Great HSG News Round-up

Haiti Support Group News Round Up

21 March 2013

LEGAL/IMPUNITY/HUMAN RIGHTS

The 'Baby Doc' Duvalier case continues to be heard, albeit in his absence as he continues to claim ill health for a good roundup with background, read this piece in Other Worlds. the most significant feature is that victims are being heard in court for the first time, a huge step forward in bringing the ex-dictator to trial for crimes against humanity. The UN's independent expert on Human Rights in Haiti also added his voice to the call for the trial to go ahead, although Truth-Out points out that for justice to really be served, Duvalier should not be alone in the dock.

The UN, however, does not have much of a moral high ground to stand on after its disgraceful refusal to afford justice to the victims of the cholera epidemic it has inflicted on Haiti, as pointed out by former Prime Minister of Jamaica, PJ Patterson, whose comments are in stark contrast to the deafening wall of silence on the issue from the Haitian administration.
While the UN has kicked the issue of dealing with cholera into the long grass with an unfunded 10-year $2.2billion project, the epidemic is taking off again and a scandalous lack of resources for treatment means many more unnecessary deaths, as explained in this MSF report and this excellent piece in The Nation.

Illegal, often violent, forced evictions of IDP camp dwellers continue, with a new twist that those who dare to speak up are now facing arrest for their temerity.

Meanwhile, the continued delays in forming a constitutionally valid electoral council allow the Haitian government carry on with unelected agents of the President in charge of local authorities and causing a crisis of democracy, which, along with deteriorating rule of law, is even drawing condemnation from the UN security council, which has hitherto been supportive of the Martelly/Lamothe administration. The US embassy, meanwhile, has not been able to resist the temptation of yet again throwing its weight around in the electoral affairs of a sovereign nation.

OTHER

In more depressing news, the UNDP 2012 Human Development Index report shows that Haiti dropped three places in the index compared to the previous year, from 158th to 161 (out of 186). Even the UK's Daily Mail has been moved to publish a lengthy article drawing attention to the lack of discernible improvements, which may be in part explained by the workings of aid policies, which once again fall under the spotlight, in particular those of Canada and the USA. 

Forbes magazine carried an interesting piece on a potential alternative sustainable development project for Haiti, so it is all the more of a shame that the 'international community' and donors continue to focus on the assembly/sweatshop model, the prime example being the 'Caracol Free Trade Zone', the impact of which is analysed by the excellent Grassroots Watch/Ayiti Kale Je.

The news is not all depressing, as Haitian grassroots peasant's associations continue to resist, seeing themselves as part of a broader movement across Latin America and the developing world, drawing not a little inspiration from the late Hugo Chavez, whose death has wide-ranging implications for Haiti, not least because the PetroCaribe deal represented a major source of funds for the Haitian government.

In another piece of all too rare good news, the tireless work of organisations such as KOFAVIV and the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) has led to a tightening of the laws on sexual violence, although much hard work still needs to be done to translate this into practice.

For Earth Day

There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and dessecrated places.

The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.

-- Wendell Berry

After the Earthquake, but Before the Flood

By Ben Fountain
Originally published here, in the Wall Street Journal

I arrived in Port-au-Prince last December to find my friends coughing, sniffling, hacking and struggling for breath amid the orange smog that hung over the city like a cloud of Cheetos dust. Soon Haiti would mark the second anniversary of the earthquake, and I was back to do more of what I usually do there: try to figure out why things are the way they are.

"N'ap boukiné dlo," my friend Faubert said when he picked me up at the airport. We're grilling water. In other words, amid the matrix of Haiti's macro-catastrophes, your own daily striving often seemed futile.

Faubert took me up the hill to the house of my friend Gary, an expat American who had married a Haitian woman 20 years before. The smog didn't bother Gary, his theory being that a two-packs-a-day habit had immunized him against airborne crud. Mornings we'd sit out on what was left of his small patio, drinking coffee and watching the bucket brigades in the ravine below, hauling away the rubble one pail at a time. "They're probably making about 10 bucks a day," he said of the laborers. Not starvation wages; not quite.

For regular folks it seemed hand-to-mouth as usual, but soon I became aware of something new stirring: a tidal wave of foreign capital was bearing down on Haiti's shores. The TV news was full of announcements for new beach resorts, industrial parks, luxury hotels for visiting businessmen. The song "Billionaire" by Travie McCoy was getting heavy play ("I wanna be a billionaire so [expletive] bad/Buy all of the things I never had…"). A glossy lifestyle magazine had recently launched, its sexy ads and features aimed squarely at the local One Percent.

Meanwhile, there was the problem of the 600,000 people—or was it 700,000?—still living in tents. Authorities had recently cut services to the camps in hopes that people would move out. One day at the sprawling camp across from the National Palace, a neatly dressed man with piercing hazel eyes grabbed my hand. He had something urgent to tell me, urgent! Something about the camps and Ogoun, voodoo god of iron, fire and war. Did I know? Had I heard? I listened as politely as I could while wriggling free, but not before he leaned close and vigorously rubbed his head against mine.

"I think it was voodoo," said my friend the ophthalmologist. "I think he was trying to put Ogoun in your head." Disappointingly, I didn't feel any different. The ophthalmologist and his family were still living in tents, although they did, thanks to extension cords running from their half-destroyed house, have electricity now. These days his practice consisted largely of street clinics, where he charged about $2.20 for a diagnosis.

He was skeptical about all the foreign investment. "A few people will make millions," he predicted. "Everyone else, maybe their income will go from $500 a year to $800, but their misery will increase from being surrounded by all this wealth they can never have."

 I went up into the mountains, to the farm of a beautiful woman whose work with native plants and sustainable methods showed the kind of decent life that was possible. At a gallery opening in Jacmel I met an artist who'd spent the '60s tending bar at jazz clubs in New York. He'd seen all the greats, and a lot of them—Blakey, Mingus, Roach—had made the pilgrimage to Haiti, whose music has some of the world's most complex rhythms. Back in Port-au-Prince, Gary and I resumed our morning sessions on his broken patio. The sounds of the city roiled around us. Crowing roosters, barking dogs, the scrape of shovels and saws, music blaring, traffic. We watched the bucket brigades, drank coffee and talked about our kids. Shortly after the quake Gary had sent his son and daughter to live with family in the U.S. He could barely say their names without tearing up.

One night I sat on the patio contemplating the honeycomb of cinder block houses that filled the ravine. The power went out, and a collective groan rose up. Pinpricks of flashlights appeared, then someone started a fire on an open patch of ground. By the time power was restored, a roaring bonfire was going.

Word came that lots of men in dark suits had taken up residence at the fancy Karibe Hotel. Soon the other shoe dropped: Oprah! Her visit was part of a celebrity invasion—Louis Farrakhan, Ben Stiller, one of the Kardashians. Oprah did a tour of Sean Penn's refugee camp. An evening reception feting the Ghetto Biennale artists coincided with Mr. Farrakhan's visit to a nearby mosque, creating a traffic jam that paralyzed downtown for hours.

I left one morning at 6 o'clock. Gary and I waited on his patio for my ride. Nearby, someone was hammering a piece of metal with maniacal industriousness. Gary laughed. "It doesn't matter what time it is," he said. "Wherever you are in Haiti, there's always some guy hammering on something."


Somehow Ben Fountain always manages to capture what it is about Haiti. Ben, who we met shortly after the earthquake through our neighbor Gary, has become a dear friend. His book of short stories, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, is a favorite and his next book, Billy's Long Halftime Walk, will be published in May. 

Two Years after the Earthquake in Haiti, “Housing Is Our Battle”

On the second anniversary of the Haiti earthquake, a protestor's sign reads, "If there is land for factories, there should be land for housing." [Photo by Ben]

By Alexis Erkert

January 19, 2012

Remember, you are marching today for those who couldn’t be here,
To say to them, “We haven’t forgotten. We’ll never forget.”
And to say to those that are still here,
We will take a stand for the rebuilding of Haiti.
                - Right to Housing Collective, January 12, 2012

On the morning of January 12, 2012, a group of women, children and men wound their way through the city wearing white, the Haitian color for mourning. Part memorial, they deposited wreaths of flowers on sites that had become mass graves during the 2010 earthquake, and part protest, they carried a banner that read “Two years later: Enough is enough.” They alternated between singing a funeral dirge and chanting, “We need houses to live in!”

Haitian social movements have reclaimed douze janvye, January 12, as a symbol of moving forward. Two years later, 520,000[i] continue to live in appalling conditions in displacement camps. And so, on January 11 and 12, thousands of Haitians – peasant farmers, activists, and displacement camp residents – took to the streets to denounce the situation in tent camps and the forced evictions of residents, and to call on the Haitian government to undertake land reform, provide public housing, and protect women's rights.

Although political and social divisions have long fissured Haitian movements, organizations from across historic divides are demanding many of the same things. One clear, common emphasis is the immediate need for land and housing for the displaced.

Excerpts from declarations and speeches on or around January 12, all with a focus on the right to housing, follow.

From a joint press conference of the International Lawyers’ Office (BAI) and residents of Camp Mariani, denouncing the threat of illegal forced eviction by the landowner in complicity with the local government:

We raise our voices to denounce with all of our might, before the national and international community, the threat of forced eviction, and arbitrary and illegal acts of violence being carried out against us by the major. We can’t take the pressure anymore. We ask all the institutions involved (the president, the government, the mayor, NGOs assisting displaced people, human rights organizations, etc.) to press, press our case, to take this issue into consideration so that the government and mayor sign a moratorium to block the aggression against people living in this camp, to plan what should be done with regards to displaced people, to respect the rights that we have as people. As Article 22 of this country’s constitution and Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declare, “All people have the right to housing.”

From a speech given by Marie Frantz Joachim of Haitian Women’s Solidarity (SOFA), on behalf of the National Coordination of Women’s Organizations (KONAP), composed of a wide variety of feminist organizations, during the January 12, 2012 memorial march:

Out of respect for the battle our ancestors carried out, we too undertake the struggle to force our leaders to take responsibility for… the people living under tents. The housing problem is a structural problem and demands a structural response. Displaced Haitians cannot continue to live in the chicken cages that are being constructed for them. Haitians should be living in dignity…  And so we say, “This is our battle: the right for people to live in adequate housing.” And we ask that everyone in the social movement, all organizations, come together so that we can clearly, collectively, respond.

From the Eye-to-Eye Platform (Platfòm Je nan Je), a 12-member grouping that includes four of Haiti’s largest peasant associations, in a declaration to the Haitian Parliament following a march attended by thousands of protestors: 

The Eye-to-Eye Platform supports people from all four corners of the country by submitting the following demands and recommendations to the government:

• Remove people from under tents as quickly as possible; but that doesn’t mean to send them back to pre-existing slums or to the shantytowns created after the earthquake;
• The government must implement a disaster risk management plan to identify safe construction sites, with land for farming set apart from land for housing;
• The government must create and implement a housing policy, with urban planning and zoning; In this plan we must clearly see what needs to be done in both urban and rural areas; This plan needs to designate responsibility for land and housing to state institutions;
• Guarantee the security of displaced people, especially in the places to which they are being relocated…

From the report by the National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH), one of Haiti's most prominent human rights organizations: Advocacy for the Situation of January 10, 2010 Earthquake Victims:

Recommendations of RNDDH to the relevant institutions:

• Plan an effective re-location strategy with the participation of displaced people;
• Develop a public housing policy with the involvement of the Haitian government's own Public Enterprise for the Promotion of Social Housing (EPPLS);
• Strengthen state institutions necessary to effectively control the situation in camps and relocation sites;
• Insist that all actors involved in rebuilding the country adopt a human rights-based approach to everything that they do.

From a speech by Colette Lespinasse and Reyneld Sanon of the Right-to-Housing Collective, made up of 30-some Haitian organizations, grassroots groups and displacement camp associations.

We, organizations of survivors living in internally displaced persons [IDP] camps, as well as social and grassroots organizations, state:

• The government must define a land use policy for the country;
• The Parliament must draft and vote on a law to guarantee the right to housing;
• The government must look for and acquire land though expropriation [eminent domain] so that there is sufficient space to respond to the housing needs of the population;
• Women, children and the disabled, and the population in general must participate in decision-making regarding housing;
• All neighborhoods should be places where people can live in dignity and security

We resolve to remain mobilized in the struggle to change our society and our government. We resolve to regain the sovereignty of our country to construct a society in which we can enjoy guaranteed access to housing and all our fundamental rights.

From a presentation on housing in Camp Carradeux on January 12, 2012 by Olrich Jean Pierre of Noise Travels, News Spreads (Bri Kouri Nouvèl Gaye), an alternative media group doing advocacy and public education:

When we struggle for housing, we’re not just asking for houses. There are other services that should accompany housing. A house in an area where potable water isn’t available does not respect the right to housing. People need access to healthcare.  The battle for housing is not simply a battle for 4 square meters to live in. It’s a battle for public schools to educate our children so that they don’t have to go work in factories. It’s a battle to have access to healthcare when we’re sick.

We’re not just mobilizing to denounce the situation. No, the struggle before us is the struggle to pressure the government, to ask them, “Where are the houses that you’ve prepared for us?” And then to ask if there are toilets inside of them. Because we are a people with dignity. And with rights that need to be respected.

---

[i] HAITI Emergency Shelter and Camp Coordination Camp Management Cluster, Displacement Tracking Matrix V2.0 Update, November 30, 2011.

See Other Worlds’ recent article, Home: From Displacement Camps to Community in Haiti, for more detail on the right-to-housing movement in Haiti and how Haitian organizations are responding with advocacy and alternatives.

Copyleft Other Worlds. You may reprint this article in whole or in part.  Please credit any text or original research you use to Alexis Erkert and Other Worlds.

Anniversary Blues | By Edwidge Danticat

An excerpt from Edwidge Danticat's essay in the February 2012 issue of The Progressive

Anniversaries hurt. They brutalize the body. They pummel the spirit. Especially the anniversary of a catastrophe, where we are remembering the death not just of one or two people, but hundreds of thousands: 300,000 to be precise. Just when we thought our pain had subsided, it emerges again, it expands from a daily ache, which we hoped would one day disappear, to the throbbing agony we experienced at the moment that it seemed the world ended.

Two years ago in Haiti, the Earth opened, buildings collapsed, and people died. Armies descended, displaying military might worthy of a war zone. A flock of nongovernmental agencies came, too, growing from an estimated 10,000 to 16,000, making Haiti host to more nongovernmental organizations per capita than almost any other country in the world. Money was pledged by the world’s powers, great and small, $9.9 billion worth of promises, with less than half of that actually delivered.

Two years ago, I watched all this unfold from my home in Miami, mostly with an infant in my arms. Three weeks later, when I was finally able to travel to Haiti, my chest nearly exploded in spite of the pumping and bottling one must do when away from a nursing baby. During that first trip, seeing so many people—including friends and family members—sleeping on the streets, in the shadows of shattered houses, cramped next to each other in public places in makeshift tents, I dreaded the first rain.

Since then lots and lots of rain has fallen. Even a hurricane has blown through.

Two years worth of rain and sun has thinned out the tents. Wherever they could, people abandoned the pretense of temporary shelter and converted cloth and tarp to tin and wood, even where the land was not theirs. Some have been forcibly evicted. Gunmen have come in at night—some sent by private landowners, others by the state.

You will hear that the number of the displaced has been reduced in half since the earthquake, that it has shrunk from 1.5 million to 600,000, but you will not hear where the displaced have gone.

In a devastated city of mostly renters, where unemployment is at nearly 60 percent, the displaced have been accused of purposefully squatting in squalor, living in open spaces where the heat dehydrates babies, and women and girls are raped, supposedly just to catch the attention of nongovernmental organizations. As if they had mansions that they were neglecting, hidden food and water that was going to waste, schools for their children that they were hoping to trade up for a better one, as if they had anything but their dignity left intact.

Sometimes it can feel as though none of us is doing enough. That feeling, especially among those of us children of Haiti who are living in the diaspora, is the opposite of donor fatigue. It is sometimes hope and sometimes guilt. Hundreds of friends and family members rely on us. We finance homes, clinics, schools, weddings, and funerals, but there is always more to do for, and with, people who are eager to get a foothold themselves and do so proudly every day.

On this anniversary, while remembering the dead and celebrating those still living, I also want to recognize more than ever the marginalized members of Haitian society—people like my grandparents and their grandparents, poor, urban and rural, self-reliant and proud men and women who are the backbone of Haiti. Without their full inclusion and participation in the reconstruction of their country, Haiti will never fully succeed.

Originally published here.

2-Year Link Round Up

Memories are powerful. Today I opened a random Haiti article that popped up on my twitter feed and upon reading the first line ("Two years ago this Thursday, at least 150,000 people died one evening in Haiti"), promptly dissolved into tears.

Probably, Ben and I should have escaped to Kenscoff or the beach this week to ignore the anniversary buzz and nurture ourselves. Instead, I am torturing myself by reading every 2-year anniversary article, editorial and reflection that crosses my desk [meaning my lap, really] via google, twitter, facebook, email and the local newspaper. Believe me, there are a lot. Haiti-philes are usually prolific in their research and analysis; aid groups have a lot of explaining and defending to do; and the mainstream media is capitalizing on the anniversary as a time when more people are paying attention.  

A random assortment of things that I've read have stood out to me. 

For reality (& sobering statistics):
Haiti 2 years later: Half a million still in camps (Trenton Daniel, AP)  

Haiti: Seven Places Where the Earthquake Money Did and Did Not Go (Ramanauskas and Quigley)

Did you drink Soup? Strains on Solidarity in Haiti (Mark Schuller, Huffpost)

For overall depth of coverage: 
Haiti Experiences Progress, exasperation 2 years after quake (Jacqueline Charles, Miami Herald)

For passion:
Two Years Later, Where is the Outrage? (Let Haiti Live, Melinda Miles)

For contrast
Les Nanti's d'Haiti (Paolo Woods' photographs of Haitian elite in Le Monde)

For thought: 
A Stubborn Savior: Is Bill Clinton Haiti's Hope for Salvation? (Marc Hujer, Der Spiegel)   

For laughs:
It's Haiti Week over at the Cartoon Movement, a great collaborative of political cartoonists from around the world. Today's cartoon, Haiti: Paradigm Shift, was especially excellent.

An awkward translation from English into... English of the article I co-authored last week on grassroots housing alternatives:
http://world-disaster-news.com/new/haiti-earthquake/beverly-bell-home-from-displacement-camps-to-community-in-haiti

And for a truly bright spot in a week of mostly tragic, condemning news coverage:
Haiti Can be Rich Again (Laurent Dubois and Deborah Jenson, NYT op ed)

Natural Medecine

I was way out in the countryside a few days ago and I met this doktè fèy, leaf doctor. I bought a small bottle of her medicine after this amazing sales pitch: "It's cold medicine. It works great on children. It's also good for any type of pain you have. The ingredients are sugar cane liquor, honey, and all of the leaves that make good pain killers." I took a capful and it numbed me for the following few hours I spent bouncing down dirt roads. I just tasted it again to remember what it tastes like and it made me not want to type anymore...

Flight

by Edwige Danticat
The New Yorker 9.11.2011

My family in Haiti has been removing rubble from a school that was shattered during the earthquake of January 12, 2010. In the process, they have found bones, human bones. Because they are not scientists or DNA experts, it is impossible for them to trace the bones back to the bodies to which they once belonged: active, lively people who spoke and laughed and danced and loved.

Whose bones are these? they wonder. Do they belong to the bright student who was always first in her class, to a parent with whom a teacher had an appointment? Are they the teacher’s bones?

Listening in on phone conversations about the bones, I think of fossils dug up thousands and even millions of years after death. There is Lucy, the three-million-year-old Ethiopian; Otzi, the five-thousand-year-old Ice Man; and the casts of entire families buried beneath Pompeii.

It is the burden of the survivors and the curious to decipher final moments, whether they occurred a year, ten years, or a thousand years ago. Do they speak to the reality of a particular time, to the nature of death itself, or to an individual’s final instincts during his or her last moments on earth? In cases where we have a personal connection, we want to know whether our loved ones suffered. Did they have any regrets about things left undone, words unsaid? After two years, after ten years, there are still people around to look back and to remember. However, after a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand years, the bones and images will have to speak for themselves.

The image that lingers most in my mind from September 11, 2001, is that of human beings attempting to fly—men and women catapulted from or fleeing a volcano-like inferno of fuel, fire, heat, and smoke, then cutting across a clear blue sky, down toward the ground. Some were alone. Some were in pairs. Some tried to make parachutes of ordinary things—curtains, clothes. One woman held on to her purse, perhaps thinking that she might need it on the very slight chance that she landed safely on the ground.

Televised tragedies make death—that most private of departures—public, national, global. No deaths were more public on September 11, 2001, than those of the so-called “jumpers,” a word that many have rightfully called a misnomer, because these were certainly not the deaths these people would have chosen for themselves.

We are often told that we must not compare tragedies, but how can we not when we experience them in the same body and with the same mind? Past horrors give us a language with which to define new ones. Worldwide terrors become personalized.

My father, for example, who woke me from a deep sleep in another part of New York, to tell me that the World Trade Center had been destroyed, died four years later, of pulmonary fibrosis—a disease that also struck many 9/11 first responders. He had spent part of that day in downtown Brooklyn, picking up people fleeing Manhattan and chauffeuring them home. That eerie coincidence is one more thing that links September 11th to all the other horrors that my father endured in his life, including a brutal dictatorship.

My father was extremely critical of the television stations that showed the so-called jumpers. Yes, the images were shocking and deeply unsettling, but they also rendered undeniable the true horror of that day, even though, like bones, they mostly tell one story, the final one. The job of reconstructing lives belongs to the living, the memory keepers, which is what all of us became that day, willing or unwilling witnesses, unable to look away.

A few days after September 11th, when I ventured near the still smoky ashes of the World Trade Center, I kept thinking about a clear blue sky that had rained lives. I got on a bus filled with other ordinary New Yorkers whose eyes were still teary and red, and whose mouths and noses were covered with dust masks. Besides the shared sensation of having been shattered, though, there was also a feeling of community: having gone through this with the city, wherever in the world you had been born you were now a lifelong New Yorker. Those of us who were from countries that have always been, in their own ways, terrorized could now be counsellors to our previously sheltered friends, but only barely. For, no matter how much we immerse ourselves in communal grieving, we all carry within ourselves our own private memorials of loss and an increasing fear of future ones.

Watching any disaster, from near or far, makes us aware that memorials are not only places but also experiences. Acts of remembrance can surface out of daily rituals, even interrupted ones. A place setting left unused at a dinner table. An oversized shoe into which we slip a foot. A prayer whispered over unclaimable bones.

Though I occasionally suffer from a fear of flying, during the past ten years getting on an airplane has become for me an act of remembrance. Each necessary surrender to every new, sometimes frustrating security measure is an acknowledgment that I, too, am attempting to glide on wind currents on borrowed wings while also hoping—praying—to land safely on the ground.

Original at //www.newyorker.com/talk/2011/09/12/110912ta_talk_danticat#ixzz1XhHQpW8f

On Assignment

  

I spent last Monday and Tuesday shooting the beautiful empty beaches in the Southwest of the Dominican Republic.

My flight from Charlotte to Miami - incidentally, on the airline that paid me to take this trip - was delayed by 45 minutes because the luggage wasn't calculated when they loaded the plane. They had to re-calculate it while the pilot made a joke about his trigonometry being rusty. Because of the delay I made it to the gate in Miami as my plane was boarding, but then something happened to the engine next to me as we sped up to take off - there was loud bang and then the airplane stopped on the runway. The pilot said maybe a compressor blew out (whatever that means) but that we would be fine and not to worry. After ten minutes, he got back on the intercom to say that they had checked the book and we would be fine - it was just a problem with the autopilot and us accelerating too quickly - so they turned the plane around and took off successfully. The engine still sounded really strange and I've never been so sure that my flight would crash into the ocean.

I did get to the DR in one piece, rented a car, drove six hours to the Pedernales region, took a couple pictures, slept in my car next to a big lagoon in a national park and then took more pictures the next day of a bunch of different beaches, all hours apart. I filed my pictures by 3 PM and drove 6 hours back to Santo Domingo in time to have a beer at a gas station where I slept in my car again. I returned the car at 6am Wednesday morning, motorcycle-taxied, bussed and motorcycle-taxied again to the bus station. I bought my ticket to Port-au-Prince right before the bus boarded. 7 hours later, I arrived home to my beautiful wife, an indian meal and an avocado tree full of avacados.

  

I was hungry and in a hurry, so I bought this frozen pizza at a supermarket in Santo Domingo. At a military checkpoint, a fat soldier asked me for some and instantly produced a huge kitchen knife to cut himself a slice.  

 

 

Housing Rights... or Forced Evictions?

So last week wasn't all birthday parties. On Monday the 23rd, the mayor of Delmas (a municipality amalgamated with Port-au-Prince) sent his security forces, BRICOR - trained by a sketchy American security company - and national police officers to destroy a displaced people's camp in Carrefour de l'Aeroport, or Kafou Ayopo, where people have been living in tents and makeshift shelters since the earthquake. More than 100 families were threatened, some residents beaten or arrested, and evicted from the public plaza. 

Ben got there about 2 hours after they smashed the tents but the BRICOR were still there pulling stuff into the street so that a bulldozer could scrape it into a dump truck. He was told by an officer that they don't want any abri proviswa (temporary shelters) in the Delmas area because they needed to clean up the streets for tourists. While Ben was there, about 100 people were trying to salvage their belongings.

One woman that he spoke to, 52-yr old Yvonne Andre told him, "I've been here since the earthquake. We don't have anywhere to go - if we had homes, we wouldn't be here." It infuriates me that a popular narrative regarding Haiti's IDP (Internally Displaced Peoples) camps is that people want to live in them. Want to live under a tarp, in rainy season, in unsanitary conditions, with no privacy, and almost a year after food aid has ceased being distributed. A newspaper ad just months after the earthquake featured a picture of a tent camp with "No to squatters and anarchists!" stamped across the photo. Can you imagine?

Evictions continued throughout the week, increasing in intensity, and some Haitian human rights activist friends trying to hold a press conference in a camp were victims of attempted assault by police and BRICOR armed with machetes and shovels. They were protected by the camp residents.

Pressure from concerted national and international efforts have resulted in a halt in evictions, for now. Nigel Fisher, Haiti's UN humanitarian coordinator, sent a letter to the Haitian president, Haitian grassroots groups and activists mobilized, several Congressmen and women issued a statement and many concerned individuals reacted (thank you if you responded to alerts on facebook asking you to call your representative or to call or write the Haitian embassy).

You can read more about what happened on CommonDreams.org, and on Bea's blog, or see more photos taken by Bri Kouri Nouvel Gaye.

In stark contrast, we had the privilege the week before of attending a 3-day forum on housing rights, organized by FRAAKA (Fòs Refleksyon ak Aksyon sou Koze Kay). Since she has already written about the forum so eloquently, I'll quote Other Worlds' Beverly Bell:

"Two days before the Delmas camp demolitions began, several hundred displaced people rallied against evictions in Camp Karade. The event was part of the International Forum on the Housing Crisis, held May 19 -21 and attended by hundreds. More than 40 grassroots and Haitian non-governmental organizations from throughout the capital region and five other towns, as well as 35 displacement camp committees, were represented. In the first broad-based gathering led by impacted people since last year’s disaster, Haitians strategized with each other and with housing activists from elsewhere in the Americas about how to win their guaranteed right to housing.

Sanon Reyneld from FRAKKA, the main organizing group of the forum, said in the opening address, “The right to housing is a debt that the government has toward the poor for the responsibility it never took on housing that caused so many people to die.” The toll from the earthquake, an estimated 225,000 to 300,000, was in large part this high because so many inferior quality houses collapsed.

The final declaration of the forum read in part, "We ask: [1] for the authorities to stop the violence that is accompanying evictions…; [2] for the authorities to arrest and bring to justice all those engaged in violence against those living in camps; [and 3] for them to take all measures to help people find permanent housing so they can relocate out of camps." "

The last day of the forum, a rally in Caradeux.

According to Bell, "Displaced persons are protected by both Haitian and international law. Article 22 of the 1987 Haitian constitution guarantees “decent housing” for everyone. Article 25 of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees every individual a “standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including… housing.” Many sections of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs declare protection from displacement, notably for victims of disasters. In a ruling last November, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights directed the Haitian government to stop evicting IDPs unless it provided them safe alternative shelter." Meanwhile, the International Organization for Migration reported in April that nearly 170,000 displaced people living in camps are facing the threat of imminent eviction.

FRAKKA and other grassroots organizations trying to deal with the housing crisis have advocacy activities planned for the coming weeks to raise general awareness and put pressure on the government and NGOs to take these issues (and the basic rights of displaced people) more seriously.

The Road (now) More Traveled

The Inter-American Development Bank is funding this road project in the south of Haiti, aiming to cut travel time and transportation costs, and to improve living conditions in the southern provinces. This 50-mile stretch of road connects Les Cayes and Jeremie and several villages in between. A Brazilian company, OAS, is doing the construction. The road is far from complete, but is already transforming commerce and daily life in the area. Travel time has been cut in half; fewer trucks are breaking down, so less food is spoiled; and farmers are planting more crops in anticipation of more dependable farm-to-market transportation.

All of this is great, but in reality the project's impact is a little more complex. I was hoping to find a solid development project to photograph that had a clear cut, positive impact (and perhaps cure some of my own disillusionment about development work). Instead, I came across locals displaced by the road who have yet to be reimbursed for their houses and land by the government. OAS is responsible for reimbursing those whose land and houses are unintentionally damaged by the construction and they have; but the government hasn't come through on their part of the deal. The road also improves transportation into the most forested part of the country, and the forests will probably diminish with increased access to the charcoal market in Port-Au-Prince. One of the heavy equipment operators told me he thought that the way the road was being built was terrible and it would wash away quickly.

Time will tell what this road does for the region. Most of the folks I talked to were really excited about the improved road, but I'm not sure I've found my perfect project yet.

-posted by Ben

Istwa m melanje ak rèv mwen yo/My history, mixed with my dreams

Reposted with permission from http://storiesfromhaiti.wordpress.com/ Check out the site for more writings from the Konbit des Jeunes Penseurs (Gathering of Young Thinkers) or follow them on Facebook for updates. Scroll down for English translation.

Mwen se Ayiti. Depi lontan mwen ekziste, mwen te toujou gen gwo solèy ki t’ap klere m men sa pat enpeche m rete fre.

Mwen te gen pye k’ap pile m, ki vle di mwen te abite pa yon bèl ras yon nasyon po wouj.

Christophe Colomb ak solda li yo te vin dekouvri m kòm yon dezyèm paradi.

Depi lè sa yo wè ke lanati mwen bèl yo wè bèl pye bwa, bèl plaj, yo tonbe de pale yo banm pot non hispanyola; ki vle di petit espay.

Epoutan se blofe yo t’ap blofe m, yo te vle gaspiye m epi piye m.

Aprè kèlke mwa yo retounen debake pa pil pa pakèt ak yon bann gwo bato pou yo ale ak sa manman yo ak papa yo te kite pou yo

Yo te mete bèl pitit mwen yo nan esklavaj nan travay fòse. Yo fini pa mouri pase yo pat abitye, se kouche yo te konn kouche tout la senti jounen epi manje vyann boukannen.

La frans tande gen yon ti île, yon ti peyi li batay ak espanyol jiskaske yo twouve yo antant.

Yo siyen yon trete pou yo ka maltrete m.

Lè pitit mwen yo fin mouri (endyen yo) yo debake ale achte nèg an Afrik yo rantre vini ak yo sou yon gwo bato ki rele Negriye.

Nèg sa yo te vrèman imilye, maltrete, yo bay yo non esklav, ki se yon byen mèb, ki gen yon mèt. Esklav sa yo travay du lever au coucher du soleil, yo menm konn touye yo bay bèt manje.

Tout byen m ak ekonomi mwen te repose sou do esklav sa yo nan travay nan jaden kann, nan sikreri, nan boulanjeri, kòm esklav a talan, esklav domestik.

Se yon delivrans lè dwa de lòm te deklare tout moun fèt pou viv lib pa dwe gen kesyon esklav ak mèt.

Sa pot enpeche yo kontinye.

Sou abitasyon breda te gen yon ti nonm ki te rele Toussaint li lite jouk li kapab pou wè sil te ka delivre nèg sa yo men elas lit la te mal pase olye de dyalòg se te zam li te dwe pran.

Mwen kwe dyalòg tap pi bon pou mwen paske ti rès richès ki rete yo tap ret pou pititi mwen.

Dessalines repran lit la pou pi rèd ak yon sistèm koupe tèt, boule kay, aprè seremoni nan Bwa Kayiman anpil kay boule, anpil kout zam tire.

18 novanm 1803 nan batay Ravin Akoulèv anpil blan franse tonbe, anpil richès gaspiye.

An 1804, mwen gen yon peyi. Yon peyi ki plonje nan kriz ekonomik, kriz politik, kriz sosyal.

Kriz politik ak sosyal la fè anpil san koule. An 1805 Dessalines te touye ti rès franse sou pretèks yo se espyon ansyen metwopòl la.

E poutan yo pral touye nonm an 1806 poutèt tè li te vin ak yon sistèm gran pwopriyete tèrèn.

E poutan ti peyizan ki te libere m yo t’ap reklame ti lo tè, ti tè pa mòso misye te kont koripsyon administrativ li te sezi tout tè san papye.

Nou konnen nèg milat yo tap mande tè papa yo te kite pou yo, milat sa yo te mete ak ti peyizan yo.

Yo te rive touye Dessalines 17 oktòb 1806. Aprè sa te vin gen batay de Sibè mwen te vin gen 2 prezidan yon nan lwès ak sid, lòt la nan nò. Lè nèg sa yo fin mouri, Boyer pran la relèv, li peye dèt mwen yo li reyini île la ki te divize an 2 pati kanpay de lès e kanpay lwès.

Si nou wè mwen rakonte nou tray ak tribilasyon mwen, se paske mwen bezwen chanjman.

Chanjman sou tout pwen ke se swa politik, ekonomik, sosyal. Fòk nou respekte konstitisyon mwen an.

Ki vle di:

1. Fòk eleksyon onèt e kredib, òganize chak fwa yon gouvènman fin pran manda li.
2. Fòk nou sispann sistèm gwo pòch sa kraze kès leta = ogmante plis soufrans.
3. Fòk nou kraze sistèm chomaj, chomaj sa ki lage pèp la nan zak malonèt tankou nan fè manifestasyon pou yo ka dechouke.
4. Fòk gen inivèsite ak lise pou jèn yo mwen ka edike.
5. Fòk gen yon rekonsilasyon nasyonal pou tout moun egal e fòk ekzile nou rantre lakay pou kontinye ede m sitou nan kesyon rekonstriksyon m.

Si nou fè sa map vin pi bèl, mwen p’ap debuloze, m’ap ka konbat siklòn ak tranblemanditè.

Gen de bagay ki pase devan je m ki pa fè byen, tankou lè yon ap touye lòt oubyen lè siklòn ap fin pote pitit mwen na lanmè sa fè m mal anpil.

Mwen vle sot nan eta mwen ye ya men sa depan de nou.

Nan tèt ansanm, nan viv tankou frè ak sè, nan konn soufrans youn ak lòt n’ap rive rann mwen bèl.

Lè sa tout lòt nasyon ap vle frekante m ansi nou menm tou être ayitien veut dire avoir un drapeau.

Yon drapo ki senbolize lape, dyalòg rekonsilasyon, libète, egalite, ak fratènite.

I am Haiti. Long have I existed, and I have always been shone upon by the bright sun, but it never hindered me from staying cool.

Long ago, my land was trodden by many feet, which is to say that I was inhabited by a beautiful red-skinned race.

Christopher Columbus and his soldiers discovered me and found that, next to heaven, I was the closest thing to paradise.

From that moment they saw my beautiful nature, my beautiful trees and beautiful beaches, they christened me Hispaniola, which means Little Spain.

And yet it was nothing more than trickery and lies — they wanted only to lay waste to me and plunder me.

After some months they returned, they came on and all, with everything their mothers and fathers had left them.

They enslaved my beautiful children, put them to forced work. And they all began to die, my children, because they weren’t used to that kind of work — they were used to lying around all the blessed day eating roasted meat in their paradise.

They signed a treaty so they could mistreat me.

When at last all my children, the Indians, had died, the foreigners left to go buy Africans. They returned with them on great ships known as Négriers.

These men and women were so humiliated, abused. They were calles slaves, which is like being an object, a piece of property with a master. These slaves worked from sunrise to sunset, and could even be slaughted and fed to the beasts.

All of my wealth and economy rested on the backs of these slaves, working in the sugar cane fields, in the sugar factories, making bread, as “slaves of talent,” as domestic slaves.

It was salvation when the Rights of Man were declared, saying that everyone should live free, that there would no longer be slaves and masters.

This was the beginning of the end of slavery in Haiti.

On Breda’s plantation there lived a man named Toussaint. He fought as hard as he was able to deliver his countrymen from slavery, but alas, the struggle was greater than his ability to create dialogue, and in the end he had to take up arms instead.

I think that dialogue would have been better for me than armed struggled, because what remained of my riches would have been better preserved for my children.

Dessalines, again, took up the struggle for a better system. He beheaded, burned houses. After the ceremony at Bois Caiman, many homes were burned; many shots were fired.

On November 18, 1803, at the battle of Ravine-à-Couleuvres, many French fell, and many of my riches were destroyed.

In 1804, I was born a country. A country plunged into economic crises, political crises, social crises.

The political and social crises made a lot of blood flow. In 1805, Dessalines killed what remained of the French on the pretext that they were spies of the former métropole.

However, he too would be killed, in 1806, because of his land reform policies.
And nonetheless, the small peasants who had liberated me claimed my land as their own, and Dessalines was against administrative corruption and seized all the ownerless land to be controlled by the state.

We knew the mulatres would demand the land their fathers had left for them, and those mulatres joined forces with the small peasants.

They killed Dessalines on October 17, 1806. After that, there was the Battle of Sibert, and I had two presidents, one in the west and the south, and one in the north. When they at last died, Boyer took advantage of this respite to pay my debts off and reunite the island that had been divided in two.

If you see that I am telling of my trials and tribulations, it’s because I yearn for change. Change in all realms, political, economic, and social. You must respect my constitution.

Which is to say:

1.  Elections must be honest and credible, organized every time a government has finished its mandate.
2. We must stop this system of politicians filling their pockets from state coffers; it only leads to more suffering.
3. We must break this system of unemployment. Unemployment leads people to commit dishonest acts, to protest in the streets, to engage in violent dechoukaj.
4. We must have universities and high schools so my young people can be educated.
5. We must have a national reconciliation so everyone can be equal, and the dyaspora should come home so they can help me, especially in this period of my reconstruction.

If we do all this, I will become more beautiful, I will not fall apart, I will be able to withstand hurricanes and earthquakes.

There are things that pass before me that hurt me — when people kill one another, or when hurricanes carry my children out to sea, this hurts me greatly.

I want to escape from this state I am in now, but that depends on you.

In putting your heads together, in living as brothers and sisters, in knowing one another’s suffering, you will make me more beautiful.

And when that happens, other countries will flock to me, your desires will be realized, and being Haitian will mean having a flag.

A flag which symbolizes peace, reconciliatory dialogue, liberty, equality, and brotherhood.

– Wescando DUVERT

Also heading back to Haiti...

My last post mentions deportations that will be resuming (again) to Haiti after a temporary review in February. There's been some great press on this issue (and of course, if you agree that current conditions in Haiti are such that deportations should remain suspended, please contact your policymakers to let them know):

• The Guardian: Stop these inhumane deportations to Haiti
• AP: Deportees from US struggle in quake-hit Haiti
• Uptown Radio: Deportations of Haitian Convicts Set to Resume  
•  MCC signed on to this letter as part of the Interfaith Immigration Coalition on Friday. 

Also heading back to Haiti... Yesterday the AP reported that Aristide's return was "imminent" (ie. before the second round of the elections, which will be on March 20th) and his lawyer told CNN as much today.

Time for Two

As you climb the road into the mountains above Petionville, packed-together houses and bumper-to-bumper traffic slowly gives way to the smell of pine trees, to wild impatiens and nasturtiums, mountain views and of course, stone walls and impenetrable gates guarding the fancy houses behind them.

I'm enjoying a 5-day weekend for Carnival. It was great to spend the day together on Saturday sleeping in, working in our garden, cooking and watching movies, but Ben and I still felt the need to get away (mostly from the eternal time-suck that is our email). We're seriously not used to spending as little time together as our busy schedules here allow. Even though we took a six-day road trip at the end of December, it felt like ages since we had intentional alone time, so Sunday morning we decided to head for the mountains.

We wanted to spend the night here. The first time we went, Ti Kay Kreyol charmed us with its gardens, Haitian art, bright Creole colors, and locally-produced menu. Unable to reach anyone by phone beforehand, we showed up on a holiday weekend to a locked gate. Since we weren't willing to turn around and head for home, we continued on to the Lodge in Furcy. I kid you not, we spent more last night than we have ever spent for a hotel room in our lives (wait for upcoming post on why we don't travel much in Haiti). The price might not seem unreasonable to many of you, but we tend to be more camping-for-free-under-bridges kind of folk.

We've only ever heard amazing things about the Lodge - its lush grounds, nearby hiking trails, great restaurant.... So, we figured we'd splurge a bit. Maybe we're hard to please (in fact, I know we are), but we weren't overly impressed with our overcooked dinner, staff that pretended not to speak Creole and having Jean-Claude Duvalier dining at a nearby table.

We spent the afternoon hiking around, albeit with a small crowd in tow trying to sell us everything from cut flowers to horseback rides. More than anywhere we've been in Haiti, we felt like the fact that we'd parked our motorcycle at the Lodge before we set off marked us as wealthy intruders, part of a social and economic elite that we're uncomfortable being associated with. The reception we received walking through the village, especially when we didn't purchase anything, was markedly hostile.

But - and maybe this is ultimately what made us uncomfortable - we can afford to spend a night at the Lodge. And did. We can afford to eat dinner there, in such close proximity to a former dictator. We went hiking on the steep mountain paths that surround the Lodge for fun, not out of necessity.

And to be fair, we loved getting a chance to go hiking. We loved seeing the stars come out from the Lodge's balcony as it got dark. At 6,000 feet, Furcy is cold and we loved being able to sleep under a heavy quilt. We loved falling asleep to the tinkling of those little frogs that sound like bells. Mostly, we loved having nothing to do but spend time together.

 There are no deer in Haiti, which may beg the question, Was this the last one?

Ben's Carnival Picks

"Carnival is dead. Long live Kanaval."

For all of its pumping music, beautiful dancing women, advertising, free t-shirts and fantastic paper mache artistry, Jacmel's Kanaval is intrinsically political.

The characters and costume partially betray their roots in medieval European carnival, but the Jacmellian masquerades are also a fusion of clandestine Vodou, ancestral memory, political satire and personal relevation. The lives of the indigenous Taino Indians, the slaves' revolt and more recently state corruption are all played out using drama and costume on Jacmel's streets... [Haitian culture] is a vibrant, living avatar for not only Haitian history, but for all our histories. - Leah Gordon

Smeared from head to toe with a vile concoction of cane syrup and powdered charcoal, they dart at the crowd, snarling like wild, rabid animals... They swing long hemp whips through the air in whistling arcs. Adorned with Beelzebub's horns, these demonic metaphors for the experience of slavery... are the [lanse kòd], the "rope-throwers" - Richard Fleming

These are the chaloska, "thick-lipped snaggletoothed personifications of dictatorship and torture," named after brutal military commander Charles Oscar, whose significance during kanaval changes each year according to popular perception of Haiti's political situation and its central players.

The form these characters will take each year; the emergence of new actors, and the messages they will spread might seem sublteties lost in the apparent chaos of the streets, but the political history of Haiti is always inscribed in its Carnivals... The masked theatre of Jacmel's kanaval is an annual opportunity to discuss the country's latest political skullduggery, its economic woes and environmental catastrophes, and the many military incursions it has suffered. - Fleming

Endyen, or Indians, represent the island's indigenous inhabitants, the Taino, exterminated by Spanish colonists at the beginning of this island's recorded history.

The Zel Mathurin (Wings of Mathurin), are winged devils that act out the battle between good and evil (pictured here with 3 paste, or pastors). They terrify children as caricatures of the demons that fight with the archangel St. Micheal (in blue).

Other revolving characters that make up the cast of Jacmel's kanaval are the lwa (vodou spirits), the ancestors, zombis, Yahweh (a savage beast that lives in the woods and gets whipped as he makes his way through the kanaval parade), trannies (traditionally to mock effeminate French colonial lords), prophets and saints, birds, animals and fantastical creatures of the imagination, traditional dancers, the comedic Jwif Eran (Wandering Jew), the members of a courtroom (judge, jury, prosecutor and defense and accused), the heroes of the Haitian revolution, caricatures and parodies of poverty, illness (this year, cholera), imperialism and current social issues, and last but not least... making their debut in 2011, heads advertising the local driving school:

 Death by cholera

 "Down with Violence"

 According to the artist, these masks juxtapose misery with peace

Foreign imperialism

There have been many times [2010 notwithstanding] that the future of Jacmel's Carnival has appeared unstable, but it continues to struggle and survive.... Carnival is dead, long live Kanaval. 

Kanaval is not dead. -Gordon

All italicized quotes in this post are from Leah Gordon's book of photography and oral history, Kanaval: Vodou, Politics and Revolution on the Streets of Haiti