officials we and the GOH did meet with, whether independently or collaboratively, were U.N. officials, not “U.S.” officials.

As framed in Ms. Reitman’s piece, this alternate camp became a disaster of its own. The camp is called Corail-Celesse. And indeed, as Ms. Reitman reported, a few months following the relocation, a storm had hit Corail. Approximately 150 of the 1,200 tents erected would be collapsed by that storm. A single death was reported, by lightning strike. It was also wrongly reported at the time that the surveying organization, a U.N. designate with a grand reputation and working through the Haitian Ministry of Public Works and Transportation, had been somehow derelict in its duty by determining that Corail was not seated in a flood zone. I went personally to Corail in the immediate aftermath of the storm. The harsh rain had proven one thing for certain: the surveying organization was correct. And for those in the know, their grand reputation remained intact. The tents had fallen simply from harsh rainfall, sky to ground, not, as widely reported by the media, due to flooding. What those not in the field do not know is that 100 or more tents go down in EVERY camp with EVERY harsh rain. But rains in Haiti tend to fall at night, when fearful journalists dare not tread into “spooky” IDP camps, and too many U.N. bureaucrats have never seen the inside of a camp to begin with.

When I visited Corail that morning, none of the former residents of the camp I managed wanted to return to the hillside of Bourdon (a.k.a. Pétionville camp). I spoke personally to hundreds of them. They preferred to stay in Corail. They salvaged their belongings, 150 new tents were distributed to them, and life, shitty as it was post-disaster, went on. It needs to be said that this was a voluntary relocation and that all formal communications with those who opted to relocate was done with a factual sharing of all information available, which shamefully included the false assurances, given by habitation organizations of the U.N., that all tents would be expediently transitioned into the hurricane-resistant shelters that were to be placed on a separate sector of the Corail land, development of which would happen in expedient follow-up to the initial relocation. What was never proposed to those opting for Corail, however, was, as Reitman erroneously reported, “that they would be first in line for jobs in the Korean-owned garment factories that the Haitian government pledged would soon be built in the area.” (Though we all had high hopes for that to be the case.) In the construction of the article, she folds that false information (based on a widely known rumor of Haitian political campaign-speak origin) into my confirmation of the list of incentives and assistance that were in the offing immediately in her piece, connecting the rumored promise of jobs to my quote, “That’s the plan. . . .” WRONG!

An additional distortion in the Rolling Stone article is Reitman’s recounting of a meeting between myself and community leaders within an IDP camp tent. In Ms. Reitman’s article I am quoted saying to a group of Haitian community leaders, during the buildup to relocation, that “I don’t give a fuck about the rich guys who own this club.” This was a reference to the owners of the land upon which these IDPs had established their ad hoc encampment with tents made originally from salvaged bed sheets in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, not, as reported in Rolling Stone, from plastic sheeting (the rain-resistant sheeting she observed was only later distributed by NGOs and U.N. organizations). In the context of the article I had said it, and meant it just as stated. In context of reality and of the broader explanation I gave Ms. Reitman and her fact checker, I explained that I had indeed said those words knowing I was speaking to a group of pro-Aristide, anti-foreign “community leaders” whom, I had been informed in advance, believed that any whites operating in the camp within which they lived were doing so on behalf of the “rich white people who own the club,” which in Haiti has a resonating history of class division, forced evictions and brutality. I used those words about the landowners only in knowing I would need to court open minds, and had to make the separation clear between their assumptions about these landowners (which, had they been justified, indeed my words would have expressed exactly the position I and J/P HRO would have taken) and our own position as a humanitarian operation, presenting them with an opportunity to make a sacrifice for the greater good of the community. I will say here on behalf of those community leaders that they did ultimately make the choice to relocate and they did so with a proud and touching sense of social contribution. But it also has to be said that I am personally unaware of any other earthquake infringed upon landowners, whether white, black, rich or poor, who have been as consistently supportive of an IDP population and their NGO partners. William Evans, Coty Reinbold and the rest of the board of the Pétionville Club have been extraordinarily supportive. So, to have left my statement as “I don’t give a fuck about the rich guys who own this club” and to do it on page one of her article without further explanation, was an indication of the pages to come and the damaging distortion whereby ongoing relationships and vital collaborations are compromised.

On that same first page of Ms. Reitman’s article, a “U.N. official” who asked not to be identified made the scurrilous speculation that the relocation to the camp at Corail, which had most certainly prevented disastrous consequences at the Pétionville Camp, was to this unnamed coward “the most grotesque act of cynicism that I’ve seen in some time.” I believe it lacks journalistic grace to include, within the writer’s own agenda, such words as these, without identifying the interviewee, and seems to have been the result of the absent-minded slip of the interviewee to have properly introduced himself to Reitman. So, in an effort to indemnify both parties, I will risk here, though with a confidence of nearly empirical certainty, that that cowardly unnamed U.N. official was a fellow by the name of Jean-Christophe Adrian. And . . . if not, he, having spoken along these lines publicly before, will serve just fine to exemplify the problem.

Adrian is a notorious charlatan and head of programs for U.N. Habitat in Haiti. He has hypnotized a crew of development-set minions with an arrogance that translates into his followers’ fulfillment and to the great detriment of the Haitian people. I was first introduced to Mr. Adrian through comments he made to Jacqueline Charles in The Miami Herald. Following the storm in Corail, Mr. Adrian, a “shelter and development expert,” seized the opportunity to raise his profile in a glibly calculated statement. Piggybacking on a hot but childishly misinformed “gotcha moment” of the media’s own creation, following that storm, he stated to the Herald, “This is what happens when Hollywood and the U.S. military get together.”

My next notice of Adrian was later, when we had initiated one of the first and most aggressive rubble-removal campaigns by an NGO in an area of Port-au-Prince identified with those displaced who live in the camp J/P HRO manages. It is the highly visible market area of Delmas 32, where multilevel residences collapsed en masse, leaving behind miles of double-head-high rubble, strewn with human remains, blocking nearly every roadway. On the day that the World Bank had declared this specific area of operations of primary importance for rubble removal, intending to identify an organization to do the engineering work beginning two weeks hence, and noting Mr. Adrian’s U.N. Habitat as a principal resource, J/P HRO had already completed the area in question. We had cleared virtually all rubble from its central division with private funding from Richard Hotes, a gentleman who later, in full disclosure (and why not?), became a member of the J/P HRO board of directors.

Personal though my judgments may appear, the larger point in any further discussion related to Mr. Adrian is that, like too many in the development community, he stays out of the field, out of touch with the Haitian people, myopically theoretical and pathologically anti-humanitarian, preferring the conference rooms of secured and air-conditioned buildings, where he and his sort entrap captive audiences into masturbatory verbosity and theoretical strategy talks. On this single issue do I fully agree with Reitman. It’s enough talk and political pandering. It is time to act in support of, and on behalf of, the Haitian people and their government. In particular, the remaining emergency concern for those 595,000 living the highly vulnerable circumstances of camps.

By the third page of Reitman’s piece comes the proposal: “Perhaps the very idea of fixing Haiti at all is a flawed concept, revealing not only the limits of Western humanitarianism but also the folly of believing that any country and its problems are ours to set right.” In another context, this might have been a boldly provocative question. But here it exposes one of the great flaws not only in the journalism, but also of the organizations and agencies, and individuals most reckless. Indeed, it is the Haitians themselves who, in so many cases, ARE “setting it right.” And that there are some international organizations that truly do work in support of their Haitian counterparts with these collaborations is why enormous successes can also be touted. THAT is the THING. The THING missed by Reitman and Adrian to the detriment of a population, and potentially at the cost of millions of dollars.

Given the short window of Ms. Reitman’s week in Haiti, she would weave what are the legitimate criticisms toward most NGOs into an overbearing generalization. Hence, the ludicrous, and ironic, targeting of one of the most productive NGOs in Haiti, Cooperative Housing Foundation (CHF). I have worked closely with CHF and its now-acting country director, Ann Lee. Ms. Lee earns her reputation as one of the most solid individuals in the NGO community. She had been in Haiti working with CHF for three years prior to the earthquake, and lost many friends and loved ones on that terrible day, including some who lost their lives doing the work they did through CHF. Ms. Lee is, at one point in Reitman’s story, quoted addressing this brand-new set of complexities born of an earthquake of such a scale, in a densely urban and impoverished environment: “It’s a complete learning experience for all of us.”

What I should highlight here is that Ms. Reitman had shaped her own argument by positioning the following quote John Simon, by former undersecretary of USAID under the Bush administration: “Unfortunately, what you seem to have with Haiti is a lot of new people who were not in the business of doing disaster relief and who took this as an opportunity to learn.” Secretary of State Clinton’s counselor and chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, would also be in the crosshairs of this particular spin. (Somehow I didn’t make the cut on that one, though as the only truly new one to emergencies/development, I would certainly hope for ongoing learning, and do appreciate some of the positive framing that our organization received, though too isolated, in Reitman’s piece.) Meanwhile, Simon himself (interesting to view his picture on the Internet) published a piece for the Center for Global Development titled “Six Lessons for Disaster Relief in Haiti.” Well, I’m glad he too recognizes the importance of lessons and his own learning. Ms. Lee said it right: “It’s a complete learning experience for ALL of us.” Ms. Lee’s granting of the interview is an affirmation that no good deed, nor honest words, would go unpunished. It is worth noting, perhaps, that all experienced disaster relief agencies, such as the WFP and IFRC, described Haiti’s earthquake as one of the most complicated disasters in recent history. Of course everyone has to learn. Yet Mills is even criticized for having read the lessons from other disasters, as though it’s not sensible to read the kind of papers that Simon himself writes.

The CHF program in Ravine Pintade is new to Haiti, and new to the world of disaster relief, but is based on their years of experience of operating in urban environments from Colombia to Ghana and India. It will very likely prove itself to be at the core of reconstruction following future natural disasters in urban areas. What Ms. Reitman has done in referring to CHF, and attributing to them the generic criticisms of NGOs, is really criminal. Having been in Haiti since January 2010, I can share with you here that CHF is most certainly not, as Ms. Reitman contends, “generally considered one of the most ostentatious NGOs in Haiti.” On the contrary, the “two spacious mansions” and the “fleet of brand-new vehicles” claimed derogatorily of the organization’s presence in Haiti, are, in fact, an office building (which suffered serious earthquake damage and which they rent at an extraordinarily low cost), and a hut, if you will, in Ravine Pintade with no air conditioning, where Haitian and international staff alike sweat relentlessly throughout the day to meet needs, and a small collection of well-maintained and necessary vehicles; the “newest” of them has been traversing, scraping and banging about the rugged terrain of Haiti for six years.

Furthermore, Reitman contends that CHF is “one of the largest USAID contractors in Haiti and enjoys a cozy relationship with Washington.” The were-it-not-so-sad-it-would-be-laughable distortion of this is that were it not for such reckless media, were it not for the absence of diligent media coverage in Haiti, such “cozy relationships” might be productively had. But instead, the virtual blanket of negativity has served to do nothing but inflame suspicion between donors and NGOs, and to allow those NGOs most destructive and least ideologically integrated – least knowledgeable of either the GOH plans or of the needs of the community at large – to seize the day. And it is they, in their cozy relationship with the media, who do more harm than good, in the sense that anthropologist Tim Schwartz was, I’m sure in a literal sense, accurately identifying. Schwartz, who is quoted throughout the piece and is used to support many of Reitman’s propositions, is a very knowledgeable person. But for Rolling Stone to not recognize the hyperbole and provocateurism of his language displays a short memory for its own Gonzo, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Though Schwartz has recently become a lightning rod for criticism based on a leaked and highly questionable USAID report, where he asserted that the death toll from the immediate effects of the earthquake had been exaggerated (exaggeration is common to disaster, though often immeasurable or subjective), he is still rightly considered a brilliant and vital voice. But again, it takes appreciating Schwartz’s idiosyncrasies, as it would Dr. Thompson’s himself, to recognize that when Schwartz uses a word or sentence descriptively, as Dr. Thompson might, the word “swine,” he would more likely be applying it to one such as Jean-Chrisophe Adrian than he would to describe the Suidae family of even-toed ungulates. His pre-quake book, Travesty in Haiti, remains, for me, the single most important sanity-sustaining volumes for any international who cares about Haiti, and in what its healing may come to represent about all of us, from countries outside, with blessed comforts and informed compassion.

Still, the greatest obscenity of Ms. Reitman’s reporting comes when she intermingles Schwartz’s primary accusatory swine call upon NGOs as “ignoring what the Haitians are telling us” in their request for “repair” over “replacement” of their homes with Ms. Lee’s notion to “raze” homes and offer temporary shelter to those whose homes would be replaced. The homes Ms. Lee is referring to have been paint-stenciled the letters MTPTC in the color red (not the red “X” Ms. Reitman’s piece reported, presumably as a shorthand to readers more acquainted with relief protocols following Hurricane Katrina). The MTPTC is the government of Haiti’s own ministry, which with the support of UNOPS (an excellent U.N. organization, earlier referenced as the “correct” surveyor at Corail) inspected post-earthquake structures. Those stamped in red letters are homes that have been determined by engineers, trained by UNOPS, to be, for any practical and equitable spend, beyond repair, and Ms. Lee, in genuine service to these residents, properly intends to dissuade them from the dangerously misguided belief that basic repairs will suffice. Recently, J/P HRO’s engineering team pulled 13 bodies, including some babies, out of a home that had been reoccupied following the earthquake, despite the red-stamped warning of the MTPTC. It collapsed, as more will, following a rainfall that seeped the fissures of its earthquake damage. For dissuading highly dangerous residency, Ms. Lee and her organization were slighted. I’m quite sure this misleading integration with Schwartz’s quote was neither the intention nor context of Schwartz’s words, but rather, a well-intentioned journalist’s investment in poetry versus the prose that would demand more than a week of in-country observation.

As of July 31st, 2011, 894 camps remain, representing 594,811 individuals (according to the most recent IOM report). The pace of spontaneous returns that have been facilitated by numerous strategies, and assistance programs, has slowed considerably. These remaining are the poorest of the poor, and truly have no place better to go than to stay in the dense, unsafe and unsanitary displacement sites. They are choosing to stay in the absence of the alternative, facing, in tents and improvised shelters, the ongoing hurricane season, and living in constant risk. Some 121,000 are under immediate threat of eviction, with a newly introduced strain of cholera consistently threatening to re-spike as the rains and subsequent floods increase during the season.

Reitman’s article accuses the Haitian Ministry of Public Health and Population of having lied about initial infection and mortality rates, when in fact what they had done was to restrict the reporting of either strictly to confirmed cases. This follows international protocol. There is no centralized medical data bank, and few trained or equipped to report from more remote departmental regions. Compounding this handicap, the Haitian National Lab was swamped beyond capacity. For this, Haitian health care officials were defamed. I had spoken personally to both Health Minister Alex Larsen and to the health ministry’s general director, Gabriel Thimotée, and both were adamantly and openly calculating the outbreak as a major emergency for untold numbers. Reitman claims that no cases of cholera have occurred since the 1960s, but her statement is incorrect – no cases of cholera have been reported in Haiti prior to the ’60s. Reporting began at the beginning of the epidemic, and a journalist had stated that there had been no cases since the ’60s or earlier. That’s been misrepresented since that time. There are no documented cases of cholera in Haiti before October 2010.

Of the 894 remaining camps, only around 10 are “planned camps” with Sphere Standard humanitarian aspirations. All the other camps are spontaneous settlements that formed without structure in the immediate aftermath of the quake. Many have no management assistance at all; some are covered minimally by mobile teams. No lighting or sanitation. No drainage, security or clean water. Nothing but raggedy, rape-ridden plots of toxic dirt, in a patchwork quilt of tarps, tents and sticks. Few NGOs are still delivering assistance in camps, and, unfortunately, those few are progressively suspending operations as their funds for humanitarian assistance dry up, despite the strong advocacy efforts of Giovanni Cassani, IOM’s CCCM cluster coordinator for IDP affairs, and a few willing camp managers and service providers. Those who will pay the price are the people left in camps, stuck in the middle of this transition from emergency response to development: They will cease to receive assistance where they are, but they have not yet been offered a better place to go/return to.

Otherwise, highly functioning NGOs like Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors without Borders, abandoned many camps, heading for areas that would court media praise and donor dollars. Sophisticated donor money rarely comes without restriction (unrestricted funds). And Reitman touches on this issue in quoting both Dr. Louise Ivers (senior health and policy adviser for Paul Farmer’s exceptional Partners in Health organization), and Schwartz, in relation to “accountability to those we serve” and getting things done (not just showing that the money is spent). But she does not follow up or investigate the point further. Patrons can’t be expected to have the street sense of those in the field. So the overwhelming tendency for those contributing is to identify pet projects to which their emotional embrace is charged by familiarity, rather than real-time needs. And it is a vicious cycle, upon which many in the development set prey. Two notable donor exceptions in Haiti have been Voila and Digicel, both socially responsible companies, but also with the advantage of having in-country presences. Had Reitman focused more on the bureaucracy and systemic dysfunction, and less on sensationalized complaint, a productive balance may have been struck between journalism and advocacy.

Education is a priority for all. Educating donors is a worthy place to begin a new collaboration between NGOs. Not long ago, a major donor came to assess J/P HRO’s camp-based education program. After months of back and forth, and mountains of mandatory paperwork, J/P HRO’s education program scored highest of all grant candidates on the donor’s organizational review. Excited, and on the brink of expanding our school, we were cut off at the last minute, due to a newly discovered wrinkle by the donor’s administrators. We were not eligible for their grant because we had not been an NGO for three years. These types of intractable restrictions have created enormous limitations on many good programs. But there are newly positive signs. The government of Haiti, through a grant by IDA (the World Bank’s financing facility for poor countries), has taken an unusually bold step in actuating a significant relocation and development grant with our organization. I invite this to be scrutinized by media and donors alike. I have great faith in our team, and expect success.

For those of us who have been steadily involved on the ground since January 2010, each day feels like an eternity. And to be sure, the challenges ahead are enormous. But no one being honest can say that an extraordinary recovery is not visible. There is still much rubble to be removed, and truly a gargantuan emergency of needs: housing, jobs, education, medical and psychosocial health options yet to be discovered. Roads and power grids to be established or repaired. But cities hit hardest – Port-au-Prince, Léogâne, Carrefour, Jacmel – both in terms of material devastation and the human spirit, bear absolutely no resemblance to post-quake January 12th, 2010. And if there is an immoral message in Reitman’s piece, it is anything that will discourage the hope and practical expectation of recovery.

The government of Haiti poses a challenging paradigm. Haiti is a country with a constitution that bears reactionary principles, drafted in the devastating wake of the Papa Doc and Baby Doc dictatorships. The distribution of power left future presidents with almost total deference to parliament and private interest. In the aftermath of the earthquake, President René Préval and I often worked shoulder to shoulder. I grew to have a great respect and affection for the man. His ability to negotiate the chessboard of Haitian politics was as extraordinary as was his genuine concern for the Haitian people. In fact, had it not been for the earthquake, he would likely have left office not only as the first two-time democratically elected president, nor as one of only five presidents of Haiti since 1804 to have left office alive, but with the most successful legacy of development and economic growth of any president in Haiti’s history. Instead, this very human and internal man – with little formal power, facing his own suspicions, and those of him, and subject to the whims of money flows not under his control – found himself unable to connect with the Haitian people or re-instill confidence of any measure.

By January 2011, anti-climactic though it was, the return of Baby Doc Duvalier to Haiti would inspire interlopers to circle wagons and attempt to set the stage for a, perhaps, more significant distraction. As elections, flawed though they were, moved forward, the self-celebratory wing of the American “left” – think tanks – along with notable expatriate journalists and intellectuals supported by celebrities who endorse their academic mentor’s every call energetically and militantly, all grouped to proactively support the inflammatory return of deposed former president Jean Bertrand Aristide. Note: In Ms. Reitman’s article, passing her own inspection and that of her meticulous fact checker, this central figure of Haiti’s recent past, and current history, was misnamed Jean-Paul Aristide. [Page 70, third column.] WTF??? Really!? WTF???

Meanwhile, Haitians themselves would come to choose a new president: Michel Joseph Martelly. The cumulative cynicism of Reitman’s article dismisses Martelly as a right-wing militarist in the pocket of the private sector and the United States government. It is an assertion entrenched in the lust for endless struggle and the imposition of American norms with no practical regard for a Haitian context. One of Martelly’s first acts as president was to assure a five-cent tax on any calls made to Haiti from outside the country – the entirety of its benefit targeted to place all school-age children in free schooling within two years. Though the economics of this policy may be fairly debated, in that callers may newly self-restrict putting a potential impact on local telecoms, it can hardly be viewed as the act of a “right-winger.” And his call for a new Haitian military should be understood in the balance of a country currently under effective security occupation by the foreign faces, helmets, weapons and APCs of United Nations peacekeepers. (Despite the exceptional work by many of these peacekeepers and their leadership, there are always those who exploit power.)

This dismissal is a slap in the face to Haitians who brought Martelly to the presidency, numbering far more than just those who had access to the polls. But it was also a slap in the face to the United States government’s efforts and successes. When the secretary of state’s counselor and chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, is marginalized as having no “development experience” while playing such an integral role in the legitimacy of Haitian enfranchisement, one must ask: Is the beginning of “development” not in the enablement of a government by the people? Is this their democracy? Or does it belong to its non-Haitian critics? Across Haiti a great thing had happened: The people got the president they wanted. This was in no small way without the exceptional support of Mills, U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Merten, and then-MINUSTAH Special Representative of the Secretary General and Head of Mission Edmond Mulet, and his deputies Nigel Fisher and Kevin Kennedy.

So here we are, in September 2011, standing by as the democratically elected president of Haiti and his people suffer the sabotage techniques of members of a parliament that have blocked from them, the installment of two prime ministers in succession (a third, Garry Conille, awaits Senate confirmation), thereby stalling the selection and rebuilding of the very ministers and ministries through which all redevelopment projects should rightly be administrated. Many of these rogue members of parliament (principally representatives of the former president’s Inite party) with corruption scandals knocking on their own doors are glued together by the threat tactics of a former Fanmi Lavalas party president, whose untimely return was principally facilitated and encouraged by forces outside of Haiti. They are demagogues, whose ideological aims indulge romantic reparations over tangible repair, and so vilify the families of the bourgeoisie that the human construct of progress has been reduced to a protectionist pissing contest, where fair-minded and inventive people, open to truth and reconciliation, may otherwise be coming to compromise for the greater good – distribution of land, manufacturing, import, export, agriculture and a potential boon for green technologies, from which all could share the benefit of the prize. Haiti.

Where to begin? In the areas of operation where J/P HRO have ongoing programs, I am known to the population not as a film actor, not as a warm and fuzzy humanitarian, but as a blan (that foreign guy who’s the boss of the organization working with them in their camps and their neighborhoods). I am also known, to those I am known, as a potential employer. As many as 100 people in the course of any given day will approach or call out to me, “Hey, blan!” What follows is almost never a request for money, for a handout, as would be otherwise typical in a developing country. In Haiti, what is wanted is a job.

When Reitman concludes arbitrarily that the plans of development funneled through co-chair President Clinton and the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) and former and sitting prime minister and IHRC co-chair Jean Max Bellerive’s Action Plan for National Recovery and Development are doomed, “Haitians . . . know from bitter experience that the business-friendly model of development, currently being touted as their salvation, has repeatedly failed them.” My question is, which Haitians is she referring to? Those I encounter each day are part of the population that averaged one or two dollars a day in wages before the earthquake swallowed even that. There is an initial focus on hotels and the apparel industry (see the impact of the apparel industry in Indonesia, where percentages of those below the poverty line dropped from 60 percent to 20 percent, and in Vietnam, from 64 percent to 13 percent in a single decade), and a minimum wage now set at $5 per day, the development of a northern industrial park (not to be confused with the earlier mentioned industrial park plans hoped for at Corail) projecting 20,000 jobs, training and upward mobility as the baby steps of investment, into a more holistic plan encouraging decentralization, robust agricultural expansion and new oversights on labor regulation, and freedom of labor organization.

I ask Ms. Reitman: Which Haitians are, to date, so invested in the “bitter” experience of the past? When Ms. Reitman focuses through a lens of luxury leftism, through quotations discrediting current strategies and staffs of President Clinton, or the development experience of Cheryl Mills (two of the most proactive forces in Haiti’s, perhaps, best chance), what becomes obscured is that the billions of dollars currently stuck in bottleneck would likely have never existed without their most significant advocacy. (The same can be said for the emergency relief donations made to the American Red Cross, a monolithic but still very necessary institution.) Recently, Roland Van Hauwermeiren, Haiti country director for Oxfam, Great Britain, “voluntarily” stepped down from his post, following allegations not of his own misconduct but of staff misconduct under his charge. It is unclear whether he had knowledge of the misconduct in this situation, but from the outside Hauwermeiren was a rare beast indeed. Rare, in that few country directors in Haiti brought as much ethically philosophical leadership skill sets and experience to the table of relief, despite working for a large bureaucratic organization. It is a loss, I’m quite sure, due largely to Oxfam’s recognition of the current state of intolerant scrutiny by a biased and uninformed media covering, and largely NOT covering, Haiti. And, fairly, to Oxfam’s generally high standards of internal investigation and scrutiny. Clinton and Mills are two of the sharpest knives in Haiti’s kitchen drawer of international support, and the only thing more “bitter” than the “past” for Haitians would be to be beckoned for the cooking of this feast of reconstruction, only to find those two essential knives stolen or dulled by a reckless media, as I’m sure was the case for one of the best country directors in Haiti, Roland Hauwermeiren.

Suspicion and cynicism toward U.S. policy in Haiti have shameful historic validity, but it is a new day. It is time for the Haitian people and their new president to have their voices heard and their needs met. So much white noise of corruption, both real and imagined, so much suspicion, and conspiracy. One of the best and most passionate minds on the American assistance to Haiti, President Clinton, who is also the United Nations special envoy to Haiti, is, due to all this white noise, an asset to the new Haitian president, and yet, for them to walk together is to walk on eggshells simply to avoid the stigma of American interventionism. Clinton was right. Haiti can recover, and more quickly than one would ever imagine. But this will take an intrepid juggling of patience and decisiveness, coordination and collaboration. There will, in the best of circumstances, be stumbles and bumbles. The fucking situation’s a mess. But as long as we understand that some additional fish must be provided if we are to assist in improving fishing skills, and if we continue to have faith in human beings to make incredible things happen, and that Haitians themselves, as I and so many others in the field assert, are on the highest rung of that potential, acting now can be the difference between going the distance and further disaster.

But in all of this, I am reminded of Philip Roth’s description of the Clinton White House while under the partisan attack during a personal scandal gone public. Roth imagined the artist Cristo wrapping the White House in fabric, a scrawl of graffiti across it stating, “A HUMAN BEING LIVES HERE.” Well, 9 million human beings live in Haiti. They need our support. Rolling Stone readers and Rolling Stone magazine, they need your support and dollars. Donations to underfunded organizations that I can unflinchingly recommend can be made to: J/P HRO, PIH, CHF, UNOPS, IsraAID, Architecture for Humanity, IOM, IMC, PRODEV and Project Medishare. But even more importantly, governance is the key. For all the children of Haiti, we must call upon maverick and socially responsible businesses to walk hand in hand with the people’s chosen president, Michel Martelly, now. And as for Jean PAUL Aristide? Who is that?

The editors reply:

We greatly respect the work Sean Penn is doing in Haiti, and the daunting scale of the task facing all those engaged in the effort to rebuild the country. His accusations of distortions and inaccuracies in our article, however, are misplaced. The writer, Janet Reitman, first reported from Haiti in 1994. Her story on the shortcomings of the current reconstruction efforts were based on nine months of intensive reporting and research, including on-the-ground visits to Haiti, Miami, New York City and Washington, D.C. Penn’s own experiences, as reported in the piece, accurately reflect what he told both Reitman and our factchecker.

It is a well-established journalistic practice to grant anonymity to informed sources who are in a position to suffer retribution for speaking out against those in positions of power. Penn’s “near empirical certainty” about the identity of one of our sources is completely unfounded. In addition, every anonymous quote used in the story was echoed by multiple sources with first-hand knowledge of the effort to rebuild Haiti.

Penn is correct in noting that we got Jean Bertrand Aristide’s middle name wrong in the third of three references we made to him in the piece. We regret the error, and have corrected it in the online version of the story.

Le RNDDH se prononce contre la mise à l’écart de la PNH dans la sécurité rapprochée des hauts dignitaires de l’Etat au profit d’individus de provenanc

2011-09-15T17:57:00.001-04:00

Le RNDDH se prononce contre la mise à l’écart de la PNH dans la sécurité rapprochée des hauts dignitaires de l’Etat au profit d’individus de provenance et d’appartenance inconnues

L’organisme des droits humains met également en garde contre des réintégrations au sein de la PNH en dehors des normes en vigueur

Publié le jeudi 15 septembre 2011

(Read the original article here)

Le directeur exécutif du Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (RNDDH), M. Pierre Espérance, dénonce la présence d’individus lourdement armés assurant la sécurité rapprochée de hauts dignitaires de l’Etat et qui ne font pas partie de l’unique force publique reconnue, en l’occurrence la Police Nationale d’Haïti (PNH).

Dans une interview accordée mercredi à Radio Kiskeya, le responsable de l’organisme des droits humains se dit préoccupé par une telle anomalie. Il rappelle la situation qui avait prévalu sous Aristide (2001-2004) quand la police avait été politisée et des corps paramilitaires constitués. Il relève que le comble avait alors été atteint quand le Président Aristide avait fait appel à une firme internationale de sécurité, au mépris de la force publique nationale devant remplir une telle fonction.

« C’est à l’intérieur de la PNH que doit être constituée une unité chargée de la sécurité rapprochée des hauts dignitaires », insiste M. Espérance. Il justifie sa position par le fait que, tout en créant des frustrations au sein de la PNH, la présence d’individus armés plonge dans l’embarras l’Inspection générale de la police qui ne peut en aucune manière sanctionner les éventuelles infractions commises par ces derniers.

En ce qui concerne la sécurité présidentielle, le responsable du RNDDH déclare ne voir aucun inconvénient au fait que puissent s’en occuper les trois unités spécialisées USGPN, USP et CAT Team du Palais National (siège de la Présidence).

« Tout devrait être entrepris afin de ne pas affaiblir la principale force publique nationale », insiste M. Espérance. Il met l’accent sur la nécessité de renforcer les efforts déployés depuis 2006 en vue de la professionnalisation de l’institution policière.

Le directeur exécutif du RNDDH a enfin souhaité que les lois régissant le processus de réintégration au sein de la PNH soient strictement respectées, en référence à des informations selon lesquelles des démarches en ce sens seraient en cours en faveur de plusieurs ex-policiers proches des autorités issues des dernières élections. [jmd/Radio Kiskeya]

CBC's The Current on the UN in Haiti

2011-09-07T11:58:00.001-04:00

My interview this morning about the United Nations presence in Haiti on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's The Current with Anna Maria Tremonti can be heard here. MINUSTAH's Nigel Fisher speaks directly following.

Garry Conille, nouveau Premier ministre désigné d’Haïti

2011-09-06T10:17:00.001-04:00

Garry Conille, nouveau Premier ministre désigné d’Haïti

Après plusieurs jours de valse-hésitation, le Président Michel Martelly a finalement choisi lundi soir, comme éventuel successeur de Jean-Max Bellerive, le jeune médecin et fonctionnaire des Nations Unies dont le dossier de candidature sera bientôt soumis aux deux Chambres du Parlement

Publié le lundi 5 septembre 2011

(Read the original article here)

Le Président Michel Martelly a officiellement désigné lundi soir le Dr Garry Conille, un fonctionnaire onusien de 45 ans, pour briguer le poste de Premier ministre, en vue de combler le vide gouvernemental auquel est confronté le pays depuis près de quatre mois.

"Par application de l’article 137 de la constitution, je vous informe que j’ai fait choix du docteur Garry Conille comme Premier ministre", écrit le chef de l’Etat dans la lettre de nomination envoyée aux présidents du Sénat, Rodolphe Joazile, et de la Chambre des Députés, Sorel Jacinthe.

Pour avoir le droit d’accéder à la Primature et de former son gouvernement, le nouveau prétendant devra passer avec succès, au Sénat et à la Chambre basse, l’examen de sa désignation. De même, sa déclaration de politique générale sera soumise à ratification en Chambre séparée.

Fils du Dr Serge Conille, un ancien ministre de Jean-Claude Duvalier, le successeur potentiel du Premier ministre démissionnaire, Jean-Max Bellerive, a été notamment, ces derniers mois, chef de cabinet de l’ancien numéro un américain, Bill Clinton, envoyé spécial du secrétaire général de l’ONU pour Haïti et co-président de la Commission intérimaire pour la reconstruction (CIRH).

Considéré comme proche de la communauté internationale, Garry Conille se trouvait depuis quelques jours à l’étranger afin de régler les formalités administratives liées à son départ du poste de représentant résident du Programme de l’ONU pour le Développement (PNUD) au Niger. Il occupait cette fonction depuis juillet dernier.

M. Conille a été diplômé en médecine à l’université d’Etat d’Haïti avant d’émigrer aux Etats-Unis où il a fait des études en administration.

Depuis sa prise de pouvoir au mois de mai, le Président Martelly en est à son troisième Premier ministre désigné.

Ses deux premiers choix avaient porté sans succès sur l’homme d’affaires Daniel-Gérard Rouzier et le juriste Bernard Gousse, tous deux rejetés, l’ un par les Députés, en juin, et l’autre par les Sénateurs, début août.

Au Parlement où l’ancienne plateforme présidentielle INITE et ses alliés détiennent une majorité relative, la position des principales forces politiques sur la candidature de Garry Conille n’était pas encore connue. spp/Radio Kiskeya

The U.N. in Haiti: Time to Adapt or Time to Go

2011-09-01T17:38:00.000-04:00

The U.N. in Haiti: Time to Adapt or Time to Go

Sep 1 , 2011

By Michael Deibert

Truthdig

(Read the original article here)

In the summer of 2009, visiting Haiti for the first time after an absence of three years, I found the country in better shape than at any time since I started visiting there in 1997.

Three years after the inauguration of René Préval as Haiti’s president (after the two-year tenure of an unelected interim government), the population of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, again felt safe enough to patronize downtown bars and kerosene-lit roadside stands late into the evening, where once armed gangs controlled entire neighborhoods. Billboards that once praised the infallibility of a succession of maximum leaders instead carried messages about the importance of respect between the population and the police, or decrying discrimination against the disabled.

A police-reform program was in its third year, providing the country with a level of professional law enforcement not often seen in a place where political patronage, not expertise, swelled the ranks of security forces with party loyalists. Investment was beginning to pick up and, by the end of the year, Haiti’s delicious signature rum, Barbancourt, had even won the bronze and silver medals at the International Wine and Spirit Competition.

Presiding over all this was the (at the time) 9,000-member United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti, known as MINUSTAH. When I sat that summer in the office of the head of the mission, veteran Tunisian diplomat Hédi Annabi, he seemed to be justified in his pride at the country’s progress, telling me that “the level of respect for basic freedoms, such as freedom of the press, is at a historically remarkable level.”

Of course, all of this changed at 4:53 p.m. on Jan. 12, 2010, when the country was struck by an apocalyptic earthquake that leveled much of the capital and surrounding towns and killed an estimated 200,000 people. Annabi, his deputy and nearly 100 other MINUSTAH personnel died as the structures they were in collapsed on them, and the peacekeeping mission itself became one of the many strata of Haitian society that needed rescuing.

A year and a half after the quake, with a new president (popular singer Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly) and a contentious parliament locked in a bitter struggle for power, MINUSTAH, having picked itself up and dusted itself off, remains in Haiti, its force now increased to 12,000 under the leadership of Chile’s former minister of foreign affairs, Mariano Fernández.

Though an estimated 634,000 survivors of the quake still live in makeshift settlements in and around the capital, and Haiti remains without a government (two of Martelly’s nominees for prime minister have been rejected), it is my conclusion after a visit to Haiti last month that it is now time, after seven years in the country, for MINUSTAH to either significantly refocus its mission or close its operation in Haiti and leave the business of governing and reconstruction to the Haitians themselves.

* * *

Haitians have a keen sense of their own history as the site of the world’s first successful slave revolt (in 1804) and the second independent republic in the Americas (after the United States), a nation that has produced guerrilla leaders of the magnitude of Charlemagne Péralte and Benoît Batravill when faced with a two-decade U.S. occupation of the country in the early 20th century.

If you ask the average Haitian on the street what the purpose of MINUSTAH in Haiti is now, as I did in a vast tent encampment of displaced earthquake survivors in front of Haiti’s still-collapsed National Palace, they will answer you succinctly: MINUSTAH is in Haiti to protect the interests of the foreigners.

True or not, such a perspective has become conventional wisdom in Haiti, and it was a refrain that I heard time and again as I traveled this country that, though still stricken, is by no means beaten or defeated.

At this point, for the first time since I have been observing the mission, the sentiment on the street among a majority of Haitians appears to be a desire to see MINUSTAH in its current incarnation gone from Haiti.

For several reasons, MINUSTAH’s reputation with the Haitian people has reached its lowest level since it arrived in 2004.

A cholera epidemic that has killed more than 5,800 people since October has been linked convincingly to the mission. A June report by a group of epidemiologists and physicians in the journal of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that evidence “strongly suggests” that the cholera strain had been brought to Haiti by U.N. peacekeepers and spread through a faulty waste disposal system along the Artibonite River, a conclusion supported by other studies.

Rightly or wrongly, the perception of MINUSTAH’s response to the crisis within Haiti itself has been of the mission stonewalling and obfuscating. This perception was reinforced in August when some residents of the country’s Plateau Central region accused the mission of dumping raw sewage near the Guayamouc River there, something MINUSTAH has denied.

In a far cry from the largely congenial relations I saw between U.N. peacekeepers and the local population in 2009, something of a bunker mentality has also appeared to have developed. On several instances—particularly at the intersection of the busy Route de Delmas and the road that eventually leads to the country’s international airport—I witnessed peacekeepers patrolling with their mounted machine guns pointed down at crowds of people who appeared to pose no threat at all and were merely going about the business of trying to secure the basic necessities of survival on any given day.

Staying in a hotel only feet away from a tent encampment where thousands of Haitians sat in darkness throughout long evenings of pounding rain, an American filmmaker and I watched as a group of rather surly, well-fed men identifying themselves as police advisers with MINUSTAH literally drank themselves into oblivion over the course of two days. This took place under the gaze of local Haitian staff and other guests. Speaking to others in the capital, I discovered that such behavior is evidently not an uncommon occurrence, and it creates the unfortunate perception of a fraternity party amid an apocalypse, and makes the mission appear very removed from the daily struggles of the Haitians it is ostensibly there to protect.

* * *

By any estimation, MINUSTAH has done many things for Haiti during its years in the country. During a 2004-06 campaign of violence in the capital by various armed groups dubbed Operation Baghdad, a ghastly wave of kidnapping, arson and murder affected all levels of society, and at one point an average of one police officer was being killed every five days. The security forces of the interim government then in power often responded to this by broadly targeting the impoverished male population of the capital’s slums with extrajudicial executions. In tandem with Haiti’s police after Préval’s 2006 inauguration, MINUSTAH largely brought this period to an end, something for which Haitians should be grateful to it.

Likewise, when elements linked to political actors used the population’s legitimate anger over the rise of food prices as a cover for violent attacks against government installations and figures in 2008, it was likely only the presence of MINUSTAH that saved Préval from being toppled by a coup organized by these same elements.

MINUSTAH has built roads and worked hard to create a space where nonviolent political debate can take place. Haiti, however, ultimately needs to be governed and administered by Haitians, not as some eternal international protectorate. Having stood with Haitians through some of their worst days, the United Nations is now being seen more and more as an occupying force despite the fact that it has been in Haiti at the invitation of two democratically elected heads of state for five of its seven years there.

If Haiti is ever to change, it is Haitians who are going to have to change it, and MINUSTAH must now give them the space in which to do so. Haiti’s security force—the Police Nationale d’Haiti—has grown by leaps and bounds in terms of professionalism and accountability under the leadership of Mario Andresol, and now must be entrusted with more responsibility in terms of safeguarding the country’s fragile democratic gains.

Simultaneously, with so much hostility building up toward the mission in the country’s agricultural areas and elsewhere due to the cholera epidemic, the mission might do well to engage with Haitian peasant organizations in an effort to help revitalize the country’s ailing rural economy. Though peasant groups such as Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan and the 200,000-member Mouvman Peyizan Nasyonal Kongre Papay (the latter led by veteran peasant leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, winner of the 2005 Goldman Environmental Prize for grassroots environmentalists) have been largely hostile to MINUSTAH’s presence, a détente between the groups could help foster the transition from strict peacekeeping to development, which is needed if the mission is to succeed.

Neither the United Nations, the United States nor any other foreign body can fix all of Haiti’s ills. Ultimately, the Haitians have to do it for themselves. Among Haiti’s political class, Haitians have to stop killing one another, Haitians have to stop being corrupt, Haitians have to stop paying and accepting bribes, and politics must no longer be viewed as a blood sport of winner take all where one side celebrates total victory and one side weeps in abject defeat and marginalization.

This has been the tradition of Haitian politics for more than 200 years, but it has not been the tradition of the majority of Haitians who have historically been excluded from the political process, and whose generosity, industry and fundamental decency impress all those who meet them.

The Haitian people understand this better than anyone else. In its current incarnation in Haiti, the United Nations mission has become an obstacle, rather than an asset, to the country taking ownership of the issues that confront it.

It is time for the mission to refocus on new tasks, or to leave while the Haitians can still see it off as a friend.

Notes from Haiti's Long Hot Summer

2011-08-23T19:42:00.002-04:00

Notes from Haiti's Long Hot Summer

Posted: 8/23/11 07:00 PM ET

By Michael Deibert

(This article was cross-posted on the Huffington Post, where it can be read here)

I.

Throughout what has been a dolorous summer in the Haitian capital, the image of the Caribbean nation's new president has gazed out at passersby from billboards and murals affixed to walls that did not topple during the country's apocalyptic January 2010 earthquake.

Depicting a man with a bald pate and broad smile, with messages such as "Nouvelle Haiti" and "Bienvenue au pouvoir" stenciled painstakingly next to them, the murals' optimism belies the intense political struggles of the first three months of the rule of Michel Martelly, a well-known singer who performed under the moniker Sweet Micky.

"I love President Martelly, I voted for President Martelly, so did my mother and my sister," says Carlos Jean Charles, who resides in Camp Toussaint, a 2,800 person collection of fragile tents set up in front of Haiti's once-grand National Palace, which still lies in ruins 18 months after the tremor.

"I think Martelly has a good heart," Charles says, echoing the statements of others in the camp. "But the problem is the parliament. Those people have been doing this shit for 25 years, fighting for power. They don't give him a chance."

A day after he was sworn in this May, Martelly announced that he was submitting the name of Daniel Rouzier, a businessman and devout Catholic, to serve as his Prime Minister, only to have the nomination rejected by parliament a month later.

On July 6th, Martelly announced that his new pick for Prime Minister would be attorney and former Minister of Justice Bernard Gousse, at which point 16 of Haiti's 30 senators announced, before the nomination had even been considered, that Gousse was also to be rejected, which he was earlier this month.

So the country, where an estimated 634,000 survivors of the quake still live in makeshift settlements in and around the capital, remains without a government.

II.

The situation is reminiscent of the the first mandate of the man that Martelly replaced as president, René Préval, in the late 1990s. During that era, following the resignation of Préval's Prime Minister, the post remained vacant for nearly two years as an opposition-dominated parliament rejected successive nominees in an effort to deprive the Préval government of oxygen.

It is a modus operandi that is being repeated today in Haiti, but under much worse conditions and this time with the parliament dominated by members of Préval's own coalition (several of them elected in highly disputed circumstances), though the amount of control the former president still exerts over the disparate group of legislators is a matter of some debate.

"The population who voted for Martelly perceived the change he offered as drastic change, a complete rupture from the way things were done in the past," says Marilyn Allien, the director of La Fondation Héritage pour Haïti, the Haitian chapter of the anti-corruption organization Transparency International.

"But the way things were done in the past was very good for some people. There are people who thrive when corruption and impunity prevail, and it doesn't serve them at all if a new leader comes in and tries to institute the rule of law."

A political novice who ran on an education platform and whose very distance from Haiti's rancid political class was a large part of his appeal, Martelly has relied on a close circle of advisors, some of questionable reputation, to give him counsel when dealing with parliament.

Lurking in the background to all of this are Haiti's two recently-returned former leaders, Jean-Claude Duvalier and Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Duvalier, the scion of a family dictatorship started by his father François that ruled Haiti for 29 years, was chased out of the country in 1986 amidst an uprising that has yet to fulfill its promise of democracy, social and economic justice. He returned to Haiti from his long exile in France in January to the outrage of those who suffered at the hands of his regime.

Aristide, a former Catholic priest, was at the forefront of the anti-Duvalier movement and became Haiti's president in 1991, only to be ousted in a military coup seven months later.

Restored to the presidency by a US-led military intervention in 1994, Aristide turned over the reins of government to Préval in 1996. He was returned to power during a violence-wracked ballot in 2000, with his second mandate marked by high levels of official corruption and political violence before he too was overthrown by an armed insurrection after months of large-scale street protests against his rule.

Since his return to Haiti from exile in South Africa in March, Aristide has been largely silent, though some in the camps and elsewhere have darkly suggested they see his hand in the parliamentary maneuvers currently underway.

Further complicating the mix, the 12,000 person United Nations mission in Haiti, in place since June 2004 and known by the acronym MINUSTAH, has probably reached the nadir of its reputation during its time in the country.

Once welcomed as a bulwark against political chaos, the mission has seemed adrift since the earthquake, which killed nearly 100 of its personnel including the head and deputy head of the mission.

A cholera epidemic which has killed more than 5,800 people since last October, has been linked to the mission, with a June report by a group of of epidemiologists and physicians in the journal of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said that evidence "strongly suggests" that the cholera strain had been brought to Haiti by UN peacekeepers.

Often unfairly derided as "turista" (tourists) by Haitians, the mission now appears to be largely living up to the scathing sobriquet, with some of its members a feature in some of the capital's more expensive hotels, getting loudly intoxicated and carousing often only feet away from the meager encampments of those made homeless by January 2010's tremor.

III.

Shortly before I visited Haiti this month, I had made plans to visit with an old friend.

Jean-Claude Bajeux, the co-founder of the Centre Oecuménique des Droits de l'Homme (CEDH), was also a former Minister of Culture, a militant for human rights and democracy and a great Haitian patriot.

Virtually his entire family had been killed by François Duvalier, sending him into a long exile during which he received a PhD from Princeton University in the United States, and lived and taught in both Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

He fought against both the Duvalier family dictatorship and the military juntas that followed and, in more recent times, against the violent anarcho-populism with which Aristide attempted to rule the country. Well into his twilight years, when most men of his age would be playing with their grandchildren, I would see Bajeux bravely march in demonstrations at times when it was physically dangerous to do. Lately he had provided an important analytical voice to Haiti, critiquing not only Haiti's political machinations but those of outsiders involved in the country, as well.

Bajeux passed away, if not exactly unexpectedly, then rather suddenly, earlier this month at the age of 79, before I had a chance to see him. His goal of an inclusive, transparent and just political system in Haiti is still an unrealized dream.

Shortly before he died, in a conversation with a friend, Bajeux had time enough to deliver a simple charge.

"My generation is passing away," Bajeux said. "We did all we could. Now it is up to you."

IV.

There can be a sense of tragic timelessness in Haiti, an impression that one gets when driving northwards from the capital along Route Nationale 1, where tent camps now ring either side of the road, and which meanders along the Côte des Arcadins and into the agricultural heartland of the Artibonite Valley.

As one drives, to the left the Caribbean Sea glitters blue-green, and resorts from when Haiti was once a tourist destination - now largely empty save for Haiti's wealthy and the moneyed foreigners in the country - front the ocean. Skiffs with canvass sails ply the channel between the mainland and the immense, isolated Île de la Gonâve in the bay.

Back in the capital, ebullient Creole evangelical hymns still reverberate in the mornings from the mountainsides and ravines that crisscross the city, and radios still pump out a non-stop diet of sinuous konpa music of the kind that first brought Michel Martelly to prominence along with the driving racine rhythms of vodou and endless political chatter.

Given the long odds he faces, there is something moving about the faith of ordinary Haitians that Martelly is the figure who will transform their immensely difficult lives. And, despite what one may read, the Haitians, even in the wake of the extraordinary amount of suffering that has been foisted on them in recent years, are not a defeated people.

The mood in Haiti today reminds one of the wanly flickering orange glow of the kerosene lamps that Haiti's market women - known as ti machann - use to illuminate their wares as they work late into the night. One can see them by the roadside, hoping for one more customer, one more sale, one more ray of life.

Haiti is like that, too, persevering ever onward as long as the slenderest flicker of hope remains.

Haiti Images, August 2011

2011-08-22T09:16:00.007-04:00

All photos Photo © Michael Deibert

Sunset, Port-au-Prince, 15 August 2011

2011-08-16T01:59:00.002-04:00

Photo © Michael Deibert

On the passing of Jean-Claude Bajeux

2011-08-06T11:20:00.001-04:00

I penned a few thoughts on the passing of the Haitian democratic activist and patriot Jean-Claude Bajeux here. MD

TWO TELECOMMUNICATIONS EXECUTIVES CONVICTED BY MIAMI JURY ON ALL COUNTS FOR THEIR INVOLVEMENT IN SCHEME TO BRIBE TELECO OFFICIALS

2011-08-05T12:45:00.006-04:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

TWO TELECOMMUNICATIONS EXECUTIVES CONVICTED BY MIAMI JURY ON ALL COUNTS FOR THEIR INVOLVEMENT IN SCHEME TO BRIBE OFFICIALS AT STATE-OWNED TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPANY IN HAITI

www.justice.gov

WASHINGTON—Joel Esquenazi and Carlos Rodriguez, former executives of Terra Telecommunications Corp., have been convicted by a federal jury on all counts for their roles in a scheme to pay bribes to Haitian government officials at Telecommunications D’Haiti S.A.M (Haiti Teleco), a state-owned telecommunications company. The jury reached its verdict yesterday after five hours of deliberations, following a two-and-a-half-week trial.

The convictions were announced by Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; U.S. Attorney Wifredo A. Ferrer for the Southern District of Florida; and Special Agent in Charge Jose A. Gonzalez of Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation Division (IRS-CID), Miami Field Office.

“These defendants authorized more than $800,000 in illegal bribe payments to Haitian officials in exchange for business advantages – a clear violation of the FCPA,” said Assistant Attorney General Breuer. “This verdict is another powerful example that bribery of government officials – whether at home or abroad – has serious consequences. In finding the defendants guilty on all charged counts, the jury sent an unmistakable message that paying off foreign officials does not, in fact, pay off.”

“These individuals conspired and made corrupt payments to foreign government officials for the purpose of securing business advantages for their company,” said U.S. Attorney Ferrer. “The FCPA helps to create a more level playing field in which businesses can compete fairly and sends the message that American businesses are simply not up for sale.”

“These convictions send a strong and clear message that we will aggressively pursue investigations on subjects that use shell companies to launder funds,” said IRS Special Agent in Charge Gonzalez. “IRS-CID will utilize its financial investigative expertise to unravel any complex money laundering scheme leaving no financial stones unturned.”

Joel Esquenazi, 52, of Miami, and Carlos Rodriguez, 55, of Davie, Fla., were convicted of one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and wire fraud; seven counts of FCPA violations; one count of money laundering conspiracy; and 12 counts of money laundering.

According to the evidence presented at trial, Esquenazi was the president and Rodriguez was the executive vice president of Terra, which was headquartered in Miami-Dade County, Fla. Haiti Teleco was the sole provider of land line telephone service in Haiti. Terra had a series of contracts with Teleco that allowed the company’s customers to place telephone calls to Haiti.

According to the evidence presented at trial, the defendants participated in a scheme to commit foreign bribery and money laundering from November 2001 through March 2005, during which time the telecommunications company paid more than $890,000 to shell companies to be used for bribes to Teleco officials. Esquenazi and Rodriguez authorized these bribe payments to successive directors of international relations at Teleco.

The purpose of these bribes, according to the evidence presented at trial, was to obtain various business advantages from the Haitian officials for Terra, including the issuance of preferred telecommunications rates, reductions in the number of minutes for which payment was owed, and the continuance of Terra’s telecommunications connection with Haiti. To conceal the bribe payments, the defendants used various shell companies to receive and forward the payments. In addition, they created false records claiming that the payments were for “consulting services,” which were never intended to be performed or actually performed.

Esquenazi was remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshals. Rodriguez remains free on bond. Sentencing for both defendants currently is scheduled for Oct. 13, 2011.

On April 27, 2009, Antonio Perez, a former controller at Terra, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the FCPA and money laundering. On Jan. 12, 2010, he was sentenced to 24 months in prison, which he is currently serving.

On May 15, 2009, Juan Diaz, the president of J.D. Locator Services, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the FCPA and money laundering. He admitted to receiving more than $1 million in bribe money from telecommunications companies. On July 30, 2010, he was sentenced to 57 months in prison, which he is currently serving.

On Feb. 19, 2010, Jean Fourcand, the president and director of Fourcand Enterprises Inc., pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering for receiving and transmitting bribe monies in the scheme. On May 5, 2010, he was sentenced to six months in prison.

On March 12, 2010, Robert Antoine, a former director of international affairs for Haiti Teleco, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. He admitted to receiving more than $1 million in bribes from Miami-based telecommunications companies. On June 2, 2010, he was sentenced to 48 months in prison, which he is currently serving.

In a superseding indictment, Washington Vasconez Cruz, Amadeus Richers, Cinergy Telecommunications Inc., Patrick Joseph, Jean Rene Duperval and Marguerite Grandison are charged in a related scheme to commit foreign bribery and money laundering from December 2001 through January 2006. No trial date is currently set. An indictment is merely an accusation, and defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

The conspiracy to commit violations of the FCPA and wire fraud count carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a fine of the greater of $250,000 or twice the value gained or lost. The FCPA counts each carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a fine of the greater of $100,000 or twice the value gained or lost. The conspiracy to commit money laundering count carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a fine of the greater of $500,000 or twice the value of the property involved in the transaction. The money laundering counts each carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a fine of the greater of $500,000 or twice the value of the property involved in the transaction. The indictment also seeks forfeiture which will determined by the court at a later date.

The government’s investigation is ongoing. The Department of Justice is grateful to the government of Haiti for continuing to provide substantial assistance in gathering evidence during this investigation. In particular, Haiti’s financial intelligence unit, the Unité Centrale de Renseignements Financiers (UCREF), the Bureau des Affaires Financières et Economiques (BAFE), which is a specialized component of the Haitian National Police, and the Ministry of Justice and Public Security provided significant cooperation and coordination in this ongoing investigation.

To learn more about the government’s FCPA enforcement efforts, go to www.justice.gov/criminal/fraud/fcpa.

The case is being prosecuted by Senior Trial Attorneys Nicola J. Mrazek and James M. Koukios of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Aurora Fagan of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. The Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs also provided assistance in this matter. The cases were investigated by the IRS-CID Miami Field Office.

Affaire Dionald Polyte : Le président de la Chambre basse et l’épouse du disparu parlent d’assassinat

2011-07-28T11:25:00.002-04:00

Affaire Dionald Polyte : Le président de la Chambre basse et l’épouse du disparu parlent d’assassinat

Sorel Jacinthe annonce que les préparatifs sont en cours en vue de l’organisation des funérailles probablement nationales du Député de Pestel/Beaumont ; Guy Philippe et son camp de plus en plus ciblés alors que les conclusions de l’enquête parlementaire se font attendre

Publié le jeudi 28 juillet 2011

(Read the original article here)

Le président de la Chambre basse, Sorel Jacinthe, qui attend toujours les résultats de l’enquête parlementaire ouverte sur la nature du décès du Député Dionald Polyte, a assimilé cette disparition à un assassinat, en marge d’une rencontre mercredi avec l’épouse du défunt.

Insistant sur la nécessité de tirer au clair les circonstances dans lesquelles l’élu de INITE a trouvé la mort lundi en rentrant à Port-au-Prince, M. Jacinthe a aussi exigé la pacification de la circonscription de Pestel/Beaumont (Grand’Anse, sud-ouest), une ancienne destination touristique de référence transformée, selon lui, en zone de non-droit.

Il a, dans la foulée, sérieusement mis en doute les propos des agents de sécurité de Polyte affirmant qu’une arme l’aurait tué accidentellement dans sa voiture.

« Dionald appartenait à un corps, la Chambre des Députés, qui doit déterminer la façon dont les obsèques doivent se dérouler », a indiqué le Député Jacinthe avant d’ajouter qu’au cas où des funérailles nationales lui seront réservées, il faudra consulter la Présidence sur la date et le protocole de la cérémonie.

Pour sa part, Marie Eva Dutreuil Polyte, la veuve du Député, a qualifié d’assassinat la mort de son mari. Infirmière attachée à un centre de santé se trouvant à Beaumont, à proximité du lieu où s’est produit le présumé homicide involontaire, elle juge bizarre que le blessé ait été acheminé de préférence dans la localité très éloignée de Camp-Perrin (sud)pour y recevoir les premiers soins.

L’ordre aurait été intimé au conducteur du véhicule de prendre cette direction, soupire-t-elle.

D’autre part, les agents de sécurité, qui tenaient tant à Dionald Polyte, auraient empêché le chauffeur de communiquer la nouvelle de l’accident à d’autres personnes.

Enfin, c’est une Marie Eva Dutreuil Polyte ulcérée qui a relancé les accusations contre le camp de Guy Philippe en soutenant que l’ancien chef rebelle anti-Aristide avait kidnappé et rançonnné son mari, lors des élections de 2006. Le même Philippe, basé en principe à Pestel, son village natal, aurait par la suite continué à persécuter et à menacer de mort le futur Député, même après son arrivée au Parlement.

Les autorités policières et judiciaires ne se sont pas encore prononcées sur la mort violente de Dionald Polyte, 41 ans, qui suscite une remontée de la tension politique dans sa circonscription de Pestel/Beaumont, devenue très volcanique ces derniers temps. spp/Radio Kiskeya

Le député de Beaumont-Pestel (Grand’Anse), Dionald Polyte (INITE), tué par balle dans le Sud

2011-07-25T14:12:00.002-04:00

Le député de Beaumont-Pestel (Grand’Anse), Dionald Polyte (INITE), tué par balle dans le Sud

Publié le lundi 25 juillet 2011

Haïti-Parlement

Radio Kiskeya

(Read the original article here)

Le député Dionald Polyte de la circonscription de Pestel-Beaumont (Grand’Anse, Sud-Ouest) a été tué par balle tôt lundi matin dans des circonstances non encore élucidées, alors que son véhicule avec 6 autres personnes à bord, traversait la localité de « Catiche », près de Camp Perrin (Sud).

Le député qui regagnait la capitale après avoir pris part le week-end écoulé à la fête patronale de Duchity (5ème section communale de Pestel), a succombé à ses blessures à l’hôpital de Camp Perrin où il avait été transporté d’urgence. Les six autres personnes qui se trouvaient à bord du véhicule dans lequel se trouvait le parlementaire en sont sorties indemnes.

Le délégué départemental de la Grand’Anse, Wilkens Candy, n’était pas en mesure de préciser les circonstances exactes de la mort du parlementaire.

Elu lors du récent scrutin législatif sous la bannière de l’ex-plateforme présidentielle INITE, Dionald Polyte avait battu le député sortant Ronald Etienne (Front pour la Reconstruction Nationale, FRN, de Guy Philippe). Le candidat malheureux, ainsi que ses partisans, avaient énergiquement protesté contre cette défaite qu’ils avaient mise au compte de la manipulation par le Conseil Electoral Provisoire (CEP) des suffrages exprimés.

Le Plateau Central se détournerait de l’agriculture

2011-07-22T16:51:00.004-04:00

The great AlterPresse pulls through again where other news outlets fail, this time with one of the saddest articles I have read about the diminution of agriculture in Haiti. What a telling line: "Maïssade, qui était la principale fournisseuse de riz du Plateau Central, ne peut rien offrir aujourd’hui."

I closed my 2005 book, Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti, with the words of a peasant I met on the road to Maïssade. His words still ring so true today, almost a decade later.

MD

Haïti-Economie : Le Plateau Central se détournerait de l’agriculture

jeudi 21 juillet 2011

Correspondance - Ronel Audate

(Read the original article here)

Hinche, 13 juillet 2011 [AlterPresse] --- Au Plateau Central on vend de tout et on produit peu, alors que les habitudes alimentaires changent et que les regards se tournent de plus en plus vers la République Dominicaine et Port-au-Prince.

« Maintenant je peux gagner ma vie honorablement et je n’ai plus besoin de me faire du souci pour ce qui concerne les saisons sèches ou pluvieuses. Et je n’ai plus besoin d’une houe ou d’une machette, maintenant tout est réglé », affirme Selondieu Odius.

Comme beaucoup d’autres paysans agriculteurs de Juanaria (section communale de Hinche), il a vendu sa portion de terre pour s’acheter une moto qu’il utilise pour faire le taxi.

A Hinche de plus en plus de personnes se détournent de l’agriculture au profit du commerce de boissons gazeuses et de matériaux de construction. Certains ont la préférence de la vente des produits alimentaires tels, entre autres, le riz, le pois, le mais moulu ou le poisson, des produits alimentaires importés des Etats-Unis et de la République Dominicaine voisine d’Haïti.

Dans certaines régions il est des gens qui ne veulent plus entendre parler des produits locaux comme l’igname, le manioc, ou la patate, alors qu’ils adorent les saucisses en provenance de l’autre côté de la frontière, les poulets, les poissons emboités, et le riz américain (diri miyami en Créole haïtien).

Des ONG internationales établies dans la région distribuent régulièrement des kits alimentaires à des centaines de familles dites nécessiteuses. Celles-ci reçoivent mensuellement des coupons leur permettant de se procurer les produits alimentaires de premières nécessités. Mais ces distributions de nourriture loin d’apporter une solution durable, affectent les paysans.

« Une marmite de maïs coûte 25 gourdes et personne ne veut en manger, on préfère le riz ou le blé distribués par des ONG. Quel choix me reste t-il ? », déplore Macelin Paul un paysan originaire de la section de Marmont (Hinche). A Maissade, la tendance observée chez les jeunes est de migrer vers la République dominicaine ou Port-au-Prince à la recherche d’un emploi.

« Si tout va bien, au retour ils ouvrent leurs petits commerces de gazeuses ou des petites banques de borlettes (lotterie) », constate le docteur Camille Joseph, cadre de l’ONG Agronome et Vétérinaire Sans Frontière (AVSF).

« Partout c’est la misère et la faim. On est en train de payer la conséquence de l’inconséquence de nos dirigeants », déplore t-il.

Le Plateau Central dont la production a été mise à mal par l’épidémie de cholera, semble frôler une grave crise alimentaire. Tout concourt à favoriser cette situation, notamment l’insécurité foncière et la politique du marché libre qui décourage le travailleur paysan.

Pour Despinos Edouard, technicien en agriculture, la commune de Hinche aurait toutes les possibilités de faire face à une éventuelle crise alimentaire. Selon lui les sections de Marmont, de Juanaria et d’Aguahedionde offrent de grandes possibilités agricoles.

La région du Plateau Central possède en outre des ressources hydriques énormes, à l’image de la commune de Maissade.

« Elle est traversée par la rivière Rio Frio, la rivière Canot et d’autres cours d’eau qui pourraient irriguer des centaines d’hectares de terre durant la saison sèche, alors que ces opportunités ne sont pas exploitées. Maïssade, qui était la principale fournisseuse de riz du Plateau Central, ne peut rien offrir aujourd’hui », explique l’agronome Lyps Maitre, spécialiste en foresterie et cadre du ministère de l’agriculture. [ro kft gp apr 21/07/2011 15:00]

Lage peyi'm by Azor

2011-07-17T10:44:00.001-04:00

Haïti/Sous-traitance : Un déficit d’information publique sur le Parc industriel du nord

2011-07-06T12:23:00.003-04:00

(With foreign journos for the most part still stuck in PauP, Haitian press reports important story concerning proposed industrial park in Caracol. Hope other reporters follow up on this. MD)

Haïti/Sous-traitance : Un déficit d’information publique sur le Parc industriel du nord

lundi 4 juillet 2011

Enquête (1er papier sur 3)

Par Sylvestre Fils Dorcilus

(Reaed the original article here)

P-au-P., 4 juil 2011 [AlterPresse]--- Alors que les travaux de construction de la clôture du terrain devant abriter le Parc Industriel du Nord (PIN) ont démarré, la population de Caracol (Nord) demeure peu informée des tenants et aboutissants de l’opération en cours.

Les travaux font suite à la signature le 14 décembre 2010 d’un accord entre le gouvernement haïtien et le gouvernement des États-Unis, en partenariat avec la Banque Interaméricaine de Développement (BID), pour la mise en œuvre de ce projet.

Cependant ce n’est qu’au cours des travaux que les résidents de la localité, en particulier les occupants du terrain, ont pris connaissance de cette initiative.

« La population de Caracol n’a pas été informée au préalable de ce projet. Je n’ai jamais entendu parler d’un projet de Parc industriel dans la commune. Même les élus locaux n’ont été informés que lors du démarrage des travaux », indique l’agriculteur Alexis Jacqueson.

La commune de Caracol, à 45 kilomètres de la ville frontalière Ouanaminthe, où fonctionne depuis 2003 une Zone franche, compte environ 10 000 habitants.

Perspectives incertaines

Robert Etienne, la quarantaine, originaire de Glodine (localité de Cararol), comme d’autres habitants de la zone, n’a pas mâché ses mots pour dénoncer ce qu’il appelle l’« irrespect » du pouvoir central (administration de l’ancien président René Préval) envers la population de Caracol.

« Le gouvernement n’a aucun respect pour nous [habitants de Caracol]. C’est seulement un beau matin au début du mois de janvier dernier, quand une équipe de techniciens est venue pour explorer le terrain, que nous avons été informés du projet », explique Robert, l’air désabusé.

Robert et Alexis, tous deux cultivateurs victimes, déplorent que « n’ayant pris contact avec aucun d’entre eux (les planteurs) », les techniciens, une fois arrivés sur le terrain avec des engins lourds, ont rasé tout ce qu’ils ont trouvé sur leur passage.

« Imaginez un instant les torts causés à des paysans-planteurs qui s’apprêtent à récolter ou qui viennent à peine de semer », s’exclame Robert en montrant du doigt l’espace qu’ils cultivaient ensemble depuis environ dix ans.

Le lancement des travaux a également été une surprise pour d’autres citoyens qui évoluent dans différents secteurs à Caracol. C’est le cas notamment du pasteur Arnold Baptiste qui occupe une partie du terrain depuis plus de dix ans.

« Je n’en ai rien su », explique le pasteur Arnold Baptiste. Une partie du bâtiment de l’église qu’il dirige a été détruite durant les travaux. Lui aussi appelle au dialogue et à la réparation des dommages.

Ayant encore en mémoire l’histoire de la Zone franche de Ouanaminthe, dans le Nord-Est, ils sont plusieurs parmi les résidents de la localité à se soulever contre les autorités haïtiennes pour réclamer dédommagement, réparation et relocalisation.

« Nous allons nous organiser pour forcer l’État à assumer ses responsabilités vis-à-vis de nous », scandent des planteurs regroupés au sein de l’Association pour la Défense des Droits des Travailleurs de Caracol (ADTC).

L’ADTC, protestant contre les dispositions gouvernementales, demande aux autorités de prendre des mesures d’urgence pour dédommager et relocaliser les paysans-planteurs qui exploitent le terrain pour la plupart depuis une vingtaine d’années.

Des emplois et… un éventuel désastre écologique

Le projet, qui, selon les initiateurs, devrait générer 20.000 emplois à court terme et 65.000 emplois à long terme dans le secteur de la sous-traitance, sera exécuté sur près de 250 hectares de terre en deux phases.

La première phase, consacrée à la mise en place de certaines infrastructures, dont la clôture globale du terrain, quant à elle, sera exécutée sur 75 hectares de terre, selon des documents officiels dont dispose l’agence AlterPresse.

Selon le Centre de facilitation des investissements (CFI), le gouvernement américain et la Banque Interaméricaine de Développement (BID) se sont engagés à investir 140 millions de dollars américains pour la production de l’électricité du parc industriel, la construction de près de 5.000 logements et la mise en place d’infrastructures manufacturières.

La firme sud coréenne Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd, qui s’installera dans le parc, projette, pour sa part, d’investir 78 millions de dollars américains.

Le gouvernement haïtien s’occupera de la gestion du parc, et apportera le support et la surveillance. Il doit s’assurer en outre que la nouvelle construction adhère aux normes permettant de résister aux désastres naturels.

Le projet, toujours selon des documents officiels, inclut le développement des infrastructures routières, de logements, de l’accès à l’énergie, ainsi que la logistique et la construction de la première usine textile de la compagnie Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd.

En dépit des opportunités que les initiateurs du projet font miroiter, la crainte d’une atteinte à l’agriculture haïtienne et la dégradation de l’environnement, déjà fragilisé, parait certaine. De nombreux résidents de Caracol, interrogés, dénoncent le fait que le gouvernement a choisi d’installer des infrastructures industrielles sur des terres cultivables.

« C’est l’espace le plus fertile que nous avons à Caracol. Il est inconcevable et inacceptable que l’État puisse choisir cette portion de terre pour établir un parc industriel », dénonce Renel Pierre, un citoyen de la localité. Il dit regretter que « la population ne peut rien faire pour forcer l’État à revenir sur sa décision. » [sfd kft gp apr 04/07/2011 07:00]

Open letter from Daniel Gérard Rouzier to Haiti

2011-07-05T16:29:00.001-04:00

July 5th, 2011,

Open letter to my compatriots

My fellow citizens,

For a democratic system to work properly, it is essential that all citizens subject themselves to the will of the institutions that lead them; better yet, they must strengthen them and accept, without hesitation, the verdict that they deliver as long as that verdict is transparent and legal. For a democratic system to work properly, it is just as essential that the elected officials responsible for making laws abide by them without exception.

Our Lower House Representatives were duly elected to the Parliament by the people and, by voting against my ratification as Prime Minister, they fulfilled the role that their conscience imposed on them. Nothing, however, entitled them to violate my rights or, at the very least, to allow that they be violated by some of their peers with complete impunity.

Faced with a branch of government ever so complacent in arbitrariness and in lies, I take on the responsibility to correct the malicious and false statements that were unfortunately made by some of its members, even when the Parliamentary Commission in charge of analyzing my nomination already had all the information needed to contradict the slanderers and set the record straight and even when I made sure to hold, together with the President, a press conference on June 21st to present the complete facts. Allow me, in passing, to note that neither the congressman from the district where I was born and still live, nor the congressmen from the two districts where I am among the entrepreneurs who create the most jobs and who are the biggest taxpayers, nor the chambers of commerce that my businesses belong to, came to my defense.

Alone in the proverbial lion’s den, I must set the record straight:

* First, I am Haitian and I have never renounced my nationality. All my life, I have used the passport of only one country, my country, Haiti. My valid passport, along with my last two expired passports, were submitted to the Commission for analysis.

* Second, for having been Honorary Consul of Jamaica in Haiti, I did not lose my Haitian nationality. Moreover, I have never undertaken any political engagement on behalf of a foreign nation nor did I undertake any other engagement to defend the interest of a foreign nation at the expense of that of my country. It is incidentally absurd that our members of Parliament pretend not to be aware of the difference between the attributions of a career consul and those of an honorary consul which has never been considered to be, in any country and at any time, a political position.

* Third, I have been working in Haiti for more than 30 years and I pride myself in being among the Haitian citizens who have always and regularly paid all taxes owed to the country’s fiscal authorities. I am proud to state loud and clear that I have totally, completely and continuously fulfilled all my fiscal responsibilities toward my country. The Direction Générale des Impôts (DGI), Haiti’s tax collection authority, can bear witness to that fact and has never failed to issue me a yearly tax clearance certificate.

I direct those members of Parliament who feel authorized to tarnish, in all impunity, the image of honest and upstanding citizens of our country to get in touch with the DGI in order to verify the authenticity of my documents and the truthfulness of my assertions.

For the sake of historical accuracy, I am attaching, to this letter, a copy of my latest tax return, DGI’s receipt for taxes paid in addition to those withheld from my salary by my company every month on behalf of DGI as well as the tax clearance certificate delivered by DGI. The same information is available for the past five years, from fiscal year 2005-2006 to fiscal year 2009-2010 as required by law.

I want to take this opportunity to thank President Martelly for having presented me to the Nation to become Prime Minister of my country. While I have never asked him to do so, he has already set the historical record straight by informing the Nation, more than once, that I did not look for this position, that I did not scheme, nor did I lobby him for this honor. Quite the contrary!

As a citizen, I had accepted to serve my country on behalf of all our fellow citizens who died as a result of the earthquake, of hurricanes, of cholera, those who died from poverty, those who died by drowning in high seas, those who died from armed violence, kidnappings and assassinations like Guiteau Toussaint not too long ago… All of them victims of our collective failure to take on our Republic’s triptych: Liberty, Equality and, above all, Fraternity.

It is specially with them in mind that I had agreed to go in front of the Parliament and in front of the Nation at a time when the Haitian people, faced with an endless series of political, social, economic, institutional, meteorological and seismic catastrophes, one more deadly than the other, let out a clear and powerful scream of rupture with the past and progress for the future when it elected Michel Joseph Martelly to the highest office in the land.

A population scorned, betrayed, despised by those who had promised hope, democracy and development, only to deliver unemployment, misery, beggary and insecurity;

A population who, for the past 50 years, has been faced with the gradual collapse of the State, the deliquescence of its institutions and the rule of mediocrity, corruption, violence and anarchy;

A population finally decimated by cataclysmic disasters as if Mother Nature wanted to join in the scramble for the spoils initiated by the flock’s guardians;

A population in anguish, weakened, disillusioned, traumatized, on its knees but never defeated, raised its head and dealt a resounding and peremptory “No” to the status quo and its supporters.

I had accepted to serve next to President Martelly because when Haiti, the First Free Nation of the Americas after having abolished slavery, the First Black Republic of the World, brought him to power, it also proclaimed its right to a new Haitian dream in a country reclaiming its sovereignty.

A new Haitian dream that wants all families to be able, by virtue of the fruit of their labor, to raise their children with dignity in a normalized society where the notions of inclusion, job creation, wealth distribution, solidarity, justice, accountability, transparency, order and discipline are no longer purely theoretical concepts, but a daily practice beginning at the very top, propagating itself throughout the executive branch toward civil service and reaching civil society by a sort of contagious percolation.

It is because I strongly believe in this dream that I had put aside my charitable activities, that I had resigned as Chairman of the boards of my companies, that I had agreed to sacrifice priceless family time to assume the responsibility to form the new government that would be in charge of building our country.

Various signals coming from the Parliament’s ranks and insisting on a different kind of politics steadfastly and uniquely engaged in the improvement of our compatriots’ quality of life had also convinced me that, together, we could have pulled off this remarkable feat and work to resolve the problems that we have collectively created.

When future generations will look back to the past, they will remember that 2010 was the year of all catastrophes. If, however, we finally get to work honestly, I am convinced that our descendants will be stunned by the contrast that 2011 will offer.

The year 2011 could indeed be the starting point of a period in time that will be as hard as it will be exhilarating. This brings to mind the words of Sir Winston Churchill when he became Prime Minister of England at a time when the country was threatened by Nazi Germany. He said this to the British people.

“I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined the government: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: victory; victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.”

If we treat extreme poverty and the throes of underdevelopment as a monstrous tyranny, we have to stand ready to wage war against them, and this war, President Martelly, the next Prime Minister, you and I simply cannot afford to lose it. The political strategy that I wanted to propose to the Nation was to wage war against the devastating consequences of the catastrophes created by nature and by man in our country during the past 50 years and to embrace wholeheartedly the change promoted by the President.

This change had to express itself first and foremost in the defense of the common good; this heritage that includes the existence of the goods necessary for the development of the Haitian citizen and the real possibility for all to have access to them. This common good requires the social welfare and the development of all the country’s children, all of them, without exclusion and without exclusivity; and it implies the peace, the stability and the security of a just order.

The common good is, in that sense, different from the general interest which, in a group, does not take into account each individual person and, consequently, because it only considers the general entity, may accept the necessary sacrifice of certain members of the group, usually the weakest ones, for the survival of the others.

The common good, as I see it, will need the commitment and involvement of all members of society; no one will be exempt from participating, according to his ability, in order to reach and develop it; and no one will be left behind. Fok tout moun lité, fok tout moun travay e fok tout moun jwenn !

To protect the common good, the next government must commit to match the interests of all sectors with the requirements of justice and to use all the power at its disposal to do so.

It’s in the name of that quest for the common good for all my fellow citizens that I had accepted to serve next to President Martelly with my faith. This faith that raises mountains, this faith that makes me look for Christ in the other, this faith that gets me to believe that our Good God has a plan of love and excellence for Haiti, that I must get involved and that I will not die before seeing change, real change, in Haiti.

These last two months, I heard all kinds of voices, some more striking than others, standing against the fact that I assume my Christian faith publicly and without reserve.

Following the vote of the Members of the Lower House, a journalist, for whom I have the greatest respect, wrote the following: “Mr. Rouzier, in his prayers and his faith, probably forgot that God does not vote in the Senate or the Lower House.” I will simply answer him that our Good God voted and that, in His great love for me, he probably spared me a more painful fate.

I had accepted to serve my country and I saw in this nomination a calling, a vocation, one more opportunity to serve Christ and to touch Him every day in:

* the 680,000 people rotting under tents;

* the 8 million Haitians who will sleep tonight without electricity;

* the 5 million illiterate who are maintained in the dark;

* our thousands of compatriots who are rotting in jail for petty crimes without any hope of ever
seeing a judge;

* the millions of youths who have lost all hope of ever finding a job;

* the millions of senior citizens who have been forgotten and abandoned by our society;

* the millions of women who must slave away every day to provide for their children’s basic
needs;

* our fellow citizens suffering of physical handicaps and mental challenges and who are the
ragamuffins of our society;

* our farmers to whom we have turned our back for too long.

For all these reasons, I will keep my eyes riveted on Christ and I will keep on serving. I only have one life to live and I have to take advantage of all the opportunities that are given to me to make it count for something. My life and my faith have been made up so far of effort and perseverance in adversity, more than they have been made up of dogma and theology. Our Good God has planted a dream of love and excellence for all in my heart and He has allowed me to understand that to do my best is normal and that to go beyond my abilities is a challenge. Where my abilities end, my faith begins. A strong faith sees the invisible, believes the incredible and receives the impossible.

If you and I, together, join our efforts and wage battle for a prosperous Haiti, with all the talent, all the resources that God has given to us, then and only then will the future generations see 2011 as the launch of the Renaissance.

May our Good God bless Haiti, may He bless the President, may He bless the Parliament and may He bless us all with our families, always.

Respectfully,

Daniel Gérard ROUZIER

Anna Ferdinand on Martissant

2011-07-05T10:12:00.005-04:00

(Originally published Feb 18, 2007)

From Anna Ferdinand

It was 1995 when I first went to Haiti. I was visiting the National Office on Migration (ONM) one day and met up with a group of young men from Grand Ravine who had gone into exile to the DR during the coup for their support of Aristide. Upon their return, with the restoration of Aristide, they approached every government office they could think of in an attempt to bring development to their area now that democracy had returned. I began teaching English at a school at their request. After class often I would join them in their rehearsals for a folklore troupe and a theater group.

They also brought me on several occasions to Grand Ravine, introducing me to people who had been in Guantanamo, telling me about their hopes for a school in Grand Ravine, and a project that would stop the erosion of the road that crossed the deepening ravine. They were bringing up the issues that faced the new democracy; the need for schools, infrastructure, reforestation and
the need to promote a beautiful culture in a country filled with artists. It was a time when there was hope that these things could now be achieved, that if you could stumble upon the right government channel, these things just might happen.

By the year 2000, when political crisis had been well established and the May 21 elections took place, one of the group from Grand Ravine, Luckner Monprevil, was elected as second in a cartel of three Port-au-Prince mayors under Fanmi Lavalas. The artists who had been members of the theater group were now his security corps, toting large guns. At the inauguration, City Hall was overrun with Lavalas supporters and the scene was chaotic. I came upon the law student turned adjoint mayor to congratulate him. He was surrounded by his well armed friends, cowering in a room in the back. It was a mad scene outside, and the reality of power in that situation was overwhelming him in the moment. Unfortunately he came into a questionable situation and political chaos and mismanagement brought his cartel down. I don't think he did much of anything while in power and by the end was criticized for driving a Mercedes to work.

By 2003 the groups were well armed, and all innocence seemed to have been lost. True power to develop from the mayor's office had come and gone. Power had corrupted, with positions for the old gang in parliament and presence in the National palace. Only the dance teacher had turned away in disgust.

When Fefe Bien Aime, a Grand Ravine resident who had been appointed as cemetery director (a gun battle in the cemetery took place under his direction), was killed, the Lavalas group, entrenched in the new system of Popular Organizations, turned against Aristide. Bien Aime was last seen in the hands of the police. Later his car was found dumped and he was dead. But after a couple of months of calling Aba Aristide, they were again pro and the new leader was seen in the palace; political mutations in an atmosphere devoid of positive development in any sense. Just as the Raboteau folks came in and left the Lavalas fold, so did the group in Grand Ravine. Idealism, ideas of justice and development were long gone, lost to gang war.

The discussion of what gang was in charge of what crimes occupies the discussion on this list, fights between the authors of articles in a war of words, is equally unconstructive. It's easy to try and paint a picture of black and white, right and wrong, but Haiti is far beyond that. Michael Deibert has done a commendable job, with heavy duty investigative journalism over the years, of opening the eyes to the fact that no one side has the monopoly on what is good and right.

The United States government bought their own form of political gangsters to carry out their war out in what they consider a slum. Aristide played the same game on his lower wrung of power. There was a hope that he would step out of the game, to hold up a mirror in the face of what the most powerful do to the least powerful. Instead he became their mirror image. The consequence has been that not only did Martissant residents initial activism result in little, but the whole country has blown up in everyone's faces.

The gang wars, the election wars, the constant parade of wars just hit on the sand like endless waves, lapping up on the real land, with real people living real lives where nothing ever changes because people never change.

Journalism in Haiti: A few thoughts

2011-06-27T20:46:00.003-04:00

I thought long and hard about whether or not to post the words you are about to read.

As I know how hard it is to be a journalist working in some of the harsher corners of the world - and that if you are doing your job well you inevitably piss off somebody - I generally try hold my commentary on other reporters' work to a minimum unless it is in cases of egregious factual errors or conflicts of interest. There will always be those willing to chatter from the sidelines at the work of reporters good, bad and mediocre, and I feel that, in general, with all the serious issues confronting the countries I myself work on, I would have relatively little to add to the cacophony.

Perhaps it is because I have spent so much time outside of mediacentric cities like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco over the last decade, but I have, in general, never been much moved by the "and I alone escaped to tell thee" confessional pieces of journalists who fly into a desperate place for a few days (or weeks) and then immediately begin reminiscing about how rough the assignment was in print, on tv, etc. I've always felt that, if one can't take it, then one should just get another kind of job. We reporters are rarely the story, though I know such narratives are increasingly fashionable.

Perhaps that will explain my reaction to this story, "I’m Gonna Need You to Fight Me On This: How Violent Sex Helped Ease My PTSD," on the GOOD media website. Written by Mother Jones human rights reporter Mac McClelland, the article, as I read it, uses the mass rape of women in Haiti (and later in the Democratic Republic of Congo) as the background for a foreign reporter's journey of self-discovery. I can't speak to the author's motivations, but of the many articles on Haiti I have read over the years that have made me want to throw things, I don't think that I have ever read something that has viscerally struck me as more narcissistic as a piece of writing about this country I dearly love and have been visiting and reporting on for the last 15 years.

By no means do I want to make light of the journalist's trauma, or even less that of those she describes interviewing. Everybody experiences anguish and suffering in different ways. There may be much about the reporter's experiences there that I don't know but from the article itself, though it sounds as if, a rather disturbing and atypical (for Haiti) incident with a driver aside, nothing at all out of the ordinary happened. Haiti can be a rough place and journalists wanting to work there need to be prepared for that. Reading the article, though, I could not help but ask myself, as a foreign journalist who also works in Haiti, some questions.

With a million people still homeless in Haiti after the January 2010 earthquake, with a once-proud system of rural agriculture now on life-support due in no small part to the policies imposed on Haiti by the international community, with women and girls disenfranchised and and with the country's politicians seemingly poised to enter yet another period of poisonous deadlock, is this the best we foreign journalists can do? Is this the future of journalism? Where the suffering and struggle for survival of the majority of the world's population merely provides a backdrop for navel-gazing to even further promote was has already become our incredibly inward-looking, self-referential culture?

I am afraid it may be. On one hand it is good that the author does not pretend - as so many do - to be an authority on a country that she knows little about, but on the other hand, given all this space, isn't there SOMETHING happening in Haiti that deserves notice beyond the experiences and reactions of we foreigners (or, narrower still, we journalists) when covering the place?

Any foreigner who knows a little bit about Haiti will confess freely how much they realize they still don't know about this quite complex country. You learn things about it slowly and through trial and error in places like the desperate bidonville of Cité Soleil, in the moisture-dappled hills of Furcy and Fermathe, along its meandering coasts and amidst its inscrutable mountains.

But there are some things Haiti is definitely not. It is definitely not a therapist for we, the privileged outsiders entrusted with telling its stories. If all we can write about when faced with all of this suffering, resistance and resilience is ourselves, then we might as well stay home.

Their suffering is their suffering. Not ours. Give them at least that.

Message to the Nation of President Martelly

2011-06-23T10:30:00.001-04:00

Message to the Nation of President Martelly

Haitian people,

As required in the constitution of the country, I had chosen Pierre Daniel Gérard Rouzier as Prime Minister. As you heard the news, the Chamber of Deputies with the power of the Constitution, took the decision to put aside [my choice]. Many people were surprised to see what reasons they gave for not voting for him. I regret the decision that the Deputies took, it's a decision that prevented the country to have the services of an honest citizen, who wanted to work for the people, for his country and which is right in his life. This decision slowed all the possibilities that allow to change my promises into realities. Now I am forced to see what happened and I have to sit down again to discuss with the President of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies to choose a new prime minister. I must tell you, we do not know how long, the Parliament will take, before ratifying another Prime Minister [...] Meanwhile, I can not accept that the battle against cholera stops, that the battle against garbage in the street stops, the battle to put the country back on track stops, that the battle against the problems of people under tents stops that my free school program for children stops, because my government can not be installed, to start working for the people.

It is necessary right now, that I take some decisions and I'll take them. I convene the outgoing Prime Minister, Jean Max Bellerive, to look at the ways that exist to enable the Government and the offices of the state to function as they should, to begin to provide solutions to solve the problems of the population. It's time for my vision and my program starts to spread, it's time, that the country is unlocked.

I continue to believe that the Parliament will do what it must do to solve the problems of the Haitian people the way it should. I take this opportunity to compliment all the people, for this beautiful exercise of democracy, when you decided not to take the street and you let the parliamentarians work in peace. Similarly, I hope that the parliamentarians will be aware that the country can no longer wait and that the people are tired and in pain. Once again, I repeat, Haiti must come before any personal interests. I am asking to the Haitian people that suffers, that awaits, which has the hope in a better life, to continue to have confidence. Change will happen and Haiti will change anyway.

Tet Kalé

Mobilisation paysanne contre l’accaparement des terres agricoles

2011-06-23T08:17:00.002-04:00

Mobilisation paysanne contre l’accaparement des terres agricoles

mercredi 22 juin 2011

Par Sylvestre Fils Dorcilus

(Read original article here)

Hinche (Haïti), 22 juin 2011 [AlterPresse] --- Des milliers de paysannes et paysans ont marché pendant plusieurs heures, le mardi 21 juin 2011, dans plusieurs rues de la ville de Hinche (chef-lieu du département géographique du Plateau central, à plus d’une centaine de kilomètres au nord-est de la capitale), a observé l’agence en ligne AlterPresse.

« L’accaparement des terres du pays, un danger pour la souveraineté agricole » : tel a été le thème retenu par les organisateurs de la marche, déroulée pacifiquement sous la protection d’une patrouille de l’unité départementale pour le maintien d’ordre (Udmo) de la police nationale d’Haïti (Pnh).

Cette initiative de plusieurs regroupements et plateformes d’organisations sociales, dont des organisations de femmes et de défense de droits humains, avait, entre autres objectifs, de promouvoir la biodiversité agricole en défendant les semences locales.

« Il faut que les autorités gouvernementales du pays puissent enfin assumer leurs responsabilités face à la dégradation notre agriculture. Il faut qu’il y ait une vraie politique agricole », ont scandé les manifestantes et manifestants.

A travers cette mobilisation, les organisateurs de la manifestation entendaient plaider en faveur de dispositions institutionnelles susceptibles d’assurer la souveraineté alimentaire, la réfection de l’environnement et la construction d’une nouvelle Haïti par une exploitation harmonieuse des terres agricoles dans le pays.

« Nous sommes tous des paysans de plusieurs départements géographiques du pays, qui sont venus participer à cette marche pour dénoncer la politique agricole du gouvernement haïtien », a indiqué le porte-parole du Mouvement des paysans de Papaye (Mpp), Chavannes Jean-Baptiste.

Les manifestantes et manifestants paysans portaient, pour la plupart, des chapeaux en paille et étaient vêtus de maillots de couleur rouge, sur lesquels étaient inscrits : « vive l’agriculture haïtienne ; vivent les semences locales ; vive la nourriture de chez nous, etc. »

Exprimant leur indignation face au mode de gestion agricole du pays, mis en place par les autorités centrales qu’ils qualifient d’« irresponsable », les milliers de manifestants, en grande partie des agricultrices et agriculteurs, ont plaidé pour l’implantation d’une politique agricole adaptée à la réalité haïtienne.

« Il faut une politique agricole adaptée à la réalité de notre pays. Il faut que les dirigeants cessent d’importer les denrées agricoles ainsi que les semences étrangères dans le pays », exigent-ils, en criant haro sur les semences et produits importés.

Le processus d’invasion des terres nationales, par des investisseurs privés partout dans le pays, constitue une menace pour les populations locales, privées de leurs moyens de vie et de subsistance, a témoigné Camille Chalmers, de la plateforme de plaidoyer pour un développement alternatif (Papda), présent à la mobilisation du 21 juin 2011.

Comme d’autres manifestants, Chalmers s’est prononcé pour une politique agricole cohérente, reflétant les réalités nationales, en vue, dit-il, de garantir la souveraineté agricole et l’indépendance du pays.

« En déstructurant les économies locales, l’afflux sur le marché local de denrées agricoles, produites dans les pays du Nord de manière intensive avec d’énormes moyens mécaniques, ruine l’agriculture vivrière respectueuse des êtres humains », a déploré Jean-Robert, agriculteur, résident à Papaye, section communale à environ une dizaine de kilomètres à l’est de Hinche.

Plusieurs milliers de fermes agricoles disparaissent chaque année dans le pays. Si cette tendance se perpétue, il n’y aura, bientôt, plus de paysans dans nos campagnes, ont souligné les agricultrices et agriculteurs ayant soutenu la mobilisation du 21 juin.

De plus, l’agriculture paysanne est progressivement remplacée par une agriculture industrialisée.

« Chaque jour, nous voyons des voisins abandonner le travail agricole, faute de revenus décents. De jeunes paysans, désireux de pratiquer l’agriculture, se retrouvent très souvent découragés par le manque de perspectives économiques, le prix prohibitif des terres et une situation de campagnes vidées de leurs agricultrices et agriculteurs », a fait remarquer Jérôme, planteur depuis 25 ans.

« Nous sommes convaincus qu’il n’y aura pas de futur viable pour nos sociétés, sans paysans vivant dignement de leur production. Par cette initiative, nous lançons donc un signal d’alarme et appelons au regroupement des forces pour sauver l’agriculture paysanne dans le pays », souhaite Chavannes Jean-Baptiste.

Il faut une réforme en profondeur dans la politique agricole en Haïti. D’autres politiques agricoles et alimentaires, plus légitimes, plus justes, plus solidaires et plus durables, sont nécessaires dans le pays pour répondre aux enjeux de souveraineté alimentaire, ont fait valoir plusieurs agricultrices et agriculteurs ayant pris part à la mobilisation du 21 juin 2011.

Mise en branle à Papaye aux environs de 10:30 am locales (15:30 gmt), la marche a pris fin sur la place Charlemagne Péralte de Hinche vers 1:00 pm (18:00 gmt), avec notamment une distribution symbolique de semences agricoles locales, de plantules fruitières et forestières aux agriculteurs en signe d’encouragement à la production nationale. [sfd rc 22/06/2011 17:40]

Haïtel's Franck Ciné arrested, then released, in connection with Guiteau Toussaint slaying

2011-06-19T10:19:00.001-04:00

Libération du PDG de la Haïtel, Franck Ciné

Placé en garde à vue pendant 48 heures suite à l’assassinat du numéro un de la BNC, Guiteau Toussaint, l’ex-actionnaire majoritaire de l’ancienne SOCABANK bénéficie d’un "élargissement", selon son avocat, Wilson Estimé, qui qualifie d’illégale la décision que le parquet de Port-au-Prince avait prise à l’encontre de son client ; messe de funérailles en mémoire du disparu et fermeture des banques mercredi prochain

Publié le samedi 18 juin 2011

Radio Kiskeya

(Read the original article here)

Le PDG de la compagnie de téléphonie mobile Haïtel, Franck Ciné, a été libéré samedi après-midi deux jours après son arrestation dans le cadre de l’enquête criminelle ouverte par le parquet de Port-au-Prince sur l’assassinat, il y a une semaine, du patron de la Banque Nationale de crédit, Guiteau Toussaint.

"Le commissaire du gouvernement, Me Harrycidas Auguste, a ordonné l’élargissement de M. Ciné vu qu’il avait été retenu illégalement", a indiqué à Radio Kiskeya un de ses avocats, Wilson Estimé.

Agé de 77 ans, l’homme d’affaires, ancien actionnaire majoritaire de la Société Caribéenne de Banque (SOCABANK) déclarée en faillite et reprise en 2006 par la BNC, avait déjà fait la prison de 2007 à 2009 pour sa responsabilité présumée dans une faillite fraduleuse évaluée à 40 millions de dollars.

Me Estimé a fait savoir que son client se trouvait globalement en bonne santé après avoir connu quelques difficultés respiratoires au cours de sa garde à vue de 48 heures.

Il affirme haut et fort que Franck Ciné entend rester en Haïti afin de pouvoir répondre à n’importe quelle sollicitation des autorités judiciaires.

Lors de son interrogatoire jeudi au parquet, il avait bénéficié de l’assistance de deux des avocats les plus chevronnés du barreau de Port-au-Prince, Mes Pierre C. Labissière et Gérard Gourgue.

Depuis la disparition brutale de Guiteau Toussaint et l’onde de choc qu’elle a provoquée dans différents milieux, une dizaine de mandats d’amener ont été émis et plusieurs suspects interpellés.

Le banquier émérite de 57 ans avait été abattu d’une balle au visage par des inconnus ayant pénétré par effraction dimanche dernier (12juin) dans sa résidence à Vivy Mitchel, un quartier résidentiel situé sur la route de Frères (Pétion-Ville, banlieue est de la capitale).

Une cérémonie du souvenir se tiendra mardi soir à l’initiative de la famille du disparu et de la Banque nationale de crédit, l’une des plus importantes du système bancaire haïtien.

Le lendemain mercredi, une messe de funérailles sera chantée dans la matinée à l’église St-Pierre de Pétion-Ville. Le corps devrait être inhumé aux Etats-Unis où réside la famille de M. Toussaint.

En vue d’honorer sa mémoire et de protester contre son assassinat, l’Association professionnelle des banques (APB) a annoncé que toutes les succursales des banques commerciales, d’épargne et de logement resteront fermées durant toute la journée de mercredi, à travers le pays. spp/Radio Kiskeya

Arrestation de l’activiste Lavalas Yvon Antoine alias "Yvon ZapZap"

2011-06-15T00:08:00.002-04:00

Haïti-Politique-Justice

Arrestation de l’activiste Lavalas Yvon Antoine alias "Yvon ZapZap"

Aucune précision pour l’instant sur un éventuel lien entre l’ordre du parquet de Port-au-Prince de le placer en garde à vue et l’assassinat du banquier Guyto Toussaint ; le chef de cabinet du Président Martelly, Thierry Mayard Paul, annonce la mise aux arrêts de "trois activistes politiques" qui seraient impliqués dans ce crime révoltant

mardi 14 juin 2011

(Read the original article here)

La police a procédé mardi à l’arrestation de l’activiste politique Lavalas Yvon Antoine dit "Yvon ZapZap" dans le cadre de l’exécution d’un mandat émis contre lui par le commissaire du gouvernement de Port-au-Prince, Me Harrycidas Auguste, a appris Radio Kiskeya de sources proches du parquet.

Appréhendé à la rue Dehoux, au quartier-général de Fashion Maté, une bande à pied traditionnelle du carnaval de Port-au-Prince, l’intéressé est accusé d’association de malfaiteurs et de trouble à l’ordre public.

Il se trouvait mardi soir au commissariat de la capitale où il a été placé en garde à vue.

Le mandat décerné contre Yvon ZapZap l’a été lundi, au lendemain de l’assassinat unanimement réprouvé du président du conseil d’administration de la Banque nationale de crédit (BNC), Guyto Toussaint, abattu dimanche soir à son domicile.

Cependant, il n’était pas possible de savoir si l’arrestation du militant Lavalas avait un lien quelconque avec ce meurtre.

Intervenant mardi matin sur Radio Métropole (une station privée de Port-au-Prince), Me Thierry Mayard Paul, chef du cabinet particulier du Président Michel Martelly, a annoncé que l’enquête criminelle en cours a déjà entraîné l’arrestation de "trois activistes politiques".

L’avocat s’est gardé de révéler l’identité de ces individus ainsi que leur appartenance politique.

En décembre dernier, en pleine contestation violente des résultats préliminaires du premier tour des présidentielles du 28 novembre, le très remuant Yvon ZapZap avait rejeté les accusations faisant état de son implication dans un incident armé au Champ de Mars (centre de la capitale) entre des partisans présumés de la plateforme INITE et de Michel Martelly, alors candidat.

Trois personnes avait été blessées par balle dont deux grièvement.

Le même activiste, proche de Fanmi Lavalas, le parti de Jean-Bertrand Aristide, avait été emprisonné pendant de longs mois sous le gouvernement de transition Alexandre/Latortue (2004-2006) pour son rôle actif dans "l’Opération Bagdad", une funeste insurrection armée qui avait considérablement secoué Port-au-Prince à la chute, en février 2004, de M. Aristide.

A noter qu’Yvon ZapZap était de ceux qui s’étaient mobilisés lors du retour d’exil, à la mi-mars, de l’ancien Président Lavalas resté très discret après sept années passées en Afrique du Sud. spp/Radio Kiskeya

Assassinat de Guiteau Toussaint, président du conseil d'administration de la BNC

2011-06-13T02:29:00.002-04:00

National

12 Juin 2011

Assassinat de Guiteau Toussaint, président du conseil d'administration de la BNC

Le Nouvelliste

(Read the original article here)

Le décès de Guiteau Toussaint, 56 ans, président du conseil d'administration de la Banque Nationale de Crédit, a été constaté ce dimanche 12 juin 2011 à l'hôpital de la Communauté Haïtienne où il avait été transporté suite à des blessures par balles reçues en sa résidence à Vivy Mitchel (Frères), a appris Le Nouvelliste de sources policières.

Selon les premiers éléments disponibles, des individus armés non identifiés se sont introduits dans son domicile, ont maîtrisé le personnel de maison et ont abattu d'une balle à la tête le banquier.

Le décès de Monsieur Toussaint a été constaté à l'hôpital de la Communauté haïtienne de Frères.
Ces dernières années M. Guiteau Toussaint avait conduit avec brio le sauvetage de la BNC une banque propriété de l'Etat haïtien aux bords de la faillite quand il en prit le contrôle en mars 1999.

Triste de fin pour celui qui a servi la fonction publique et son pays pendant trente-sept ans dont douze à la direction de la BNC. Pendant plusieurs années il a occupé le poste de Vice-Président de l'Association Professionnelle des Banques (APB). En avril 2011, le Group Croissance l'avait honoré pour son travail au sein de la corporation.

Diplômé en Gestion à l'Institut National d'Administration, de Gestion et des Hautes Etudes
Internationales (INAGHEI), ancien professeur d'Université, avant de se retrouver à la tête de la BNC, Guiteau Toussaint a travaillé au ministère de l'Economie et des Finances où il était directeur général et également dans d'autres institutions financières. Il a été directeur financier de l'Institut de Développement Agricole et Industriel (IDAI) devenu par la suite, Banque Nationale de Développement Agricole et Industriel (BNDAI).

En dépit de tout, c'est son parcours exemplaire avec la Banque Nationale de Crédit qui restera comme la réalisation majeure de sa vie professionelle.

Guiteau Toussaint est arrivé à la BNC en 1999, plus précisément au mois de mars 1999 avec une mission claire, nette et précise : Celle de restructurer cette institution. D'ailleurs le comité qu'il préside s'appelle le Comité provisoire de contrôle et de restructuration de la BNC. Ce qui constituait un détour dans la vie de la BNC vu qu'avant, c'était toujours un conseil d'administration qui dirigeait cette institution.

D'où vient l'idée de ce comité de restructuration qui était le deuxième du genre ? Cela venait du fait que la BNC a connu, comme toute institution, des moments difficiles dans son existence. Entre 1991 et 1995, d'autres banques commerciales privées sont arrivées sur le marché avec des ressources humaines beaucoup plus dynamiques et beaucoup plus orientées clients que la BNC. Cette dernière jouissait jusqu'alors d'une situation de quasi-monopole avec la Banque Royale du
Canada et la Banque de l'Union haïtienne sur le marché local.

Incapable de se battre, pendant les années 90, la BNC perdit rapidement d'importantes parts de marché et fut déclassée. De la première place parmi les banques de la place, elle passa à la sixième position. A côté du fait qu'elle perdit des parts de marché, les fonds propres de la banque fondirent également avec les déficits enregistrés au sein de l'institution.

A ce moment, deux options s'offraient aux responsables : privatiser (moderniser) la banque ou la restructurer. Une première expérience, conduite par la Banque de la République d'Haïti, ne donna pas les résultats escomptés. Alors l'Etat haïtien pris la décision de donner une deuxième chance à la BNC afin de voir comment on peut sauver ce patrimoine national.

C'est dans ce contexte que le Directeur général du ministère de l'Economie et des Finances d'alors, Guiteau Toussaint arrive à la banque avec la mission d'analyser les possibilités de la restructurer. L'autorité de nomination lui accorde trois mois pour donner une idée claire sur cette affaire à savoir si la BNC pouvait être sauvée ou s'il fallait la laisser périr.

« Moi et mon équipe nous avions compris qu'il s'agissait d'un défi et nous avions pris le taureau par les cornes et montré que le miracle était possible moyennant une restructuration dans ses modes d'opération, ses ressources humaines, sa capitalisation », expliqua Toussaint lors d'une interview accordée au Nouvelliste en 2009.

« Ainsi nous avions fait notre rapport à l'autorité de tutelle, le ministère de l'Economie et des Finances et au Chef de l'Etat pour leur dire que l'institution pouvait être sauvée moyennant certaines conditions bien précises. Nous avions fait le travail de restructuration qui a duré deux ans, deux ans et demi. »

La Banque Nationale de Crédit pu être sauvée et est devenue dix ans plus tard un fleuron dans le patrimoine de l'Etat haïtien avec un actif total de plus de 18 milliards de gourdes, des fonds propres de 1.4 milliard de gourdes, des dépôts totaux de 15 milliards alors qu'en 1999 l'actif total de la banque était de 1.8 milliard de gourdes. Pendant cette période, l'actif a pu être multiplié par 10, ainsi que les dépôts, les prêts et les fonds propres.

Gage de la bonne santé de la BNC, l'Etat, son actionnaire, et la Banque de la République d'Haïti, l'autorité de contrôle du secteur, lui permirent de mener une opération majeure et inédite dans l'histoire bancaire en Haïti : une banque publique a pu faire acquisition d'une banque commerciale qui était en difficulté.

« Cela a été une transaction pour protéger le système bancaire haïtien d'une crise systémique. Après ce qui s'est passé avec les coopératives financières, la Banque centrale a beaucoup incité la BNC à faire l'acquisition des actifs et passifs de la Socabank » eut à dire Guiteau Toussaint en 2009.

La BNC fit l'acquisition de la SocaBank, une banque en difficulté. La Soca présentait un avoir net négatif de 1.5 milliard de gourdes. Cette transaction a été faite dans une perspective de sauvetage du système financier et de protection de l'avoir des déposants.

L'un des axes majeurs de la restructuration de la BNC a été les ressources humaines tant du point quantitatif qu'au point de vue qualitatif. La banque fonctionnait avec un effectif de plus de 800 employés en 1999 alors que des études démontraient qu'elle pouvait fonctionner très facilement avec un effectif de 350 à 400 employés. Il fallait réduire la taille de cette institution en accordant certains avantages aux partants.

« Ce que nous avons fait. Et pour compléter l'effectif, on a fait appel à des consultants, à des ressources beaucoup plus jeunes et dynamiques avec un nouvel esprit orienté client. Comme je le dis toujours, ce dernier est la raison d'être de la banque», argumenta Toussaint lors de cet entretien.

« Il nous a fallu beaucoup de temps pour mettre ce nouvel esprit dans la tête de tout un chacun à savoir que la banque existe parce que le client y vient. Nous avons fait le travail, mais ce n'est pas encore gagné à cent pour cent. Il faut continuellement le faire avec les nouveaux qui arrivent, leur inculquer cet esprit et faire en sorte qu'ils puissent fournir un service de qualité aux clients qui arrivent. »

Interroger sur la vision de celui qui conseil après conseil été resté en poste à la tête de la BNC pour un des plus long règne au sein de cette institution née de la scission de la Banque Nationale de la République d'Haïti en BRH, la banque centrale et la BNC une banque commerciale, Guiteau Toussaint déclara :

« Pour diriger une institution comme la BNC, il faut aussi avoir de la vision. Une vision c'est comme un rêve auquel nous donnons un délai. Notre vision est de faire de la BNC une des banques les mieux cotées de la place en termes de services bancaires. Cette banque doit continuer à créer de la valeur pour son propriétaire et pour la communauté. Elle doit être une banque efficace et efficiente au service de la communauté et orientée vers la promotion de l'économie nationale. C'est notre vision de la banque et c'est cette vision qui, chaque jour, chaque mois, chaque année, défile continuellement devant nous dans notre travail. »

Frantz Duval
Avec l'aide de Gary L. Cyprien

Note de Presse de LFHH relative à la Déclaration de Patrimoine

2011-06-12T19:03:00.002-04:00

Note de Presse de LFHH relative à la Déclaration de Patrimoine.

La Fondation Héritage pour Haïti (LFHH)

Pétion-Ville, Haïti, le 10 juin 2011 – La Fondation Héritage pour Haïti (LFHH), section haïtienne de Transparency International (TI) rappelle que la loi portant sur la Déclaration de Patrimoine, datée du 18 février 2008, publiée dans Le Moniteur No. 17 du 20 février 2008 oblige certaines catégories de personnalités politiques, de fonctionnaires et autres agents publics à faire la déclaration de leur patrimoine dans un délai de trente (30) jours après leur entrée en fonction et trente (30) jours après la fin de leur mandat. Cette déclaration comprend l’ensemble des biens meubles et immeubles incluant les dettes hypothécaires, les dettes personnelles et tous autres engagements.

LFHH estime que l’application de ces dispositions légales rentre dans le cadre des dispositions régissant un état démocratique et contribue à une meilleure gouvernance. Dans la présente conjoncture de passation de pouvoir suite à l’investiture d’un nouveau Chef d’Etat et à la formation en cours d’un nouveau gouvernement, LFHH juge opportun d’encourager les membres du gouvernement sortant, les anciens parlementaires qui n’ont pas été reconduits, les nouveaux élus (Président, députés et sénateurs) et tous les fonctionnaires et autres agents publics concernés à se conformer à la loi.

Les personnalités politiques, fonctionnaires et autres agents publics tenus de faire la déclaration de patrimoine sont indiqués à l’article 7 de la loi portant sur la Déclaration de Patrimoine. Conformément aux articles 3 à 6 de ladite loi, la déclaration de patrimoine doit se faire au greffe du Tribunal de Première Instance du domicile du ou de la déclarant (e), et l’Unité de Lutte Contre la Corruption (ULCC) est chargée de collecter dans les greffes des différentes juridictions du pays les informations fournies par les déclarants (es), de les traiter en vue de la création d’une base de données dont elle a la garde et le contrôle, et qu’elle analyse aux fins d’enquête en cas de soupçon d’enrichissement illicite ou de tout autre acte de corruption.

LFHH exhorte l’ULCC à veiller à la stricte application de ladite loi et à adopter les mesures appropriées prévues en cas de constat de défaut de déclaration de patrimoine, conformément aux dispositions des articles 16 à 19 de la loi portant sur la Déclaration de Patrimoine.
LFHH souhaite que les dispositions de ladite loi, notamment les délais prévus, soient respectées en vue de garantir la transparence de la vie politique et administrative et protéger le patrimoine public de l’Etat, tout en préservant la dignité de ces personnalités politiques, fonctionnaires et autres agents publics qui y sont assujettis.

La Fondation Héritage pour Haïti

Section haïtienne de Transparency International

LA FONDATION HÉRITAGE POUR HAÏTI (LFHH)
LE CENTRE POUR L’ETHIQUE ET L’INTÉGRITÉ PUBLIQUE ET PRIVÉE

Haitian migrants in the Brazilian Amazon

2011-05-25T07:48:00.001-04:00

Extrait du 1er discours a la nation de Michel Martelly

2011-05-16T10:17:00.001-04:00

Haiti spruces up for Martelly swearing-in

2011-05-12T09:43:00.000-04:00

Haiti spruces up for Martelly swearing-in

11 May 2011

By Clarens Renois

AFP

PORT-AU-PRINCE — Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince, still shattered after last year's earthquake, is sprucing up as best it can ahead of this weekend's swearing-in ceremony for president-elect Michel Martelly.

Women with brooms fanned out along Port-au-Prince's Avenue Panamerican that links the capital to the suburb of Petion-ville, in a frenetic effort to clear away weeks of accumulated refuse ahead of Saturday's inauguration.

The sweepers are an essential element of the city's facelift, as Haiti prepares for its first major political celebration since Port-au-Prince was leveled by the powerful January 2010 quake.

"With the arrival of President Martelly, we want to give a new look to the capital," explained one of the workers, who said that the mounds of collected garbage would be incinerated.

It is, however, a Sisyphean labor. No sooner have the women cleared away debris than it reappears in the road, forcing them to repeat their efforts, sometimes several times over.

In addition to sweeping and scrubbing, there is lots of re-painting going on in many neighborhoods, with building facades scrubbed of political graffiti and commercial advertisements.

The cleanup effort is being carried out, by and large, by volunteers. One group, "Haiti Propre" or "Clean Haiti" discreetly toils day after day to rid the city of trash and to restore the charms hidden beneath tons of the rubble and refuse.

"Our capital is beautiful; We have to stop treating it like an enormous trash can," said one of member of the group, who said he hopes to introduce similar efforts elsewhere in Haiti.

Meanwhile, the Haitian capital has become a major construction site, with dozens of workers laboring to erect installations for viewing the inauguration, and to construct a dais from which Martelly will to address the Haitian people and numerous dignitaries, including a dozen invited heads of state.

Haitians are praying for a fresh start under Martelly, whose ubiquitous picture beams down from posters plastered across Port-au-Prince.

His swearing in Saturday is the latest chapter in Haiti's tumultuous political history. After weeks of uncertainty about the election result, Martelly last month was declared Haiti's president-elect after winning 67 percent of the vote in a historic run-off.

But he faces a challenge to forge true national unity, with just slightly more than one million out of more than 4.3 million eligible Haitian voters actually casting ballots.

A popular former carnival singer, Martelly has made the recovery of his devastated country a top priority, after the earthquake killed some 220,000 people and left 1.5 million homeless.

He also faces the challenge of forging alliances that will allow him to govern, with parliament controlled by outgoing President Rene Preval's political coalition.

Down the Avenue Panamerican a bit, Jean-Marie Duplessy, who heads up a club of Martelly supporters, has placed a portrait of his hero between pictures of two other political figures he greatly admires: US President Barack Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

He has a separate message for each of the three leaders.

For Obama: "Help us but let us live in peace," he said, similar to what he has to say to the French leader: "Don't exploit Haiti. Help us to get ahead."

Duplessy said his message for Martelly, is to offer the support of the club's entire 45-strong membership for the rebuilding effort.

"We are ready to work together, for the love of Haiti," he said.

Once Martelly takes office on May 14, he has vowed that his first six months will focus on moving hundreds of thousands of quake survivors out of squalid tent cities, tackling a resistant cholera epidemic and boosting agricultural production.

He also plans reforms of Haiti's dysfunctional education system, which he hopes will lead to armies of newly trained teachers, and construction of new schools.

In a public market in his hometown of Petion-ville one recent day, a truck blared tunes by "Sweet Micky," as Martelly is lovingly known by his fans.

Some like John, a university student, are skeptical that even a figure who benefits from as much goodwill as Martelly can change decades of endemic corruption, dictatorship and cronyism.

"He can't do anything by himself. He's going to have to tackle (Haiti's problems) with the help of everyone together," he said.

Another supporter said she is hopeful about Martelly's vow to introduce long-overdue school reform. But she also is prepared to hold his feet to the fire.

"I hope he's not deceiving us," said Martelly-backer Marie-Rodele, 22.

"If he does like all the other presidents," she said, "we will be the first to ask him to go."

Identifier et sanctionner les auteurs de la tentative de coup d’Etat parlementaire du 9 mai 2011

2011-05-11T11:03:00.001-04:00

Haïti-Politique-Editorial

Le « Kase fèy kouvri sa » doit cesser et le règne de l’impunité prendre fin !

Identifier et sanctionner les auteurs de la tentative de coup d’Etat parlementaire du 9 mai 2011

mercredi 11 mai 2011

(Read the original article here)

La tentative de coup d’Etat parlementaire du lundi 9 mai dernier ne devrait pas être classée sans suite. La pratique du « Kase fèy kouvri sa » nous a déjà joué de très mauvais tours. Si on y a recours encore une fois, de le cycle infernal des calamités sociales et politiques continuera à se perpétuer.

Le problème est qu’on est en présence d’individus et de pratiques qui se situent tout à fait dans le passé. Paradoxalement, l’aspiration au changement est manifeste au sein d’une population pourtant à majorité analphabète.

Se situer dans le passé signifie quoi, aujourd’hui ?

L’exemple de quelques pratiques et comportements, ainsi que de leurs conséquences logiques, devraient suffire à l’édification de tous. Des pratiques et comportements tout à fait contraires au changement et à la modernité dont voici une liste non-exhaustive :

- Recours systématique à des combines politiques consistant en la conclusion clandestine d’accords malsains au regard des lois en vigueur ;

- Mépris de l’opinion publique : refus du débat et du dialogue ; absence de transparence dans les actes posés ;

- Subordination de l’intérêt général à l’intérêt particulier : primauté des intérêts individuels, de clans, de partis sur les intérêts du groupe, de la communauté ;

- Absence de ligne et de conviction politiques : opportunisme cynique, manque de cohérence dans le discours comme dans les actes ; manque de courage politique ; langue de bois ; double langage (Woulem 2 bò) ; inconstance politique se traduisant par un manque de loyauté par rapport au groupe d’appartenance et/ou changement permanent de camp politique ou de chapeau politique, selon les intérêts du moment ;

- Mépris de la Constitution, des lois et de toutes règles : actions ouvertement illégales et arbitraires ;

Dans le cas qui nous préoccupe, celui de la tentative avortée de coup d’Etat parlementaire du 9 mai, outre les pratiques et comportements énumérés, il existe des facteurs aggravants : le fait par des parlementaires d’avoir voulu délibérément étendre la durée de leur mandat constitue une atteinte grave au principe de la souveraineté populaire. Car, agissant ainsi, les parlementaires ont tenté de se substituer au souverain, le peuple, dont ils sont censés être l’émanation, pour déterminer eux-mêmes la durée des mandats.

Le deuxième acte qu’il faudrait définitivement placer sous le vocable de « piraterie parlementaire » c’est l’introduction délibérée dans le texte de la proposition d’amendement de la clause relative aux deux mandats consécutifs pour le président de la république. Une violation flagrante d’un prescrit de la charte fondamentale qui vise à préserver le pays à la fois d’élections dirigées et de la pérennisation au pouvoir d’un quelconque régime.

Le « Kase fèy kouvri sa » doit cesser et le règne de l’impunité prendre fin !

Une enquête devrait être menée pour clairement déterminer ce qui se tramait et identifier qui en étaient les auteurs. Quels qu’ils soient. Si, comme on le laisse entendre, le président élu s’est mêlé de la partie, il devrait publiquement s’expliquer, au nom du changement qu’il prône. De toute façon, qu’il y soit impliqué compromettrait déjà la prétention de sa part d’incarner le changement, à quelques jours de son investiture.

Au nom du changement, il faudrait définitivement bannir le « Kase fèy kouvri sa ». Et, surtout, il faut qu’il y ait systématiquement des sanctions, fussent-elles morales, contre ceux-là qui se seront rendus coupables d’actes attentatoires à l’ordre constitutionnel, à l’équilibre du système démocratique en construction, au prestige et à l’honorabilité des institutions républicaines. Parce que "Chen ki manje ze, pa janm kite » et la démocratie, ainsi que la justice, ne font pas bon ménage avec l’impunité.

Marvel DANDIN

Haitian lawmakers vote to allow dual nationality

2011-05-09T09:05:00.000-04:00

Haitian lawmakers vote to allow dual nationality

Associated Press

Mon May 9 2011, 12:49 am ET

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Haitians living overseas will now have more rights in their homeland.

Haitian lawmakers late Sunday amended an article in the old constitution that will do away with a law that bans dual nationality.

That means the 2 million Haitians living in the United States, Canada and elsewhere will have more say in the political affairs of Haiti. They are now able to run for lower levels of office and own land, a senator said.

The amendment won't be official until it's published in The Monitor, a government publication.

Huit (8) sénateurs en fonction, un (1) sénateur élu au 1er tour et trois (3) sénateurs élus non contestés dénoncent la manipulation des résultats des

2011-04-23T08:31:00.001-04:00

Haïti-Elections

Huit (8) sénateurs en fonction, un (1) sénateur élu au 1er tour et trois (3) sénateurs élus non contestés dénoncent la manipulation des résultats des Législatives par le CEP et le président René Préval

Ils réclament la formation d’une commission d’enquête haïtienne, l’interdiction de départ des membres et du directeur général du CEP et la non-publication des résultats contestés dans le journal officiel de la République

samedi 23 avril 2011

Radio Kiskeya

(Read the original article here)

Au nom de la République d’Haïti,

Face à la grossière manipulation de l’expression de la souveraineté populaire organisée par les membres du CEP avec à sa tête le président Gaillot Dorsinvil, nous, Sénateurs de la République d’Haïti, condamnons fermement le détournement de la volonté du peuple exprimée dans le vote du 20 Mars. Devant ces manœuvres politiciennes orchestrées par les antinationaux de l’INITE au service d’intérêts partisans nous nous engageons à défendre l’intérêt général de la Nation.

Le président Préval essaie par tous les moyens de conserver le contrôle des affaires de l’Etat en réintroduisant dans le parlement l’ensemble des parlementaires qui se sont opposés à la loi sur l’augmentation du salaire minimum, qui ont voté la loi d’urgence et la prolongation de son mandat. Il aura ainsi à sa solde des éléments sans aucune légitimité sinon celle d’être des subordonnés dociles et sans qualité qu’il pourra toujours mobiliser à ses propres fins et au service d’une oligarchie méprisant l’exigence de justice sociale.

Ce viol systématique de la loi électorale détruit le fragile processus démocratique et dénie au peuple le droit de choisir ses représentants. En tant que Sénateurs de la République, nous avons sorti une note de protestation le jeudi 21 Avril et nous avons appris avec satisfaction que des organismes de droits humains dont le RNDDH et le Président élu, Monsieur Joseph Michel Martelly ont aussi appelé le CEP à respecter le vote populaire :

1) Nous saluons ces protestations et exigeons que les résultats de cette manipulation ne soient pas portés au journal officiel.

2) Nous appuyons aussi bien la requête du RNDDH que l’exigence du Président nouvellement élu d’une commission d’enquête indépendante constituée d’haïtiens.

3) Les responsables ne peuvent rester impunis ; de ce fait nous exigeons une interdiction de quitter le territoire national pour l’ensemble des membres du CEP, ainsi que pour son Directeur Général, jusqu’à ce que la lumière soit faite.

4) Nous demandons à la population de bien saisir l’ampleur et l’enjeu de cette trahison menée par un Président en fin de mandat entouré de sa clique. L’exigence de changement et de justice sociale nécessite une vigilance devant ces manœuvres antidémocratiques et demande le respect de la volonté exprimée dans le scrutin du 20 Mars 2011. Nous lui demandons de garder la mobilisation pour le respect de son vote et nous lui assurons de notre engagement à l’accompagner pour les problèmes cruciaux du pays.

Fait à Port-au-Prince le 22 avril 2011 :

Suivent les signatures des Sénateurs et de la Sénatrice :

Maxime Roumer (Grand’Anse)

Edmonde Beauzile (Centre)

Nenel Cassy (Nippes)

Jean Willy Jean Baptiste (Artibonite)

Youri Latortue (Artibonite)

Andris Riché (Grand’Anse)

Jean William Jeanty (Nippes) Steeven Benoit (Ouest)

Mélius Hyppolite (Nord-Ouest)

Anick Francois Joseph (Artibonite)

Polycarpe Wesner (Nord)

Evallière Beauplan (Nord-Ouest)

Haiti's President-elect Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly at the National Press Club

2011-04-22T11:23:00.001-04:00

Des festivités rara pour contribuer à reconstruire Léogane

2011-04-14T17:39:00.004-04:00

(A wonderful article about the resurrection of Léogane, a town that I last saw when it was devastated following Haiti's January 2010 earthquake. MD)

Haïti-Culture-Reconstruction : Des festivités rara pour contribuer à reconstruire Léogane

jeudi 14 avril 2011

(Read the original article here)

P-au-P, 14 Avril 2011 [AlterPresse] --- L’Union des Raras de Léogâne (URAL) entend faire des festivités raras cette année « un vecteur de la reconstruction », selon le maire accesseur de Léogane, Wilson Saint-Juste.

Les festivités raras en 2011 s’inscriront sous le thème « Ak rara Léogâne la vi ka fleri » (Avec les raras de Léogâne la vie peut fleurir).

L’URAL a tenu le mercredi 13 avril une conférence de presse au Ministère de la Culture pour annoncer que les festivités auront lieu cette année, après une pause forcée en 2010 à cause du tremblement de terre de janvier 2010.

Les organisateurs veulent que cette fête traditionnelle soit « un vecteur pour la reconstruction de Léogâne », ville épicentre du séisme, détruite à 90%, a indiqué Wilson Saint-Juste.

Selon Saint-Juste, les festivités ne doivent pas être considérées « uniquement comme un espace où les gens viennent pour danser, parler, un espace de fête mais un espace pour la mise en place d’infrastructures ». Selon lui, il ne s’agit pas seulement de faire des « dépenses mais de générer des revenus ».

Le budget de cette fête cette année s’élève à un peu plus de 12 millions de gourdes, mais le gouvernement haïtien ne versera que 16% de cette somme, soit 2 millions de gourdes.

« Nous sommes réellement déterminés à organiser cette fête rara, mais vous remarquerez que cette fête n’est pas sans défis, sans contraintes », a affirmé le coordonnateur du Comité d’organisation, Guston Jean-Louis.

Les principales sources de financement pour l’organisation des fêtes sont le secteur privé et surtout la diaspora, des secteurs qui ont vu leurs biens gravement affectés par le séisme, a-t-il signalé.

Il existe plus de 32 bandes raras uniquement dans la plaine de Léogâne, et chacune dépense en moyenne 900 mille gourdes pour les différentes sorties, a renchérit Wilson Saint-Juste.

« Léogâne est le bastion du rara », a t-il soutenu, ajoutant que les bandes raras sont étroitement liées aux « lakou »(unité géographique spécifique à la culture haïtienne). Dans cette ville également, les festivités durent un mois et s’étendent du mercredi des cendres au lundi casimodeau.

« Le rara se rapproche du vodou à tous les niveaux…C’est un karma, une régénérescence…Un rituel de purification, un rite qui marque un passage…Souvent, il est possible de remarquer des personnes vêtues de leurs habits de pénitence… parce qu’elles avaient fait vœu à tel saint ou tel loi (esprit vodou) », a expliqué le professeur Jean-Yves Blot, Chargé de Mission du ministère de la culture.

L’URAL, créée en 2004 sous l’impulsion du ministère de la culture, entend faire de cette particularité culturelle, « un axe de développement », a indiqué Gelès Séjour, responsable des relations publiques du Comité d’organisation. [kft gp apr 14/04/2011 11 :00]

Haïti: Yvon Neptune a-t-il vendu la mêche?

2011-04-13T14:13:00.002-04:00

National 12 Avril 2011

Haïti: Yvon Neptune a-t-il vendu la mêche?

Le Nouvelliste

(Read the original article here)

Yvon Neptune, un des éléphants de Fanmi Lavalas qui s'est dit « exploité », a claqué la porte et remis officiellement sa démission à Jean-Bertrand Aristide, le représentant national. Neptune, sans prendre des gants, a dénoncé le non-respect de la charte du parti, la concentration des pouvoirs entre les mains d'Aristide et les « manipulateurs » déguisés en « apôtres du changement et de l'inclusion de la majorité pauvre ».

L'ex-Premier ministre Yvon Neptune n'est plus membre du Parti Fanmi Lavalas (FL). Il a officiellement coupé les ponts dans une correspondance cinglante, sans langue de bois, à l'ex-président Jean-Bertrand Aristide, représentant national du parti, le 29 mars 2011. M. Neptune, revenant sur sa volonté de contribuer à jeter les bases d'une société plus juste,à l'érection d'un État plus humain en rejoignant (Fanmi Lavalas), a confié qu'il a été « exploité ».

« Mes 14 années de promotion de cette rupture ont été, selon Yvon Neptune, exploitées à d'autres fins par ceux qui ne sont mûs que par leurs bas et manipulateurs instincts de pouvoir et d'argent, tout en se faisant passer, dans leur discours, pour des apôtres du changement et de l'inclusion de la majorité pauvre ».

Sans ménager l'ex-président Jean-Bertrand Aristide pour qui il dit n'avoir cependant ni « sentiment d'animosité » ni « rancune », M. Neptune, dans une interview accordée au journal le mardi 12 avril 2011, a indiqué qu'il est inacceptable que tous les pouvoirs soient concentrés entre les mains de ce dernier.

« Jean-Bertrand Aristide centralise tout le pouvoir. Il n'y a pas de démocratie et de respect des normes au sein de Fanmi Lavalas qui fonctionne à l'image de la rue », a indiqué Yvon Neptune. Le ton posé pour égrener ses paroles, M. Neptune a révélé « qu'il a toujours très clairement dit au représentant national que les structures telles que prévues dans la charte doivent être mises en place ».

Créé en 1996, le parti, jusqu'au départ d'Aristide le 29 février 2004, n'a jamais eu de coordination nationale montée par les coordinations départementales telles que prévues dans la charte, a cité M. Neptune.

Fanmi Lavalas a fait des congrès ! « Comment peut-on avoir des congrès sans l'existence d'une coordination nationale coiffée bien sure par le représentant national? », s'est demandé Yvon Neptune.

Neptune un traitre? « Évidement que les gens qui m'ont accusé de toutes sortes de choses, incluant d'avoir trahi Jean-Bertrand Aristide en 2004, l'ont fait avec l'assentiment de ce dernier. Jean-Bertrand Aristide envoyait des messages à la fin de chaque année. Il aurait pu dire aux gens d'arrêter de dire cela parce que cela ne va pas faire honneur ni à moi ni à lui », a expliqué M. Neptune, avant d'ajouter que « Jean-Bertrand Aristide sait que ce que ces gens racontent est archi-faux ».

29 février 2004 : démission ou kidnapping de Jean-Bertrand Aristide ?

« Ce n'est pas à moi de le dire », a répondu Yvon Neptune, qui indique en revanche avoir choisi de rester au pays et à la primature par respect pour ses propres convictions et les déclarations faites avant le 29 février 2004. « La note signée par Jean-Bertrand Aristide ne m'avait pas été remise par lui. C'est à lui de dire à qui il a remis cette note et dans quelle situation », a ajouté M. Neptune, qui souligne que « M. Aristide, à part de dire qu'il a été kidnappé, n'a jamais nié avoir signé cette note en créole dans laquelle il dit préférer partir afin d'éviter un bain de sang dans le pays ».

« C'est le président de la Cour de cassation, Me Boniface Alexandre, qui est venu à la primature avec l'enveloppe décachetée contenant la note », a révélé plus loin M.Neptune, qui dit avoir eu une conversation téléphonique avec Jean-Bertrand Aristide au lendemain du 29 février 2004 après son arrivée en République Centrafricaine.

Est-ce que Jean-Bertrand Aristide a été victime d'un coup d'Etat ?

« On peut avoir démission et coup d'Etat en même temps. C'est Jean-Bertrand Aristide qui doit réconcilier la question : coup d'Etat ou démission », a expliqué M. Neptune, qui plaide en faveur de l'établissement de la « vérité historique » dans ce dossier. « Je ne peux pas mentir. Je suis comme ça », a-t-il indiqué en confiant par ailleurs qu'il n'a absolument aucun regret d'avoir fait l'expérience de ces 14 dernières années l'ayant conduit à la primature (2002-2004), à la présidence du sénat et de l'Assemblée nationale et en prison.

« Ce sont les expériences qui m'ont formé et me forment aujourd'hui. Je ne peux pas avoir de regret », a-t-il dit, philosophe, en évoquant son avenir politique : « Je considère que toutes les activités que je mène en tant qu'être humain et en tant que citoyen ont un contenu politique, à un niveau ou à un autre (...) Mon avenir, c'est ce que je fais tous les jours », a ajouté cet architecte né à Cavaillon le 8 novembre 1946, candidat malheureux à l'élection présidentielle du 28 novembre 2010 sous la bannière du Parti Ayisyen pou ayiti.

M. Neptune a remis sa démission officiellement moins d'un mois après le retour de l'ex-président et représentant national de Fanmi Lavalas, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, le 18 mars 2011. « En 1804, la Révolution haïtienne a marqué la fin de l'esclavage. Aujourd'hui, nous le peuple haïtien, marquons la fin de l'exil, des coups d'Etat », avait indique Aristide. L'ex-prêtre de Saint-Jean Bosco - qui s'est enfermé depuis dans un total mutisme - avait soutenu qu'il faut, dans ce pays rongé par une misère amplifiée depuis son départ, « faire la transition pacifique de l'exclusion à l'inclusion sociale ». « Le problème, c'est l'exclusion. La solution, c'est l'inclusion », avait-il dit.

La démission et le grand déballage de M. Yvon Neptune permettront-ils d'établir la vérité historique sur les évènements du 29 février 2004 ? L'avenir de nouveaux faits le diront...

Roberson Alphonse

In Ivory Coast, Democrat to Dictator

2011-04-08T20:00:00.005-04:00

(So reminiscent of Haiti's recent past. MD)

April 7, 2011

In Ivory Coast, Democrat to Dictator

By Venance Konan

The New York Times

(Read the original article here)

Paris

IN 1982, when I was a student in Abidjan, I went on strike for Laurent Gbagbo. President Félix Houphouët-Boigny — Ivory Coast’s first president, who ruled for more than 30 years — had forbidden Mr. Gbagbo, then a democracy activist and history professor, from holding a conference. The government detained about 100 of us demonstrators at a military base, where we spent two days without food. We didn’t regret it; we had pinned our hopes for democracy on Laurent Gbagbo.

But look at Mr. Gbagbo now: Soundly defeated at the polls last November after a decade as president, he refused to concede, plunging Ivory Coast into chaos. Those who protested were tortured and killed; his soldiers fired on gatherings of women and shelled a market, killing dozens. It’s only now, after United Nations and French troops have intervened and he has been besieged in his home, that he may be prompted to give up his hold on power.

How did the man who was once seen as the father of Ivorian democracy turn to tyranny? Was it the corruption of power? The intoxication of going from having nothing to everything all at once? Only a year before he was elected president, in 1999, I remember him denouncing Slobodan Milosevic, saying: “What does Milosevic think he can do with the whole world against him? When everyone in the village sees a white loincloth, if you are the only person to see it as black, then you are the one who has a problem.” But in the space of 10 years, he became deluded by power, a leader whose only ambitions were to build palaces and drive luxurious cars.

After last fall’s election, Mr. Gbagbo and his wife, Simone, refused to accept the results, in part because they had become evangelical Christians, and their pastors convinced them that God alone could remove them from power. Every day on state TV, fanatical clergymen called Mr. Gbagbo God’s representative on earth, and the winner of the election, Alassane Ouattara, the Devil’s. Many young Ivorians, poor, illiterate and easily brainwashed, believed this.

More prosaically, Mr. Gbagbo and his cronies — guilty, among other crimes, of stealing from the public coffer — fear being brought to justice before an international tribunal, so much so that they have decided to hold on to power no matter the cost. The fear of losing everything can make a dictator, even one who once was a champion of democracy, lose his mind.

The hopes we had in 1982 are long gone now. I was one of many people who denounced Mr. Gbagbo’s brazen attack on democracy, and on Jan. 10, his militiamen burst into my old house in Abidjan looking for me. I went into hiding after that, and friends helped me flee Ivory Coast for Ouagadougou, in Burkina Faso, and then France.

I am much luckier than those who have been killed, wounded or raped, those who are languishing in Liberian refugee camps or living without water and electricity. My friend Oumou tells me that her neighbors are burying their dead in their buildings’ courtyards. If they go to the cemetery with the bodies of relatives who have been shot in the fighting, they are considered rebels and executed. The same is true for people who seek medical treatment for bullet wounds.

The international community was right to intervene. To allow Mr. Gbagbo to remain in power despite the wishes of the electorate is to give up on the democratic process in sub-Saharan Africa, at the same time as North Africa and the Arab countries are overthrowing authoritarian regimes. We in sub-Saharan Africa began that process 20 or 30 years ago, when Mr. Gbagbo and I were younger men. From Bamako, Mali, to Kinshasa, Congo, students and the dispossessed poured into the streets to topple our dictators.

But in Ivory Coast, we failed; Houphouët-Boigny stayed in power until his death, just as Omar Bongo did in Gabon and Gnassingbé Eyadéma in Togo, while Paul Biya is closing in on 30 years in Cameroon. The seed of democracy had been sowed in Africa, but it grew slower in some countries than in others. I believe it will grow again in Ivory Coast, once Mr. Gbagbo is gone.

I saw him on TV last December, when, despite the protests, he was inaugurated for another term at the presidential palace. Simone Gbagbo wore a white dress, as if she were a bride. At the end of the swearing-in, she conspicuously kissed her husband, and the small crowd applauded. The president and his wife were well-matched in delusion: The whole country knows that Mrs. Gbagbo lost her husband’s favor once he became president, and he has since taken a second wife — younger and, it is said, more beautiful. The kiss, like the ceremony, fooled no one.

When I heard that international forces were bombarding Mr. Gbagbo’s bases, that was the image that came to me: Laurent, wearing the medals and sash of the office that he refused to give up, and Simone in her wedding dress, the two entwined forever in their tragedy, which is also that of their country.

Venance Konan is a journalist and novelist. This essay was translated by The Times from the French.

Is Another Assassination of Jean Dominique about to Take Place?

2011-04-03T21:12:00.002-04:00

(Eleven years ago today, on 3 April 2000, in the courtyard of Radio Haiti-Inter on the Route de Delmas in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, journalist and free man Jean-Léopold Dominique, and Radio Haiti's caretaker, Jean-Claude Louissaint, were gunned down, and Haiti lost one of the most powerful advocates for a free press and the enfranchisement of the peasant majority that the nation had ever seen. Less than a year later, his widow, Michèle Montas - herself a great journalist - delivered the following editorial over the airwaves of Radio Haiti Inter about her quest for justice. I reprint it here in the memory of Dominique, Louissaint and Radio Haiti Inter itself. MD)

Is Another Assassination of Jean Dominique about to Take Place?

Michèle Montas Dominique

Radio Haiti Inter Editorial 3/3/02

(Read the original article here)

Today is March 3, and 23 months ago a journalist committed to the struggle for change was assassinated. That shameful crime aroused indignation throughout the entire country. Such an example of growing impunity brings the attention of the world upon Haiti today.

On the same date last year, on March 3, 2001, twenty-six organizations from the civil society wrote to the head of the Haitian State. "This committed journalist," said the letter "was not killed under the dictatorships that he had so bravely fought. He was assassinated at a time when a government whose efforts he was supporting toward more justice and stronger institutions was promising, just like you, the rule of law and the end of impunity... If justice is not served today, in the cases of Jean Dominique and Jean-Claude Louissaint, other irreplaceable individuals will be destroyed by the same murderers or other assassins." And it continued by reminding the duties of the Chief of State: "Article 136 of the Constitution makes you, Mr. President, the person responsible for the stability and preservation of institutions. Article 145 of our Fundamental Law makes you responsible for ensuring that court orders are obeyed," said the open letter to the head of the State.

On this same date last year, March 3, 2001, shortly after that document was broadcasted by our radio station, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide came to Radio Haiti to express his support publicly for the judicial inquiry and pledge that the Executive Branch of government would make available to justice the resources needed to investigate the April 3, 2000 assassinations at Radio Haiti. Today, 23 months later, facts are speaking louder than words:

Fact: The Chief of State, who has the direct and exclusive authority to renew Judge Gassant’s mandate, has still not done so although that judge diligently and systematically conducted the investigation for 16 months with courage and competence, not allowing himself to be intimidated by individuals presumed above the law. No explanation was given to thousands of persons who, for 23 months, have been calling for justice in this emblematic case.

Facts: All the resources, i.e. logistical, technical, and financial made available in this judicial case by the preceding government have been cancelled. The special and relatively modest funds which had helped in the success of the trials of Raboteau and Carrefour-Feuille, as well as the funds allocated, among other resources, to the work of the first two investigating judges assigned to the murder cases of Jean Dominique and Jean-Claude Louissaint, allowing them to follow the leads of a difficult investigation in several areas of the countries, were cancelled; so were the resources made available for other investigations such as those about the poisoning of children with diethyl glycol or the kidnapping of baby Nanoune Myrtil at the General Hospital. Among the measures taken to help in the investigation about the murder of the most famous Haitian journalist, police protection was given to the investigating judge and some of the witnesses. Such help is no longer available.

Fact: The Senate of the Republic, composed exclusively of members of Fanmi Lavalas, returned the Jean Dominique file to the investigating judge, asking for a number of documents prior to any decision about lifting Senator Dany Toussaint’s parliamentary immunity, as requested by Judge Gassant; according to jurists, the release of such documents would amount to a flagrant violation of the investigation’s confidentiality. By doing so, the Senate conferred upon itself the authority of a court, in violation of the separation of powers.

Fact: The Police, which theoretically answers to the Ministry of Justice, has taken no action on some arrest warrants. Witnesses who have refused to appear in court, alleged assassins, or individuals who have openly committed illegal acts go about their businesses freely, in this case as in others. Meanwhile, a new judge is assigned to the cases of Jean Dominique and Jean-Claude Louissaint, not by the Judges’ Association as required by law, but by the Senior Judge of the Civil Court, whose animosity against Judge Claudy Gassant is commonly known.

Fact: Will you say to me: The investigation is making progress? Judge Pierre Josiard Agnant, whose expertise is similar to Judge Gassant’s, heard the plaintiff and summoned an alleged witness and an individual who had been charged, based on previous hearings held by Judge Gassant in the course of the investigation. Senator Toussaint, charged by Judge Gassant, bragged and claimed victory. It is not a common practice for an individual who has been charged to select the investigating judge by whom he will be interrogated. Will you tell me that the investigation is also making headway, since things are apparently moving? Because of those very facts, serious questions arise about the political will to render justice to Jean Léopold Dominique, after 23 months and many other assassinations. In the case of Judge Gassant, one could mention the need for the regime to be careful with a few rich and powerful party members that the investigating judge had not spared, or with members of the judicial branch resentful of that judge who spent several months in the spotlight. In the interest of the State: Appease, in the name of forced reconciliation, adversaries or possible political rivals within the same party facing accelerated implosion.

There are still more serious questions arising: Would it be the case that the healthy wing of this party, who expressed itself for an independent and transparent judicial investigation, is being sacrificed in favor of those who constitute a mafia within the party? Putting the "continuing investigation" on the back burner and forgetting the demands for justice formulated in the emblematic case of Jean Dominique, is that one of the prices that the regime must pay? Power at what price?

Seriously, what has been Judge Gassant’s professional mistake, when the Supreme Court just ruled in his favor over Senior Judge Lise Pierre-Pierre? Why is the Chief of State keeping so silent? We have the right to know. You may remember, Mr. President, the three famous "roch dife" (firestones): Participation, Justice, and Transparency. If it is confirmed, that decision not to renew the mandate of a competent investigating judge after he conducted an investigation for 16 months may seem like an easy way out, in the short term; however, even if it is never explicitly announced, that decision will exert a powerful effect undermining the credibility of the Chief of State. How can someone really expect that Judge Agnant, no matter how competent or dedicated, will manage to bring himself up to date in a matter of days, and work effectively on a difficult and eminently dangerous case, while obviously he will have no special police protection? Is it possible to believe that the purpose is just "the investigation continues?"

In the case of the majority party in the Senate of the Republic, as in the case of the Police, the inability to impose guidelines and to clean up, control, and manage is dramatically eroding the authority of the already weakened State, by projecting the image of a lack of cohesiveness, planning, and, above all, the absence of political will. But is that just an image?

Today, beyond words and promises, the facts indicate that the balls are biased and the regime is affected with a dangerous gangrene. Principles and moral guidelines are compromised every day by political opportunism. Those ideals shared by Jean, including a generous but rigorous socialism, respect for liberties within the framework of democracy, nationalist independence, based on a long history of resistance, those ideals that Jean used to call "Lavalas" are trampled every day in this balkanized State where weapons make right, and where hunger for power and money takes precedence over the general welfare, causing havoc on a party which, paradoxically, controls all the institutional levers of the country. Our concerns run deep, since the cracks are widening and the building will eventually collapse over all of us.

Today, it may be politically incorrect to demand truth and justice, 23 months after the murders of April 3, 2000. All we want is a decent country, and we will never accept a new assassination of Jean Dominique, even perpetrated insidiously.

The Legacy of Haitian Feminist Paulette Poujol-Oriol

2011-03-29T22:00:00.002-04:00

The Legacy of Haitian Feminist Paulette Poujol-Oriol

By Gina Ulysse

(Read the original article here)

Paulette Poujol-Oriol, who died March 11 at age 84, left her birth country, Haiti, a legacy that is immeasurable. She was one of Haiti’s most ardent feminist leaders, as well as an unmatched cultural producer and worker.

She was born in Port-au-Prince on May 12, 1926 to Joseph Poujol, founder of the Commercial Institute, and Augusta Auxila, a homemaker. The family migrated to France when she was eight months old. Poujol-Oriol spent six formative years in Paris, where her parents were engaged in the worlds of commerce, education and theater. She credited this time in Paris as instrumental to her development as a renaissance woman.

Poujol-Oriol began her school studies at the École Normale Supérieure in Port-au-Prince, then went on to Jamaica where she attended the London Institute of Commerce and Business Administration. She started to teach at her father’s institute at the age of 16. With additional studies in education, she dedicated herself to teaching, but never stopped her own learning. In addition to being fluent in French, Kreyol and Spanish, she eventually learned and mastered English, Italian and German.

But aside from teaching, Poujol-Oriol was writing. She published her first novel, Le Creuset (The Crucible) in 1980, winning the Prix Henri Deschamps–just the second woman to have ever received that prestigious Haitian literary award. Another work, La Fleur Rouge (The Red Flower) was awarded Radio France Internationale’s Best Novel award in 1988. Her novel Le Passage (Vale of Tears) was translated into English with a forward by well-known Haitian writer Edwidge Danticat.

And aside from teaching and writing, Poujol-Orio was an actress and playwright, as well as the director and founder of Haiti’s Piccolo Teatro, which introduced children to the theatre arts. Over the course of her life as a prolific writer, relentless artist and activist, she became one of Haiti’s most highly acclaimed women, a recipient of acknowledgements and awards too numerous to name.

As a staunch feminist activist, she battled for Haitian women’s causes and visibility in her writing as well as in practice. At a very young age, she defied gendered and classed restrictions, possessing a hunger for knowledge–encouraged by her parents–that surpassed social expectations of young women of her class. These made her a recognizable intellectual force. In an interview on Thomas Spear’s Ile en ile, Poujol-Oriol recalls being steered towards gentler literature by booksellers astonished by her ferocious passion for French classics. The sense that less is expected of women and that they should be invisible motivated many of her undertakings.

In many ways, Poujol-Oriol was both a product of her privileged socio-economic background as well as a challenge to its strictures. Highly visible and engaged in the world, she insisted on keeping her name when she married, bore two children, divorced and remarried–at a time when such practices (keeping your own name, divorcing, remarrying) were frowned upon in Haiti. All the while, she continued to pursue her art and social interests.

In 1950, she became a member of the Ligue Féminine d’Action Sociale (Women’s League for Social Action)- the organization founded in 1934 to advance women’s rights in Haiti. She served as president of the League from 1997 until her death. She was also a founding member of several women’s associations, including L’Alliance des Femmes Haitiennes (Alliance of Haitian Women), an umbrella organization that coordinates more than fifty women’s groups.

Baruch College professor and Haitian sociologist Carolle Charles met Poujol-Oriol in 2005 at the Caribbean and Latin American conference on women and citizenship. She remembers her “as a feminist organizer [who] also knew about the fragility of Haitian institutions, thus her strong support to newer feminist organizations.” That gathering was organized by Haiti’s only feminist research center, Enfofanm, directed by Myriam Merlet–one of the four well-known feminists who perished in the 2010 earthquake. At the conference, Poujol-Oriol, a member of the board of directors of Enfofanm, received a life achievement award for her contribution to the Haitian women’s movement. Her “level of commitment to the women movement,” says Charles, “was uncompromising.”

In Haiti these days, with the contested elections run-off and the return of exiled former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Paulette Poujol-Oriol’s passing has received less attention than it truly deserves. She was a much beloved intellectual mother to hundreds of students, who called her mommy. She is survived by her actual son, physician Georges Michel, who resides in Haiti, and her daughter, Claudine Michel a professor of education and black studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. In Haiti’s Le Nouvelliste, her son is quoted saying, “She had lots of projects (plays, novels) [in the works]. Even at her age, she continued to write.”

Poujol-Oriol inspired generations of Haitian writers, artists and feminist activists. Speaking of her loss, Charles paraphrases the popular Haitian saying, “she came from a small country, but a great nation.” Then she added what other obituaries consistently insist: “She stood against injustice and inequality. She was a “poto mitan”–a formidable central pillar.

The Joint OAS – CARICOM Mission continues its activities in Haiti

2011-03-29T16:06:00.001-04:00

The Joint OAS – CARICOM Mission continues its activities in Haiti

March 29, 2011

(Read the original article here)

The Joint OAS-CARICOM Electoral Observation Mission (JEOM) will maintain its presence in the 11 electoral departments of Haiti until the proclamation of the final results on April 16, 2011, despite the departure of more than 160 observers.

The JEOM observers are present in the Vote Tabulation Centre (CTV) round-the-clock since this phase began on March 21, 2011. The observers are monitoring the new procedures put in place for the processing of the result sheets (“procès-verbaux”) and the application of criteria for verification to ensure the integrity and transparency of the tabulation process. The JEOM notes the strengthening of the capacity of the Legal Control Unit (UCL), which has now 16 lawyers whose task is to determine the validity of the result sheets brought to their attention. The Mission has noted that compared to the first round, a greater amount of result sheets were sent to the UCL. The Joint Mission reminds all actors involved in this process and the Haitian citizens that it is essential that a rigorous and consistent verification be done in strict compliance with the criteria established and published by the CEP. This will lead to the publication of reliable preliminary results.

The Mission is concerned about the statements made by presidential and legislative candidates campaign teams and allies on the voting trends of the March 20 election. Premature announcements of victory are harmful to public order and the smooth unfolding of the electoral process by creating expectations among their supporters that might not be founded.

The JEOM reminds all presidential and legislative candidates, and their campaign teams and allies, that any information available on the election outcome is partial and that the vote tabulation currently underway should lead to the publication of preliminary results on March 31. The Mission understands the candidates’ eagerness to know the results. However, it wishes to point out to the two presidential candidates in particular that one of them will be elected President of the Republic and, as such, will be responsible for the proper functioning of institutions and the maintenance of public order. They should therefore demonstrate as of now the sense of responsibility they will have to display when taking the helm of the affairs of the Republic by appealing to their teams and supporters to await the publication of the preliminary results to avoid creating false expectations and to respect the verdict of the ballot box.

The Mission also deplores the acts of intimidation that have taken place since the elections and that are the result of tensions between the legislative candidates in some localities. The Mission calls on all political leaders, political groups and their supporters to contribute to the maintenance of a calm and peaceful atmosphere as they await the publication of the preliminary results of the presidential and legislative elections.

For more information, please visit the OAS Website at www.oas.org.

Reference: E-589/11

Response to Tom Luce (second part)

2011-03-27T09:19:00.002-04:00

(Note: Two initial responses to some of Tom Luce's rather deceptive contentions about Haiti on the can be read here and here. MD)

To many of us who have spent a bit of time in the country, one of the major flaws that is often to be found in the writing about Haiti done by foreigners over the years is that it all-too-often it presents Haiti in stark black and white terms in a seeming eternal search for victims and perpetrators. This approach, to me, seems woefully insufficient, and not reflective at all of the country's complex political history, where today's oppressed can (and has often been) tomorrow's oppressor.

In one of his notes, Tom Luce wrote that “there was no "popular uprising" of the people against Aristide. It was only a small band led by criminals armed from CIA depots in the DR. “ Luce then goes on to laud Haiti supposedly “lawful” 2000 elections.

This is a handy example of what I am talking about.

Haiti's 2000 elections

In the run-up to the May 200 and November 2000 ballots, Haiti experienced the following (just off the top of my head):

1. The March 2000 murder by a mob of, Legitime Athis, the Petite Goave campaign coordinator for the Mouvement Partiotique pour le Sauvetage National party of Hubert Deronceray, along with his wife.

2. The disruption of the 8 April 2000 funeral (with Mr. Aristide in attendance) of murdered Radio Haiti Inter director Jean Dominique (the investigation into whose killing Mr. Aristide undermined at every turn), by a crowd of young men began shouting “Viv Aristide,” charging out of the stadium and burning down the headquarters of Evans Paul’s Komite inite Demokratik political party. That same day Radio Vision 2000 was pelted with rocks and bottles by a crowd shouting pro-Aristide slogans and calling for the murder of journalists there, and a stone-throwing mob surrounded the house of mayoral candidate Micha Gaillard, forcing his wife and sons to flee over a back wall to a neighbor’s house

3. The 12 April 2000 murder of Merilus Deus, a Mouvement Chrétien pour une Nouvelle Haiti (MOCHRENA) candidate for the rural assembly in Savanette, who was shot and then hacked to death by a mob of attackers who also slashed his daughter for good measure.

4. The 18 April 2000 murder, also by machete, of 70 year-old Ducertain Armand, an advisor to the Parti Democratique Chretien Haitien of Marie-Denise Claude (whose on father, Pastor Sylvio Claude, an Aristide rival, was also killed by a mob in September 1991) in his Thomazeau home.

5. The 24 May 2000 murder by a mob of Lavalas partisans of mayoral candidate Jean-Michel Olophene, his skull cracked open by a hurled rock. This ghastly murder was actually captured on videotape, which I have seen, the assailants chanting pro-Aristide slogans. Incidentally, it was Cite Soleil gang leader Robinson “Labanye” Thomas’ support of this candidate against the official Lavalas slate that resulted in his being jailed for a few months before being released after he agreed to work for the Aristide government. He did so until the October 2003 murder of hsi friend Rodson “Kolobri” Lemaire. Labanye himself, of course, was also then slain in March 2005.

6. The quite notorious November 2000 attack on a meeting of the Mouvman Peyizan Papay (MPP) in Hinche, led by Lavalas mayors Wilo Joseph (Maissade) and Dongo Joseph (Hinche), during which the Recif Night Club, where several hundred MPP activists were gathered, was first pelted with stones and then raked with automatic weapons fire. Dieugrand Jean-Baptiste, brother of MPP leader Chavennes Jean-Baptiste, was shot in the chest and nearly died, another MPP member was shot in the neck, a mechanic working nearby the scene was shot in the ankle and a merchant pushing a cart was shot in the back. A detailed account of the attack, gathered from those who were present, can be found in my 2005 book, Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti.

These incidents were all in addition to such moves as the arrests of such Organisation du peuple en lutte politicians Paul Denis, Vasco Thernelan and Mellius Hyppolite, and the claims on Haitian radio by Yvon Neptune and Rene Civil before the vote tally was even announced (in violation of electoral law) that Fanmi Lavalas had won a landslide, give on a flavour of what voting in Haiti was like at the time. In addition to all of this, or course, there was the corruption of the vote tabulating process itself, which is well outlined in this letter by Orlando Marville, the chief of mission OAS Electoral Mission in Haiti at the time.

The ouster of Jean-Bertrand Aristide

I can understand why, for someone like Tom Luce, it would be simpler to believe that Haitian history began on 29 February 2004 and to only focus on Guy Philippe and his cronies, but if there was no popular movement against the government, then how does one explain pictures such as this one, taken at a 26 December 2003 demonstration against the Aristide government (by no means the largest).

Here are some other photos of these supposedly non-existent demonstrations: http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article1067 and http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article1000.

It may be easy for people to forget that the serious armed challenge to the Aristide government began with a group - the Cannibal Army in Gonaives - that was heavily armed WHILE they were working for Mr. Aristide, and that they only turned against the president following the murder of their leader, Amiot “Cubain” Metayer (here and here), on what they believed were Aristide’s orders, but for those of us who saw the Cannibal Army savage anti-government marchers in Gonaives in 2001/2002, it is not easy to forget at all.

The absolute breaking point for the Aristide government - the moment from which it was irretrievably doomed - was the savage and stupid 5 December 2003 attack on protesting university students in Port-au-Prince, an attack during which rector Pierre Marie Paquiot was beaten with iron bars (leaving him permanently incapacitated), at least six people were shot, and a dozen more stabbed and beaten. The siege which was witnessed by those at the Fondation Connaissance et Liberté (FOKAL) nearby, who wrote the following of it:

On December 5, 2003,...we were witness to, and at certain times lived, the terror and horror of that day...We saw groups of pro-governmental militia, called chimere or OP (Popular organization), regroup in front of our building, visibly preparing to attack the student demonstration scheduled for that day. We saw their arms displayed, ranging from fire arms, wooden and iron sticks, rocks and other objects capable of hurting and killing. We saw their chiefs, men and women, also armed, equipped with walkie-talkies and cellular phones, organize and give orders to the commandos that were to attack the students. We saw the police, not neutral as has been reported, but acting as accomplices to the militia. On several occasions, during that day of horror and shame, the police opened the way for the chimere’s attack and also covered their backs. We saw children aged between twelve and fifteen, some in school uniforms, used by the lavalas militia to throw rocks and attack the students with fire arms.

Actual footage of the attack, as well as of the 2003/2004 demonstrations, can be seen in Haitian director Arnold Antonin's very interesting film GNB Kont Atilla, which someone (not me) has uploaded to You Tube in several sections, the first of which can be seen here.

After the attack, Minister of Education Marie-Carmel Paul Austin, Minister of the Environment Webster Pierre, Minister of Tourism Martine Deverson, Secretary of State for Public Health Pierre-Emile Charles and Haiti’s ambassador to the Dominican Republic Guy Alexandre all resigned from the Aristide government in protest.

I wonder if Mr. Luce condemned any of this at the time? Or the 2003 killings by government forces in Gonaives? Or the 2004 massacre by government forces in St. Marc? Or the 2005 killing of the great Haitian poet and journalist Jacques Roche? Or the 2004 decapitation of Weber Adrien? Would be interesting to know...

[Btw, for a more realistic and authoritative picture of late 2004/early 2005 era of Haiti than the one Tom Luce paints, I point readers to Jane Regan's excellent article "Haiti: In Bondage to History?" published by NACLA in Jan/Feb2005]

The chimere and their antecedents

For those of us who actually bothered to get to know the young men who would come to be called chimere - that is, for those of us, who viewed these young men as more than useful political pawns to be either lionized or condemned - we saw vividly how so many of them were born into an economic and political system that refused to make any use of them except as cannon fodder. When one sat and talked with them they spoke quite movingly of being caught up when they were young in an atmosphere of hope and possibility and then cynically sent down a road that proved not at all to be what they had envisioned.

In a review of my book once, someone wrote the it reminded him that, in its depiction of those who would be labeled chimere, one could find humanity even in those regarded as the most violent of street hoodlums. Not a message, he added, that many Haitians would embrace willingly but perhaps Haiti must learn this type of reconciliation before it can turn the corner and make tangible progress toward rebuilding society. As I also wrote in my November 2005 editorial for Newsday, "Ballots instead of bullets," about Jacques Roche's murder, some of those who were called chimere, far from being the simple thugs they were often depicted as, could have represented a youth movement to help turn Haiti around But their legions were blurred with those of hard-core criminals, some of whom wore nice suits, some of whom boasted foreign visas and they, and Haiti, paid the price.

Did the people of Jean Rabel, Piatre, St. Marc, Grand Ravine, Ti Bois and Descartes bleed and die any differently depending on which political current slaughtered them? In my experience, no they did not.

Conclusion and a bit of history

Foreigners with a stake in the triumph of one or the other of Haiti's discredited political currents can shout, threaten, cajole, defame, libel and repeat the same talking points over and over again as endlessly as they wish to, but it doesn't make what they are saying any more true, and whitewashing or papering over Haiti's recent history makes peace and reconciliation less, not more, likely for a country that has already suffered far more than its lovely, generous, gentle industrious people could have ever deserved.

Many of Mr. Aristide's detractors and advocates act as if the man appeared in a puff of smoke in 1990, when in fact he is part of the tradition of noiriste populist leaders in Haiti stretching at least back to Francois Duvalier and Dumarsais Estime and arguably to Lysius Salomon and even before.

Though I believe that he exacerbated them terribly with a style of governance that was built on little more than cult of personality, corruption, nepotism and wanton violence, Mr. Aristide was not the sole cause of Haiti's problems but rather, like many dictators and demagogues in other countries I have reported on, a symptom of the larger national malaise. As long as Haiti exists with such an unequal economic system based on the upside-down logic of sucking workers from a once-rice agricultural tradition in the countryside to Port-au-Prince for jobs that do not exist there, the tensions that helped bring Mr. Aristide to power - rich vs. poor, black vs. mulatto, urban vs. rural - will also continue to exist and will give rise to more Duvaliers and more Aristides. And more of their easily-expendable (to them) henchmen - whether they be called macoutes or attache or chimere - will be there, desperate to believe that the political current they are hitching their fortunes to is the only one that will possibly bring the country out of its mess.

As I have written before, though they are so rarely included in the international dialogue on their country's fate, I believe that Haiti's peasantry are indeed the key to its reconstruction, and that a total approach to not only urban economic development but also to sustainable rural agriculture is the only thing that would be cause for any hope at all looking forward.

Likewise the reform of the Police Nationale d'Haiti (PNH), which has made such great strides under the leadership of Mario Andresol - quite different to the 2001-2004 era, as the resignation letter of former PNH head Jean-Robert Faveur makes clear - must be joined by a reform of Haiti's broken judiciary which, as Pierre Esperance noted, is so broken that in it the criminal also becomes a victim.

These are all serious, on-the-ground issues and concerns which I understand are perhaps not as immediately attractive to tackle as simply shouting political slogans or sticking one's fingers in one's ears when someone of a different viewpoint expresses their opinions. But if we as foreigners interested in Haiti cannot do better than we have done thus far, and cannot tackle these tough issues head-on, all of this discourse is simply so much meaningless blah-blah-blah of outsiders, well-intentioned or not, commenting on a country they are ultimately not all that interested in coming to understand.

All best,

MD

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Manifestation anti-Aristide à Port-au-Prince, 26 Decembre 2003

2011-03-26T07:42:00.003-04:00

In Defense of Michael Deibert

2011-03-25T10:14:00.003-04:00

(In response to a February 2007 article about me in the publication Counterpunch, Gerry Hadden, a former National Public Radio correspondent with extensive experience covering Haiti and author of the excellent forthcoming book Never the Hope Itself: Love and Ghosts in Latin America and Haiti, penned the following discourse on my work in Haiti. Counterpunch's editors, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, evidently not very interested in presenting a diversity of views, did not publish it. But, stumbling across it again recently, I felt that it might be a useful piece for the public record, and as such print if for the first time with Mr. Hadden's permission here. MD)

For a few years now, from time to time, I have been coming across attacks against former Reuters reporter Michael Deibert. I have read that Deibert is biased, possibly a CIA operative and/or part of a conspiracy to drive and keep Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of power. Based on experience, I can say that none of these accusations is true.

I was National Public Radio's correspondent in the region from 2000 until 2004. During those years I traveled to Haiti about 10 times. I first arrived there on the eve of the May 2000 legislative elections and last went in June of 2004 as United Nations troops were taking over control of the country from the U.S. Marines. In between I covered the presidential elections that brought Aristide back into office and various events during his truncated tenure, including the unrest that led to his flight from the country on February 29th 2004. I saw a lot of Haiti in good times and bad, but I did not become an expert on Haiti. It goes without saying that to be an expert on Haiti, or on any country for that matter, you have to live there.

That said, I tried to report fairly on Haitians and their struggles. Often during that reporting I worked alongside Michael Deibert, then a Reuters' reporter based in Port-au-Prince. We travelled together on more than one occasion to Gonaives - once to interview members of the
Cannibal Army shortly after members had sprung their leader Amiot “Cubain” Metayer from the local jail. We also visited the Plateau Central together, interviewing everyday Haitians about their lives and their government. On one trip we sought out members of the so-called 'rebel'
army as it advanced towards Port-au-Prince in early 2004. We worked together on countless occasions in the capital and made trips down to Jacmel and other areas.

What I admired about Michael's work in Haitii was his utterly normal way of living and working. He tended to stay away from the luxury hotels where other journalists hung out. He lived in a modest house in a neighborhood that could not be described as exclusive. He walked
everywhere downtown, he learned to speak Kreyol, he made many Haitian friends - I'm not talking about government ministers or business leaders but just normal Haitians. He became carried away by Haiti (who among her visitors isn't?) and always had the country's best interests in mind as a reporter. He longed to see strong institutions take root, to see corruption curbed, international bullying and realpolitik checked and real economic growth established.

There seems at times to be some confusion as to what a reporter's job is. It is not to take a side in the internal political struggles of a nation. That's the job of the local citizenry. A reporter's job is to report as fairly and accurately as possible on what's going on. As Haitian history evolved so did the stories that Deibert wrote. That is normal and natural. In 2000 we were all writing stories that portrayed the hope of Haitians with 'Titid' back in the national palace. That hope was palpable, citizens expressed it with dizzying joy. Then things began to change. There are many interpretations of just what happened and why. It is not my intent here to explain the
tangled events that led to the fall of Aristide's government.

What I want to say is this: Michael Deibert is not and never was an enemy of Haiti. He shed a lot of sweat walking around the capital and countryside, from Cite Soleil to Cap Haitien, and he wrote about what he saw and what people told him and what he could learn via investigations. He helped a lot of people too, with small gestures, with food, with money, and most of all with the kinds of favors that neighbors do for each other and which never get recorded in history. To my mind he never took a side. As time went on the voices critical of Aristide began to grow louder. Deibert reported on that, and investigated their claims. And he tested the claims of Aristide's supporters.

During the last two years of Aristide's presidency, both Michael and I witnessed many acts of intimidation and violence against carried out by people claiming to be acting on Aristide's behalf. I personally knew young men from the slums who were armed and on the payroll of police leaders close to the National Palace; these young men were on call to defend the palace against protesters. During the marches against the government in the weeks before Aristide fled, these young men stated that they were paid to attack the anti-Aristide protesters. Later they were abandoned by the government or killed in what appeared to be an attempt to silence them.

The Cannibal Army itself was initially a self-proclaimed pro-Aristide gang. Its leaders only turned on the president after leader Cubain's heart and eyes were cut out. The Cannibal Army had big guns before they switched sides.

In St. Marc one afternoon during those final days I interviewed bands of Aristide supporters also armed to the teeth with heavy guns - and even grenades. They were trying to 'root out' his opponents. Later that afternoon they carried out a massacre; other foreign journalists and photographers reported that they did so side by side with member of the Haitian National Police.

Several local journalists also told me their stories about being threatened or attacked for being critical of Aristide during those final two years or so. As time went on reporters based in and outside of Haiti began to realize that the situation was growing unbearable on the ground. Whether or not President Aristide was directly responsible for the rising chaos and the atmosphere of intimidation is a matter of debate about which I am not qualified to argue.

There were countless wrongs committed on the other side too. A strong argument has been made by many that without U.S. and international support Aristide never had a chance to turn his country around. With aid suspended an institutionally weak country only unraveled further, with corruption and drug smuggling flourishing. Seeing no way out, Aristide may have been driven to seek support from less than honorable people. Again, there were many such characters who acted in Aristide's name and contributed to the sense that his government was not following the rules of democracy.

Deibert wrote about all of the events and injustices that were taking place, not just those that hurt Aristide's cause. To do otherwise would have been a violation of journalistic principals.

It's unfair to suggest that he was a stooge for those members of the international community who stood against Aristide. It is even worse to imply that he somehow has contributed to Haiti's suffering via his writings.

Everyone who cares about Haiti shares the same goal, to see the situation there improve. We can tone down the debate a little without losing critical judgment. Thank you.

Gerry Hadden

Haiti Elections: Attentes

2011-03-23T08:36:00.001-04:00

Note on Jean-Bertrand Aristide's return to Haiti

2011-03-18T12:38:00.003-04:00

As questionable friends of Haiti such as Amy Goodman, Danny Glover and others celebrate the return to Haiti of a man as politically and personally corrupt and ruthless as any that I have ever reported on, it seems only fitting that, if they don't have the dignity or respect to do so, some foreigner should write a note of apology to the many Haitians who fell opposing the man's rancid and despotic regime, or for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

So here it goes.

On behalf of all the misguided and ignorant foreigners who still act as apologists for a man who did as much to impoverish Haiti and destroy its fragile institutions as any ruler in its history (and this is by no means a complete list), I would like to apologize

To Marie Christine Jeune, the courageous young female Police Nationale d'Haïti (PNH) officer who had publicly criticized Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s attempts to link the police force with armed gangs and was found, raped and mutilated in March 1995

To Yvon Toussaint, opposition senator for the Organisation du Peuple en Lutte (OPL) party, gunned down in March 1999

To the thirteen people murdered in the Fort Mercredi slum in June 2001 by the forces of gang leader Felix “Don Fefe” Bien-Aimé, whom Jean-Bertrand Aristide had appointed as director of the Port-au-Prince cemetery as a reward for his loyalty

To Brignol Lindor, the journalist murdered by the pro-Aristide Domi Nan Bwa gang in Petit-Goâve on 3 December 2001

To Ramy Daran, assistant to the Mouvement Chrétien Pour une Nouvelle Haiti's Luc Mesadieu, burned alive by a pro-Aristide gang in Gonaives on 17 December 2001

To Eric Pierre, the 27-year-old medical student from Jacmel, was was shot and killed while leaving the Haiti’s Faculté de Medicine in January 2003 on a day of planned anti- government demonstrations, with witnesses saying attackers fled the scene in a car with official TELECO plates and even providing license numbers

To 25-year-old Saurel Volny, shot and killed by police during an anti-government demonstration in Gonaives in January 2003.

To Ronald Cadet, a student activist who was shot and killed in Haiti's capital in February 2003 after being forced to live in hiding since November 2002

To the eleven people, including Michelet Lozier, mother of five, killed by Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s security forces as they raided the Gonaives slum of Raboteau in the early morning hours of 2 October 2003

To the fourteen people, including seventeen-year-old Josline Michel and the month old baby girl of Micheline Limay, also killed by Jean-Betrand Aristide’s security forces when they again raided Raboteau on 27 October 2003

To Danielle Lustin, the university professor, feminist activist and expert in microfinancing murdered on 22 October 2003 and whose memorial mass at Sacre-Coeur was interrupted by a gang of young mean descending from a white pickup bearing “Officielle” license plates, who pummeled them with rocks and bottles, crying “Viv Aristide” and threatening them in the most base, misogynistic terms

To Maxime Desulmond, the well-known student leader from Jacmel, killed when pro-Aristide gangs fired upon an anti-govenrment demonstration in Port-au-Prince on 7 January 2004

To Leroy Joseph, Kenol St. Gilles, Yveto Morancy and the rest of the at least 27 people who were murdered and the women raped by a combination of PNH, Unite de Securite de la Garde du Palais National d’Haiti and Bale Wouze forces in Saint Marc between 11 February and 29 February 2004.

To my dear friend James "Billy" Petit-Frere, and his brother Winston "Tupac" Jean-Bart, and all the other young men used as cannon fodder by Aristide and then abandoned to their fates or their lives extinguished (such as Roland François) when they were no longer of use

Also on behalf of we foreigners, I would like to apologize to the Haitian constitution, shredded like Lyonel Trouillot's "faded piece of cloth fought over by dogs" by Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the following manner:

By a demobilization of the Haitian army in April 1995, which was illegal without a constitutional amendment, as the army was still enshrined in Article 263 of the Haitian constitution.

By his violation of Article 7 of Haiti's constitution, which states that "the cult of personality is categorically forbidden. Effigies and names of living personages may not appear on the currency, stamps, seals, public buildings, streets or works of art." Jean-Bertrand Aristide placed hagiographic billboards bearing his image throughout the country, and the state television station TNH showed ceaseless homages to the president.

By personally and directly blocking the investigation into the murder of Haiti's foremost journalist, Radio Haiti Inter owner Jean Dominique and Jean-Claude Louissaint - as attested to by the staff of Radio Haiti Inter, investigating magistrate Claudy Gassant and now-PNH chief Mario Andresol - and and by pressuring Justice Henry Kesner Noel, to sign a re-arrest warrant for Prosper Avril in April 2002, among other acts, Jean-Bertrand Aristide violated Article 60 of Haiti's constitution, which delegated firmly the independence of the executive and judicial branches of government.

By attempting in September 2003 revive a presidential decree passed by Jean-Claude Duvalier on October 12, 1977 ("broadcast information must be precise, objective and impartial, and must come from authorized sources which are to be mentioned when broadcasting. Those who are responsible for the broadcasts have to control the programs to ensure that the information "even when it is correct ”cannot harm or alarm the population by its form, presentation or timing. The broadcast stations will provide a channel for the broadcasting of official programs, if so required by the public powers .") which was a naked assault on articles 28-1, 28-2 and 245 of Haiti's constitution, which forbids censorship and protects free speech and journalistic practices.

To say nothing of Jean-Bertrand Aristide's arming of a generation of desperately poor street children which violated Article 268 of the Haitian constitution whereby the PNH were to be the only body with the right to distribute and circulate weapons in the country.

Haitian people, you deserve better foreign friends than those who touch your soil today with the man who victimized you so. Perhaps some day you will have the foreign friends that you deserve. Until then, I know you will persevere. You are the children of heroes, after all.

Kenbe fem,

MD

Un meeting de Mirlande Manigat à Mirebalais tourne à l’affrontement : Plusieurs blessés

2011-03-16T16:14:00.001-04:00

Haïti-Elections-J-5

Un meeting de Mirlande Manigat à Mirebalais tourne à l’affrontement : Plusieurs blessés

Contrainte de renoncer à s’adresser à ses partisans et d’abandonner précipitamment la ville, théâtre de tirs nourris et de jets de pierre, la candidate démocrate-chrétienne dénonce l’attitude, une fois de plus, violente des supporters de son rival, Michel Martelly, et s’apprête à protester officiellement auprès de l’institution électorale

mercredi 16 mars 2011

(Read the original article here)

Des affrontements à coups de pierre ayant opposé, au milieu de tirs nourris, des partisans de Michel Martelly et de Mirlande Manigat, ont fait plusieurs blessés légers, lors d’un meeting de la candidate démocrate-chrétienne qui a dû être annulé mardi après-midi à Mirebalais (Bas-Plateau Central, centre), un nouvel épisode de violence qui marque la campagne électorale entrée dans sa dernière ligne droite.

Evacuée d’urgence par les membres de sa sécurité rapprochée avec le soutien des agents de l’Unité départementale de maintien d’ordre (UDMO), Mme Manigat a sévèrement condamné ces "nouvelles provocations" des partisans de "Sweet Micky" et annoncé son intention d’adresser dès mercredi une "protestation formelle" au Conseil électoral provisoire.

Suite à des jets de pierre, de nombreux coups de feu ont retenti provoquant des scènes de panique au moment où le service d’ordre tentait de maîtriser des individus chauffés à blanc qui avaient investi la foule avec des posters de Michel Martelly.

Parmi les blessés que le correspondant local de Radio Kiskeya a pu remarquer figurait un des musiciens du groupe rap vedette Barikad Crew (BC) ayant endossé la candidature de la professeure Manigat.

Sans avoir eu le temps de s’exprimer devant de nombreux supporters qui l’attendaient, l’aspirante à la Présidence a été contrainte de quitter précipitamment la place publique de Mirebalais où devait se tenir le rassemblement.

Les incidents ont touché d’autres secteurs de la ville et l’Hôtel Mirage, un établissement appartenant à un partisan de Michel Martelly, a essuyé des jets de pierre.

Intervenant en direct sur les ondes de Radio Kiskeya au "Jounal 4è" (l’édition de 16 heures), Mirlande Manigat a dénoncé les "attaques systématiques" des partisans de son rival dans ses différents déplacements électoraux.

Une situation qu’elle qualifie d’inadmissible en soulignant qu’à Mirebalais des hurleurs ont causé un vacarme insupportable pendant trois quarts d’heure.

Elle s’est, par ailleurs, plainte de la passivité de la police qui n’aurait rien fait contre les agresseurs.

La candidate entend aller jusqu’au bout de sa campagne après avoir effectué une tournée globalement satisfaisante dans le département du Centre qui l’a aussi conduite à Hinche, Cerca Carvajal et Boucan Carré.

A cinq jours d’un deuxième tour historique, l’intolérance et la tension semblent gagner nettement du terrain après déjà de graves incidents qui avaient fait plusieurs blessés lors d’un autre meeting de Mirlande Manigat, la semaine dernière au Cap-Haïtien (nord).

L’Organisation des Etats américains a condamné lundi ces violences électorales et exhorté les deux camps à calmer leurs partisans en vue de rendre le scrutin de dimanche pacifique.

La démocrate-chrétienne a notamment reçu au cours des dernières 24 heures le soutien de la ministre de la culture, Marie Laurence Jocelyn Lassègue, qui a obtenu une mise en disponibilité, et de quatre syndicats d’enseignant. spp/Radio Kiskeya

Vidéo avec Gotson Pierre

2011-03-15T16:50:00.000-04:00

Entretien vidéo avec Gotson Pierre, initiateur du Télécentre mobile pour les déplacés du séisme.

Note to the Corbett List

2011-03-13T17:01:00.004-04:00

I confess some surprise that a single article of mine on Haiti’s former president has sparked such debate as the country confronts its first presidential vote in five years, a vote during which neither Mr. Aristide or any member of the interim government that followed him are candidates. But perhaps in the long run it is useful as it seems to be sparking a needed re-examination on some important aspects of Haiti’s recent history. If such examination would help even in the smallest way for the people of St. Marc who still wait for justice to achieve their aim, then it will have been mightily worth it.

1. Further on St. Marc

It is easy for those who were not in Haiti at the time to mock and dismiss the wrenching first-hand accounts of the survivors of the February 2004 Aristide government assault on St. Marc, or the first-hand accounts of journalists such as myself and the Miami Herald’s Marika Lynch who visited the town shortly thereafter. But one is reminded one of the sage words of the British academic Stephen Ellis who, when describing the incredulity that some ascribed to accounts of Liberia's civil war, wrote that "while descriptions (of the civil war) are routinely dismissed as sensational journalism by high-minded academics, it would be foolish simply to scoff at the opinions of correspondents who glean their impressions at first hand. Journalists acquire detailed knowledge, and an appreciation for the flavor of events, which can escape distant observers."

Simply put, the hypothesis that the reporting of many journalists, local and foreign, in Haiti at the time, the testimony of dozens of witnesses, the research of both Human Rights Watch and the Reseau National de Defense des Droits Humains (RNDDH), all working autonomously, is all part of a seamless, coordinated conspiracy is not a hypothesis that can be accepted by any rational person.

The best quote I’ve ever heard about Haiti’s justice system came from RNDDH’s director Pierre Esperance, who said to me, in connection that the to St. Marc case, that “in our system, the criminal becomes a victim because the system doesn't work.” That is what we saw with relation to the St. Marc massacre. Rather than having a transparent trial to hold the perpetrators accountable, they were sent to sit in jail without any conclusion to the official investigation, like almost every other high-profile case in the country’s history.

A word in defense of the RNDDH, an organization that I have seen do the most important human rights advocacy in Haiti, both in its present incarnation and as the Haiti-branch of the NCHR, since I first began visiting Haiti now nearly 15 years ago.

Though their critics like to bray about RNDDH’s 2004 award of C$100,000 (US$85,382) from the Canadian International Development Agency, most of the group’s funding in fact comes from organizations such as Christian Aid, the Mennonite Central Committee and the Lutheran World Federation. As part of its vitally important work, since that grant, RNDDH has consistently advocated for justice on behalf of a number of Fanmi Lavalas members who it says were victimized under Haiti’s 2004-2006 interim government, including Jean Maxon Guerrier, Yvon Feuille, Gerald Gilles, and Rudy Heriveaux.

RNDDH has shown a commitment to a non-political defense of human rights that a group like the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), under the sway as it is of Mr. Aristide's Miami attorney Ira Kurzban (one of the IJDH’s founders and chairman of its board of directors), or the IJDH’s Haiti partner, the the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI), which receives “most of its support from the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti,” have never risen to.

[With the IJDH’s 2005 annual report listing Mr. Kurzban’s law firm in the category reserved for those having contributed more than $5000 to the organization, the group’s 2006 report lists the firm under “Donations of Time and Talent,” and the American Immigration Lawyers Association South Florida Chapter (for which Mr. Kurzban served as past national president and former general council) in a section reserved for those having donated $10,000 or more. Simply put, the IJDH is a creature of Mr. Aristide’s attorney, a man who has a financial stake in rehabilitating the former president. Their work in Haiti should be seen in this context.]

I would like to give the last word on the St. Marc killings to Charlienor Thompson, the coordinator of the Association des Victimes du Genocide de la Scierie (AVIGES), whose feelings of abandonment by the international community in general and the United Nations in particular were summed-up in a heart-rending 2007 open letter to Louis Joinet, the United Nations' independent expert on the situation of human rights in Haiti at the time. In that letter, Thompson wrote of how “we, the victims, who live in Haiti and who have lodged a complaint with the judicial system of our country for more than three years, remain confused and ask ourselves who cares about our case?"

Thompson goes on to ask:

How can we expect justice? Who can testify freely while murderers are free and move with impunity? The majority of people in Saint Marc are afraid. Even those who were direct victims of the acts mentioned above are frightened. The victims are eager to flee the city and witnesses to hide. When will we enjoy the benefits of justice that we demand? In the present circumstances, in what form will it come?

2. Further on Martissant

As happened with regards to the killing of St. Marc, a handful of advocates for Haiti’s former president living in North America have made it their goal to attempt to deceive people that violence in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Martissant came only from one side, that of forces hostile to Haiti’s former president. They seek to convince people, despite the evidence gathered by Haiti’s own journalists and foreign reporters such as myself, that gangs formerly allied to Haiti’s former president did not play an enthusiastic and blood-soaked role in the killings there. Put simply, this is false.

Consider the following:

- A 23 August 2005 broadcast from the capital’s Radio Kiskeya stated "inhabitants of various districts of Martissant (a southern slum of Port-au-Prince) launched an S.O.S to the authorities on Monday so that they would forcefully intervene in a zone infested with heavily-armed gangsters. These inhabitants, the majority of them young people coming from 4th and the 5th Avenue Bolosse, describe the reactivation in the district of groups armed under the regime of Jean Bertrand Aristide which have made their residence in the Grand Ravine zone of Martissant."

- The 19 November 2005 article "Nouvelle montee de tension a Martissant" from the Haitian media outlet AlterPresse stated "The tension went up of a notch these last days within Martissant, in the southern sector of the capital, where confrontations have occurred between rival bands, residents told AlterPresse. Clashes have occurred on several occasions during the last 8 days between the armed bands from Grande Ravine and the Lame Ti Manchet, leaving at least 2 dead and several casualties by bullets."

- A 6 November 2006 statement by the president of Haiti’s senate, Joseph Lambert, himself a member of the Lespwa party of Haitian president Rene Preval, where Lambert directly referred to the violence in Martissant as being part of "Operation Baghdad II," in reference to a fall 2004 explosion of violence by Aristide partisans, and went on to say that "Operation Baghdad 2 takes the form of a means for a sector to politically pressure the executive (branch) in order to find employment." [Note: Despite statements to the contrary, Operation Baghdad was called just that by those carrying it out, as can be heard in this 2004 report from National Public Radio's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro]

- A 4 December 2006 broadcast from Radio Kiskeya which stated that "according to residents (of Martissant) a local gang called Base Pilate was responsible for four murders. The leaders of this armed group are insane with rage after the death of a police officer considered to be one of their allies...The Base Pilate is committed, under the umbrella of the armed gangs of Grand Ravine, to fight without mercy against the Lame Ti Manchet, another rival band based within Sainte-Bernadette lane."

- An 8 December 2006 broadcast, again recorded on the ground in Martissant, from Radio Metropole, stated "Heavy shooting was recorded in the zone of Martissant yesterday ; witnesses confirm that gangsters of Grand Ravine associated with the gang Base Pilate tried to launch an attack against the districts of Descartes and Martissant 1. Residents of Descartes and Martissant 1 affirm that 2 people were killed and several others wounded yesterday evening. "

- A 19 January 2007 broadcast from Radio Kiskeya, which stated that "A wild war has been underway for several months among gangs called Base Pilate and Lame Ti Manchet, which imposes the law of the jungle on Bolosse, Grand Ravine and Ste-Bernadette."

3. Further on Nanoune Myrthil’s infant

Like any other observer, I do not feel that I yet know the full story of the fate of Nanoune Myrthil’s infant, nor have I ever stated otherwise. However, given the statements of Nanoune Myrthil herself, the focus on the case by Radio Haiti Inter (arguably Haiti’s most independent and respected radio station when it was still broadcasting) and Radio Metropole during 2000/2001, and the separate (yet highly similar) declarations of Johnny Occilius, Jean-Michard Mercier and Sonia Desrosiers, it certainly, to me, seems a case worth investigating and by any standard rises to the level of something that is newsworthy. Can one imagine such a case in the United States or Europe, with individuals similarly close to the seat of power making such declarations and the charges not receiving media attention or a thorough investigation? I certainly cannot.

4. Reporting ethically from Haiti

Most journalists I know, whatever other criticisms I may have of them, would never knowingly print information that they knew to be false. This cannot be said for those seeking to deny justice to the victims of St. Marc and Martissant today.

In 2006, Jeb Sprague and Diana Barhona attacked the press solidarity group Reporters sans frontières (RSF), for supposedly receiving money from the International Republican Institute (IRI). When Sprague and Barhona were unable to produce proof of this claim, RSF News Editor Jean-François Julliard responded succinctly "We do not receive any funding from the International Republican Institute. This is a pure figment of the authors' imagination. Your readers can check our certified accounts on our website, rsf.org. "  

Also, in 2006, Jeb Sprague attacked the Haiti Support Group, a London-based solidarity organization that has been working at a grassroots level in Haiti since 1992. In an article co-authored with Joe Emersberger and which appeared in the magazine Counterpunch, Sprague claimed that Haiti Support Group head Charles Arthur encouraged people to harass a researcher who had published highly controversial human rights study in the British medical journal, The Lancet (link). Arthur later wrote that "The statements about me in the Counterpunch piece are pure fiction. " Arthur’s full response to Sprague’s allegations can be read here.

In his 2009 article, “Calls Mount to Free Lavalas Activist," Wadner Pierre (along with Sprague one of the co-editors of the Haiti Analysis website) described Ronald “Black Ronald” Dauphin - a man identified by survivors of the February 2004 pogrom as one of the chief members of the group that carried out the massacre - as “a Haitian political prisoner,” attacked the RNDDH and quoted the IJDH which also, curiously, described Ronald Dauphin in a June 2009 press release as “a Haitian grassroots activist, customs worker and political prisoner,” language mimicked closely in the Sprague/Pierre article.

Wadner Pierre, who recently wrote a rather un-gentlemanly piece mocking Haitian presidential candidate Mirlande Manigat on the basis of here age wrote his laudatory article about those accused in the St. Marc killings having never mentioned that he had been described as working for the IJDH’s Haiti affiliated, the BAI , or that he had previously contributed text and photographs to the IJDH website lauding the April 2007 release of Amanus Mayette, another suspect of the St. Marc massacre, a photo essay that since appears to have been removed from the IJDH site.

Given such a record, I am not surprised that Sprague, Pierre, etc would continue their rather fevered attacks against reporters against myself (which I largely responded to in a blog posting here) and against the victims in Martissant and St. Marc.

Our first and only duty as reporters is not to those abroad who have profited from Haiti’s ongoing misery, it is to the suffering in Haiti themselves. Whatever discomfort that causes in powerful circles beyond Haiti is not only deserved, but welcome and necessary if the cycle of impunity that is killing the country is ever to be ended.

With my best regards and hopes for a peaceful election,

MD

Response regarding a few points

2011-03-10T11:46:00.003-05:00

Recently, several friends forwarded me some of the exchanges that have been taking place about me on the Corbett list. I wanted to take a moment to respond to a few points.

1. The disappearance of the Nanoune Myrthil’s infant

For my part, I first heard about the 29 February 2000 disappearance of Nanoune Myrthil's baby from the General Hospital when Radio Haiti Inter reported on it on 21 June 2001. In a report by Jean-Delec Mezy, the station recounted how a nurse, Yanick Augustin, had been accused of being involved in the disappearance and was slated to appear before a judge that month. I recall that this appearance was postponed several times, and that there were several emotional public appeals by Nanoune Myrthil herself that she and her missing child be given justice. At the time, there much controversy of what exactly had happened to the child and whether or not official pressure was being brought to bear - as it was in the investigation of the slaying of prominent journalist Jean Dominique - to keep the inquiry from reaching some sort of resolution. Some of the transcript of that broadcast can be read here.

Apropos of that, on 3 March 2002, in her editorial, “Is Another Assassination of Jean Dominique about to Take Place?” also on Radio Haiti Inter, Dominique's widow, Michele Montas, bemoaned the fact that “all the resources, i.e. logistical, technical, and financial” made available in the Dominique investigation by the Preval government had been cancelled by the Aristide government, and that “ so were the resources made available for other investigations such as those about the poisoning of children with diethyl glycol or the kidnapping of baby Nanoune Myrtil at the General Hospital.”

During the same address, the full text of which can be read here, Montas said of the Aristide government the following:

The regime is affected with a dangerous gangrene. Principles and moral guidelines are compromised every day by political opportunism. Those ideals shared by Jean (Dominique), including a generous but rigorous socialism, respect for liberties within the framework of democracy, nationalist independence, based on a long history of resistance, those ideals that Jean used to call ‘Lavalas’ are trampled every day in this balkanized State where weapons make right, and where hunger for power and money takes precedence over the general welfare, causing havoc on a party which, paradoxically, controls all the institutional levers of the country. Our concerns run deep, since the cracks are widening and the building will eventually collapse over all of us.

How right she was, it turned out.

In July 2003, Johnny Occilius made his now-famous declaration on Radio Kiskeya of So Anne’s alleged-involvement with the baby’s disappearance and death, followed one month later by former Lavalas deputy mayor of Port-au-Prince Jean-Michard Mercier, who supported in every detail Occilius’ account and expanded upon it. Sonia Desrosiers, the widow of Roland Francois - the Port-au-Prince gang leader who was kidnapped and killed in July 2003 - then gave her own account to Radio Vision 2000. Readers and listeners are free to make up their own minds about the veracity or not of the various explanations of the child's disappearance.

In my view, at least, the episode in no way reflects upon vodou, Haiti’s poignant spiritual blend of its African and European heritage, as a whole. I have enjoyed attendance at many vodou ceremonies around the country since 1997, and urge other journalists to treat the belief system with interest and respect given its political significance to the country.

2. The violence in Martissant/Grand Ravine

Jeb Sprague, whom I have never met or spoken to, first made himself known to me in November 2005, when he emailed to me, unsolicited, a graphic picture of the bullet-riddled, blood-soaked bodies of a Haitian mother and her children along with a smiley-face emoticon and a semi-coherent tirade against myself, the World Bank and the Inter-American Dialogue.

When Sprague writes of the 2006 violence in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Martissant that I "essentially ignored the role of the largest and most violent armed group in the area at that time: Lame Ti Manchet,” this is false in several aspects.

As I wrote in an extensively sourced February 2007 article for AlterPresse "The terrible truth about Martissant," the chain of events that Sprague describes bears no resemblance at all to the reality of what journalists such as myself and the reporters of Haiti’s radio stations witnessed on the ground there in the neighborhoods of Grand Ravine, Ti Bois and Descartes during the summer of 2006.

Nevertheless, in both that article and my August 2006 report "Storm of Killing in Neighbourhood Has Wide Implications for Nation," there is in-depth description and analysis of the significant role of the Lame Ti Manchet in the violence.

I understand that on-the-ground reportage may be more time-consuming and at times put one at greater personal risk than simply commenting upon issues from the safety of academia in the United States and Europe, but I really urge Sprague to arise from his desk and spend a bit of time on the ground in Haiti, learning the language, speaking with and traveling among its people. I think it would do wonders towards educating him from having a less internet-based knowledge of the daily lives of the country’s people.

3. Jean-Remy Badio

When Sprague writes, in regards to the killing of Jean-Remy Badio that I "(and Reporters Without Borders likewise) failed to properly attribute the major suspects of this assassination,” this is also false.

I was very happy and proud to lend my voice in solidarity with my courageous Haitian and Caribbean colleagues in aiding in the drafting the Association of Caribbean Media’s “ACM calls for action on Badio killing” on 30 January 2007, the text of which can be read here. The press release read in part as follows:

The Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM) is calling on Haitian authorities to move swiftly to bring the killers of Jean-Remy Badio to justice and wants the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to do more to end the isolation of this Member State... It is especially distressing to note that that Mr. Badio’s murder results from his work in reporting on the operations of organized gangs in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Martissant.

4. Evel Fanfan and AUMOHD

When Sprague writes that I have critizied the work of Evel Fanfan and his organization, the Association des Universitaires Motivés pour une Haiti de Droits (AUMOHD), this is also false. I have never written a line, positive or negative, in reference Fanfan or AUMOHD.

5. Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Regarding Jean-Bertrand Aristide: Though I believe his government exacerbated many of the problems confronting Haiti and lost a golden chance to help move the country forward, he was a symptom, rather than the sole cause, of Haiti’s greater malaise. Impunity, corruption, environmental degradation and an upside-down economic system are the true plagues that are killing Haiti as a state, plagues that many in my own country have unfortunately been all-too-happy to cast their lot in with for a few pieces of gold. Until these corrosive elements in Haiti are definitively addressed and the malefactors both Haitian and foreign prosecuted and made to answer for their crimes, there will be more Duvaliers, Aristides and others like them, and whether called macoute or attache or chimere, their economically desperate and easily-disposable (in their eyes) enforces will continue to operate with the same modus operandi.

Every time I visit Haiti, I see thousands of decent, dedicated people - part of grassroots organizations such as Fonkoze, the Mouvman Peyizan Nasyonal Kongre Papay and others - working towards their country’s reconstruction. A handful of of self-appointed American and European activists can continue to rage all they want on the interent in support of the work of Mr. Aristide’s fabulously compensated American lobbyists, but the violence and vehemence of their rhetoric doesn’t make what they have to say say any more true.

Best regards from Mardi Gras,

MD

Haiti’s Aristide should be greeted with prosecution, not praise

2011-02-17T15:05:00.001-05:00

Haiti’s Aristide should be greeted with prosecution, not praise

By Michael Deibert

The indictment late last year by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of six prominent Kenyans for their roles in violence following that country’s disputed 2007 elections was a welcome sign for those seeking to hold politicians accountable for their crimes. Though the ICC has badly bungled what should have been its showpiece case - against the ruthless Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga - the Kenya indictments nevertheless represented a welcome extension of its continuing mission.

To those of us who have seen Haiti’s political convulsions first-hand over the years, that Caribbean nation makes a compelling case for attention by the ICC as perpetrators of human rights abuses often go unpunished or are even rehabilitated in subsequent governments. With one despotic former ruler (Jean-Claude Duvalier) having recently returned and another (Jean-Bertrand Aristide) announcing his intention to do so, one Haitian case, in particular, would seem tailor-made for the ICC’s attention.

In February 2004, in the midst of a chaotic rebellion against Mr. Aristide's government, the photojournalist Alex Smailes and I found ourselves in the central Haitian city of Saint Marc, at the time the last barrier between Aristide and a motley collection of once-loyal street gangs and former soldiers who were sweeping down from the country's north seeking to oust him.

Several days earlier, on 7 February, an armed anti-Aristide group, the Rassemblement des militants conséquents de Saint Marc (Ramicos), based in the neighborhood of La Scierie, had attempted to drive government forces from the town, seizing the local police station, which they set on fire.

On 9 February, the combined forces of the Police Nationale de Haiti (PNH), the Unité de Sécurité de la Garde du Palais National (USGPN) - a unit directly responsible for the president’s personal security - and a local paramilitary organisation named Bale Wouze (Clean Sweep) retook much of the city. By 11 February, a few days before our arrival, Bale Wouze - headed by a former parliamentary representative of Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas political party named Amanus Mayette - had commenced the battle to retake La Scierie. Often at Mayette’s side was a government employee named Ronald Dauphin, known to residents as "Black Ronald,”often garbed in a police uniform even though he was in no way officially employed by the police.

When Alex and I arrived in the town, we found the USGPN and Bale Wouze patrolling Saint Marc as a single armed unit. Speaking to residents there - amidst a surreal backdrop of burned buildings, the stench of human decay, drunken gang members threatening our lives with firearms and a terrified population - we soon realized that something awful had happened in Saint Marc.

According to multiple residents interviewed during that visit and a subsequent visit that I made to the town in June 2009, after government forces retook the town - and after a press conference there by Yvon Neptune, at the time Aristide’s Prime Minister and also the head of the Conseil Superieur de la Police Nationale d'Haiti - a textbook series of war crimes took place.

Residents spoke of how Kenol St. Gilles, a carpenter with no political affiliation, was shot in each thigh, beaten unconscious by Bale Wouze members and thrown into a burning cement depot, where he died. Unarmed Ramicos member Leroy Joseph was decapitated, while Ramicos second-in-command Nixon François was simply shot. In the ruins of the burned-out commissariat, Bale Wouze members gang raped a 21-year-old woman, while other residents were gunned down by police firing from a helicopter as they tried to flee over a nearby mountain. A local priest told me matter-of-factly at the time of Bale Wouze that “these people don't make arrests, they kill."

According to a member of a Human Rights Watch delegation that visited Saint Marc a month after the killings, at least 27 people were murdered there between Feb. 11 and Aristide’s flight into exile at the end of the month. Her conclusion supported by the research of the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains, a Haitian human rights organization.

Following Aristide's overthrow, several members of Bale Wouze were lynched, while Yvon Neptune turned himself over to the interim government that ruled Haiti from March 2004 until the inauguration of President René Préval in May 2006.

Held in prison without trial until his May 2006 release on humanitarian grounds, a May 2008 decision by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found the Haitian state had violated the American Convention on Human Rights in its detention of Neptune, though stressed that it was "not a criminal court in which the criminal responsibility of an individual can be examined.” Neptune ran unsuccessfully for president in Haiti’s recent elections.

After being jailed for three years without trial, Amanus Mayette was freed from prison in April 2007. Arrested in 2004, Ronald Dauphin subsequently escaped from jail, and was re-arrested during the course of an anti-kidnapping raid in Haiti's capital in July 2006. Despite several chaotic public hearings, to date, none of the accused for the killings in La Scierie has ever gone to trial. At the time of writing, Mr. Aristide himself continues to enjoy a gilded exile in South Africa, his luxurious lifestyle and protection package bankrolled by South African taxpayers.

Frustratingly for the people of St. Marc, far from being supported in their calls for justice, the events they experienced have become a political football among international political actors.

The United Nations independent expert on human rights in Haiti, Louis Joinet, in a 2005 statement dismissed allegations of a massacre and described what occurred as "a clash", a characterization that seemed unaware of the fact that not all among those victimized had any affiliation with Haiti's political opposition.

The Institute for Justice and Democracy (IJDH), a U.S.-based organization, has lauded Mr. Dauphin as “a Haitian grassroots activist.” The IJDH itself maintains close links with Mr. Aristide’s U.S. attorney, Ira Kurzban, who is listed as one of the group’s founders, serves on the chairman of board of directors and whose law firm, according to U.S. Department of Justice filings, earned nearly $5 million for its lobbying work alone representing the Aristide government during the era of its worst excesses. By comparison, the firm of former U.S. congressmen Ron Dellums received the relatively modest sum of $989,323 over the same period.

When I returned to St. Marc in June of 2009, I found its residents still wondering when someone would be held accountable for the terrible crimes they had been subjected to. Amazil Jean-Baptiste, the mother of Kenol St. Gilles, said simply "I just want justice for my son.” A local victim’s rights group of survivors of the pogrom, the Association des Victimes du Génocide de la Scierie (AVIGES), formed to help advocate on residents’ behalf, but have had precious little success in what passes for Haiti’s justice system, broken and dysfunctional long before January 2010's devastating earthquake.

Though Mr. Aristide remains something of a fading star for a handful of commentators outside of Haiti- most of whom have not spent significant time in the country, cannot speak its language and have never bothered to sit down with the victims of the Aristide government's crimes there - to those of us who have seen a bit of its recent history firsthand, the words of veteran Trinidadian diplomat Reginald Dumas - a man who does know Haiti - seem apt, that Mr. Aristide "[acquired] for himself a reputation at home which did not match the great respect with which he was held abroad.''

The ICC has sometimes been criticized for acting as if war crimes and crimes against humanity are simply African problems, taking place in distant lands. The people of St. Marc, only a 90 minute flight from Miami, know differently. As Mr. Aristide currently loudly voices his desire to return to Haiti from his exile in South Africa, doubtlessly transiting several ICC signatory countries (including South Africa itself) in the process, the case of the victims of St. Marc is one admirably deserving of the ICC’s attention.

Michael Deibert is a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies at Coventry University and the author of Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti (Seven Stories Press). He has been visiting and writing about Haiti since 1997.

Photo © Michael Deibert

COMMUNIQUE DE RADIO KISKEYA SUITE A L’ASSASSINAT DE L’UN DE SES FILS, LE JOURNALISTE JEAN RICHARD LOUIS CHARLES

2011-02-10T18:26:00.001-05:00

Haiti-Presse-Insécurité

COMMUNIQUE DE RADIO KISKEYA SUITE A L’ASSASSINAT DE L’UN DE SES FILS, LE JOURNALISTE JEAN RICHARD LOUIS CHARLES

KOMINIKE RADYO KISKEYA SOU KO ANSASINAY KI FET SOU PITIT LI, JOUNALIS JEAN RICHARD LOUIS CHARLES

mercredi 9 février 2011,

(Read the original article here)

C’est avec consternation et une profonde tristesse que toute l’équipe de Radio Kiskeya a appris le meurtre perpétré ce 9 février, à la rue Capois, sur la personne de l’un des fils de la station, le journaliste-reporter et présentateur Jean Richard Louis Charles.

Selon les premières informations, Jean Richard Louis Charles a été abattu par un individu pour des raisons qu’il incombe à la police et à la justice d’établir.

C’est à Radio Kiskeya où il fut parmi les collaborateurs les plus réguliers et les plus responsables, que Jean Richard a fait ses premières armes en journalisme. A 29 ans il avait de grandes potentialités que beaucoup dans le public lui reconnaissaient.

Cette brutale et tragique disparition d’un jeune plein de promesses comme Jean Richard Louis Charles constitue un véritable désastre pour la station, pour la presse et pour le pays. Il travaillait depuis 2005 à la station. En mai prochain la collaboration en serait à sa septième année.

Radio Kiskeya remercie tous ceux qui, de la presse et de tous les autres secteurs, lui ont témoigné leurs sympathies en cette circonstance extrêmement dramatique.

Tout en présentant leurs plus sincères sympathies aux deux filles de Jean Richard, Cynthia et Shelsy , à sa compagne, et à ses parents et amis, la Direction et le personnel de Radio Kiskeya exigent que toute la lumière soit faite sur ce crime et que l’enquête ne se poursuive éternellement.

Justice pour Jean Richard Louis Charles !

Port-au-Prince, le 9 février 2011.

La Direction et le personnel de Radio Kiskeya

Se ak gwo sezisman epi yon dezolasyon san parèy tout ekip Radyo Kiskeya aprann kò ansasinay ki fèt maten mèkredi 9 fevriye a, nan Ri Capois, sou pitit Radyo a, jounalis-repòtè-prezantatè Jean Richard Louis Charles.

Dapre premye enfòmasyon yo, Jean Richard Louis Charles tonbe anba bal yon atoufè ki te atakel pou rezon lapolis ak lajistis dwe eklèsi.

Se nan Radyo Kiskeya Jean Richard grandi epi devlope kòm jounalis-repòtè-prezantatè. Li te pami manm ekip la ki te pi prezan nan pòs li e ki te konn fè travay li ak sans reskonsablite. Pou talan li ak poansyalitel, anpil moun nan piblik la te gentan apresye l.

Se yon dezas pou Radyo a, pou laprès, ak pou tout peyi a, disparisyon, nan kondisyon sa a, yon jenn gason tankou Jean Richard Louis Charles ki te pwomèt anpil. Li te gen 29 an e li tap kolabore ak stasyon an depi me 2005. Ane sa a ta pral fè l 6zan pou debouche sou 7tan.

Nan okazyon tris sa a, Radyo Kiskeya remèsye tout moun, tout konfrè, reprezantan enstitisyon leta ak sektè prive ki prezantel kondoleyans.

Pandan yap prezante tout senpati yo bay 2 pitit fi Jean Richard Louis Charles yo, Cynthia ak Shelsy , konpay li , paran ak zanmi li, Direksyon ak pèsonèl Radyo Kiskeya ap mande pou tout limyè fèt sou sikonstans lanmò sa a.

Fòk ankèt la pa « se poursuit » ! Fòk Jean Richard Louis Charles jwenn jistis !

Pòtoprens, 9 fevriye 2011.

Direksyon ak ekip Radyo Kiskeya

Haiti Stories / Istwa Ayiti

2011-01-26T12:03:00.002-05:00

(Please come hear myself and others discuss Haiti at the Haiti Stories/Istwa Ayiti conference at UCLA this week. MD)

Conference: Haiti Stories / Istwa Ayiti

Saturday, January 29, 2011

1-6 pm

Free program

In a series of discussions moderated by author and journalist Amy Wilentz, scholars across several disciplines examine how Haiti is narrated and presented in the world, and how storytelling, in the broadest as well as narrowest senses, affects the country in general and in the aftermath of the earthquake. Speakers, from 1-4 pm, include:

Donald Cosentino, scholar of Haitian art, professor of world arts and cultures

Mark Danner, writer, journalist, and professor of journalism

Michael Deibert, writer and journalist

Jonathan Demme, filmmaker

Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health

Axelle Liautaud, designer and art collector

Bob Maguire, professor of international affairs and director of the Trinity Haiti Program

Michele Voltaire Marcelin, poet and artist

Catherine Maternowska, anthropologist, co-founder of Lambi Fund of Haiti

Jocelyn McCalla, senior advisor to Haiti's Special Envoy to the United Nations

Claudine Michel, professor of black studies

Joe Mozingo, writer, Los Angeles Times

Madison Smartt Bell, novelist and writer

Deborah Sontag, investigative reporter, New York Times

Maggie Steber, photojournalist

Loune Viaud, director of Strategic Planning and Operations, Zanmi Lasante

Damon Winter, photojournalist, New York Times

A reception from 4-6 pm closes the program.

Please note: seating for this conference is first-come, first-served.

Impunity or Justice – what will exiled leaders find returning to Haiti?

2011-01-21T11:12:00.003-05:00

Impunity or Justice – what will exiled leaders find returning to Haiti?

Friday, 21. January 2011

Transparency International

(Read the original article here)

Marilyn Allien, head of La Fondation Heritage pour Haiti (LFHH), the Transparency International chapter in Haiti, reflects on what the return of former president Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier after 25 years in exile means for Haiti.

Truly, we in Haiti are having a very hard time digesting this event and what it means for governance and the rule of law in Haiti. At LFHH, we are in shock – it’s almost like another earthquake in terms of its implications, particularly for the victims and their family members who suffered under the Duvalier regime.

The local media are reporting that some people who were tortured more than 25 years ago are now compiling documents to lodge complaints. It is a pity that this was not done before. We know that the statute of limitations has run out on crimes of corruption – a case in point is the alleged stolen assets that are now frozen in Switzerland – but there are no statutes of limitations for crimes against humanity. However, at the hearing at the Prosecutor’s office on January 18, Duvalier was not charged with crimes against humanity.

After his hearing, Duvalier was allowed to return to his hotel but asked “to remain at the disposition of Haitian justice.”

What, we are asking ourselves, is Haitian justice today? In 2009 we at LFHH have looked at the Haitian pillars of justice as part of a National Integrity System review of governance systems and found them sorely lacking. Haiti’s Superior Council of Judiciary Power created by a law voted in 2009 and responsible for ensuring the integrity of magistrates and judges is yet to be operational as it is supposed to be headed by the President of the Supreme Court. This post has been vacant since 2004 and Haiti’s president has failed to nominate a new President of the Supreme Court. All these failings date to before the earthquake and its devastation and before the latest round of elections which have further weakened the system.

[Building up Justice: Haiti's Palace of Justice in ruins after the 2010 earthquake]

It would be optimistic to predict that justice will be done in the case of Jean-Claude Duvalier – who misruled Haiti for 15 years (François Duvalier, the father, was President for life during a period of 14 years) –but as we struggle to reconstruct our devastated island, it is this kind of optimism that keeps us going.

A good friend of mine, journalist Michael Deibert, wrote an article for CNN that encapsulates what many of us feel as we wait to see what will happen next. The return of Duvalier, he said is “a sharp reminder of how impunity remains a significant stumbling block as Haitians try to construct a more just and equitable society.”

And if that were not enough, news is now spreading through Haiti that

Jean-Bertrand Aristide, another former corrupt and murderous misruler of Haiti, is also trying to return to the island.

Haitians are still waiting to see if any of the perpetrators of crimes under the Duvalier and Aristide regimes will ever be brought to justice. This would be a big step forward for a nation struggling to build accountability and integrity into a new governance regime.

I whole-heartedly concur with what Michael Deibert wrote: “Frustratingly for the people of Haiti, far from being supported in their calls for justice, the abuses they have experienced have more often than not become a political football among international actors.”

What we are fighting for and advocating is a strong judicial system where impunity has no place. The shock of Duvalier’s return makes this all the more urgent.

A monster returns to Haiti

2011-01-19T14:12:00.002-05:00

19 January 2011

A monster returns to Haiti

By Michael Deibert, Special to CNN

(Read the original article here)

Editor's note: Michael Deibert is a visiting fellow at the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies at Coventry University and the author of "Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti" (Seven Stories Press).

(CNN) -- The return to Haiti this week of Jean-Claude Duvalier, the scion of a family dictatorship that misruled that Caribbean nation for 29 years, is a sharp reminder of how impunity remains a significant stumbling block as Haitians try to construct a more just and equitable society.

Returning to the same airport from which he fled in 1986, Duvalier (popularly known as "Baby Doc" to distinguish him from his more unhinged dictator father, François "Papa Doc" Duvalier), looked stunned and confused, as if the Port-au-Prince to which he returned -- still leveled from a 2010 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people -- had changed beyond recognition.

Unfortunately for Haiti's people, however, some things about the nation -- which produces sinuous music, acidly brilliant novelists and stunning art, along with grinding poverty and political unrest -- have yet to change.

Though Duvalier presided over his sputtering police state without the gleeful ruthlessness of his father, his tenure in Haiti's presidential palace was nevertheless perhaps best summed up by a prison on the outskirts of the Haitian capital called Fort Dimanche, where enemies of the state were sent to die by execution, torture or to simply waste away amidst conditions that were an affront to humanity.

The figure of the rotund Duvalier -- who was questioned yesterday by a Haitian judge about a few of his government's many transgressions -- and his spendthrift wife presiding over such a desperately poor country might have been farcical were the results not so grim.

Haitians' great hopes after Duvalier's flight were sobered considerably amidst ever-greater bloodletting, as pressure groups such as the Duvalier's former paramilitary henchmen, the army, the country's rapacious elite and others vied for the spoils of power.

The election of Jean-Bertrand Aristide at the head of a broad-based coalition in 1990 was followed by a coup only seven months after his inauguration. Three long years of paramilitary terror followed before Aristide was returned by a U.S.-led military mission to Haiti in 1994. The leaders of the regime that oversaw the terror, again, fled to their comfortable repasts abroad.

But happy endings are hard to come by in Haiti. As Duvalier whiled away his time, using his ill-gotten fortune in Europe, the newly returned Aristide set about creating a thuggish style of governance that the younger Duvalier's father would have found very familiar.

Corrupted elections in 1997 and 2000 favored Aristide's loyalists, and important statutes of Haiti's 1987 constitution -- such as those forbidding the cult of personality and protecting the independence of the judiciary -- were trampled.

By the time Aristide returned to Haiti's national palace in 2001, a network of armed partisans reminded many Haitians of the ruthless methods of rulers past. Then, 18 years after Duvalier's flight, Aristide followed him into exile in February 2004, amid street protests and a rebellion spearhead by formerly loyal gang members.

The grotesque excesses of Duvalier are perhaps the most well known, but to date, none of these men have seen the inside of a prison cell for the actions of their respective regimes. Victims of the Duvaliers' network of enforcers -- the Tontons Macoutes -- have waited in vain for justice and even seen former Duvalierist officials recycled in succeeding, supposedly "democratic," governments.

Nor has anyone yet been held accountable for several large-scale killings by government security forces -- or the slaying of at least 27 people in the town of St. Marc in February 2004 that occurred as the Aristide government drew to its inevitable denouement .

Frustratingly for the people of Haiti, far from being supported in their calls for justice, the abuses they have experienced have more often than not become a political football among international actors.

During the height of the excesses of Duvalier fils, Ron Brown, then acting as deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee and later serving as Bill Clinton's secretary of Commerce, lobbied the U.S. Congress on behalf of the dictator, pocketing more than half a million dollars for his efforts.

In the present day, a U.S.-based organization called the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, linked at the hip with Aristide's U.S. attorney, Ira Kurzban, has worked to discredit the calls for justice of the survivors of the massacre in St. Marc. Kurzban's law firm made millions representing the Aristide government.

Like Duvalier before him, Aristide continues to enjoy a gilded exile, this time in South Africa, where his comfortable lifestyle is bankrolled by South African taxpayers.

And now Duvalier, one of Haiti's waking nightmares, is back in his native land. Will he face justice? What will that justice look like in a place where recently political actors saw fit to rig an election amidst the ruins of a country that has yet to even begin to recover from last year's apocalyptic tremor?

The aforementioned great writers of Haiti no doubt find it all bitterly symbolic.

Out of the ruins of the Duvalier torture prison, Fort Dimanche, now abandoned, grew a slum. Its residents called it Village Demokrasi. Democracy Village.

It is here where, as Duvalier returns from 25 years of exile and Haiti marks as many years of the international community's questionable ministrations, that residents try to stave off hunger pangs with cakes made out of clay and seasoned with cubes of chicken or beef bouillon.

There is symbolism in that, too.

History lesson

2011-01-18T21:56:00.001-05:00

Douze janvier

2011-01-10T18:02:00.002-05:00

As we approach a day when I am sure every do-gooder, opportunist, crank, cynic and other assorted character will be weighing in with verbose and sanctimonious tomes on this melancholy anniversary, I just wanted to keep things brief.

Haitians, to the many of you that toil everyday for the necessities of life with so little reward to show for your efforts, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry that you have been dealt such a cruel hand by nature and fate, and I am sorry that your own leaders and ours have failed you so miserably time and time again. Thank you for the kindnesses, small and large, that you have shown me during the long time I have spent traversing your city lanes and your country roads. I really do hope, to the bottom of my soul, that 2011 is a bit kinder to you, and I will do my best to contribute what I can.

With love,

MD

The Guardian's Haiti Problem

2011-01-10T17:44:00.002-05:00

(Reading the last absurd magnum opus from Centre for Economic and Policy Research co-director Mark Weisbrot in the Guardian - a paper whose coverage I generally respect - I felt compelled to respond in the Comments section. Though this is something I almost never do, I felt that response, included below, might be of some general interest. MD)

As a contributor to the Guardian from time to time myself, I have written in the past to Cif editor Matt Seaton and asked when, perhaps, the newspaper would be willing to publish an Op-Ed on Haiti from someone a bit more knowledgeable about the country than Mr. Weisbrot, who has spent virtually no time there, doesn't speak the language and knows almost nothing of it's history.

I had previously written to Mr. Seaton following Mr. Weisbrot's previous screed, taking issue with, among other things, Mr. Weisbrot's statement that Jean-Bertrand Aristide is Haiti’s “most popular political leader” and that his Fanmi Lavalas party was banned from the ballot.

As his government drowned in violence, impunity, corruption and nepotism, Mr. Aristide was overthrown in February 2004 by a mass movement that encompassed sectors of Haitian society I had never seen agree on anything before or since. I saw it. I was there. And if Mr. Seaton didn't believe me, I advised him to ask other journalists - actual journalists who were on the streets of Haiti and not behind a desk in Washington somewhere like Mr. Weisbrot. I also stated that I could recommend some for him to talk to, if he liked, if he don't want to take my word for it as a Creole-speaking reporter who has covered the country for some 15 years.

While the banning of Fanmi Lavalas as a party is technically true (and something I opposed), in Haiti's most recently corrupted ballot, virtually all of the major figures of the Lavalas party - Yvon Neptune, Leslie Voltaire, Nawoon Marcellus, Yves Christalin, etc - participated, albeit as part of different political groupings. A Haitian acquiantance who was instrumental in the constriction of the original (late 1980s/early 1990s) Lavalas movement wrote to me that "Fanmi Lavalas has all its people in the election, it’s a blan’s (foreigner's) myth that they were excluded and I have been 3 times to Haiti between August and last week. My feeling is that it’s a made-for-foreign-consumption issue.”

Here we read again that Fanmi Lavalas is "the most popular political party in the country."

I opposed the exclusion of the party named Fanmi Lavalas (now a shadow of its former self) from Haiti's recent ballot, but a look at the 2006 elections - the country's last nationwide ballot in which Fanmi Lavalas participated and which Weisbrot also absurdly denounced - is instructive.

Fanmi Lavalas gained only 4 seats in the country's senate, the same amount as political parties such as the Fusion des Sociaux-Démocrates Haïtienne (FUSION) and the Organisation du Peuple en Lutte (OPL). By comparison, the Lespwa party of Haitian President René Préval won 11 seats. In Haiti's lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, Fanmi Lavalas failed to win a single seat in 6 of the country's 10 departments, while Lespwa won seats in all but two. and Fusion won seats in six departments. In the Chamber, Lespwa garnered a total of of 19 seats, the Alliance Démocratique (Alyans) took 13 seats and the OPL 10 seats. Fanmi Lavalas won only 6 seats.

I asked Mr. Seaton where on earth he and Mr. Weisbrot get their history from to thus call Fanmi Lavalas the country's most popular political party and was met with a curt dismissal, as if somehow facts are not important when writing about a country like Haiti.

So much for freedom of debate in the pages of the Guardian, alas. And so much for the paper's discussion of Haiti veering very far from the rigid ideological line to which Mr. Seaton appears to hew.

Because Haiti is a poor country with few among its number able to write in English in papers such as the Guardian, people who are appallingly ignorant of it, its history and its people are allowed to inveigh in a way that a Haitian would never be allowed to about, say, the United States or the UK. To some of us who have spent a great deal of time there, this is really disgraceful. If facts are indeed “sacred,” then the Guardian owes Haiti's people, who struggle for the necessities of survival, better than they are giving them at present. At least some sort of diversity of views is in order, I think.

I would advise the paper to try digging up an actual Haitian to write about Haiti sometime. It may seem like a radical move, but in a country that boasts perhaps the most impressive intellectual and literary tradition in the Caribbean, I can recommend quite a few.