HaitiAnalysis
News, analysis, and archives on the grassroots in Haiti.
Updated: 2 hours 42 min ago
Two Years After His Return, Aristide Finally Speaks Out
by Kim Ives (Haiti Liberte)
Former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide called for national unity to tackle the problem of hunger in Haiti and thanked the Haitian people for their massive show of solidarity the day before when thousands joined him in a slow procession through Port-au-Prince back his residence from making a court deposition on May 8. “Yesterday, was an ordinary day, but you made it into an extraordinary day, and I say thank you,” Aristide said on May 9 to about 20 journalists assembled in his home’s Spartan study, where he has spent most of the past two years since his return to Haiti from a seven year exile on Mar. 18, 2011. Since that day, when thousands also accompanied him home, it was the first time he has spoken publicly. In the course of his 40 minute talk, Aristide also thanked Haitians in Haiti’s rural provinces, its diaspora, the police force, his Lavalas Family party, and “all the other political parties.” Speaking directly to the Haitian people, he obliquely tweaked the government of President Michel Martelly, but refrained from any direct criticism or policy discussion. “I know you have a $1.50 problem,” he said referring to the illegal tax that the Martelly government levies on every money transfer Haitians make to folks back home. “I know you have a problem in the sending of money. I know you have problems in the question of telephone calls [where a 5 cent or 1 gourde tax is placed on every minute of international calls]... I’m not going to get into the problems. I’m not going to get into making criticisms.” Instead, he spoke about his university, his emotions after the earthquake, and his love for the Haitian people. “I want to say thank you for what you have taught me,” he said. “Yesterday I learned a lot. In the two years since I’ve returned, I’ve been learning at the school of the Haitian people.” He reported that his medical school began with 126 students, but that “this year it opened with 254 students, while there are 115 who are in their second year of medical school.” He also said that the University of the Aristide Foundation (UNIFA) now has a nursing school with 73 students and a developing computer school. “All the students this year have partial-scholarships,” he said. “When in a university a student pays 90,000 gourdes (US$2,118) for the year, with us in the first year they pay 30,000 gourdes (US$706), one third.” “We’d like to do more, but we don’t have the means,” he said. “Whatever little bit I can do for education, I do it.” To the consternation of many of his followers that he has not spoken out, he replied: “Nobody forced me not to speak. I don’t take orders. Like the Haitian people, I’m my own boss. I speak when I have to. Nobody can stop me from talking.” As for staying in his home, he said: “I didn’t leave with my body, but I left with my heart. My heart’s eyes sees far. My heart’s eyes see what is happening in the provinces and in Port-au-Prince.” He said his trip through Port-au-Prince had reminded him of all the suffering and damage after the earthquake and “yesterday I relived it.” “I know what it means for you who have not been able to escape the pain of goudougoudou,” he said, using Haitians’ onomatopoetic term for the seism. In typical form, he rattled off various statistics about the damage done by the earthquake. “I saw a people that even though they have suffered under rubble, they have a pride, a dignity, a determination, a character, and they want to live, they have to live,” he said. “Despite being deceived, they still stand.” Most of his declaration was a call for Haitians to come together to fight hunger, sparked by an old woman who had pointed to her belly during the march the day before. “When I eat, I’m ashamed as I think of people who cannot eat,” he said. Aristide called on politicians to “depoliticize” hunger to fight it, and to come together. “The Fanmi Lavalas is growing and becoming stronger and more powerful,” he said. “If there are free, honest, democratic elections, it is likely that it will win big.” But Fanmi Lavalas is also “fooling itself” if it thinks “it is going to resolve the problem of hunger by itself. That’s false. It cannot.” He also said that the Martelly government, “with all the respect that I have for the current authorities,” could not solve it alone either. “The problem of hunger demands that we find a formula where people and parties who are in power and those who are not, overseas Haitians with those here, can dialogue together with respect so we can solve this hunger question because it is no joke.”
Former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide called for national unity to tackle the problem of hunger in Haiti and thanked the Haitian people for their massive show of solidarity the day before when thousands joined him in a slow procession through Port-au-Prince back his residence from making a court deposition on May 8. “Yesterday, was an ordinary day, but you made it into an extraordinary day, and I say thank you,” Aristide said on May 9 to about 20 journalists assembled in his home’s Spartan study, where he has spent most of the past two years since his return to Haiti from a seven year exile on Mar. 18, 2011. Since that day, when thousands also accompanied him home, it was the first time he has spoken publicly. In the course of his 40 minute talk, Aristide also thanked Haitians in Haiti’s rural provinces, its diaspora, the police force, his Lavalas Family party, and “all the other political parties.” Speaking directly to the Haitian people, he obliquely tweaked the government of President Michel Martelly, but refrained from any direct criticism or policy discussion. “I know you have a $1.50 problem,” he said referring to the illegal tax that the Martelly government levies on every money transfer Haitians make to folks back home. “I know you have a problem in the sending of money. I know you have problems in the question of telephone calls [where a 5 cent or 1 gourde tax is placed on every minute of international calls]... I’m not going to get into the problems. I’m not going to get into making criticisms.” Instead, he spoke about his university, his emotions after the earthquake, and his love for the Haitian people. “I want to say thank you for what you have taught me,” he said. “Yesterday I learned a lot. In the two years since I’ve returned, I’ve been learning at the school of the Haitian people.” He reported that his medical school began with 126 students, but that “this year it opened with 254 students, while there are 115 who are in their second year of medical school.” He also said that the University of the Aristide Foundation (UNIFA) now has a nursing school with 73 students and a developing computer school. “All the students this year have partial-scholarships,” he said. “When in a university a student pays 90,000 gourdes (US$2,118) for the year, with us in the first year they pay 30,000 gourdes (US$706), one third.” “We’d like to do more, but we don’t have the means,” he said. “Whatever little bit I can do for education, I do it.” To the consternation of many of his followers that he has not spoken out, he replied: “Nobody forced me not to speak. I don’t take orders. Like the Haitian people, I’m my own boss. I speak when I have to. Nobody can stop me from talking.” As for staying in his home, he said: “I didn’t leave with my body, but I left with my heart. My heart’s eyes sees far. My heart’s eyes see what is happening in the provinces and in Port-au-Prince.” He said his trip through Port-au-Prince had reminded him of all the suffering and damage after the earthquake and “yesterday I relived it.” “I know what it means for you who have not been able to escape the pain of goudougoudou,” he said, using Haitians’ onomatopoetic term for the seism. In typical form, he rattled off various statistics about the damage done by the earthquake. “I saw a people that even though they have suffered under rubble, they have a pride, a dignity, a determination, a character, and they want to live, they have to live,” he said. “Despite being deceived, they still stand.” Most of his declaration was a call for Haitians to come together to fight hunger, sparked by an old woman who had pointed to her belly during the march the day before. “When I eat, I’m ashamed as I think of people who cannot eat,” he said. Aristide called on politicians to “depoliticize” hunger to fight it, and to come together. “The Fanmi Lavalas is growing and becoming stronger and more powerful,” he said. “If there are free, honest, democratic elections, it is likely that it will win big.” But Fanmi Lavalas is also “fooling itself” if it thinks “it is going to resolve the problem of hunger by itself. That’s false. It cannot.” He also said that the Martelly government, “with all the respect that I have for the current authorities,” could not solve it alone either. “The problem of hunger demands that we find a formula where people and parties who are in power and those who are not, overseas Haitians with those here, can dialogue together with respect so we can solve this hunger question because it is no joke.”
Categories: Haitian blogs
After Aristide Testifies to Investigating Judge: Massive March Signals Lavalas Movement’s Resurrection
by Kim Ives (Haiti Liberte)
Well over 15,000 people poured out from all corners of Haiti's capital to march alongside the cortege of cars that carried former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide back to his home in Tabarre from the Port-au-Prince courthouse he visited on May 8. Thousands more massed along sidewalks and on rooftops to cheer the procession on, waving flags and wearing small photos of Aristide in their hair, pinned to their clothing, or stuck in their hats. Led by Fanmi Lavalas party coordinator Maryse Narcisse through a gauntlet of jostling journalists, Aristide had entered the courthouse (the former Belle Époque Hotel) at exactly 9:00 a.m., the time of his appointment to testify before Investigating Judge Ivickel Dabrésil. Aristide had waited with Narcisse in a car outside the court's backdoor for about 45 minutes. It was only the second time that Aristide had left his home (and the first time publicly) since returning to Haiti on Mar. 18, 2011 from a seven-year exile in Africa following the Feb. 29, 2004 Washington-backed coup d’état which cut short his second government. Lawyer Mario Joseph said that he was "very satisfied" with the reception given by Judge Dabrésil, who is investigating the April 2000 murder of radio journalist Jean Dominique and his radio’s caretaker Jean-Claude Louissaint, for which Aristide is one of many prominent Haitians, including former President René Préval, interviewed for testimony. Joseph said the three hour deposition was very "cordial and relaxed." But many Haitians feared that the summoning of Aristide – even if only for testimony – was a trap set by President Michel Martelly, who, as the former vulgar konpa musician “Sweet Micky,” was the principal cheerleader of both the 1991 and 2004 coups d’état against Aristide. “This summoning of Aristide is a political act remote-controlled by the Martelly government, the same as the now discredited legal suits brought a few months ago by Ti Sony [a former resident of the Lafanmi Selavi orphanage who claimed that Aristide had “exploited” him and other orphans] and some who lost money when the cooperative banks went bust [while Aristide was in power in 2002 and 2003],” said outspoken Sen. Moïse Jean-Charles. “Those previous efforts to smear and destroy Aristide failed, so now they are trying this.” Many Haitian radio commentators point to Judge Dabrésil’s postponement of Aristide’s deposition from its original date of Apr. 24 as proof that there is a political hand in the judge’s proceedings. The deposition, and the expected anti-Martelly pro-Aristide outpouring, would have taken place during the 5th Summit of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) from Apr. 23-26 held in Pétionville and attended by many regional leaders. Furthermore, on Mar. 7, the Defend Haiti website reported that “Presidential Adviser Guyler Delva admitted, earlier this week, to giving Judge Ivekel Dabrésil a car, and Senator John Joel Joseph said on Radio Scoop FM on Wednesday [Apr. 30] that the administration had purchased a house in Florida for the judge.” Another impetus for the massive turn-out came on the evening of May 7 when Haitian National Police (PNH) Director General Godson Orélus took to the airwaves to announce that the PNH had “received no formal notification of the demonstration” as required by law and that therefore “any demonstration is formally forbidden” along the route between Aristide’s house and the courthouse. “The police don’t want any demonstration,” he concluded, throwing down a gauntlet which the Haitian people took up the next morning. Lavalas leaders, including Narcisse, responded that the march was not a “demonstration” but an “accompaniment” of Aristide by the Haitian people. Many Lavalas leaders came to the courthouse to show their solidarity including Senators Moïse Jean-Charles, John Joel Joseph, Francky Excius, and Jean Baptiste Bien-Aimée; Deputy Saurel Hyacinthe; former senator Gérard Louis Gilles; former deputies Jacques Mathelier and Lionel Etienne; former Justice Minister Calixte Delatour; activists Farah Juste, Claudy Sidney, and Volcy Assad. About 100 people had spent the night in a vigil across the street from Aristide’s home. At 6 a.m., hundreds more joined them to mass on the sidewalks in front of Aristide's house. But the real “accompaniment” began after the hearing. Leaving the courthouse at noon, Aristide's ride home took five hours, passing slowly through downtown Port-au-Prince, the Champ de Mars, the hillside slum of Belair, Delmas 2, then the roads through the old military airport and past the international airport. Parallel solidarity demonstrations were held in Cap Haïtien, Aux Cayes, and Petit Goâve. Alongside the 20 or so cars that followed Aristide’s silver jeep, young and old walked, jogged, and ran, singing, chanting, and laughing. The river of humanity included motorcycles, bicycles, wheelchairs, and the occasional person on crutches. Marchers also tore down pink government propaganda posters from lampposts along the way. Several copies of one poster declaring “With the Martelly/Lamothe government, Haiti is advancing” was torn up and left in pieces in the street for vehicles and marchers to pass over. (Martelly’s long-time business partner Laurent Lamothe is Haiti’s Prime Minister.) Three times Aristide got out of his car to wave to the crowd -- outside the courthouse gate, in Belair, and in front of his home -- causing people to sprint toward his car and raise their arms, creating a sea of hands. Afterwards, people hugged and high-fived each other, some laughing, some crying. Even one man dressed in rags moved down the line of cars following Aristide, wiping each car clean with a dirty cloth but asking for no money in return. “Se pa lajan non, se volontè wi,” (It’s not for money, I’m here of my own free will) was the refrain of crowds which turned out for Aristide’s massive campaign rallies when he first ran for President in November and December 1990. The song was heard again on May 8, 2013 in the largely spontaneous march, which grew in size and volume as it made its way through the capital. In contrast, when Martelly organized a carnival-like rally of a few thousand in the Champ de Mars on May 14, many participants were paid 1000 gourdes (US$24) a head to turn out. They were also given a t-shirt - either pink or white - to put on. But after taking the money, many "celebrants" discarded their t-shirts in the street, Haïti Liberté reporters observed. (A Haiti Liberté photographer was prevented from accessing media stand at the May 14 rally after presenting his press credentials.) Some pundits tried to banalize the historic march, saying it was merely the beginning of the electoral campaign of the Lavalas Family (FL), the party that Aristide founded in 1996. (Many Haitian political leaders, including those in the FL, strongly doubt whether free and fair elections can be held under Martelly, or whether he even wants to hold them. “No matter what, Martelly has to go” was another chant heard during the march.) But May 8, 2013 was much more than a mere campaign rally. It was a watershed event, a popular show of force which has changed the political calculus of Haiti in the near-term. Haitian history has shown that when the Haitian people begin to move in such numbers, major political change is imminent. The weeks ahead will reveal exactly what that political change will be.
Following his May 8 court appearance, Aristide was “accompanied” by many thousands of Haitians, young and old, in an emotional march back to his home.Photo by: Daniel Tercier/Haiti Liberté
Well over 15,000 people poured out from all corners of Haiti's capital to march alongside the cortege of cars that carried former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide back to his home in Tabarre from the Port-au-Prince courthouse he visited on May 8. Thousands more massed along sidewalks and on rooftops to cheer the procession on, waving flags and wearing small photos of Aristide in their hair, pinned to their clothing, or stuck in their hats. Led by Fanmi Lavalas party coordinator Maryse Narcisse through a gauntlet of jostling journalists, Aristide had entered the courthouse (the former Belle Époque Hotel) at exactly 9:00 a.m., the time of his appointment to testify before Investigating Judge Ivickel Dabrésil. Aristide had waited with Narcisse in a car outside the court's backdoor for about 45 minutes. It was only the second time that Aristide had left his home (and the first time publicly) since returning to Haiti on Mar. 18, 2011 from a seven-year exile in Africa following the Feb. 29, 2004 Washington-backed coup d’état which cut short his second government. Lawyer Mario Joseph said that he was "very satisfied" with the reception given by Judge Dabrésil, who is investigating the April 2000 murder of radio journalist Jean Dominique and his radio’s caretaker Jean-Claude Louissaint, for which Aristide is one of many prominent Haitians, including former President René Préval, interviewed for testimony. Joseph said the three hour deposition was very "cordial and relaxed." But many Haitians feared that the summoning of Aristide – even if only for testimony – was a trap set by President Michel Martelly, who, as the former vulgar konpa musician “Sweet Micky,” was the principal cheerleader of both the 1991 and 2004 coups d’état against Aristide. “This summoning of Aristide is a political act remote-controlled by the Martelly government, the same as the now discredited legal suits brought a few months ago by Ti Sony [a former resident of the Lafanmi Selavi orphanage who claimed that Aristide had “exploited” him and other orphans] and some who lost money when the cooperative banks went bust [while Aristide was in power in 2002 and 2003],” said outspoken Sen. Moïse Jean-Charles. “Those previous efforts to smear and destroy Aristide failed, so now they are trying this.” Many Haitian radio commentators point to Judge Dabrésil’s postponement of Aristide’s deposition from its original date of Apr. 24 as proof that there is a political hand in the judge’s proceedings. The deposition, and the expected anti-Martelly pro-Aristide outpouring, would have taken place during the 5th Summit of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) from Apr. 23-26 held in Pétionville and attended by many regional leaders. Furthermore, on Mar. 7, the Defend Haiti website reported that “Presidential Adviser Guyler Delva admitted, earlier this week, to giving Judge Ivekel Dabrésil a car, and Senator John Joel Joseph said on Radio Scoop FM on Wednesday [Apr. 30] that the administration had purchased a house in Florida for the judge.” Another impetus for the massive turn-out came on the evening of May 7 when Haitian National Police (PNH) Director General Godson Orélus took to the airwaves to announce that the PNH had “received no formal notification of the demonstration” as required by law and that therefore “any demonstration is formally forbidden” along the route between Aristide’s house and the courthouse. “The police don’t want any demonstration,” he concluded, throwing down a gauntlet which the Haitian people took up the next morning. Lavalas leaders, including Narcisse, responded that the march was not a “demonstration” but an “accompaniment” of Aristide by the Haitian people. Many Lavalas leaders came to the courthouse to show their solidarity including Senators Moïse Jean-Charles, John Joel Joseph, Francky Excius, and Jean Baptiste Bien-Aimée; Deputy Saurel Hyacinthe; former senator Gérard Louis Gilles; former deputies Jacques Mathelier and Lionel Etienne; former Justice Minister Calixte Delatour; activists Farah Juste, Claudy Sidney, and Volcy Assad. About 100 people had spent the night in a vigil across the street from Aristide’s home. At 6 a.m., hundreds more joined them to mass on the sidewalks in front of Aristide's house. But the real “accompaniment” began after the hearing. Leaving the courthouse at noon, Aristide's ride home took five hours, passing slowly through downtown Port-au-Prince, the Champ de Mars, the hillside slum of Belair, Delmas 2, then the roads through the old military airport and past the international airport. Parallel solidarity demonstrations were held in Cap Haïtien, Aux Cayes, and Petit Goâve. Alongside the 20 or so cars that followed Aristide’s silver jeep, young and old walked, jogged, and ran, singing, chanting, and laughing. The river of humanity included motorcycles, bicycles, wheelchairs, and the occasional person on crutches. Marchers also tore down pink government propaganda posters from lampposts along the way. Several copies of one poster declaring “With the Martelly/Lamothe government, Haiti is advancing” was torn up and left in pieces in the street for vehicles and marchers to pass over. (Martelly’s long-time business partner Laurent Lamothe is Haiti’s Prime Minister.) Three times Aristide got out of his car to wave to the crowd -- outside the courthouse gate, in Belair, and in front of his home -- causing people to sprint toward his car and raise their arms, creating a sea of hands. Afterwards, people hugged and high-fived each other, some laughing, some crying. Even one man dressed in rags moved down the line of cars following Aristide, wiping each car clean with a dirty cloth but asking for no money in return. “Se pa lajan non, se volontè wi,” (It’s not for money, I’m here of my own free will) was the refrain of crowds which turned out for Aristide’s massive campaign rallies when he first ran for President in November and December 1990. The song was heard again on May 8, 2013 in the largely spontaneous march, which grew in size and volume as it made its way through the capital. In contrast, when Martelly organized a carnival-like rally of a few thousand in the Champ de Mars on May 14, many participants were paid 1000 gourdes (US$24) a head to turn out. They were also given a t-shirt - either pink or white - to put on. But after taking the money, many "celebrants" discarded their t-shirts in the street, Haïti Liberté reporters observed. (A Haiti Liberté photographer was prevented from accessing media stand at the May 14 rally after presenting his press credentials.) Some pundits tried to banalize the historic march, saying it was merely the beginning of the electoral campaign of the Lavalas Family (FL), the party that Aristide founded in 1996. (Many Haitian political leaders, including those in the FL, strongly doubt whether free and fair elections can be held under Martelly, or whether he even wants to hold them. “No matter what, Martelly has to go” was another chant heard during the march.) But May 8, 2013 was much more than a mere campaign rally. It was a watershed event, a popular show of force which has changed the political calculus of Haiti in the near-term. Haitian history has shown that when the Haitian people begin to move in such numbers, major political change is imminent. The weeks ahead will reveal exactly what that political change will be.
Following his May 8 court appearance, Aristide was “accompanied” by many thousands of Haitians, young and old, in an emotional march back to his home.Photo by: Daniel Tercier/Haiti Liberté
Categories: Haitian blogs
ONA: Senate Uncovers Stupefying Corruption
by Yves Pierre-Louis (Haiti Liberte)
Since President Michel Martelly’s accession to power two years ago, corruption has become the hallmark of his regime. The State’s entire administration is in decline, marred by bribery, waste, mismanagement, illegal and arbitrary dismissals, and incompetence. The latest corruption scandal to erupt is in the National Insurance Office for the Elderly (ONA), Haiti’s social security institution which is supposed to manage the contributions of Haitian workers in the private sector to ensure their welfare as regulated by the Labor Code. This institution has been headed by Director General Bernard Degraff for over a year. Persistent accusations of corruption, mismanagement, illegal firings, and inappropriate employee transfers forced Senator Maxime Roumer, the President of the Senate’s Social Affairs Committee, to summon for a questioning Charles Jean-Jacques, the Minister of Social Affairs and Labor, as well as Degraff. After several postponements, finally the hearing took place in the Senate on Apr. 29. The hearing became very difficult for Bernard Degraff and his Special Advisor, Jean Robert Simonise. Sen. John Joel Joseph outlined the wholesale corruption, mismanagement, and wrongful dismissals his investigations have uncovered. He charged that Degraff has unilaterally increased his own monthly salary from 152,000 gourdes ($3,576) to 472,000 gourdes ($11,104) and that of Simonise from 190,000 gourdes ($4,470) to 351,270 gourdes ($8,264). These salaries far exceed that of the President of the Republic. Degraff also bought three Toyota Prado SUVs at $76,000 each, one for him, one for his assistant, and one for an advisor, which are registered and plated as private cars, not state vehicles. Degraff also paid $32,000 to make the vehicles bullet-proof. He bought another 40 vehicles with ONA money for employees who are close to him and those vehicles also do not bear State plates, but are private registered. Furthermore, Degraff bought an old house for ONA in Pétion-ville, without any bidding, for a whopping $ 2.5 million and then paid another $1 million to repair it. The worst is Minister Charles Jean-Jacques claimed that he was unaware of these fraudulent transactions, and in reports he submitted to the Parliament , there was no mention of these purchases. Meanwhile, former ONA employees who had been wrongly fired managed to get into the Parliament, and, with placards in hand, they called for the dismissal and arrest of Degraff . Some of the demonstrators even managed to slap Degraff as he left the Legislative Palace. Sen. Pierre Francky Exius proposed firing Degraff for corruption and embezzlement of state funds. This proposal was supported by several of his colleagues, including the Commission’s president, Sen. Roumer. Meanwhile, public school teachers continue to demonstrate for payment of several months of back wages, farmers are demanding water and fertilizer to increase their agricultural production, and people around the nation are demanding the construction of roads and public markets. Such corruption only adds fuel to the fires of demonstrations burning everywhere. Already, Martelly’s close advisor and cousin, hotelier and musician Richard Morse and Minister of Economy and Finance, Marie Carmelle Jean-Marie have resigned because of blatant corruption. Now, a group of citizens has started a petition entitled "Stop the abuses," which seeks to challenge parliamentarians to start impeachment proceedings against President Martelly.
ONA’s Director General Bernard Degraff stands accused illegally hiking his salary, buying private vehicles, and firing employees.
Categories: Haitian blogs
Despite Losing $1 Billion in Iraq, DynCorp Given Haiti Troop Contract
by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR)
This article reveals how Washington is still investing in Haiti’s military occupation, not winding it down. HL
In an Apr. 9 press release, DynCorp International announced that the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) had awarded the company with a $48.6 million contract. The purpose of the contract is to “recruit and support up to 100 UNPOL and 10 U.N. Corrections Advisors. DI will also provide logistics support to the Haitian National Police (HNP) Academy and each academy class. In addition, DI will supply five high-level French and Haitian Creole speaking subject matter experts to advise senior HNP officials.” The contract was actually awarded to DynCorp a year ago, and the first funding through the award was given to DynCorp in November 2012 in the amount of $12.9 million. DynCorp is one of the largest government contractors, receiving well over $3 billion in 2012. As the company points out, its previous work in Haiti began in 2008 and involved the training of over 400 police officers. That work, part of the Haiti Stabilization Initiative, also entailed increasing the size of the U.N. military base in Cite Soleil. DynCorp, which continues to receive funds through that task order, has received over $23 million since 2008 for its work in Haiti. One of the primary tasks of the U.N. military mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) is to recruit and train members for the Haitian National Police, so that they could eventually take over for the foreign troops. With this latest contract, DynCorp has gone from training police to take over for MINUSTAH, to simply supplying troops directly to MINUSTAH. But the awarding of the contract to DynCorp is also problematic given the company’s terrible track record in the same exact program areas where they will now operate in Haiti. In Bosnia in the late 1990s, DynCorp was contracted by the State Department to provide “peacekeepers” for the UN police there, just as in Haiti now. One employee, Kathryn Bolkovac, was eventually fired after blowing the whistle to her superiors at DynCorp on the participation of her colleagues in sex trafficking, among other abuses. The case was the basis for the 2011 Hollywood movie, The Whistleblower. Unfortunately, these types of abuses have been all too common in Haiti since the arrival of UN troops in 2004. And similar to the situation in Bosnia, there have been only sporadic and piecemeal efforts to hold those responsible, accountable. Additionally, DynCorp has a history of waste, fraud and abuse, including under U.S. government contracts to provide police training in Afghanistan and Iraq, similar to their program in Haiti. In 2010, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction issued a report which found that the State Department and DynCorp could not account for $1 billion dollars spent training the Iraq police. At the time, Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) said “[INL has]been managing this contract in Iraq since 2004 and, according to this report, they have no idea where any of the money went… What's even worse is that these are the same people responsible for police training in Afghanistan, so I don't have any confidence that they're doing a better job there.” Sure enough, in 2011 DynCorp was slammed by a joint audit from the State Department and Defense Department over their work training the Afghan police. It wasn’t the first time. Also In 2011, according to the Project on Government Oversight’s Contractor Misconduct Database, DynCorp paid $7.7 million to settle a False Claims Act lawsuit after a whistleblower alleged that the company had inflated claims under a “contract with the State Department to provide civilian police training in Iraq.”
DynCorp has gone from training police to take over for MINUSTAH, to simply supplying troops directly to MINUSTAH.
Categories: Haitian blogs
Lawyer Mario Joseph is Finalist for Swiss Human Rights Award
by Kim Ives (Haiti Liberte)
The Switzerland-based Martin Ennals Foundation and the City of Geneva have announced that Haitian human rights lawyer Mario Joseph of the Port-au-Prince-based International Lawyers Office (BAI) is one of three finalists for the Martin Ennals Award. Since 1993, the award is given annually by a jury of human rights organizations to “human rights defenders who have shown deep commitment and face great personal risk,” the foundation said in a press release. The aim of the award is to provide protection to the awardees through international recognition. Mario Joseph, recognized by many as Haiti's most important human rights lawyer, has worked on some of the most important cases in Haiti, including the current case against the former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. His family received asylum in the United States in 2004, but he chose to return to Haiti. He has faced threats and harassment for much of his 20 years as a lawyer, although it has intensified in recent months. “This recognition from the Ennals Award shines a vital spotlight on my work, and on the work of everyone who is fighting for human rights in Haiti,” Joseph said. “That spotlight will make our work safer and more effective." The other two finalists are Mona Seif in Egypt and the Joint Mobile Group in Chechnya. Seif is a core founder of the "No to Military Trials for Civilians", a grassroots initiative. Since Feb. 25, 2011, Mona has brought together activists, lawyers, and victims' families to start a nationwide movement against military trials. As part of the recent crackdown on freedom of speech in Egypt, she has been charged along with other human rights activists. Meanwhile, Igor Kalyapin started the Joint Mobile Group after the murder of several human rights activists working in Chechnya. To reduce risk, they send investigators on short missions to Chechnya to document human rights abuses. This information is then used to publicize these abuses and seek legal redress. The Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders (MEA) will be presented on Oct. 8 at a ceremony hosted by the City of Geneva. The award is made possible by a unique collaboration among ten of the world's leading human rights organizations to give protection to human rights defenders worldwide. The Jury is composed of the following organizations: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, International Federation for Human Rights, World Organisation Against Torture, Front Line Defenders, International Commission of Jurists, German Diakonie, International Service for Human Rights, and HURIDOCS. The prize also includes 20,000 Swiss Francs which the foundation specifies is “to be used for further work in the field of human rights.” Martin Ennals (1927 – 1991) was a British human rights activist who served as the Secretary-General of Amnesty International from 1968 to 1980.
The BAI’s Mario Joseph is a finalist for the world’s foremost human rights award.Photo by Kim Ives/Haïti Liberté
The Switzerland-based Martin Ennals Foundation and the City of Geneva have announced that Haitian human rights lawyer Mario Joseph of the Port-au-Prince-based International Lawyers Office (BAI) is one of three finalists for the Martin Ennals Award. Since 1993, the award is given annually by a jury of human rights organizations to “human rights defenders who have shown deep commitment and face great personal risk,” the foundation said in a press release. The aim of the award is to provide protection to the awardees through international recognition. Mario Joseph, recognized by many as Haiti's most important human rights lawyer, has worked on some of the most important cases in Haiti, including the current case against the former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. His family received asylum in the United States in 2004, but he chose to return to Haiti. He has faced threats and harassment for much of his 20 years as a lawyer, although it has intensified in recent months. “This recognition from the Ennals Award shines a vital spotlight on my work, and on the work of everyone who is fighting for human rights in Haiti,” Joseph said. “That spotlight will make our work safer and more effective." The other two finalists are Mona Seif in Egypt and the Joint Mobile Group in Chechnya. Seif is a core founder of the "No to Military Trials for Civilians", a grassroots initiative. Since Feb. 25, 2011, Mona has brought together activists, lawyers, and victims' families to start a nationwide movement against military trials. As part of the recent crackdown on freedom of speech in Egypt, she has been charged along with other human rights activists. Meanwhile, Igor Kalyapin started the Joint Mobile Group after the murder of several human rights activists working in Chechnya. To reduce risk, they send investigators on short missions to Chechnya to document human rights abuses. This information is then used to publicize these abuses and seek legal redress. The Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders (MEA) will be presented on Oct. 8 at a ceremony hosted by the City of Geneva. The award is made possible by a unique collaboration among ten of the world's leading human rights organizations to give protection to human rights defenders worldwide. The Jury is composed of the following organizations: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, International Federation for Human Rights, World Organisation Against Torture, Front Line Defenders, International Commission of Jurists, German Diakonie, International Service for Human Rights, and HURIDOCS. The prize also includes 20,000 Swiss Francs which the foundation specifies is “to be used for further work in the field of human rights.” Martin Ennals (1927 – 1991) was a British human rights activist who served as the Secretary-General of Amnesty International from 1968 to 1980.
The BAI’s Mario Joseph is a finalist for the world’s foremost human rights award.Photo by Kim Ives/Haïti Liberté
Categories: Haitian blogs
Protest against high prices and hunger
by Yves Pierre-Louis (Haiti Liberte)
On Apr. 11, 2013, several popular organizations from the capital’s poor neighborhoods, grouped in a coalition called the Heads Together of Popular Organizations (Tèt kole òganizasyon popilè yo), marched in protest against Haiti’s high cost of living, hunger, and unemployment with the slogan “Let’s Rise Up Against This Exploitative Hunger” (“Ann leve kanpe kont grangou kaletèt sa" offers word-play on the slogan “Tètkale” – meaning “completely” or “bald” – of President Michel Martelly’s government.) Starting in the poor neighborhood of Fort National in the north of the capital, hundreds of demonstrators marched through Port-au-Prince’s streets to protest the deteriorating conditions of slum dwellers in Port-au-Prince’s poorest neighborhoods including Fort National, Bel Air, Saint-Martin, Solino , La Saline, Cité Soleil, and Martissant. Throughout the march, the protesters chanted that the government of Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe is using false propaganda to lull the Haitian people out of their vigilance while manufacturing a series of fictitious projects to squander state funds. The demonstrators ridiculed a recent declaration by Martelly that he has already created 400,000 jobs in the country in the past two years. "If the government has created 400,000 jobs with a minimum wage of 300 gourdes per day for eight hours of work, that means that there should be 3.6 billion gourdes (US$83.76 million) circulating in the Haitian economy,” said one demonstrator. “We, the residents of poor neighborhoods, do not see any sign of that money. We say these 400,000 jobs are just talk." The demonstrators spray-painted slogans on walls along their route: "400,000 jobs are just talk! Up with good jobs! Down with Martelly! Down with hunger! Down with the high cost of living! Down with corruption!" Nobody gives credence to the President's statement. "The labor force in Haiti is currently estimated at 4.2 million people,” said the former Social Affairs Minister, economist Gerald Germain, in a radio program. “If the government created 400,000 jobs, unemployment would be reduced by 10%. The effects of this reduction in unemployment would be visible in the economy." Wilson Laleau, who acts as both the Minister of Trade and Industry and the Minister of Economy and Finance, has not been able to give any details about where and how the supposed 400,000 jobs announced by President Martelly have been created. “No matter what, Martelly and Lamothe have to go,” said another demonstrator. “They only tell the people lies while they fill their pockets and plunder the country. Martelly’s wife, his son, all of them are steeped in corruption, while the masses are dying of hunger in the country. We can’t pay for our children’s schooling. We can’t find work. They don’t want us to do commerce in the streets. We are crying for help! This is just the beginning. Next week, we’ll shift to a higher gear where it will be the regime’s complete uprooting that we will be demanding.” Haitian policement tried to seize the spray-paint cans of some demonstrators at the corner of Lamarre Street and Lalue. But the demonstrators quickly scattered and reassembled a short distance away to continue their march. After winding through several streets in Port-au-Prince’s densely populated neighborhoods, the demonstrators ended their protest in front of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor. Haiti’s poor continue to fight against the deterioration of their living conditions. Hundreds of thousands of earthquake victims made homeless by the January 2010 earthquake remain living under tents. UN soldiers still occupy the country. All state institutions are constantly in crisis. The democratization process is blocked. Elections are delayed, and the Electoral Council is being illegally and undemocratically established. Corruption is growing. The old Duvalierist regime is emerging more every day. All these trends have a negative impact on the lives of Haiti’s poorest. Tèt Kole continues to stand with the Haitian people in their struggle to stop these trends and build a better, brighter, more democratic future.
Sign reads: “Heads Together of Popular Organizations says the 400,000 new jobs are just talk.” Demonstrators marched through Port-au-Prince to denounce government demogagy. Photo by Frantz Etienne/Haïti Liberté
“The 400,000 jobs are just talk” and “Up with good jobs.” Slogans left on the walls where the Apr. 11 demonstration passed.
Photo by Frantz Etienne/Haïti Liberté
On Apr. 11, 2013, several popular organizations from the capital’s poor neighborhoods, grouped in a coalition called the Heads Together of Popular Organizations (Tèt kole òganizasyon popilè yo), marched in protest against Haiti’s high cost of living, hunger, and unemployment with the slogan “Let’s Rise Up Against This Exploitative Hunger” (“Ann leve kanpe kont grangou kaletèt sa" offers word-play on the slogan “Tètkale” – meaning “completely” or “bald” – of President Michel Martelly’s government.) Starting in the poor neighborhood of Fort National in the north of the capital, hundreds of demonstrators marched through Port-au-Prince’s streets to protest the deteriorating conditions of slum dwellers in Port-au-Prince’s poorest neighborhoods including Fort National, Bel Air, Saint-Martin, Solino , La Saline, Cité Soleil, and Martissant. Throughout the march, the protesters chanted that the government of Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe is using false propaganda to lull the Haitian people out of their vigilance while manufacturing a series of fictitious projects to squander state funds. The demonstrators ridiculed a recent declaration by Martelly that he has already created 400,000 jobs in the country in the past two years. "If the government has created 400,000 jobs with a minimum wage of 300 gourdes per day for eight hours of work, that means that there should be 3.6 billion gourdes (US$83.76 million) circulating in the Haitian economy,” said one demonstrator. “We, the residents of poor neighborhoods, do not see any sign of that money. We say these 400,000 jobs are just talk." The demonstrators spray-painted slogans on walls along their route: "400,000 jobs are just talk! Up with good jobs! Down with Martelly! Down with hunger! Down with the high cost of living! Down with corruption!" Nobody gives credence to the President's statement. "The labor force in Haiti is currently estimated at 4.2 million people,” said the former Social Affairs Minister, economist Gerald Germain, in a radio program. “If the government created 400,000 jobs, unemployment would be reduced by 10%. The effects of this reduction in unemployment would be visible in the economy." Wilson Laleau, who acts as both the Minister of Trade and Industry and the Minister of Economy and Finance, has not been able to give any details about where and how the supposed 400,000 jobs announced by President Martelly have been created. “No matter what, Martelly and Lamothe have to go,” said another demonstrator. “They only tell the people lies while they fill their pockets and plunder the country. Martelly’s wife, his son, all of them are steeped in corruption, while the masses are dying of hunger in the country. We can’t pay for our children’s schooling. We can’t find work. They don’t want us to do commerce in the streets. We are crying for help! This is just the beginning. Next week, we’ll shift to a higher gear where it will be the regime’s complete uprooting that we will be demanding.” Haitian policement tried to seize the spray-paint cans of some demonstrators at the corner of Lamarre Street and Lalue. But the demonstrators quickly scattered and reassembled a short distance away to continue their march. After winding through several streets in Port-au-Prince’s densely populated neighborhoods, the demonstrators ended their protest in front of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor. Haiti’s poor continue to fight against the deterioration of their living conditions. Hundreds of thousands of earthquake victims made homeless by the January 2010 earthquake remain living under tents. UN soldiers still occupy the country. All state institutions are constantly in crisis. The democratization process is blocked. Elections are delayed, and the Electoral Council is being illegally and undemocratically established. Corruption is growing. The old Duvalierist regime is emerging more every day. All these trends have a negative impact on the lives of Haiti’s poorest. Tèt Kole continues to stand with the Haitian people in their struggle to stop these trends and build a better, brighter, more democratic future.
Sign reads: “Heads Together of Popular Organizations says the 400,000 new jobs are just talk.” Demonstrators marched through Port-au-Prince to denounce government demogagy. Photo by Frantz Etienne/Haïti Liberté
“The 400,000 jobs are just talk” and “Up with good jobs.” Slogans left on the walls where the Apr. 11 demonstration passed.
Photo by Frantz Etienne/Haïti Liberté
Categories: Haitian blogs
Canadian Freeze of Aid to Haiti, the Precursor to CIDA's Demise
By: Matthew Davidson - HaitiAnalysis
Representing a new Canadian vision for international development, the Canadian government recently announced that it is merging the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT). Shocked, critics decried that "Canada's international effort[i] to help people living in poverty" is unlikely to substantially address or mitigate global poverty or inequality if CIDA's priority is to "advance Canada's long-term prosperity and security". However, the Canadian government had already indicated that changes were coming. By freezing aid to Haiti, the Conservatives signalled what could be expected for Canadian development practice elsewhere.
Changes to the Canadian development agency were announced on March 21, 2013, when Finance Minister Jim Flaherty unveiled a new federal budget. An omnibus bill much like previous budgets that stripped environmental protections and laid the groundwork for a massive expansion of prisons, the so-called Economic Action Plan 2013[ii] included numerous non-financial clauses amidst the prescribed domestic austerity measures. Buried deep in the 433-page document in a chapter entitled "Supporting Families and Communities", the budget revealed that "the Government will amalgamate the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and CIDA" in order to maximize economic opportunities for Canada. In a clarifying statement[iii] issued after the release of the budget, the Canadian Minister of International Cooperation, Julian Fantino, indicated that the decision would have no impact on Canada's international assistance budget, but CIDA as an entity would cease to exist. A new Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development would be created in its stead, co-directed[iv] by Fantino, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, and International Trade Minister Ed Fast.
Reaction to the demise of Canada's 45-year old development organization came quick. Numerous development organizations expressed concern that the changes might undermine Canada’s commitment to the world's most vulnerable people. "We risk losing the expertise, focus, effectiveness — and results — that CIDA staff brought to this goal”, argued Anthony Scoggins, Oxfam’s director of international programs, who lamented[v] that aid would "be driven by Canada’s self-interest in foreign policy, and the government’s economic and trade agenda rather than poverty alleviation.” The Canadian Council for International Co-operation likewise expressed concern that CIDA’s focus on poverty reduction and human rights would be “watered down” [vi] by the change. The Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper, extended the critique in an editorial[vii] lambasting the merger, questioning "whether the Conservatives intend to plunder the aid budget to help drum up business abroad rather than bankroll trade promotion in its own right as they ransack government operations for savings to help eliminate the deficit."
While the NGO sector feigned outrage at the announcement, not everyone was surprised. Julia Sanchez, President and CEO of the Canadian Council for International Cooperation, told the news website iPolitics that the absorption of CIDA into DFAIT had been rumoured[viii] for years. Noting that the move offered "clarity" to the Canadian strategy abroad, the head of Care Canada, Kevin McCort, spoke[ix] similarly, saying that “It wasn’t so much a shock as, ‘oh, they have done it’. The conversation has been going on for years.” Recently there had also been indicators that major changes could be expected. In November 2012, Fantino had articulated a new vision for CIDA. Speaking to the elite Economic Club of Canada, the Minister, who had previously been Ontario's Top Cop, introduced plans to have CIDA support Canadian international business interests rather than work with multilateral institutions and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) as had previously been the norm. Following[x] the speech he told the Globe and Mail that;
“I find it very strange that people would not expect Canadian investments to also promote Canadian values, Canadian business, the Canadian economy, benefits for Canada. This is Canadian money. ... And Canadians are entitled to derive a benefit.”
Just over one month later Fantino revealed, in a tirade[xi] against Haitian efforts to rebuild, that he was moving forward with this vision.
Since the devastating earthquake in 2010 Haiti has been a showpiece of Canadian aid. Haiti is the largest recipient of Canadian development assistance in the hemisphere, and only the United States has allocated more money for the small Caribbean nation. In total, the Canadian government has committed more than $1 billion[xii] to Haiti since 2006. Yet earlier this year Fantino shocked Haitians and Canadians alike with an announcement[xiii] that Canada was cutting off the still-rebuilding country, placing all aid "on ice" until further review. Citing a lack of progress in the country, Fantino claimed in January that the aid was not getting results “that Canadians have a right to expect.” CIDA released a terse statement in response claiming that existing projects had not been frozen, but Haiti’s ambassador to Canada, Frantz Liautaud, noted that Fantino had not approved any new aid projects for Haiti since he took over the portfolio.
Fantino's Haiti announcement signalled that the Canadian government was moving forward with their overhaul of the aid system, but the model that the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development was premised on had been applied in Haiti much earlier. Under the preceding Liberal government Canada had committed to using the so-called “3-D” approach to foreign affairs in Haiti, which was an attempt to integrate defence, diplomacy and development into one coherent policy approach (what the Conservatives now label as the "whole-of-government" approach). This approach helped enlist the development industry in the Canadian / American / French campaign against Haiti's president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. When the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development reviewed Canadian aid policies last year, the report urged Ottawa to continue following that model. It was recommended[xiv] that "Using [Haiti and Afghanistan] as an example, Canada should devise a whole-of-government approach to all of its development programmes." This is exactly what the Conservatives did.
There was speculation[xv] at the time of Fantino's announcement that the review of aid would be used to make room for Canadian capital investment. Buoyed by the Minister's November comments[xvi], many predicted that opportunities would be created for Canadian mining companies. Fantino had told the Economic Club;
"Canada's mining and extractive sector is a prime example of how a government agency like ours can partner with the private sector to advance global development objectives. This is a huge opportunity for both Canada and developing countries. Especially when you consider that almost one-third of the Toronto Stock Exchange Index is comprised of the natural resource sector. Canadian companies in the extractive sector account for almost half the mining activities in the world, and represent approximately 12 percent of Canada's direct investment abroad. These companies boost economic growth and provide high-value jobs to thousands of workers in Canada and around the world. CIDA is working to help the Canadian mining, oil and gas sector to partner in development with local governments and NGOs for mutual benefit.
Numerous Canadian mining companies were already taking advantage of the security and stability provided by the 10,000 UN peacekeepers stationed across Haiti - a force that has its origins in the 2004 Canadian-back coup against Haiti's democratically-elected president. This made Haiti well-suited to be the first place to implement Fantino's vision. It also helped that the failure of aid in Haiti could be invoked to support a new approach (even though less than half of 1% of all post-quake aid was directed to the Haitian government, weakening the state's capacity to rebuild).
Canadian government officials of all political stripes have long considered CIDA to be too independent and unresponsive to government priorities. Writing in the Globe and Mail, the career diplomat Colin Robertson noted that "In the development world there is a tendency towards moralism and a disdain for the urgencies of realpolitik."[xvii] Indicating a cross-partisan desire to make CIDA subservient to foreign policy objectives, Lloyd Axworthy, a prominent Liberal politician and former Minister of Foreign affairs, applauded[xviii] the decision to wither CIDA. "The move Thursday to end the independence of the Canadian International Development Agency and move its operations into the foreign ministry is one I strongly endorse", he wrote. "I compliment the government on taking this step." When he froze aid to Haiti, Fantino had made clear that his intent for aid in Haiti was that it created benefits for Canadians, exactly what Canadian government officials had long hoped for. The new Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development now does the same for all Canadian development projects.
Matthew Davidson is a graduate student at Trent University in Ontario, Canada, where he is studying the history of development in Haiti.
REFERENCES[i] http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/acdi-cida/acdi-cida.nsf/eng/NIC-5493749-HZK#mission [ii] http://www.budget.gc.ca/2013/doc/plan/chap3-5-eng.html [iii] http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/acdi-cida/acdi-cida.nsf/eng/NIC-5493749-HZK#mission [iv]http://www.ipolitics.ca/2013/03/21/adios-cida-hola-d-fat-d-development-body-looses-its-stand-along-status/ [v]http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/federalbudget/2013/03/21/federal_budget_2013_tories_fold_cida_into_foreign_affairs_department.html [vi]http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2013/03/24/federal_budget_2013_the_canadian_government_shouldnt_plunder_aid_to_promote_trade_editorial.html [vii]http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2013/03/24/federal_budget_2013_the_canadian_government_shouldnt_plunder_aid_to_promote_trade_editorial.html [viii]http://www.ipolitics.ca/2013/03/21/adios-cida-hola-d-fat-d-development-body-looses-its-stand-along-status/ [ix]http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/03/22/cida_merger_with_foreign_affairs_may_help_the_poor.html [x]http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/fantino-defends-cidas-corporate-shift/article5950443/ [xi] http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/roger-annis/2013/01/canadas-cuff-announcement-freezing-new-aid-haiti-harmful-and-prej [xii] http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/haiti-e [xiii]http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/haiti-stunned-by-fantino-plan-to-freeze-aid/article6941946/ [xiv] http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/03/21/cida-closed-budget-2013_n_2926517.html [xv] http://www.defend.ht/politics/articles/international/3657-canada-freezes-aid-to-haiti [xvi] http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/acdi-cida/acdi-cida.nsf/eng/NAT-1123135713-Q8T [xvii]http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/cida-move-not-radical-canada-is-just-playing-catch-up/article10165928/ [xviii]http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/lloyd-axworthy-ending-cida-is-a-bold-and-admirable-move/article10163344/
Representing a new Canadian vision for international development, the Canadian government recently announced that it is merging the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT). Shocked, critics decried that "Canada's international effort[i] to help people living in poverty" is unlikely to substantially address or mitigate global poverty or inequality if CIDA's priority is to "advance Canada's long-term prosperity and security". However, the Canadian government had already indicated that changes were coming. By freezing aid to Haiti, the Conservatives signalled what could be expected for Canadian development practice elsewhere.
Changes to the Canadian development agency were announced on March 21, 2013, when Finance Minister Jim Flaherty unveiled a new federal budget. An omnibus bill much like previous budgets that stripped environmental protections and laid the groundwork for a massive expansion of prisons, the so-called Economic Action Plan 2013[ii] included numerous non-financial clauses amidst the prescribed domestic austerity measures. Buried deep in the 433-page document in a chapter entitled "Supporting Families and Communities", the budget revealed that "the Government will amalgamate the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and CIDA" in order to maximize economic opportunities for Canada. In a clarifying statement[iii] issued after the release of the budget, the Canadian Minister of International Cooperation, Julian Fantino, indicated that the decision would have no impact on Canada's international assistance budget, but CIDA as an entity would cease to exist. A new Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development would be created in its stead, co-directed[iv] by Fantino, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, and International Trade Minister Ed Fast.
Reaction to the demise of Canada's 45-year old development organization came quick. Numerous development organizations expressed concern that the changes might undermine Canada’s commitment to the world's most vulnerable people. "We risk losing the expertise, focus, effectiveness — and results — that CIDA staff brought to this goal”, argued Anthony Scoggins, Oxfam’s director of international programs, who lamented[v] that aid would "be driven by Canada’s self-interest in foreign policy, and the government’s economic and trade agenda rather than poverty alleviation.” The Canadian Council for International Co-operation likewise expressed concern that CIDA’s focus on poverty reduction and human rights would be “watered down” [vi] by the change. The Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper, extended the critique in an editorial[vii] lambasting the merger, questioning "whether the Conservatives intend to plunder the aid budget to help drum up business abroad rather than bankroll trade promotion in its own right as they ransack government operations for savings to help eliminate the deficit."
While the NGO sector feigned outrage at the announcement, not everyone was surprised. Julia Sanchez, President and CEO of the Canadian Council for International Cooperation, told the news website iPolitics that the absorption of CIDA into DFAIT had been rumoured[viii] for years. Noting that the move offered "clarity" to the Canadian strategy abroad, the head of Care Canada, Kevin McCort, spoke[ix] similarly, saying that “It wasn’t so much a shock as, ‘oh, they have done it’. The conversation has been going on for years.” Recently there had also been indicators that major changes could be expected. In November 2012, Fantino had articulated a new vision for CIDA. Speaking to the elite Economic Club of Canada, the Minister, who had previously been Ontario's Top Cop, introduced plans to have CIDA support Canadian international business interests rather than work with multilateral institutions and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) as had previously been the norm. Following[x] the speech he told the Globe and Mail that;
“I find it very strange that people would not expect Canadian investments to also promote Canadian values, Canadian business, the Canadian economy, benefits for Canada. This is Canadian money. ... And Canadians are entitled to derive a benefit.”
Just over one month later Fantino revealed, in a tirade[xi] against Haitian efforts to rebuild, that he was moving forward with this vision.
Since the devastating earthquake in 2010 Haiti has been a showpiece of Canadian aid. Haiti is the largest recipient of Canadian development assistance in the hemisphere, and only the United States has allocated more money for the small Caribbean nation. In total, the Canadian government has committed more than $1 billion[xii] to Haiti since 2006. Yet earlier this year Fantino shocked Haitians and Canadians alike with an announcement[xiii] that Canada was cutting off the still-rebuilding country, placing all aid "on ice" until further review. Citing a lack of progress in the country, Fantino claimed in January that the aid was not getting results “that Canadians have a right to expect.” CIDA released a terse statement in response claiming that existing projects had not been frozen, but Haiti’s ambassador to Canada, Frantz Liautaud, noted that Fantino had not approved any new aid projects for Haiti since he took over the portfolio.
Fantino's Haiti announcement signalled that the Canadian government was moving forward with their overhaul of the aid system, but the model that the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development was premised on had been applied in Haiti much earlier. Under the preceding Liberal government Canada had committed to using the so-called “3-D” approach to foreign affairs in Haiti, which was an attempt to integrate defence, diplomacy and development into one coherent policy approach (what the Conservatives now label as the "whole-of-government" approach). This approach helped enlist the development industry in the Canadian / American / French campaign against Haiti's president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. When the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development reviewed Canadian aid policies last year, the report urged Ottawa to continue following that model. It was recommended[xiv] that "Using [Haiti and Afghanistan] as an example, Canada should devise a whole-of-government approach to all of its development programmes." This is exactly what the Conservatives did.
There was speculation[xv] at the time of Fantino's announcement that the review of aid would be used to make room for Canadian capital investment. Buoyed by the Minister's November comments[xvi], many predicted that opportunities would be created for Canadian mining companies. Fantino had told the Economic Club;
"Canada's mining and extractive sector is a prime example of how a government agency like ours can partner with the private sector to advance global development objectives. This is a huge opportunity for both Canada and developing countries. Especially when you consider that almost one-third of the Toronto Stock Exchange Index is comprised of the natural resource sector. Canadian companies in the extractive sector account for almost half the mining activities in the world, and represent approximately 12 percent of Canada's direct investment abroad. These companies boost economic growth and provide high-value jobs to thousands of workers in Canada and around the world. CIDA is working to help the Canadian mining, oil and gas sector to partner in development with local governments and NGOs for mutual benefit.
Numerous Canadian mining companies were already taking advantage of the security and stability provided by the 10,000 UN peacekeepers stationed across Haiti - a force that has its origins in the 2004 Canadian-back coup against Haiti's democratically-elected president. This made Haiti well-suited to be the first place to implement Fantino's vision. It also helped that the failure of aid in Haiti could be invoked to support a new approach (even though less than half of 1% of all post-quake aid was directed to the Haitian government, weakening the state's capacity to rebuild).
Canadian government officials of all political stripes have long considered CIDA to be too independent and unresponsive to government priorities. Writing in the Globe and Mail, the career diplomat Colin Robertson noted that "In the development world there is a tendency towards moralism and a disdain for the urgencies of realpolitik."[xvii] Indicating a cross-partisan desire to make CIDA subservient to foreign policy objectives, Lloyd Axworthy, a prominent Liberal politician and former Minister of Foreign affairs, applauded[xviii] the decision to wither CIDA. "The move Thursday to end the independence of the Canadian International Development Agency and move its operations into the foreign ministry is one I strongly endorse", he wrote. "I compliment the government on taking this step." When he froze aid to Haiti, Fantino had made clear that his intent for aid in Haiti was that it created benefits for Canadians, exactly what Canadian government officials had long hoped for. The new Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development now does the same for all Canadian development projects.
Matthew Davidson is a graduate student at Trent University in Ontario, Canada, where he is studying the history of development in Haiti.
REFERENCES[i] http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/acdi-cida/acdi-cida.nsf/eng/NIC-5493749-HZK#mission [ii] http://www.budget.gc.ca/2013/doc/plan/chap3-5-eng.html [iii] http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/acdi-cida/acdi-cida.nsf/eng/NIC-5493749-HZK#mission [iv]http://www.ipolitics.ca/2013/03/21/adios-cida-hola-d-fat-d-development-body-looses-its-stand-along-status/ [v]http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/federalbudget/2013/03/21/federal_budget_2013_tories_fold_cida_into_foreign_affairs_department.html [vi]http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2013/03/24/federal_budget_2013_the_canadian_government_shouldnt_plunder_aid_to_promote_trade_editorial.html [vii]http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2013/03/24/federal_budget_2013_the_canadian_government_shouldnt_plunder_aid_to_promote_trade_editorial.html [viii]http://www.ipolitics.ca/2013/03/21/adios-cida-hola-d-fat-d-development-body-looses-its-stand-along-status/ [ix]http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/03/22/cida_merger_with_foreign_affairs_may_help_the_poor.html [x]http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/fantino-defends-cidas-corporate-shift/article5950443/ [xi] http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/roger-annis/2013/01/canadas-cuff-announcement-freezing-new-aid-haiti-harmful-and-prej [xii] http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/haiti-e [xiii]http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/haiti-stunned-by-fantino-plan-to-freeze-aid/article6941946/ [xiv] http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/03/21/cida-closed-budget-2013_n_2926517.html [xv] http://www.defend.ht/politics/articles/international/3657-canada-freezes-aid-to-haiti [xvi] http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/acdi-cida/acdi-cida.nsf/eng/NAT-1123135713-Q8T [xvii]http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/cida-move-not-radical-canada-is-just-playing-catch-up/article10165928/ [xviii]http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/lloyd-axworthy-ending-cida-is-a-bold-and-admirable-move/article10163344/
Categories: Haitian blogs
Senator Moïse Jean-Charles Visits Brazil and Argentina
by Kim Ives (Haiti Liberte)
Senator Moïse Jean-Charles is presently on a speaking tour in Brazil and Argentina to raise consciousness about and to campaign against the continued military occupation of Haiti by troops of the so-called United Nations Mission to Stabilize Haiti or MINUSTAH. June 1st will mark the 9th anniversary of MINUSTAH’s deployment in Haiti, a flagrant violation of the UN Charter and of the Haitian Constitution. A major demonstration calling for MINUSTAH’s immediate withdrawal will be held in Haiti on that date, with participants coming from across Latin America.
Brazilian generals have led MINUSTAH since its inception following the Feb. 29, 2004 coup d’état against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and Brazilian soldiers make up the largest contingent, about 2,200 of the 9,000-head force. Senator Moïse traveled to Sao Paolo, Brazil on Apr. 14 at the invitation of the Trabalho current of the ruling Brazilian Workers Party (PT). On Apr. 15, he flew to the city of Juiz de Fora, where he met with the mayor, local legislators, the teachers’ union, the transport workers’ union, the city’s Movement of Blacks, and the general public. Moïse’s visit to Juiz de Fora was favorably covered by an extensive news report on Globo, Brazil’s largest TV network. “I am opposed to the UN and Brazilian military occupation of Haiti because I am a Haitian nationalist,” he told the network. Late in the day of Apr. 15, the senator traveled to Rio de Janeiro, from which he flew to Brasilia, Brazil’s capital. On the morning of Apr. 16, he met with over 200 high-school students who jammed into an auditorium at Teaching Center #3 in the town of Gama, a suburb of Brazil. Translated into Portuguese by Vogly Pognon, the only Haitian college student studying at the University of Brasilia, Senator Moïse spoke to the students, who displayed rapt attention for over two hours. “95% of the Haitian population is against the occupation,” Moïse told the students. “When the Haitian people hear about UN soldiers raping young Haitians, they are angered. They heard about another young Haitian who was found hung on the UN base in Cap Haïtien. But if a neighborhood has some insecurity and they call MINUSTAH, the soldiers say it’s not their concern and never show up. But when the Haitian people rise up due to hunger, the MINUSTAH shows up to beat them with clubs and to tear-gas them.” Later that afternoon, Senator Moïse met with the Foreign Relations Committee of the House of Deputies in Brasilia. Four deputies, Committee president Nelson Pellegrino and Fernando Ferro, both of the PT, and Luiza Erundina and José Stédile, both of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB), held a cordial meeting of over 90 minutes with the senator, who stressed, as he did at other meetings, that the Haitian Senate had unanimously voted a resolution in 2011 calling on MINUSTAH to withdraw from Haiti by October 2012. That resolution has been flagrantly ignored. Then later on the evening of Apr. 16, Senator Moïse met for almost two hours with students at the University of Brasilia, who asked him many questions. “Everybody knows that Brazil is heading up the UN military occupation in Haiti,” he said in response to one question. “But who is making the big money in Haiti? The Americans. Who is giving the orders? The Americans. This game of bluff has to stop.” On Apr. 17, Senator Moïse will meet with the Brazilian Senate’s Human Rights Commission in Brasilia, and later in the day hold another public meeting. On Apr. 18, he will travel to Sao Paolo, where he will meet with several legislators in the local parliament, as well as hold public meetings. On Apr. 21, Senator Moïse will travel to Argentina where he will meet with senators and deputies there, as well as hold a large public meeting with the Workers’ Central of Argentina (CTA), one of Argentina’s largest unions. The union will also present the senator with an award for his work in Haiti. “I commend the government and the people of Brazil on the great progress they have made in this country in recent years,” Senator Moïse said to the students at the University of Brasilia. “But in my country, things are only going to get more complicated for them if the Brazilian troops stay. Recently, President Michel Martelly, who was put in power by Washington, was asked in France if he was afraid of the people rising up against him. He answered that he was not, because the MINUSTAH was there to protect him. That remark says it all.”
Sen. Moïse Jean-Charles speaking with students at the University of Brasilia on Apr. 16.Photo by Kim Ives/Haïti Liberté
Sen. Moïse Jean-Charles meeting with Brazil’s Foreign Relations Committee of the House of Deputies in Brasilia.Photo by Kim Ives/Haïti Liberté
Senator Moïse Jean-Charles is presently on a speaking tour in Brazil and Argentina to raise consciousness about and to campaign against the continued military occupation of Haiti by troops of the so-called United Nations Mission to Stabilize Haiti or MINUSTAH. June 1st will mark the 9th anniversary of MINUSTAH’s deployment in Haiti, a flagrant violation of the UN Charter and of the Haitian Constitution. A major demonstration calling for MINUSTAH’s immediate withdrawal will be held in Haiti on that date, with participants coming from across Latin America.
Brazilian generals have led MINUSTAH since its inception following the Feb. 29, 2004 coup d’état against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and Brazilian soldiers make up the largest contingent, about 2,200 of the 9,000-head force. Senator Moïse traveled to Sao Paolo, Brazil on Apr. 14 at the invitation of the Trabalho current of the ruling Brazilian Workers Party (PT). On Apr. 15, he flew to the city of Juiz de Fora, where he met with the mayor, local legislators, the teachers’ union, the transport workers’ union, the city’s Movement of Blacks, and the general public. Moïse’s visit to Juiz de Fora was favorably covered by an extensive news report on Globo, Brazil’s largest TV network. “I am opposed to the UN and Brazilian military occupation of Haiti because I am a Haitian nationalist,” he told the network. Late in the day of Apr. 15, the senator traveled to Rio de Janeiro, from which he flew to Brasilia, Brazil’s capital. On the morning of Apr. 16, he met with over 200 high-school students who jammed into an auditorium at Teaching Center #3 in the town of Gama, a suburb of Brazil. Translated into Portuguese by Vogly Pognon, the only Haitian college student studying at the University of Brasilia, Senator Moïse spoke to the students, who displayed rapt attention for over two hours. “95% of the Haitian population is against the occupation,” Moïse told the students. “When the Haitian people hear about UN soldiers raping young Haitians, they are angered. They heard about another young Haitian who was found hung on the UN base in Cap Haïtien. But if a neighborhood has some insecurity and they call MINUSTAH, the soldiers say it’s not their concern and never show up. But when the Haitian people rise up due to hunger, the MINUSTAH shows up to beat them with clubs and to tear-gas them.” Later that afternoon, Senator Moïse met with the Foreign Relations Committee of the House of Deputies in Brasilia. Four deputies, Committee president Nelson Pellegrino and Fernando Ferro, both of the PT, and Luiza Erundina and José Stédile, both of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB), held a cordial meeting of over 90 minutes with the senator, who stressed, as he did at other meetings, that the Haitian Senate had unanimously voted a resolution in 2011 calling on MINUSTAH to withdraw from Haiti by October 2012. That resolution has been flagrantly ignored. Then later on the evening of Apr. 16, Senator Moïse met for almost two hours with students at the University of Brasilia, who asked him many questions. “Everybody knows that Brazil is heading up the UN military occupation in Haiti,” he said in response to one question. “But who is making the big money in Haiti? The Americans. Who is giving the orders? The Americans. This game of bluff has to stop.” On Apr. 17, Senator Moïse will meet with the Brazilian Senate’s Human Rights Commission in Brasilia, and later in the day hold another public meeting. On Apr. 18, he will travel to Sao Paolo, where he will meet with several legislators in the local parliament, as well as hold public meetings. On Apr. 21, Senator Moïse will travel to Argentina where he will meet with senators and deputies there, as well as hold a large public meeting with the Workers’ Central of Argentina (CTA), one of Argentina’s largest unions. The union will also present the senator with an award for his work in Haiti. “I commend the government and the people of Brazil on the great progress they have made in this country in recent years,” Senator Moïse said to the students at the University of Brasilia. “But in my country, things are only going to get more complicated for them if the Brazilian troops stay. Recently, President Michel Martelly, who was put in power by Washington, was asked in France if he was afraid of the people rising up against him. He answered that he was not, because the MINUSTAH was there to protect him. That remark says it all.”
Sen. Moïse Jean-Charles speaking with students at the University of Brasilia on Apr. 16.Photo by Kim Ives/Haïti Liberté
Sen. Moïse Jean-Charles meeting with Brazil’s Foreign Relations Committee of the House of Deputies in Brasilia.Photo by Kim Ives/Haïti Liberté
Categories: Haitian blogs
Wikileaks Exhumed Cables Reveal: How the U.S. Resumed Military Aid to Duvalier
by Kim Ives (Haiti Liberte)
A chorus of outrage is building against former Haitian president Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier as he sits in the dock of a Haitian court, charged with crimes against humanity during his 15-year rule. However, the U.S. government remains strangely and completely silent. A 40-year-old trove of diplomatic cables, newly unearthed by WikiLeaks, helps explain why.
Around midnight in the early morning hours of Jul. 23, 1973, a fire broke out in the packed armory of Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier’s National Palace. Almost immediately, “President-for-Life” Duvalier and his Army Chief of Staff, General Claude Raymond, telephoned the U.S. Embassy’s Deputy Chief of Mission, Thomas J. Corcoran, to tell him about the fire and ask for U.S. assistance in putting it out. The destruction of Haiti’s large weapons cache became, in the following days, the perfect excuse to resume the sale of military weapons as well as military aid and training to the Duvalier dictatorship, after it had been halted during the 1960s under the notorious regime of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier. Haïti Liberté has been able to reconstruct a clear picture of this pivotal historical moment thanks to a new website constructed by WikiLeaks called the Public Library of U.S. Diplomacy or PlusD. The site enables searching of over 1.7 million State Department cables from 1973 to 1976 which had been declassified and stored in the U.S. National Archives, but which were all but inaccessible due to the form in which they were kept. Haïti Liberté is one of 18 media partners worldwide to which WikiLeaks provided exclusive access to the PlusD search engine in early March, prior to its unveiling for public use on Apr. 8. This article is one of several which Haïti Liberté is planning based on the cables from the 1970s. “General Raymond and President Duvalier telephoned me at 0245 [2:45 a.m.] to report fire in National Palace and to request fire extinguishers which we dispatched,” Corcoran explained in a Jul. 23, 1973 Confidential cable. “At about 0325 Foreign Minister [Adrien] Raymond informed me fire was spreading throughout ammunition storage including small arms and artillery ammo and beyond control of local firefighting facilities.” The U.S. immediately deployed a team of nine military fire-fighters from its naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They “acted without regard for their personal safety in fighting the fire in an area in which a large variety of explosive ordnance had been stored and exposed to intense heat over a period of hours,” Corcoran wrote in a Jul. 27, 1973 cable commending their valor. On Jul. 24, 1973, the day immediately after the fire, Foreign Minister Raymond “summoned” Corcoran and “presented [him] a list of ammunition and mortars which GOH [the Government of Haiti] urgently desires to purchase for the ‘maintenance of public peace, the tranquillity of families and protection of property.’” Adrien “on instructions of President Jean-Claude Duvalier” urgently requested millions of rounds of ammunition for Haiti’s Army. Among the largest items on the long list were 1.5 million 30 caliber rounds for M-1 rifles, 800,000 rounds for 50 caliber machine guns, 600,000 5.56 mm rounds for M-16 automatic rifles, and 400,000 9mm rounds for Uzi submachine guns. Duvalier also wanted dozens of mortars and tens of thousands of mortar shells. The Haitian Army had never waged war against any enemy other than the Haitian people. Nonetheless, Corcoran and the U.S. Embassy’s military attaché called the list “reasonable” and “strongly recommend[ed] approval of sale,” the cable said. In the following weeks, Haiti’s military laundry list would grow in length and breadth, asking not just for more ammunition but also for weapons and supplies, including 38 and 45 caliber handguns, M-1 rifles, M-2 carbines, 30 and 50 mm machine guns, 60 and 81 mm mortars, grenade launchers, cartridge belts, and high-capacity ammo clips. On Jul. 25, 1973, Corcoran sent another Confidential cable where he encouraged the State and Defense Departments “to take quickest possible action” and make an “extraordinary effort to expedite paper work” to reply favorably to Duvalier’s request because, among other reasons, “the Haitian Government is prepared to pay for its requirements, and there is no reason why the US should not get the sale.” (Not long before, Haiti had bought weapons from Israel and Jordan, as well as “from ‘fast-buck’ private arms dealers,” according to Corcoran.) Furthermore, Duvalier’s “request seems an excellent opportunity to strengthen U.S. influence even more with the GOH... and to win the goodwill of individual Haitian military officers,” Corcoran wrote in the cable. The U.S. had curtailed military aid and sales to Haiti after François Duvalier expelled a U.S. Marine Mission from the country in 1963. But following Papa Doc’s death in April 1971, his son “Baby Doc” inherited the “Presidency for Life” and began to repair and improve relations with the U.S., from which he wanted aid and investment. Indeed, the sale was approved and the “GOH delivered to [the U.S.] Embassy Sept. 19, 1973 check no. 163211 drawn on National Bank of Republic of Haiti same date payable to USAFSA [United States Army Forces in South America] in amount of dollars $273,411.40,” Corcoran wrote in a Sep. 19, 1973 cable. The sale was equivalent to over $1.4 million in 2013 dollars. Nonetheless, the U.S. was worried about appearances, and Corcoran wrote in an Aug. 17, 1973 cable that “no, repeat no, USG [U.S. Government] aircraft delivery [is] contemplated.” Instead the guns and ammo arrived on two Pan Am charter flights on Sep. 26 and Oct. 1, 1973, the cables show. Around the same time, the U.S. Embassy was also negotiating with the regime for the sale of six “Cadillac-Gage commando armored cars,” two of which would be used for the Leopards, an elite counter-insurgency unit of the Haitian army. The U.S. wanted to proceed with the sale of just four cars, the request for which had been made in June, before the armory fire. The Embassy wanted to finish with the pending ammunition and weapons sale “before addressing [the] problem of [the] other two cars,” but Duvalier had threatened to take his business elsewhere, namely to the French, Corcoran explained in an Aug. 31, 1973 cable. He recommended that “that State/Defense [Departments] reply gently to implied threat to transfer order to French firm that financial outlay of that sort to French company at time U.S. giving economic assistance to Haiti might raise all sorts of questions.” Military aid was also being resumed in this period. The “Embassy can understand Haiti's exclusion from the list of countries eligible for grant military training in the 1960s, owing to political conditions prevailing at that time,” Corcoran argued in a Nov. 23, 1973 cable. “However, times in Haiti have changed. The country has a new, young president moving in some positive new directions.” He claimed that “in the past few years, repression has been markedly and genuinely eased in Haiti” and that the government was showing “political restraint” and “a clear desire to do more for the economic development of the country.” Most importantly, “in international organizations, the new government in Haiti has been a dependable, good friend of the U.S., for whatever that is worth,” Corcoran wrote. “All these are positive tendencies which it seems to us should be encouraged.” This was “why we believe some grant military training for Haiti is very much in our interests,” because, among other things, it provided “the opportunity to establish some influence with the whole generation of younger Haitian military officers who know nothing of the U.S..” “In sum,” Corcoran concluded, “it seems illogical that Haiti... should still be singled out for total exclusion from grant training programs enjoyed by nearly every other nation of the hemisphere for many years -- training which will contribute substantially to advancing a number of our important interests in the region.” Indeed, U.S. military aid was resumed, specifically to train units like the Leopards, which was described by the National Coalition for Haitian Rights in a 1986 report as“particularly brutal in dealing with civilians.” Researcher Jeb Sprague explains in his new book “Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti” that the Leopards were trained and equipped “by former U.S. marine instructors who were working through a company (Aerotrade International and Aerotrade Inc) under contract with the CIA and signed off by the U.S. Department of State. Baby Doc himself trained with the Leopards, forming particularly close bonds with some in the force. A U.S. military attaché bragged that the creation of the force had been his idea. Aerotrade’s CEO, James Byers, interviewed on camera, explained that he had ‘no trouble exporting massive quantities of arms. The State Department signed off on the licenses, and the CIA had copies of all the contracts. M-16 fully automatic weapons, thousands and thousands of rounds of ammunition, patrol boats, T-28 aircraft, Sikorsky helicopters. Thirty-caliber machine guns. Fifty-caliber machine guns. Mortars. Twenty-millimeter rapid-fire cannons. Armored troop carriers.’ A handful of veterans from this force would later serve, off and on, as key figures in various paramilitary forces” which the U.S. used to carry out and maintain coups against the governments of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991 and 2004. Jean-Claude Duvalier, who returned to Haiti in January 2011 from a 25 year golden exile in France, is now technically under house arrest in Haiti. An appeals court is receiving testimony and evidence from witnesses charging that Duvalier must be tried for crimes against humanity. Haitian and international human rights groups have documented hundreds of cases of torture and extrajudicial killings and imprisonments under Baby Doc’s 15 year rule from 1971 to 1986. In January 2012, investigating judge Carves Jean dismissed the human rights charges against Duvalier, arguing that the statute of limitations had expired. The appeals court may overrule that decision. About 7,000 of the 1.7 million secret diplomatic cables from 1973 to 1976 deal with Haiti. The cables “were reviewed by the United States Department of State's systematic 25-year declassification process,” WikiLeaks explains on its PlusD website. The cables were then “either declassified or kept classified with some or all of the metadata records declassified” and then “subject to an additional review by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).” Those cables released then “ were placed as individual PDFs at the National Archives as part of their Central Foreign Policy Files collection.” However, the cables in their PDF form “are actually quite difficult to get to for the general public,” explained Kristinn Hrafnsson, a spokesperson for WikiLeaks and a former Icelandic investigative journalist, to Democracy Now on Apr. 8. “It’s very hard to access them. So, in our view, the inaccessibility and the difficulty of accessing them is a form of secrecy... so we found it important to get it to the general public in a good searchable database.” Twenty-five year old U.S. classified documents are supposed to be reviewed and declassified every year. The public should therefore be able to view classified documents as late as 1988. However, the declassification process has only been done until 1976, meaning it is 12 years behind schedule. Another reason that WikiLeaks established the PlusD database is because “there has been a trend in the last decade and a half to reverse previously declassified policy,” Hrafnsson explained. “A policy set out, for example, by Clinton in the mid-'90s was, a few years later under Bush, is reversed. It was revealed in 2006, for example, that over 55,000 documents that were previously available had been reclassified by the demand of the CIA and other agencies. And it is known that this program continued at least until 2009. So, it is very worrying when the government actually starts taking back behind the veil of secrecy what was previously available.” The PlusD database cannot be snatched back behind the veil. The 1973 to 1976 cables cover the period that infamous Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was in office under both Presidents Richard Nixon and then Gerald Ford. WikiLeaks has therefore dubbed the trove the “Kissinger Cables.” (After he left his post, Kissinger and his wife visited Duvalier in Haiti.) In 2011, WikiLeaks provided Haïti Liberté exclusively with about 2,000 secret U.S. cables related to Haiti dating from 2003 to 2010. They came from a larger 250,000-cable trove, known as “Cablegate,” which was anonymously provided to WikiLeaks by U.S. Corp. Bradley Manning. He has been imprisoned in “pre-trial detention” some 1,050 days under torture-like conditions. He is being court-martialed and may be charged with treason, which can carry the death penalty. There is a world-wide movement denouncing the U.S. government’s treatment of Manning, who also gave to WikiLeaks a video showing a U.S. Apache helicopter gunning down 12 civilians in Iraq in 2007, including two Reuters journalists. With the release of PlusD and the “Kissinger Cables,” WikiLeaks has once again provided journalists and people around the world a glimpse into the shrouded world of U.S. foreign policy. While Top Secret cables are not available, the thousands of formerly Secret and Confidential cables from the 1970s provide a clear look into how the State Department fashioned its rationales for many outrageous policies during that period, like the resumption of military aid to an unelected, corrupt, and repressive dictator like Jean-Claude Duvalier.
Jean-Claude Duvalier shaking hands with a U.S. military officer in the early 1970s. Does Washington’s military support for Baby Doc when he was in power explain its silence about his prosecution for human rights crimes today?
Jean-Claude dressed in uniform of the Leopards, a counter-insurgency unit of the Haitian Army. Washington resumed military aid to train and fund Baby Doc’s forces despite continuing political killings, imprisonment, and torture under his regime.
A Confidential cable from the U.S. Embassy in Haiti to Washington on July 24, 1973 requesting ammunition for Haitian government.
A chorus of outrage is building against former Haitian president Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier as he sits in the dock of a Haitian court, charged with crimes against humanity during his 15-year rule. However, the U.S. government remains strangely and completely silent. A 40-year-old trove of diplomatic cables, newly unearthed by WikiLeaks, helps explain why.
Around midnight in the early morning hours of Jul. 23, 1973, a fire broke out in the packed armory of Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier’s National Palace. Almost immediately, “President-for-Life” Duvalier and his Army Chief of Staff, General Claude Raymond, telephoned the U.S. Embassy’s Deputy Chief of Mission, Thomas J. Corcoran, to tell him about the fire and ask for U.S. assistance in putting it out. The destruction of Haiti’s large weapons cache became, in the following days, the perfect excuse to resume the sale of military weapons as well as military aid and training to the Duvalier dictatorship, after it had been halted during the 1960s under the notorious regime of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier. Haïti Liberté has been able to reconstruct a clear picture of this pivotal historical moment thanks to a new website constructed by WikiLeaks called the Public Library of U.S. Diplomacy or PlusD. The site enables searching of over 1.7 million State Department cables from 1973 to 1976 which had been declassified and stored in the U.S. National Archives, but which were all but inaccessible due to the form in which they were kept. Haïti Liberté is one of 18 media partners worldwide to which WikiLeaks provided exclusive access to the PlusD search engine in early March, prior to its unveiling for public use on Apr. 8. This article is one of several which Haïti Liberté is planning based on the cables from the 1970s. “General Raymond and President Duvalier telephoned me at 0245 [2:45 a.m.] to report fire in National Palace and to request fire extinguishers which we dispatched,” Corcoran explained in a Jul. 23, 1973 Confidential cable. “At about 0325 Foreign Minister [Adrien] Raymond informed me fire was spreading throughout ammunition storage including small arms and artillery ammo and beyond control of local firefighting facilities.” The U.S. immediately deployed a team of nine military fire-fighters from its naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They “acted without regard for their personal safety in fighting the fire in an area in which a large variety of explosive ordnance had been stored and exposed to intense heat over a period of hours,” Corcoran wrote in a Jul. 27, 1973 cable commending their valor. On Jul. 24, 1973, the day immediately after the fire, Foreign Minister Raymond “summoned” Corcoran and “presented [him] a list of ammunition and mortars which GOH [the Government of Haiti] urgently desires to purchase for the ‘maintenance of public peace, the tranquillity of families and protection of property.’” Adrien “on instructions of President Jean-Claude Duvalier” urgently requested millions of rounds of ammunition for Haiti’s Army. Among the largest items on the long list were 1.5 million 30 caliber rounds for M-1 rifles, 800,000 rounds for 50 caliber machine guns, 600,000 5.56 mm rounds for M-16 automatic rifles, and 400,000 9mm rounds for Uzi submachine guns. Duvalier also wanted dozens of mortars and tens of thousands of mortar shells. The Haitian Army had never waged war against any enemy other than the Haitian people. Nonetheless, Corcoran and the U.S. Embassy’s military attaché called the list “reasonable” and “strongly recommend[ed] approval of sale,” the cable said. In the following weeks, Haiti’s military laundry list would grow in length and breadth, asking not just for more ammunition but also for weapons and supplies, including 38 and 45 caliber handguns, M-1 rifles, M-2 carbines, 30 and 50 mm machine guns, 60 and 81 mm mortars, grenade launchers, cartridge belts, and high-capacity ammo clips. On Jul. 25, 1973, Corcoran sent another Confidential cable where he encouraged the State and Defense Departments “to take quickest possible action” and make an “extraordinary effort to expedite paper work” to reply favorably to Duvalier’s request because, among other reasons, “the Haitian Government is prepared to pay for its requirements, and there is no reason why the US should not get the sale.” (Not long before, Haiti had bought weapons from Israel and Jordan, as well as “from ‘fast-buck’ private arms dealers,” according to Corcoran.) Furthermore, Duvalier’s “request seems an excellent opportunity to strengthen U.S. influence even more with the GOH... and to win the goodwill of individual Haitian military officers,” Corcoran wrote in the cable. The U.S. had curtailed military aid and sales to Haiti after François Duvalier expelled a U.S. Marine Mission from the country in 1963. But following Papa Doc’s death in April 1971, his son “Baby Doc” inherited the “Presidency for Life” and began to repair and improve relations with the U.S., from which he wanted aid and investment. Indeed, the sale was approved and the “GOH delivered to [the U.S.] Embassy Sept. 19, 1973 check no. 163211 drawn on National Bank of Republic of Haiti same date payable to USAFSA [United States Army Forces in South America] in amount of dollars $273,411.40,” Corcoran wrote in a Sep. 19, 1973 cable. The sale was equivalent to over $1.4 million in 2013 dollars. Nonetheless, the U.S. was worried about appearances, and Corcoran wrote in an Aug. 17, 1973 cable that “no, repeat no, USG [U.S. Government] aircraft delivery [is] contemplated.” Instead the guns and ammo arrived on two Pan Am charter flights on Sep. 26 and Oct. 1, 1973, the cables show. Around the same time, the U.S. Embassy was also negotiating with the regime for the sale of six “Cadillac-Gage commando armored cars,” two of which would be used for the Leopards, an elite counter-insurgency unit of the Haitian army. The U.S. wanted to proceed with the sale of just four cars, the request for which had been made in June, before the armory fire. The Embassy wanted to finish with the pending ammunition and weapons sale “before addressing [the] problem of [the] other two cars,” but Duvalier had threatened to take his business elsewhere, namely to the French, Corcoran explained in an Aug. 31, 1973 cable. He recommended that “that State/Defense [Departments] reply gently to implied threat to transfer order to French firm that financial outlay of that sort to French company at time U.S. giving economic assistance to Haiti might raise all sorts of questions.” Military aid was also being resumed in this period. The “Embassy can understand Haiti's exclusion from the list of countries eligible for grant military training in the 1960s, owing to political conditions prevailing at that time,” Corcoran argued in a Nov. 23, 1973 cable. “However, times in Haiti have changed. The country has a new, young president moving in some positive new directions.” He claimed that “in the past few years, repression has been markedly and genuinely eased in Haiti” and that the government was showing “political restraint” and “a clear desire to do more for the economic development of the country.” Most importantly, “in international organizations, the new government in Haiti has been a dependable, good friend of the U.S., for whatever that is worth,” Corcoran wrote. “All these are positive tendencies which it seems to us should be encouraged.” This was “why we believe some grant military training for Haiti is very much in our interests,” because, among other things, it provided “the opportunity to establish some influence with the whole generation of younger Haitian military officers who know nothing of the U.S..” “In sum,” Corcoran concluded, “it seems illogical that Haiti... should still be singled out for total exclusion from grant training programs enjoyed by nearly every other nation of the hemisphere for many years -- training which will contribute substantially to advancing a number of our important interests in the region.” Indeed, U.S. military aid was resumed, specifically to train units like the Leopards, which was described by the National Coalition for Haitian Rights in a 1986 report as“particularly brutal in dealing with civilians.” Researcher Jeb Sprague explains in his new book “Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti” that the Leopards were trained and equipped “by former U.S. marine instructors who were working through a company (Aerotrade International and Aerotrade Inc) under contract with the CIA and signed off by the U.S. Department of State. Baby Doc himself trained with the Leopards, forming particularly close bonds with some in the force. A U.S. military attaché bragged that the creation of the force had been his idea. Aerotrade’s CEO, James Byers, interviewed on camera, explained that he had ‘no trouble exporting massive quantities of arms. The State Department signed off on the licenses, and the CIA had copies of all the contracts. M-16 fully automatic weapons, thousands and thousands of rounds of ammunition, patrol boats, T-28 aircraft, Sikorsky helicopters. Thirty-caliber machine guns. Fifty-caliber machine guns. Mortars. Twenty-millimeter rapid-fire cannons. Armored troop carriers.’ A handful of veterans from this force would later serve, off and on, as key figures in various paramilitary forces” which the U.S. used to carry out and maintain coups against the governments of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991 and 2004. Jean-Claude Duvalier, who returned to Haiti in January 2011 from a 25 year golden exile in France, is now technically under house arrest in Haiti. An appeals court is receiving testimony and evidence from witnesses charging that Duvalier must be tried for crimes against humanity. Haitian and international human rights groups have documented hundreds of cases of torture and extrajudicial killings and imprisonments under Baby Doc’s 15 year rule from 1971 to 1986. In January 2012, investigating judge Carves Jean dismissed the human rights charges against Duvalier, arguing that the statute of limitations had expired. The appeals court may overrule that decision. About 7,000 of the 1.7 million secret diplomatic cables from 1973 to 1976 deal with Haiti. The cables “were reviewed by the United States Department of State's systematic 25-year declassification process,” WikiLeaks explains on its PlusD website. The cables were then “either declassified or kept classified with some or all of the metadata records declassified” and then “subject to an additional review by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).” Those cables released then “ were placed as individual PDFs at the National Archives as part of their Central Foreign Policy Files collection.” However, the cables in their PDF form “are actually quite difficult to get to for the general public,” explained Kristinn Hrafnsson, a spokesperson for WikiLeaks and a former Icelandic investigative journalist, to Democracy Now on Apr. 8. “It’s very hard to access them. So, in our view, the inaccessibility and the difficulty of accessing them is a form of secrecy... so we found it important to get it to the general public in a good searchable database.” Twenty-five year old U.S. classified documents are supposed to be reviewed and declassified every year. The public should therefore be able to view classified documents as late as 1988. However, the declassification process has only been done until 1976, meaning it is 12 years behind schedule. Another reason that WikiLeaks established the PlusD database is because “there has been a trend in the last decade and a half to reverse previously declassified policy,” Hrafnsson explained. “A policy set out, for example, by Clinton in the mid-'90s was, a few years later under Bush, is reversed. It was revealed in 2006, for example, that over 55,000 documents that were previously available had been reclassified by the demand of the CIA and other agencies. And it is known that this program continued at least until 2009. So, it is very worrying when the government actually starts taking back behind the veil of secrecy what was previously available.” The PlusD database cannot be snatched back behind the veil. The 1973 to 1976 cables cover the period that infamous Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was in office under both Presidents Richard Nixon and then Gerald Ford. WikiLeaks has therefore dubbed the trove the “Kissinger Cables.” (After he left his post, Kissinger and his wife visited Duvalier in Haiti.) In 2011, WikiLeaks provided Haïti Liberté exclusively with about 2,000 secret U.S. cables related to Haiti dating from 2003 to 2010. They came from a larger 250,000-cable trove, known as “Cablegate,” which was anonymously provided to WikiLeaks by U.S. Corp. Bradley Manning. He has been imprisoned in “pre-trial detention” some 1,050 days under torture-like conditions. He is being court-martialed and may be charged with treason, which can carry the death penalty. There is a world-wide movement denouncing the U.S. government’s treatment of Manning, who also gave to WikiLeaks a video showing a U.S. Apache helicopter gunning down 12 civilians in Iraq in 2007, including two Reuters journalists. With the release of PlusD and the “Kissinger Cables,” WikiLeaks has once again provided journalists and people around the world a glimpse into the shrouded world of U.S. foreign policy. While Top Secret cables are not available, the thousands of formerly Secret and Confidential cables from the 1970s provide a clear look into how the State Department fashioned its rationales for many outrageous policies during that period, like the resumption of military aid to an unelected, corrupt, and repressive dictator like Jean-Claude Duvalier.
Jean-Claude Duvalier shaking hands with a U.S. military officer in the early 1970s. Does Washington’s military support for Baby Doc when he was in power explain its silence about his prosecution for human rights crimes today?
Jean-Claude dressed in uniform of the Leopards, a counter-insurgency unit of the Haitian Army. Washington resumed military aid to train and fund Baby Doc’s forces despite continuing political killings, imprisonment, and torture under his regime.
A Confidential cable from the U.S. Embassy in Haiti to Washington on July 24, 1973 requesting ammunition for Haitian government.
Categories: Haitian blogs
Inter-American Commission Grants Protection to IDP Camp Facing Eviction
by the Center for Economic and Policy Research
Last week, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) granted precautionary measures in favor of the 567 families that have been under constant threat of eviction in the Grace Village camp. Given the “imminent” threat to those in the camp, the IACHR urged the Government of Haiti:
1. To adopt the necessary measures to avoid the excessive use of force and of violence in any eviction. In particular, to guarantee that the public authorities' actions as well as those of private parties pose no risk to the life and personal integrity of the camp residents;
2. To implement effective security measures, in particular, to ensure that there is an adequate patrol around and inside the camp and to install police stations close to the camp. To this effect, the IACHR asks the Government to provide special protection to women and children;
3. To ensure that the residents have access to the potable water required for basic needs;
4. To consult with the beneficiaries and their representatives regarding the measures that need to be taken. In particular, ensure that the camp residents' committee as well as grassroots women's groups can fully participate in the planning and execution of the measures implemented for the benefit of residents, including measures focused on the prevention of sexual violence and other forms of violence in the camp; and
5. To inform [the public] regarding the adopted measures so as to investigate the events that justifies the adoption of precautionary measures
As we have written previously, the residents of Grace Village have faced significant and on-going harassment, which has included government complicity at both the local and national level. The alleged owner of the land is Pastor Joel Jeune, the founder of a Florida based 501(c)(3) organization, Grace International Inc. As the request for precautionary measures points out, the pastor’s close “ties to the mayor’s office and the local police force him to enlist the help of Haitian police to carry out illegal evictions. With his private security forces and the Haitian police, Pastor Joel Jeune has orchestrated and participated in violent, forced evictions of displaced families living inside Grace Village.” Amnesty International had warned earlier this month that the camp was “under threat of forced eviction” and that there was a “list of people from the camp” that the police were going to arrest. Amnesty urged the Haitian government to “ensure that residents of Grace Village camp are not evicted without due process, adequate notice and consultation, and that all those affected have access to adequate alternative accommodation.” In requesting the precautionary measures, human rights lawyers Mario Joseph, Patrice Florvilus and Nicole Phillips argue that:
the Haitian government’s failure to protect a vulnerable group, while simultaneously assisting non-state actors in brutalizing this vulnerable group, violates the Equal Protection clause enshrined in Article 24 of the American Convention on Human Rights. Finally, the Haitian government’s failure to protect displaced families in Grace Village from forced evictions interferes with these individuals’ exercise of fundamental rights, including the right to life, personal liberty, privacy, family, property, and judicial protection, as guaranteed by the Inter-American Convention.
The recommendations by the IACHR “reconfirm that forced evictions from displacement camps not only add trauma to earthquake victims, but also violate Haitian and international human rights standards,” said Nicole Phillips of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. She added, “landowners should raise their concerns with the Haitian government and international community who have not provided adequate housing to earthquake victims, rather than waging violence against displaced communities desperate to find a safe home.” Meanwhile, in Haiti on Mar. 28, hundreds and perhaps thousands of displaced persons marched for adequate housing and against forced evictions. Bri Kouri Nouvèl Gaye, which tweeted updates from the march, noted that, “Each time the IDP protest passes a camp the number of people grows; was several hundreds, now thousands.” According to the UN, over 70,000 people (20% of the total displaced population) are facing threats of eviction in 2013.
Hundreds of IDP camp residents marched through Port-au-Prince on Mar. 28 to protest against threats and evictions.
Photo by: Bri Kouri Nouvel Gaye
Last week, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) granted precautionary measures in favor of the 567 families that have been under constant threat of eviction in the Grace Village camp. Given the “imminent” threat to those in the camp, the IACHR urged the Government of Haiti:
1. To adopt the necessary measures to avoid the excessive use of force and of violence in any eviction. In particular, to guarantee that the public authorities' actions as well as those of private parties pose no risk to the life and personal integrity of the camp residents;
2. To implement effective security measures, in particular, to ensure that there is an adequate patrol around and inside the camp and to install police stations close to the camp. To this effect, the IACHR asks the Government to provide special protection to women and children;
3. To ensure that the residents have access to the potable water required for basic needs;
4. To consult with the beneficiaries and their representatives regarding the measures that need to be taken. In particular, ensure that the camp residents' committee as well as grassroots women's groups can fully participate in the planning and execution of the measures implemented for the benefit of residents, including measures focused on the prevention of sexual violence and other forms of violence in the camp; and
5. To inform [the public] regarding the adopted measures so as to investigate the events that justifies the adoption of precautionary measures
As we have written previously, the residents of Grace Village have faced significant and on-going harassment, which has included government complicity at both the local and national level. The alleged owner of the land is Pastor Joel Jeune, the founder of a Florida based 501(c)(3) organization, Grace International Inc. As the request for precautionary measures points out, the pastor’s close “ties to the mayor’s office and the local police force him to enlist the help of Haitian police to carry out illegal evictions. With his private security forces and the Haitian police, Pastor Joel Jeune has orchestrated and participated in violent, forced evictions of displaced families living inside Grace Village.” Amnesty International had warned earlier this month that the camp was “under threat of forced eviction” and that there was a “list of people from the camp” that the police were going to arrest. Amnesty urged the Haitian government to “ensure that residents of Grace Village camp are not evicted without due process, adequate notice and consultation, and that all those affected have access to adequate alternative accommodation.” In requesting the precautionary measures, human rights lawyers Mario Joseph, Patrice Florvilus and Nicole Phillips argue that:
the Haitian government’s failure to protect a vulnerable group, while simultaneously assisting non-state actors in brutalizing this vulnerable group, violates the Equal Protection clause enshrined in Article 24 of the American Convention on Human Rights. Finally, the Haitian government’s failure to protect displaced families in Grace Village from forced evictions interferes with these individuals’ exercise of fundamental rights, including the right to life, personal liberty, privacy, family, property, and judicial protection, as guaranteed by the Inter-American Convention.
The recommendations by the IACHR “reconfirm that forced evictions from displacement camps not only add trauma to earthquake victims, but also violate Haitian and international human rights standards,” said Nicole Phillips of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. She added, “landowners should raise their concerns with the Haitian government and international community who have not provided adequate housing to earthquake victims, rather than waging violence against displaced communities desperate to find a safe home.” Meanwhile, in Haiti on Mar. 28, hundreds and perhaps thousands of displaced persons marched for adequate housing and against forced evictions. Bri Kouri Nouvèl Gaye, which tweeted updates from the march, noted that, “Each time the IDP protest passes a camp the number of people grows; was several hundreds, now thousands.” According to the UN, over 70,000 people (20% of the total displaced population) are facing threats of eviction in 2013.
Hundreds of IDP camp residents marched through Port-au-Prince on Mar. 28 to protest against threats and evictions.
Photo by: Bri Kouri Nouvel Gaye
Categories: Haitian blogs
The number of Haitian boat people is increasing
by Yves Pierre-Louis (haiti Liberte)
Hundreds of Haitians, since the beginning of 2013, continue to risk their lives to seek a better life abroad, to escape poverty, hunger, unemployment, and poor living conditions. Promises of change and millions or even billions of dollars released in the name of alleviating poverty in Haiti never seem able to actually improve the living conditions of the Western Hemisphere’s poorest people. Haitians living in the most remote corners of the country have no choice but to flee to the Dominican Republic, Florida, and other Caribbean Islands.
During March 2013, many compatriots who had braved the danger of emigrating found themselves repatriated. On Mar. 26, 75 Haitians, including 36 women, were repatriated to Cap-Haïtien, the country's second largest city, having been intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard off Puerto Rico a week earlier. On Mar. 27, a group of 48 Haitians were arrested by Puerto Rican Police in the District of Isabella on the west coast of the island. During the Easter weekend, another group of 43 Haitian boat people were arrested off Jamaica. They were all from the Grand Anse department in Haiti’s South-West. According to refugees, they tried to flee the country for the same reasons: unemployment, poverty, hunger, poor living conditions, and loss of hope. "We are unable to meet our daily needs,” said one on his return. “We are chronically unemployed. We have no assistance in working our fields. Our children cannot continue their studies. The cost of living continues to rise to dizzying heights. We are left to ourselves. We have no choice but to risk our lives in search of a better life elsewhere." The Haitian government, which satisfies itself with generating false propaganda in an attempt to put people to sleep, offers no solution to this problem. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Haiti is said to have budgeted $100,000 to carry out a program, which is clearly ineffective, aimed at educating Haitians, especially those living in Haiti’s Northwest department, about the dangers of “illegal” migration. Through this fund, the IOM plans to continue its information campaign in the media and through a radio drama entitled "chimen lakay" (the path home). It also plans to provide assistance to returnees, giving them transport, temporary shelter, and medical assistance after registering them. This process is carried out with the assistance of the staff of the National Office of Migration (ONM), a Haitian state agency responsible for giving support to Haitian returnees. However, the political and economic situation in Haiti is steadily worsening. Marginalized people, both in the cities’ slums and the remote countryside, are the main victims. On Apr. 3, the UN announced that more than more than 1.5 million Haitians are at risk of malnutrition because of crops lost due to Hurricane Sandy and Tropical Storm Isaac last year. The poor governance of the regime of President Michel Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe just puts salt on the wound. There are all the signs that a social explosion is brewing, as the people’s hunger, and the government’s corruption and repression, grow weekly.
Just as under the Duvalier regime, Haitian refugees are increasingly taking to sailboats to escape hunger in Haiti.
Hundreds of Haitians, since the beginning of 2013, continue to risk their lives to seek a better life abroad, to escape poverty, hunger, unemployment, and poor living conditions. Promises of change and millions or even billions of dollars released in the name of alleviating poverty in Haiti never seem able to actually improve the living conditions of the Western Hemisphere’s poorest people. Haitians living in the most remote corners of the country have no choice but to flee to the Dominican Republic, Florida, and other Caribbean Islands.
During March 2013, many compatriots who had braved the danger of emigrating found themselves repatriated. On Mar. 26, 75 Haitians, including 36 women, were repatriated to Cap-Haïtien, the country's second largest city, having been intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard off Puerto Rico a week earlier. On Mar. 27, a group of 48 Haitians were arrested by Puerto Rican Police in the District of Isabella on the west coast of the island. During the Easter weekend, another group of 43 Haitian boat people were arrested off Jamaica. They were all from the Grand Anse department in Haiti’s South-West. According to refugees, they tried to flee the country for the same reasons: unemployment, poverty, hunger, poor living conditions, and loss of hope. "We are unable to meet our daily needs,” said one on his return. “We are chronically unemployed. We have no assistance in working our fields. Our children cannot continue their studies. The cost of living continues to rise to dizzying heights. We are left to ourselves. We have no choice but to risk our lives in search of a better life elsewhere." The Haitian government, which satisfies itself with generating false propaganda in an attempt to put people to sleep, offers no solution to this problem. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Haiti is said to have budgeted $100,000 to carry out a program, which is clearly ineffective, aimed at educating Haitians, especially those living in Haiti’s Northwest department, about the dangers of “illegal” migration. Through this fund, the IOM plans to continue its information campaign in the media and through a radio drama entitled "chimen lakay" (the path home). It also plans to provide assistance to returnees, giving them transport, temporary shelter, and medical assistance after registering them. This process is carried out with the assistance of the staff of the National Office of Migration (ONM), a Haitian state agency responsible for giving support to Haitian returnees. However, the political and economic situation in Haiti is steadily worsening. Marginalized people, both in the cities’ slums and the remote countryside, are the main victims. On Apr. 3, the UN announced that more than more than 1.5 million Haitians are at risk of malnutrition because of crops lost due to Hurricane Sandy and Tropical Storm Isaac last year. The poor governance of the regime of President Michel Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe just puts salt on the wound. There are all the signs that a social explosion is brewing, as the people’s hunger, and the government’s corruption and repression, grow weekly.
Just as under the Duvalier regime, Haitian refugees are increasingly taking to sailboats to escape hunger in Haiti.
Categories: Haitian blogs
Congratulations to HaitiAnalysis Contributor Wadner Pierre for Graduating with his BA in Journalism!
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Categories: Haitian blogs
Cholera in the Age of Privatized Water
by Isabeau Doucet (Haiti Liberte)
I contracted cholera two years ago by the breezy beaches of Port Salut, while attempting to escape burnout, a broken heart, and the lingering pangs of Dengue fever in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. Cholera’s not a whole lot different from food poisoning and is no big deal if you have a clean toilet, potable water, know how to treat it, and aren’t malnourished. But in hunger-wracked Haiti, where there is no sewage system and where water and sanitation are almost completely privatized, cholera has been a death sentence for over 8,000 people. According to a host of scientific studies (including the UN’s own investigators), the South Asian strain of the disease was likely imported by UN troops from Nepal in October 2010. Having sickened over 640,000, it is now the worst cholera epidemic in modern history.
A week before the long-delayed release of an international $2.2 billion 10-year eliminate-cholera plan at the end of February, the UN rejected outright a legal claim filed by over 5,000 cholera victims seeking financial compensation, an apology for the UN’s gross negligence, and a commitment that the world body rebuild Haiti’s water and sanitation infrastructure. Invoking immunity under its1946 convention, the UN snubbed the suit as “not receivable.” It has not apologized and has committed only 1% ($23.5 million) to the plan, recommending Haiti get the rest from the “private sector” or from “major venture philanthropist individuals,” according to Nigel Fisher, the new head of the UN military occupation force in Haiti known as MINUSTAH. "Combating water born diseases, cholera, is actually a good investment if you want to attract investors," Fisher added. With some 9,000 armed soldiers and police officers, MINUSTAH had an annual budget of over $800 million last year. Its current one-year mandate ends on Oct. 15, 2013. In a country where nearly 80% of people live on less that $2 a day, the water-and-sanitation-access-for-profit model has left over 80% without adequate sanitation and nearly a third without potable water. "When you look at the price of a bag of water, supposedly treated, it costs more to buy a gallon of water when you're poor than a gallon of diesel fuel," said veteran political activist Patrick Elie, looking at water vendors weave through traffic and crowds to sell as many 300ml 5 cent bags of iced water as possible before they turned hot under Haiti’s blistering sun. Those in tent camps and shanties who can’t pay for a toilet, defecate into plastic bags that end up in the nearest canal or ravine. While the poorest of the poor get their water and get rid of their waste in plastic bags, the rest are subject to the pay-as-you-go free-market chaos of water and waste tanker-trucks, run almost entirely by the local and international NGO private sector. A sharp rise in petrol’s price, if some event, say, changes Hugo Chavez's PetroCaribe deal under which Haiti gets cheap oil largely on credit, could quickly deepen Haiti's water and sanitation crisis. DINEPA, Haiti’s National Water and Sanitation Agency founded in 2008, says around a dozen private companies collect and dispose of sewage along with an unregistered number of manual merchant toilet cleaners, know as “bayakou.” DINEPA could not answer how many private water provision companies operate in Haiti and directed the query to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, which sent the question back to DINEPA. There is evidently no registration of water companies and no state regulation of water quality. Haiti is one of the few countries in the world where water security has deteriorated since the implementation in 2000 of the Millennium Development Goals, while, since 2004, the UN has maintained a multi-billion dollar military occupation in a country with no war and one of the lowest homicide rates in the region. Jon Andrus, Deputy Director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), concedes that the privatization of Haiti’s water and sanitation has threatened Haiti’s most vulnerable people and that PAHO and partners "have failed for decades to reverse that situation." Andrus is optimistic about the new plan having seen first hand the eradication of polio, rubella, and measles in some of the poorest parts of the world, despite “naysayers” even at high levels of government. The challenge of raising $2.2 billion in the face of international donor fatigue is not small, even though only 1% of post-earthquake funds actually went to the Haitian government, and international donors still owe Haiti $2.5 billion in unfulfilled pledges. The U.S. alone has yet to come through on $650 million pledged in post-earthquake “build back better” funds, which could neatly cover the next two years of the cholera eradication plan. “I can’t think of another country where they built the infrastructure from the ground up in an emergency context” said Dr. Daniele Lantagne, a U.S. cholera expert specializing in emergency water and sanitation interventions in developing countries. Lantagne is one of the leading scientists who concluded the UN’s camp of Nepalese soldiers in Mirebalais on Haiti’s Central Plateau was “the most likely source of the introduction of cholera into Haiti.” On Feb. 27, 2013, the UN billed the 10-year cholera eradication plan as its own (the Haitian and Dominican governments had originally proposed it in January 2012). Yann Libessart, the communication officer of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), was not impressed by the lofty rhetoric of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and others that day. Only $238 million, barely half of the plan’s funding for the next two years, has been scraped together, most of that ($215 million) coming from money already pledged during the Mar. 31, 2010 post-earthquake UN conference. Meanwhile cholera treatment centers which MSF passed on to the government are currently “degenerating” into “contamination zones,” he says. When asked who should fund the plan, Libessart is blunt: “the people who are responsible for the introduction of the disease into the country, for example.” The same sentiment was expressed by Dr. Ralph Ternier, Partners In Health Director of Community Care and Support in the Central Plateau, where cholera originated and persists today at a rate double the national average. “What’s important for this kind of institution is their image,” said Ternier, not surprised by the UN’s parsimony on cholera relief. “The fact that they’d give more money would mean they are guilty.” Emergency funds for cholera - only 2.5% of which ever went to the Haitian government - dried up in January. Most NGOs have left and the funding vacuum is squeezing DINEPA, putting the water and sanitation jobs of two dozen qualified Haitians on the firing line. In January, white UN sewage trucks could be seen offloading their contents into the tailing ponds of Haiti’s first sewage treatment plant in Morne à Cabrit. Now, that plant has been closed for maintenance due to lack of operational funds. It opened only 18 months ago. Since sewage treatment is central to stopping cholera, why aren’t international funds forthcoming? “It beats me,” says Wilson Etienne, a DINEPA official who oversaw the the building of the treatment site. DINEPA still aims to open two dozen treatment sites, one in each urban center, but the only business model Etienne foresees making this possible is one that charges $4 per cubic meter of human waste. For now, the Morne à Cabrit plant remains closed. “This site should have been something Haitians could be really proud of,” laments Etienne, shaking his head.
An earlier version of this article was published in The Nation.
Cholera victims in a Haitian clinic. With Haiti’s water and sanitation almost completely privatized, cholera has been a death sentence for over 8,000 people.
I contracted cholera two years ago by the breezy beaches of Port Salut, while attempting to escape burnout, a broken heart, and the lingering pangs of Dengue fever in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. Cholera’s not a whole lot different from food poisoning and is no big deal if you have a clean toilet, potable water, know how to treat it, and aren’t malnourished. But in hunger-wracked Haiti, where there is no sewage system and where water and sanitation are almost completely privatized, cholera has been a death sentence for over 8,000 people. According to a host of scientific studies (including the UN’s own investigators), the South Asian strain of the disease was likely imported by UN troops from Nepal in October 2010. Having sickened over 640,000, it is now the worst cholera epidemic in modern history.
A week before the long-delayed release of an international $2.2 billion 10-year eliminate-cholera plan at the end of February, the UN rejected outright a legal claim filed by over 5,000 cholera victims seeking financial compensation, an apology for the UN’s gross negligence, and a commitment that the world body rebuild Haiti’s water and sanitation infrastructure. Invoking immunity under its1946 convention, the UN snubbed the suit as “not receivable.” It has not apologized and has committed only 1% ($23.5 million) to the plan, recommending Haiti get the rest from the “private sector” or from “major venture philanthropist individuals,” according to Nigel Fisher, the new head of the UN military occupation force in Haiti known as MINUSTAH. "Combating water born diseases, cholera, is actually a good investment if you want to attract investors," Fisher added. With some 9,000 armed soldiers and police officers, MINUSTAH had an annual budget of over $800 million last year. Its current one-year mandate ends on Oct. 15, 2013. In a country where nearly 80% of people live on less that $2 a day, the water-and-sanitation-access-for-profit model has left over 80% without adequate sanitation and nearly a third without potable water. "When you look at the price of a bag of water, supposedly treated, it costs more to buy a gallon of water when you're poor than a gallon of diesel fuel," said veteran political activist Patrick Elie, looking at water vendors weave through traffic and crowds to sell as many 300ml 5 cent bags of iced water as possible before they turned hot under Haiti’s blistering sun. Those in tent camps and shanties who can’t pay for a toilet, defecate into plastic bags that end up in the nearest canal or ravine. While the poorest of the poor get their water and get rid of their waste in plastic bags, the rest are subject to the pay-as-you-go free-market chaos of water and waste tanker-trucks, run almost entirely by the local and international NGO private sector. A sharp rise in petrol’s price, if some event, say, changes Hugo Chavez's PetroCaribe deal under which Haiti gets cheap oil largely on credit, could quickly deepen Haiti's water and sanitation crisis. DINEPA, Haiti’s National Water and Sanitation Agency founded in 2008, says around a dozen private companies collect and dispose of sewage along with an unregistered number of manual merchant toilet cleaners, know as “bayakou.” DINEPA could not answer how many private water provision companies operate in Haiti and directed the query to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, which sent the question back to DINEPA. There is evidently no registration of water companies and no state regulation of water quality. Haiti is one of the few countries in the world where water security has deteriorated since the implementation in 2000 of the Millennium Development Goals, while, since 2004, the UN has maintained a multi-billion dollar military occupation in a country with no war and one of the lowest homicide rates in the region. Jon Andrus, Deputy Director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), concedes that the privatization of Haiti’s water and sanitation has threatened Haiti’s most vulnerable people and that PAHO and partners "have failed for decades to reverse that situation." Andrus is optimistic about the new plan having seen first hand the eradication of polio, rubella, and measles in some of the poorest parts of the world, despite “naysayers” even at high levels of government. The challenge of raising $2.2 billion in the face of international donor fatigue is not small, even though only 1% of post-earthquake funds actually went to the Haitian government, and international donors still owe Haiti $2.5 billion in unfulfilled pledges. The U.S. alone has yet to come through on $650 million pledged in post-earthquake “build back better” funds, which could neatly cover the next two years of the cholera eradication plan. “I can’t think of another country where they built the infrastructure from the ground up in an emergency context” said Dr. Daniele Lantagne, a U.S. cholera expert specializing in emergency water and sanitation interventions in developing countries. Lantagne is one of the leading scientists who concluded the UN’s camp of Nepalese soldiers in Mirebalais on Haiti’s Central Plateau was “the most likely source of the introduction of cholera into Haiti.” On Feb. 27, 2013, the UN billed the 10-year cholera eradication plan as its own (the Haitian and Dominican governments had originally proposed it in January 2012). Yann Libessart, the communication officer of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), was not impressed by the lofty rhetoric of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and others that day. Only $238 million, barely half of the plan’s funding for the next two years, has been scraped together, most of that ($215 million) coming from money already pledged during the Mar. 31, 2010 post-earthquake UN conference. Meanwhile cholera treatment centers which MSF passed on to the government are currently “degenerating” into “contamination zones,” he says. When asked who should fund the plan, Libessart is blunt: “the people who are responsible for the introduction of the disease into the country, for example.” The same sentiment was expressed by Dr. Ralph Ternier, Partners In Health Director of Community Care and Support in the Central Plateau, where cholera originated and persists today at a rate double the national average. “What’s important for this kind of institution is their image,” said Ternier, not surprised by the UN’s parsimony on cholera relief. “The fact that they’d give more money would mean they are guilty.” Emergency funds for cholera - only 2.5% of which ever went to the Haitian government - dried up in January. Most NGOs have left and the funding vacuum is squeezing DINEPA, putting the water and sanitation jobs of two dozen qualified Haitians on the firing line. In January, white UN sewage trucks could be seen offloading their contents into the tailing ponds of Haiti’s first sewage treatment plant in Morne à Cabrit. Now, that plant has been closed for maintenance due to lack of operational funds. It opened only 18 months ago. Since sewage treatment is central to stopping cholera, why aren’t international funds forthcoming? “It beats me,” says Wilson Etienne, a DINEPA official who oversaw the the building of the treatment site. DINEPA still aims to open two dozen treatment sites, one in each urban center, but the only business model Etienne foresees making this possible is one that charges $4 per cubic meter of human waste. For now, the Morne à Cabrit plant remains closed. “This site should have been something Haitians could be really proud of,” laments Etienne, shaking his head.
An earlier version of this article was published in The Nation.
Cholera victims in a Haitian clinic. With Haiti’s water and sanitation almost completely privatized, cholera has been a death sentence for over 8,000 people.
Categories: Haitian blogs
How Fitting That Michael Deibert Lauds Rory Carroll’s book about Hugo Chavez
by Joe Emersberger
Is there anything more heartwarming than to see one dishonest corporate journalist applaud another?Michael Deibert is a former Reuters journalist and author of “Notes from the Last Testament”, a long winded and mendacious whitewash of the US-led coup that ousted Haiti’s democratically elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide, in 2004.Justin Podur fully exposed Deibert when they debated years ago. In this exchange that I had with Deibert on Truthdig’s website, Deibert made the bizarre claim that I belonged to a political current that tried to deny former Haitian president Rene Preval his 2006 election victory. [1] When I asked Deibert how in the world he could justify such nonsense (which was the exact opposite of the truth) he went silent – of course, because he made it up.
Deibert once strongly insinuated that Jeb Sprague, author of a recent book about Haiti, had a criminal background. It appears that slandering former Haitian political prisoners (in particular So Ann) produced habits that he unwisely directed at people much better able to respond. It was not at all surprising to see Deibert praise Rory Carroll’s book. Hugo Chavez distinguished himself by being an outspoken opponent of the 2004 coup in Haiti that Deibert has worked so hard to whitewash.Between 2006-2012, Rory Carroll supplied about 75% of the “left leaning” UK Guardian’s output about Venezuela. Carroll churned out article after article claiming that Venezuela’s democracy and economy were on the verge of total collapse. It would be hard to improve on this joint effort by Venezuelanalysis.com and News Unspun that demolished one of his most recent outbursts.In 2009, Carroll proclaimed that “austerity is inevitable” in Venezuela. Sadly for Carroll, it clearly wasn’t inevitable then and isn’t now. In 2010, Carroll attempted to use a Wikileaks document to substantiate his claims:
“Venezuela's tottering economy is forcing Hugo Chávez to make deals with foreign corporations to save his socialist revolution from going broke” Carroll insisted.
As I discussed here, Carroll twisted what the US Embassy cable actually said in order to conclude that the foreign investors had the Chavez government by the throat. At the same time, Carroll contradicted himself by claiming that foreign investors were afraid to let on that they had Chavez by the throat. In 2011, Carroll shamefully distorted an interview he did with Noam Chomsky about Venezuela. In that case, the flak the Guardian received at least compelled them to publish the transcript and amend the headline.In 2011, the Guardian also published a petition protesting the Guardian’s Venezuela coverage. It was signed by Noam Chomsky, John Pilger and many others. Carroll (perhaps at the insistence of his editors, perhaps not) refused to report on the plight of hundreds of Chavista peasants murdered in crimes that strongly implicate wealthy landowners vehemently opposed to Chavez. The story casts a tremendous amount of doubt on everything Carroll had reported about the supposedly cowed Venezuelan judiciary that took marching order from Chavez. Both Carroll, and his editors, therefore had ample incentive to ignore it.Before anyone wastes money on Carroll’s book, I strongly suggest they read output of his that is available for free online. Many of the unanswered emails I sent to him over the years are available online as well. For laughs (and edification) I also recommend that people watch Rory Carroll desperately tread water in this Al Jazeera segment.
NOTE
[1] In fact, in a post to the Bob Corbett's Haiti List dated Feb 20, 2007 Deibert wrote
"As to the Znet articles Mr. Emersberger cites, I actually alluded to them (as well as the efforts of the political current Mr. Emersberger belongs to in denying René Préval his rightful place at the ballot box) here"
Is there anything more heartwarming than to see one dishonest corporate journalist applaud another?Michael Deibert is a former Reuters journalist and author of “Notes from the Last Testament”, a long winded and mendacious whitewash of the US-led coup that ousted Haiti’s democratically elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide, in 2004.Justin Podur fully exposed Deibert when they debated years ago. In this exchange that I had with Deibert on Truthdig’s website, Deibert made the bizarre claim that I belonged to a political current that tried to deny former Haitian president Rene Preval his 2006 election victory. [1] When I asked Deibert how in the world he could justify such nonsense (which was the exact opposite of the truth) he went silent – of course, because he made it up.
Deibert once strongly insinuated that Jeb Sprague, author of a recent book about Haiti, had a criminal background. It appears that slandering former Haitian political prisoners (in particular So Ann) produced habits that he unwisely directed at people much better able to respond. It was not at all surprising to see Deibert praise Rory Carroll’s book. Hugo Chavez distinguished himself by being an outspoken opponent of the 2004 coup in Haiti that Deibert has worked so hard to whitewash.Between 2006-2012, Rory Carroll supplied about 75% of the “left leaning” UK Guardian’s output about Venezuela. Carroll churned out article after article claiming that Venezuela’s democracy and economy were on the verge of total collapse. It would be hard to improve on this joint effort by Venezuelanalysis.com and News Unspun that demolished one of his most recent outbursts.In 2009, Carroll proclaimed that “austerity is inevitable” in Venezuela. Sadly for Carroll, it clearly wasn’t inevitable then and isn’t now. In 2010, Carroll attempted to use a Wikileaks document to substantiate his claims:
“Venezuela's tottering economy is forcing Hugo Chávez to make deals with foreign corporations to save his socialist revolution from going broke” Carroll insisted.
As I discussed here, Carroll twisted what the US Embassy cable actually said in order to conclude that the foreign investors had the Chavez government by the throat. At the same time, Carroll contradicted himself by claiming that foreign investors were afraid to let on that they had Chavez by the throat. In 2011, Carroll shamefully distorted an interview he did with Noam Chomsky about Venezuela. In that case, the flak the Guardian received at least compelled them to publish the transcript and amend the headline.In 2011, the Guardian also published a petition protesting the Guardian’s Venezuela coverage. It was signed by Noam Chomsky, John Pilger and many others. Carroll (perhaps at the insistence of his editors, perhaps not) refused to report on the plight of hundreds of Chavista peasants murdered in crimes that strongly implicate wealthy landowners vehemently opposed to Chavez. The story casts a tremendous amount of doubt on everything Carroll had reported about the supposedly cowed Venezuelan judiciary that took marching order from Chavez. Both Carroll, and his editors, therefore had ample incentive to ignore it.Before anyone wastes money on Carroll’s book, I strongly suggest they read output of his that is available for free online. Many of the unanswered emails I sent to him over the years are available online as well. For laughs (and edification) I also recommend that people watch Rory Carroll desperately tread water in this Al Jazeera segment.
NOTE
[1] In fact, in a post to the Bob Corbett's Haiti List dated Feb 20, 2007 Deibert wrote
"As to the Znet articles Mr. Emersberger cites, I actually alluded to them (as well as the efforts of the political current Mr. Emersberger belongs to in denying René Préval his rightful place at the ballot box) here"
Categories: Haitian blogs
Hugo Chavez' legacy in Haiti and Latin America
By Kim Ives - Haiti Liberte, March 17th 2013
Tens of thousands of Haitians spontaneously poured into the streets of Port-au-Prince on the morning of Mar. 12, 2007. President Hugo Chavez had just arrived in Haiti all but unannounced, and a multitude, shrieking and singing with glee, joined him in jogging alongside the motorcade of Haiti’s then President René Préval on its way to the National Palace (later destroyed in the 2010 earthquake).
There, Chavez announced that Venezuela would help Haiti by building power stations, expanding electricity networks, improving airports, supplying garbage trucks, and supporting widely-deployed Cuban medical teams. But the centerpiece of the gifts Chavez brought Haiti was 14,000 barrels of oil a day, a Godsend in a country that has been plagued by blackouts and power shortages for decades.
The oil was part of a PetroCaribe deal which Venezuela had signed with Haiti a year before. Haiti had only to pay 60% for the oil it received, while the remaining 40% could be paid over the course of 25 years at 1% interest. Under similar PetroCaribe deals, Venezuela now provides more than 250,000 barrels a day at sharply discounted prices to 17 Central American and Caribbean countries, including Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Cuba, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic.
The cost of the program is estimated at some $5 billion annually. But the benefits to, and gratitude from, PetroCaribe recipients are huge, particularly during the on-going global economic crisis. In short, Caracas is underwriting the stability and energy security of most economies in the Caribbean and Central America, at the same time challenging, for the first time in over a century, U.S. hegemony in its own “backyard.”
Washington’s alarm over and hostility to PetroCaribe is layed bare in secret diplomatic cables obtained by the media organization WikiLeaks. Then U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Janet Sanderson rebuked Préval for “giving Chavez a platform to spout anti-American slogans” during his 2007 visit, said one cable cited in an article which debuted in June 2011 a WikiLeaks-based series produced by Haïti Liberté and The Nation.
Reviewing all 250,000 secret U.S. diplomatic cables which were later released, one realizes that Sanderson wasn’t the only U.S. diplomat wringing her hands about PetroCaribe.
“It is remarkable that in this current contest we are being outspent by two impoverished countries: Cuba and Venezuela,” noted U.S. Ambassador to Uruguay Frank Baxter in a 2007 cable released by Wikileaks. “We offer a small Fulbright program; they offer a thousand medical scholarships. We offer a half dozen brief IV programs to ‘future leaders’; they offer thousands of eye operations to poor people. We offer complex free trade agreements someday; they offer oil at favorable rates today. Perhaps we should not be surprised that Chavez is winning friends and influencing people at our expense.”
We can now expect the Washington’s “contest” with Venezuela to escalate dramatically as it attempts to take advantage of the Bolivarian regime’s vulnerability during the transition of power. Already Vice President Nicolas Maduro, whom Chavez asked Venezuelans to make his successor, has sounded the alarm. "We have no doubt that commander Chavez was attacked with this illness," Maduro said on Mar. 5, repeating a suspicion voiced by Chavez himself that Washington was somehow responsible for the fatal cancer he contracted. "The old enemies of our fatherland looked for a way to harm his health."
Maduro also announced on national television on Mar. 5 “that a U.S. Embassy attache was being expelled for meeting with military officers and planning to destabilize the country,” the AP reported. A U.S. Air Force attaché was also expelled.
In short, just as the imperative to secure oil has driven the U.S. to multiple wars, coups, and intrigues in the Mideast over the past 60 years, it is now driving the U.S. toward a major new confrontation in Latin America. With Chavez’s death, Washington sees a long awaited opportunity to roll back the Bolivarian Revolution and programs like PetroCaribe. In recent years, Chavez has led Venezuela to nationalize dozens of foreign-owned undertakings, including oil projects run by Exxon Mobil, Texaco Chevron, and other large North American corporations. The future of the hydrocarbon resources in Venezuela’s Maracaibo Basin and Orinoco Belt, recently declared to be the world’s largest, will soon reveal itself to be the central economic and political issue, and hottest flashpoint, in the hemisphere.
In the case of Haiti, Hugo Chavez often said that PetroCaribe and other aid was given “to repay the historic debt that Venezuela owes the Haitian people.” Haiti was the first nation of Latin America, gaining its independence in 1804. In the 19th century’s first example of international solidarity, Haitian revolutionary leaders like Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Alexandre Pétion provided Francisco de Miranda and Simon Bolivar, South America’s “Great Liberator,” with guns, ships, and printing presses to carry out the anti-colonial struggle on the continent.
And this was the dream that inspired Hugo Chavez: a modern Bolivarian revolution sweeping South America, spreading independence from Washington and growing “21stcentury socialism.” PetroCaribe was Chavez’s flagship in that “contest,” as Ambassador Baxter called it.
Ironically, it was former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide who first foiled U.S. election engineering in Latin America in December 1990, but his electoral victory was cut short by a September 1991 coup. Hugo Chavez was the next Latin American leader to successfully carry out a political revolution at the polls in 1998. His people defeated the U.S.-backed coup that tried to unseat him in April 2002. Due to his strategic acumen, his popular support, and the goodwill created with PetroCaribe, Chavez’s prestige grew in Venezuela and around the world during his 14 years in power up until his death today, which will bring a huge tide of mourning across Latin America.
The eulogies will be many, but former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who personally knew and worked with Chavez, made a prescient observation in January that stands out: “In my opinion, history will judge the contributions of Hugo Chavez to Latin American as greater than those of Bolivar.”
Categories: Haitian blogs
Is the Caracol Industrial Park Worth the Risk?
By Haiti Grassroots Watch (Haiti Liberte)
Last October, officials from the Haitian government and a number of foreign governments and institutions, who call themselves“friends of Haiti,” saw their dream become a reality. Finally, there was earthquake reconstruction progress worth celebrating with the inauguration of the giant Caracol Industrial Park (PIC), which, according to its backers, will someday host 20,000 or maybe even 65,000 jobs.
President Michel Martelly was there, as were Haitian and foreign diplomats, the Clinton power couple, millionaires and actors, all present to celebrate the government’s clarion call: “Haiti is open for business.”* “We supported the Caracol Park because we knew it was going to be an extraordinary thing for the north,” then-Social Affairs Minister Josépha Raymond Gauthier told Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW). “The park will allow us to ‘decentralize’ the country and create a northern ‘pole.’ It will also give people jobs in an extraordinary way!” But a two-month investigation by HGW discovered that the number of jobs in the north is not yet “extraordinary,” and that many other promises have not yet been kept. One year after it started operations, only 1,388 people work in the park; 26 of them are foreigners, and another 24 are security guards. Also, HGW research among a sampling of workers found that, at the end of the day, most have only 57 gourdes, or US$1.36, in hand after paying for transportation and food out of their 200 gourdes minimum wage (US$4.75) salary. HGW also learned that most of the farmers kicked off the land to make way for the industrial park are still without land. “Before, Caracol was the breadbasket of the Northeast department,” said Breüs Wilcien, one of the farmers expelled from the 250-hectare zone. “Right now there is a shortage of some products in the local markets. We are just sitting here in misery.” Another farmer, Waldins Paul, a member of the Association of Caracol Workers, explained: “In my opinion, [the PIC] has its advantages and its disadvantages… The good part is that there are a lot of people who before didn’t have anything to do, who just sat around yawning. But now they see they aren’t getting that much for working, since 200 gourdes (about US$4.75) can’t do anything for anyone. What’s worse, it has impoverished the breadbasket of Haiti’s North and Northeast departments.” The PIC was put together by the U.S. and Haitian governments with help from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). It cost, for the first phase, at least US$250 million. Almost half, about US$120 million, came from U.S. citizens. Since then, more money has been spent on studies, roads, and on paying off the farmers expelled from their lands. [See “Caracol By The Numbers”]
“The disadvantages”
The January 2010 earthquake forcefully dislocated 1.3 million people in Léogâne and the capital. But those weren’t the only regions that saw dislocation. The PIC also forcefully expelled people: the 366 families who were farming 250 hectares of fertile land. [See “Haiti: Open for Business” to learn more about the choice of Caracol for the park.] The Chabert plantation assured the survival of about 2,500 people in those families, as well as 750 agricultural workers who toiled for at least 100 days per year each year on the plots. The Haitian government requisitioned the land in November 2011, covered it with asphalt and fill, and put up giant hangers for the factories. The Technical and Execution Unit (Unité Technique d’Exécution - UTE), an agency of the Finance Ministry, has been charged with the task of relocating of the farmers, and also with paying them damages to cover the cost of every harvest lost until they receive new lands. According to the UTE, each farmer is getting US$1,450 per hectare to make up for the lost cash revenue, as well as an additional US$1,000 per hectare to account for the food that the family would have eaten from its own plot(s). (HGW could not determine if the agricultural workers also received payments.) In January 2013, the UTE told HGW that the state had paid out to the farmers on two occasions, because the farmers had lost two harvests thus far. In addition to the money spent to reimburse the farmers – a total of about US$1.2 million, Haiti has also twice lost 1,400 metric tons (MT) of agricultural products, or 2,800 MT of food produced in Haiti for Haitian consumption. It takes over 100,000 bushels of dried beans to make up 2,800 MT. Finally, the UTE itself has an operating budget of about US$1 million. [See Caracol By The Numbers] Verly Davilmar will be getting 35,000 gourdes, or about US$833, for the most recent harvest lost. Before, he worked a half-hectare of land, growing yams, manioc and spinach. No longer. No land. He sits at home. A family of 10. “What they gave me is gone in a flash,” he told HGW. “There’s no other revenue. You don’t have any land so you have to make do with nothing.” UTE Director Michael Delandsheer told HGW that his team has almost found a solution. The farmers will eventually get plots nearby, in Glaudine. “Our first priority is to give the farmers land so they can work,” Delandsheer explained. “But even then, once they have land, we aren’t finished. We are going to make sure they get official leases to their land from the tax office, and we are going to accompany them throughout the process. Even then, our work isn’t done. We want to continue to accompany them, to help them improve their productivity.” After almost two years of promises, the Caracol farmers remain skeptical. Some of the farmers in the Ouanaminthe area, home to the CODEVI industrial park, never got lands they were promised after being displaced almost a decade ago. Caracol farmers were also allegedly promised jobs. “They said our family would be able to work [at the PIC], but so far we haven’t gotten any job offers,” Davilmar said. The assistant mayor of Caracol is also disappointed. At the beginning, Vilsaint Joseph was not completely supportive of the park, but he kept an open mind, he said. And he is happy that the commune now has electricity, thanks to the power plant built by the U.S.. But people in Caracol haven’t gotten jobs. “There are people who are about 32 years old, who went and got training, but they didn’t get a job because of the flood of young people in their twenties,” the mayor lamented. “I think that isn’t right. People spent three months getting trained up but then were told – ‘no work for you.’” The decline in regional agricultural production is also a worry, he said, because before, “come harvest time, there would be truckloads of corn and beans for Port-au-Prince.” Of a dozen farming families questioned by HGW, all of them said the payments were insufficient. Some said they could not afford to send all of their children to school. “We are thinking of organizing a sit-in to demand that the authorities give us land so we can work,” Breüs Wilcien told HGW during a recent telephone interview. Wilcien got 42,000 gourdes (US$1,000) but he said he can’t pay for his children’s schooling. “My entire household is suffering,” he said. “Before, we always had our manioc field. When things were going badly, we went out there and pulled some up to make sweet bread or to just eat as is. We are really suffering these days.”
The “winners”
If the farmers and their families can be considered as “losers,” at least for the moment, the government and its partners say that those who got jobs are “winners” because they have employment. All of the documents concerning Haiti’s reconstruction talk about the need to “create” jobs and in this regard, the PIC is held up as the biggest “success” thus far. HGW interviewed 15 workers, men and women, employed at the South Korean factory employing most of the PIC’s workers. This assembly factory – S & H Global – is a subsidiary of SAE-A Trading. It puts together clothing for some of the biggest U.S.-based companies, including JC Penny and WalMart. All of the workers – most of them women, as in assembly factories the world over – confirmed that they received the minimum wage of 200 gourdes (US$4.75) per day. Among the workers questioned, 11 said that they spent on average 61 gourdes on transportation each day, and another 82 gourdes on the midday meal and a drink. That left only 57 gourdes or about US$1.36, for all the additional expenses: water, electricity, food for the family, clothing, school fees, etc. [See “Haiti: Open for Business”] “I can’t live on this salary. It doesn’t do anything for me,” Annette** told HGW. Before the PIC, this mother of 10 worked at the CODEVI industrial park in Ouanaminthe. She lives near the border town and gets up early every day to come to the PIC. Annette left her job for the new position in the hope that conditions would be better, she said. She was wrong. “What I found is not worth if,” she explained, but she doesn’t know what else to do. Annette is in the same position as the thousands of Haitians who agree to work for a 200-gourde daily salary. Economist Frédérick Gérald Chéry believes that the Haitian government has a flawed approach to the minimum wage question, and that it has made a huge error in focusing on assembly factories where workers rarely earn more than that. In addition to not providing enough income for even a basic existence, the State University professor notes that a 200-gourde salary cannot contribute to the growth of other sectors of Haiti’s economy. “You have to calculate what a worker earns and then what he can buy with that money,” Chéry told HGW during a November 2012 interview. “What he can buy is the most important factor. You should not set the minimum wage according to absolute terms, but in terms of the basic necessities. You should not encourage a worker to buy rice that comes from the U.S. or the Dominican Republic. A minimum wage should be able to buy local products.” Waiting for a bus to go back home to Cap Haïtien, Flora* was overjoyed to talk to a journalist, despite clearly being exhausted. “God sent you,” she said. “I have been needing a journalist to talk about what we are putting up with in the park. They yell at us as if we were animals. The food they prepare is bad. There is only warm water to drink. Sometimes I’ve had to work all day without a face-mask. Dust fills my nose.” The workers’ comments were backed up by a recent report from “Better Work,” an agency of the UN’s International Labor Organization, which found that half of the 22 assembly factories in the capital region were “in non-compliance” as far as working conditions were concerned, and that 16 of them did not have an “acceptable” temperature. Asked about salaries and working conditions at its Caracol factory, a representative of SAE-A contacted via email said the company respected all aspects of Haitian law. However, when HGW asked to visit the factory in order to see the working conditions, the request was denied. More recently, a union organizer also asked to visit the factory in order to see working conditions. That request was also denied. HGW’s investigation revealed that of the 15 S & H Global workers questioned, 80% said they felt the salary level vs. the amount worked did not make sense. “It’s not worth it!” Adeline* said. “The supervisors don’t respect us. They don’t see us as human beings. They hit us with pieces of cloth.” Formerly a merchant, Adeline said she wants to go back to her old profession rather than continue to suffer. Haiti’s former Social Affairs Minister told HGW that she realizes the minimum wage offers a low salary. But she immediately echoed the same justifications that all the factory owners and managers repeat. “Someone working in an assembly industry [factory] isn’t going to get rich overnight,” ex-Minister Josépha Raymond Gauthier said in a November 2012 interview. “But someone who has no job at all has no hope.” The Caracol mayor told HGW that he felt the same way last year. Now that he knows more about what he called “unacceptable” conditions and the low salary, he has changed his mind. The jobs are nothing short of “humiliation,” Vilsaint Joseph said. The Haitian government has said that eventually it will provide free bus transportation to workers and has also promised that some of them will receive housing with subsidized mortgages. Part of the US$120 million pledged by the U.S. government is for a US$31 million development of 1,500 small homes called “EKAM” and located near the PIC. According to U.S. and IDB documents, the houses – costing US$23,510 each – will be for workers as well as displaced Caracol families considered “vulnerable” because they are headed by a woman or an elderly person. However, because only 750 are funded at the moment, relatively few will benefit. [See also Caracol by the Numbers]
Worth the risk?
In all, for the installation of the park, the power station, EKAM, the payments to the farmers, and other expenses, the U.S. government, the IDB and the Haitian government have spent over US$250 million. But even with that investment, the eventual benefits to Haiti and to the Haitian state are not guaranteed. All of the companies that set up shop in the PIC will get various tax breaks, meaning that little money will end up in the state coffers. Until the year 2020, the clothing assembly companies, like S & H Global, have additional privileges thanks to the U.S. “HELP” (Haiti Economic Lift Program) law. [See “Haiti: Open for Business”] S & H Global does employ 1,388 people and has promised to employ another 1,300 by the end of the year. In addition, SAE-A is building a school and will subsidize its operation. But to establish those jobs, SAE-A closed down a Guatemala factory, throwing 1,200 workers on the street. The company left Guatemala for Haiti because of Haiti’s low salaries and because of the HELP law, according to Prensa Libre. Once the HELP advantages expire in seven years, will SAE-A also leave Haiti? Even with these meager results, the Haitian government and other actors say the PIC is a good “bet.” In one document, the IDB promisesthat it will set Haiti on “the path of economic growth.” Speaking to the New York Times in 2012, the IDB’s country manager José Agustín Aguerre recognized that “[c]reating an exclusively garment maquiladora zone is something everyone — I wouldn’t say tries to avoid, but considers a last resort.” Still, he said, the PIC is “a good opportunity” even though the salaries are “low” and the jobs “unstable.” “[Y]es, maybe tomorrow there will a better opportunity for firms elsewhere and they will just leave,” Aguerre added. “But everyone thought this was a risk worth taking.” Economist Frédérick Gérald Chéry has a completely different analysis. Chéry notes that rushing to set up assembly industries, without a global plan, and without a national debate, is an error. “Rather than seeing the textile industry as a temporary thing, they see it as a contributing sector to our economy, and it cannot be that, because the salaries are too low and because we don’t produce any of the inputs,” Chéry told HGW. “We don’t produce the cloth, we don’t do the design, and we don’t have an ‘economy of scale.’ I predict a catastrophe if we stay on this path.” Also, the economist noted, prioritizing the PIC over agricultural production is very worrying. “If we don’t develop our agriculture in parallel with the clothing assembly industry, the farmers will be the losers,” he said. The Caracol Industrial Park is not the first big project full of promises to set up shop in Haiti’s north. In 1927, U.S. capitalists established the Dauphin Plantation to grow sisal for the international market. By World War II, the plantation had taken over 10,000 hectares of land and was the biggest employer in the country. But tens of thousands of farmers lost their land to make way for the monoculture, and the entire region became dependent on the industry. After the war and the invention of nylon, sisal’s price plummeted. The investors pulled out and eventually – in the 1980s – the plantation closed, bankrupt. Its traces can be seen today: ruined buildings and land made less fertile by years of sisal plants. One of the Caracol farmers remembered the plantation. He knows what happened when the industry closed down. “Today, if you go visit Derac, Collette, and Phaeton, you’ll see,” he said. “If it weren’t for the UN blue helmets and the World Food Organization, those people would have died of hunger by now.”
* Reporters from Haiti Grassroots Watch and many other media were denied access because they were not on a list compiled by a private media consulting group called Wellcom Haiti, located in the capital.
** This is a fictional name. HGW decided to conceal the identity of the workers in order to protect them from repercussions.
Haiti Grassroots Watch is a partnership of AlterPresse, the Society of the Animation of Social Communication(SAKS), the Network of Women Community Radio Broadcasters (REFRAKA), community radio stations from the Association of Haitian Community Media, and students from the Journalism Laboratory at the State University of Haiti.
...steam rollers clear road into the 600 acre industrial park. Photo: USAID
Farmer Alfred Joseph, 52, lost the land he had farmed for decades. "What little land I had is now covered with cement. What is an old person supposed to do?"Photo: Lafontaine Orvild/HGW
A Haitian fisherman on Caracol Bay. Fishing employs many in the region. The IDB has promised to help Caracol’s fishermen with new engines and other aid. Photo: Lafontaine Orvild/HGW Caracol By the Numbersby Haiti Grassroots Watch
Approximate cost to launch the PIC: over US$250 million
Source of the financing – US government: US$124 million; Inter-American Development Bank: US$55 million, SAE-A (S. Korean textile company): US$78 million
Number of eventual jobs at the PIC, according to different actors: 37,000 or 40,000 or 65,000…
Number of jobs at the PIC in January 2013, including the 24 security guards: 1,388
Number of farmers kicked off 250 hectares (the Chabert plantation and other lands) in order to make way for the PIC: 366 families
Amount of agricultural products (corn, manioc, plantains, black beans) formerly grown on those 250 hectares: 1,400 metric tons each harvest
Monetary value of those products: US$807,638 (each harvest)
Approximate cost of indemnifying and eventually relocating the farmers: more than US$4.6 million
Amount of money paid, per hectare, for each lost harvest: US$2,450
Average amount of land formerly farmed by each of the 366 families: 0.68 hectares
Amount of money received by each farmer for each lost harvest, on average: US$1,666
Number of new homes promised for the region from various actors: “up to 5,000”
Number of new homes under construction (January 2013) at the EKAM site, financed by the US government: 750
Amount of money spent by the US government to prepare the EKAM site, which will eventually have 1,500 small houses, schools, and other infrastructure: US$13,724,975 or about $9,000 for each eventual home
Amount of money committed to the US firm Thor Construction for 750 small houses: $17,632,839 or US$23,510 for each small house
Sources: UTE, BID, US government documents, including http://www.usaspending.gov
Last October, officials from the Haitian government and a number of foreign governments and institutions, who call themselves“friends of Haiti,” saw their dream become a reality. Finally, there was earthquake reconstruction progress worth celebrating with the inauguration of the giant Caracol Industrial Park (PIC), which, according to its backers, will someday host 20,000 or maybe even 65,000 jobs.
President Michel Martelly was there, as were Haitian and foreign diplomats, the Clinton power couple, millionaires and actors, all present to celebrate the government’s clarion call: “Haiti is open for business.”* “We supported the Caracol Park because we knew it was going to be an extraordinary thing for the north,” then-Social Affairs Minister Josépha Raymond Gauthier told Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW). “The park will allow us to ‘decentralize’ the country and create a northern ‘pole.’ It will also give people jobs in an extraordinary way!” But a two-month investigation by HGW discovered that the number of jobs in the north is not yet “extraordinary,” and that many other promises have not yet been kept. One year after it started operations, only 1,388 people work in the park; 26 of them are foreigners, and another 24 are security guards. Also, HGW research among a sampling of workers found that, at the end of the day, most have only 57 gourdes, or US$1.36, in hand after paying for transportation and food out of their 200 gourdes minimum wage (US$4.75) salary. HGW also learned that most of the farmers kicked off the land to make way for the industrial park are still without land. “Before, Caracol was the breadbasket of the Northeast department,” said Breüs Wilcien, one of the farmers expelled from the 250-hectare zone. “Right now there is a shortage of some products in the local markets. We are just sitting here in misery.” Another farmer, Waldins Paul, a member of the Association of Caracol Workers, explained: “In my opinion, [the PIC] has its advantages and its disadvantages… The good part is that there are a lot of people who before didn’t have anything to do, who just sat around yawning. But now they see they aren’t getting that much for working, since 200 gourdes (about US$4.75) can’t do anything for anyone. What’s worse, it has impoverished the breadbasket of Haiti’s North and Northeast departments.” The PIC was put together by the U.S. and Haitian governments with help from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). It cost, for the first phase, at least US$250 million. Almost half, about US$120 million, came from U.S. citizens. Since then, more money has been spent on studies, roads, and on paying off the farmers expelled from their lands. [See “Caracol By The Numbers”]
“The disadvantages”
The January 2010 earthquake forcefully dislocated 1.3 million people in Léogâne and the capital. But those weren’t the only regions that saw dislocation. The PIC also forcefully expelled people: the 366 families who were farming 250 hectares of fertile land. [See “Haiti: Open for Business” to learn more about the choice of Caracol for the park.] The Chabert plantation assured the survival of about 2,500 people in those families, as well as 750 agricultural workers who toiled for at least 100 days per year each year on the plots. The Haitian government requisitioned the land in November 2011, covered it with asphalt and fill, and put up giant hangers for the factories. The Technical and Execution Unit (Unité Technique d’Exécution - UTE), an agency of the Finance Ministry, has been charged with the task of relocating of the farmers, and also with paying them damages to cover the cost of every harvest lost until they receive new lands. According to the UTE, each farmer is getting US$1,450 per hectare to make up for the lost cash revenue, as well as an additional US$1,000 per hectare to account for the food that the family would have eaten from its own plot(s). (HGW could not determine if the agricultural workers also received payments.) In January 2013, the UTE told HGW that the state had paid out to the farmers on two occasions, because the farmers had lost two harvests thus far. In addition to the money spent to reimburse the farmers – a total of about US$1.2 million, Haiti has also twice lost 1,400 metric tons (MT) of agricultural products, or 2,800 MT of food produced in Haiti for Haitian consumption. It takes over 100,000 bushels of dried beans to make up 2,800 MT. Finally, the UTE itself has an operating budget of about US$1 million. [See Caracol By The Numbers] Verly Davilmar will be getting 35,000 gourdes, or about US$833, for the most recent harvest lost. Before, he worked a half-hectare of land, growing yams, manioc and spinach. No longer. No land. He sits at home. A family of 10. “What they gave me is gone in a flash,” he told HGW. “There’s no other revenue. You don’t have any land so you have to make do with nothing.” UTE Director Michael Delandsheer told HGW that his team has almost found a solution. The farmers will eventually get plots nearby, in Glaudine. “Our first priority is to give the farmers land so they can work,” Delandsheer explained. “But even then, once they have land, we aren’t finished. We are going to make sure they get official leases to their land from the tax office, and we are going to accompany them throughout the process. Even then, our work isn’t done. We want to continue to accompany them, to help them improve their productivity.” After almost two years of promises, the Caracol farmers remain skeptical. Some of the farmers in the Ouanaminthe area, home to the CODEVI industrial park, never got lands they were promised after being displaced almost a decade ago. Caracol farmers were also allegedly promised jobs. “They said our family would be able to work [at the PIC], but so far we haven’t gotten any job offers,” Davilmar said. The assistant mayor of Caracol is also disappointed. At the beginning, Vilsaint Joseph was not completely supportive of the park, but he kept an open mind, he said. And he is happy that the commune now has electricity, thanks to the power plant built by the U.S.. But people in Caracol haven’t gotten jobs. “There are people who are about 32 years old, who went and got training, but they didn’t get a job because of the flood of young people in their twenties,” the mayor lamented. “I think that isn’t right. People spent three months getting trained up but then were told – ‘no work for you.’” The decline in regional agricultural production is also a worry, he said, because before, “come harvest time, there would be truckloads of corn and beans for Port-au-Prince.” Of a dozen farming families questioned by HGW, all of them said the payments were insufficient. Some said they could not afford to send all of their children to school. “We are thinking of organizing a sit-in to demand that the authorities give us land so we can work,” Breüs Wilcien told HGW during a recent telephone interview. Wilcien got 42,000 gourdes (US$1,000) but he said he can’t pay for his children’s schooling. “My entire household is suffering,” he said. “Before, we always had our manioc field. When things were going badly, we went out there and pulled some up to make sweet bread or to just eat as is. We are really suffering these days.”
The “winners”
If the farmers and their families can be considered as “losers,” at least for the moment, the government and its partners say that those who got jobs are “winners” because they have employment. All of the documents concerning Haiti’s reconstruction talk about the need to “create” jobs and in this regard, the PIC is held up as the biggest “success” thus far. HGW interviewed 15 workers, men and women, employed at the South Korean factory employing most of the PIC’s workers. This assembly factory – S & H Global – is a subsidiary of SAE-A Trading. It puts together clothing for some of the biggest U.S.-based companies, including JC Penny and WalMart. All of the workers – most of them women, as in assembly factories the world over – confirmed that they received the minimum wage of 200 gourdes (US$4.75) per day. Among the workers questioned, 11 said that they spent on average 61 gourdes on transportation each day, and another 82 gourdes on the midday meal and a drink. That left only 57 gourdes or about US$1.36, for all the additional expenses: water, electricity, food for the family, clothing, school fees, etc. [See “Haiti: Open for Business”] “I can’t live on this salary. It doesn’t do anything for me,” Annette** told HGW. Before the PIC, this mother of 10 worked at the CODEVI industrial park in Ouanaminthe. She lives near the border town and gets up early every day to come to the PIC. Annette left her job for the new position in the hope that conditions would be better, she said. She was wrong. “What I found is not worth if,” she explained, but she doesn’t know what else to do. Annette is in the same position as the thousands of Haitians who agree to work for a 200-gourde daily salary. Economist Frédérick Gérald Chéry believes that the Haitian government has a flawed approach to the minimum wage question, and that it has made a huge error in focusing on assembly factories where workers rarely earn more than that. In addition to not providing enough income for even a basic existence, the State University professor notes that a 200-gourde salary cannot contribute to the growth of other sectors of Haiti’s economy. “You have to calculate what a worker earns and then what he can buy with that money,” Chéry told HGW during a November 2012 interview. “What he can buy is the most important factor. You should not set the minimum wage according to absolute terms, but in terms of the basic necessities. You should not encourage a worker to buy rice that comes from the U.S. or the Dominican Republic. A minimum wage should be able to buy local products.” Waiting for a bus to go back home to Cap Haïtien, Flora* was overjoyed to talk to a journalist, despite clearly being exhausted. “God sent you,” she said. “I have been needing a journalist to talk about what we are putting up with in the park. They yell at us as if we were animals. The food they prepare is bad. There is only warm water to drink. Sometimes I’ve had to work all day without a face-mask. Dust fills my nose.” The workers’ comments were backed up by a recent report from “Better Work,” an agency of the UN’s International Labor Organization, which found that half of the 22 assembly factories in the capital region were “in non-compliance” as far as working conditions were concerned, and that 16 of them did not have an “acceptable” temperature. Asked about salaries and working conditions at its Caracol factory, a representative of SAE-A contacted via email said the company respected all aspects of Haitian law. However, when HGW asked to visit the factory in order to see the working conditions, the request was denied. More recently, a union organizer also asked to visit the factory in order to see working conditions. That request was also denied. HGW’s investigation revealed that of the 15 S & H Global workers questioned, 80% said they felt the salary level vs. the amount worked did not make sense. “It’s not worth it!” Adeline* said. “The supervisors don’t respect us. They don’t see us as human beings. They hit us with pieces of cloth.” Formerly a merchant, Adeline said she wants to go back to her old profession rather than continue to suffer. Haiti’s former Social Affairs Minister told HGW that she realizes the minimum wage offers a low salary. But she immediately echoed the same justifications that all the factory owners and managers repeat. “Someone working in an assembly industry [factory] isn’t going to get rich overnight,” ex-Minister Josépha Raymond Gauthier said in a November 2012 interview. “But someone who has no job at all has no hope.” The Caracol mayor told HGW that he felt the same way last year. Now that he knows more about what he called “unacceptable” conditions and the low salary, he has changed his mind. The jobs are nothing short of “humiliation,” Vilsaint Joseph said. The Haitian government has said that eventually it will provide free bus transportation to workers and has also promised that some of them will receive housing with subsidized mortgages. Part of the US$120 million pledged by the U.S. government is for a US$31 million development of 1,500 small homes called “EKAM” and located near the PIC. According to U.S. and IDB documents, the houses – costing US$23,510 each – will be for workers as well as displaced Caracol families considered “vulnerable” because they are headed by a woman or an elderly person. However, because only 750 are funded at the moment, relatively few will benefit. [See also Caracol by the Numbers]
Worth the risk?
In all, for the installation of the park, the power station, EKAM, the payments to the farmers, and other expenses, the U.S. government, the IDB and the Haitian government have spent over US$250 million. But even with that investment, the eventual benefits to Haiti and to the Haitian state are not guaranteed. All of the companies that set up shop in the PIC will get various tax breaks, meaning that little money will end up in the state coffers. Until the year 2020, the clothing assembly companies, like S & H Global, have additional privileges thanks to the U.S. “HELP” (Haiti Economic Lift Program) law. [See “Haiti: Open for Business”] S & H Global does employ 1,388 people and has promised to employ another 1,300 by the end of the year. In addition, SAE-A is building a school and will subsidize its operation. But to establish those jobs, SAE-A closed down a Guatemala factory, throwing 1,200 workers on the street. The company left Guatemala for Haiti because of Haiti’s low salaries and because of the HELP law, according to Prensa Libre. Once the HELP advantages expire in seven years, will SAE-A also leave Haiti? Even with these meager results, the Haitian government and other actors say the PIC is a good “bet.” In one document, the IDB promisesthat it will set Haiti on “the path of economic growth.” Speaking to the New York Times in 2012, the IDB’s country manager José Agustín Aguerre recognized that “[c]reating an exclusively garment maquiladora zone is something everyone — I wouldn’t say tries to avoid, but considers a last resort.” Still, he said, the PIC is “a good opportunity” even though the salaries are “low” and the jobs “unstable.” “[Y]es, maybe tomorrow there will a better opportunity for firms elsewhere and they will just leave,” Aguerre added. “But everyone thought this was a risk worth taking.” Economist Frédérick Gérald Chéry has a completely different analysis. Chéry notes that rushing to set up assembly industries, without a global plan, and without a national debate, is an error. “Rather than seeing the textile industry as a temporary thing, they see it as a contributing sector to our economy, and it cannot be that, because the salaries are too low and because we don’t produce any of the inputs,” Chéry told HGW. “We don’t produce the cloth, we don’t do the design, and we don’t have an ‘economy of scale.’ I predict a catastrophe if we stay on this path.” Also, the economist noted, prioritizing the PIC over agricultural production is very worrying. “If we don’t develop our agriculture in parallel with the clothing assembly industry, the farmers will be the losers,” he said. The Caracol Industrial Park is not the first big project full of promises to set up shop in Haiti’s north. In 1927, U.S. capitalists established the Dauphin Plantation to grow sisal for the international market. By World War II, the plantation had taken over 10,000 hectares of land and was the biggest employer in the country. But tens of thousands of farmers lost their land to make way for the monoculture, and the entire region became dependent on the industry. After the war and the invention of nylon, sisal’s price plummeted. The investors pulled out and eventually – in the 1980s – the plantation closed, bankrupt. Its traces can be seen today: ruined buildings and land made less fertile by years of sisal plants. One of the Caracol farmers remembered the plantation. He knows what happened when the industry closed down. “Today, if you go visit Derac, Collette, and Phaeton, you’ll see,” he said. “If it weren’t for the UN blue helmets and the World Food Organization, those people would have died of hunger by now.”
* Reporters from Haiti Grassroots Watch and many other media were denied access because they were not on a list compiled by a private media consulting group called Wellcom Haiti, located in the capital.
** This is a fictional name. HGW decided to conceal the identity of the workers in order to protect them from repercussions.
Haiti Grassroots Watch is a partnership of AlterPresse, the Society of the Animation of Social Communication(SAKS), the Network of Women Community Radio Broadcasters (REFRAKA), community radio stations from the Association of Haitian Community Media, and students from the Journalism Laboratory at the State University of Haiti.
...steam rollers clear road into the 600 acre industrial park. Photo: USAID
Farmer Alfred Joseph, 52, lost the land he had farmed for decades. "What little land I had is now covered with cement. What is an old person supposed to do?"Photo: Lafontaine Orvild/HGW
A Haitian fisherman on Caracol Bay. Fishing employs many in the region. The IDB has promised to help Caracol’s fishermen with new engines and other aid. Photo: Lafontaine Orvild/HGW Caracol By the Numbersby Haiti Grassroots Watch
Approximate cost to launch the PIC: over US$250 million
Source of the financing – US government: US$124 million; Inter-American Development Bank: US$55 million, SAE-A (S. Korean textile company): US$78 million
Number of eventual jobs at the PIC, according to different actors: 37,000 or 40,000 or 65,000…
Number of jobs at the PIC in January 2013, including the 24 security guards: 1,388
Number of farmers kicked off 250 hectares (the Chabert plantation and other lands) in order to make way for the PIC: 366 families
Amount of agricultural products (corn, manioc, plantains, black beans) formerly grown on those 250 hectares: 1,400 metric tons each harvest
Monetary value of those products: US$807,638 (each harvest)
Approximate cost of indemnifying and eventually relocating the farmers: more than US$4.6 million
Amount of money paid, per hectare, for each lost harvest: US$2,450
Average amount of land formerly farmed by each of the 366 families: 0.68 hectares
Amount of money received by each farmer for each lost harvest, on average: US$1,666
Number of new homes promised for the region from various actors: “up to 5,000”
Number of new homes under construction (January 2013) at the EKAM site, financed by the US government: 750
Amount of money spent by the US government to prepare the EKAM site, which will eventually have 1,500 small houses, schools, and other infrastructure: US$13,724,975 or about $9,000 for each eventual home
Amount of money committed to the US firm Thor Construction for 750 small houses: $17,632,839 or US$23,510 for each small house
Sources: UTE, BID, US government documents, including http://www.usaspending.gov
Categories: Haitian blogs
Haiti’s Oscar Awards
By Mark Schuller (Haiti Liberte)
On Feb. 26, Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn, who now acts as Haitian President Michel Martelly’s “Ambassador-at-Large,” extolled the progress Haiti has made since the 2010 earthquake as “extraordinary.” There has indeed been some progress, and Penn has worked hard to resettle and improve the living standards of tens of thousands of people in one of the capital’s largest internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. However, Penn’s recent declaration is best understood as an infomercial, selling President Martelly – a.k.a. compas musician “Sweet Micky” – and reading his lines for a government show called “Haiti is open for business,” a slogan recently challenged by the U.N. Penn’s performance distracts attention from other grim realities, particularly the almost 350,000 people still living under tents in Haiti. But he is far from the only actor playing make-believe. Here’s a list of what might be considered Haiti’s Oscar-winning performances.
Best Make-up and Costume:
Goes to the United Nations. After over 20 months of vociferously denying overwhelming epidemiological and genetic evidence that UN occupation troops brought a deadly strain of cholera to Haiti in October 2010, unleashing an epidemic that has now killed over 8,000, the world body finally rebuffed a suit demanding compensation for victims, arguing that “the claims are not receivable” and that it is not responsible for damages. The UN also should be nominated for “Best Humanitarian Actor in a Supporting Role” for this cover-up, and “Best Special Effects” for claiming diplomatic immunity.
Best Picture:
This prize goes to former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, who stole hundreds of millions in foreign aid, which went into private Swiss bank accounts and to fund his secret police – the Tontons Macoutes – which killed or "disappeared" tens of thousands of Haitians. Despite this embezzlement (which even the International Monetary Fund has documented1), Duvalier brazenly returned to Haiti in January 2011, probably to make a claim on $5 million in a Swiss bank account which the Swiss government froze. Since then he has been living large. On Feb. 28, he finally showed up in a Haitian court to answer questions about the multitude of human rights abuses under his regime. He was ordered to come back on Mar. 7, but his lawyer now says he is sick in an unspecified hospital. Haiti’s justice system is also nominated for “Best Special Effects.”
Best Supporting Actor:
For this prize, it is a tie between the international community, humanitarian agencies, and the Haitian government for supporting the climate of fear and violence against Haiti’s IDPs. In a December report, Oxfam estimates that 233,000 people in 247 camps face forced eviction, a situation condemned by international human rights groups like Amnesty International and others. I have writtenabout the terrible assault on the residents at the Hancho camp near Port-au-Prince’s Industrial Park. As funds for relocation have all but dried up, many IDPs who remain are in a constant state of fear. Near midnight on Feb. 16, hundreds of people’s makeshift homes were burned to the ground in camp ACRA 2 in Pétionville’s Juvenat near the Karibe Convention Center. According to Jackson Doliscar of FRAKKA, “This camp was always under threat. The more then 4,000 families said they don’t have anywhere to go. They sleep in the streets or the corridors between people’s houses. People fled this act of violence and returned to find that assailants continued to burn other tents. Ms. Dilia Mari had five children in her tent, including a one month old baby named Cadet Ismaélla, whom she luckily saved. But according to witnesses, there were three people burned [to death], including a child. It’s important to point out that the camp was burned one and two days in advance of the CARICOM [Caribbean Common Market] assembly,” held at the Karibe Convention Center. Human rights groups confirmed that as of today no formal investigation has yet been made, and like with cholera, the victims haven’t received any word about compensation for damages.
Best actor in a lead role:
A mission group has raised over $3 million to build homes for people seeking emergency shelter in their compound. That said, the 537 families still in Grace Village, in the sprawling suburb of Carrefour, have been living in constant fear of eviction for the past year and a half. In a recent video, the journalist group Haiti Reporters not only documents slow progress in relocating Grace Village’s IDPs, but questions the fundraising by Grace Village’s U.S.-based nonprofit parent, Grace International Inc.. As Haiti Reporters pointed out, Grace International has claimed on its website that each “Permanent Sustainable Home for a Family” would cost $7,000. However, Michael Jeune, Grace Village’s administrator, told Haiti Reporters that each house cost only $900 to build. It’s possible that the Grace International website and Michael Jeune were referring to two different projects, and it’s common practice for nonprofits to charge overhead, typically justified as necessary due to the scarcity of funds for general operating expenses. However, it appears that this large mark-up may well be a case of profiteering (or what is wryly called in NGO circles “non-profiteering”), especially in the light of a discrepancy in Grace International’s annual reports to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The NGO’s 2010 tax return reported “current year” revenues as $981,183, up from $311,157 in the previous year. In their 2011 report, for the “previous year” (2010), Grace International reported $2,831,683. Perhaps due to the Haiti Reporters’ exposé, or to the lack of progress in IDP resettlement, or to the authoritarian shift in the political climate as President Martelly has unilaterally renamed all but two of Haiti’s municipal governments, the owners of Grace Village have increasingly responded to the IDPs stranded on their grounds with threats of violence. A leader of IDPs in Grace Village, Marcel Germain, who was interviewed in Haiti Reporters’ documentary, outlined the violent tactics increasingly used. The following is a transcript of a testimony given at an international colloquium on IDPs and aid held at the Faculté d’Ethnologie, hosted by the Development Sciences Department, to commemorate International Human Rights Day, on Dec. 10-11, 2012. Marcel’s testimony was cut short because the police fired teargas into the university complex in their attempt to quell an unrelated student protest. (The previous international colloquium held at the school last February had also been teargassed.)
Every day is a dilemma where Joel Jeune beats people up, forces them out, threatens people, everything. What’s worse, three people inside have lost their lives. One person [who died] we call “TiFrè” [Little Brother]. During a Brazil-Ecuador football game, there was a discussion. [Grace Village’s chauffeur] took an electric stick they had inside and he hit TiFrè with it in the heart. The second person who died had bullets in his forearm, the same time. But his brother works as a security guard at Joel’s house. They corrupted him, promising that they’d give him medical care. They have a clinic, here. They said they’d give him a little money, a little rice. This guy didn’t have anything. So they had him stay. He didn’t go to the Justice. He didn’t do anything. The third person they killed was Jean. They killed him on March 23. Jean had gone out and returned with a bucket full of wood beams and put it in front of his tent. Two children played with the bucket and he told them to stop, that the wood would injure you. He took a coconut leaf and brushed the children’s feet when he saw the kids insisted.
On Feb. 26, Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn, who now acts as Haitian President Michel Martelly’s “Ambassador-at-Large,” extolled the progress Haiti has made since the 2010 earthquake as “extraordinary.” There has indeed been some progress, and Penn has worked hard to resettle and improve the living standards of tens of thousands of people in one of the capital’s largest internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. However, Penn’s recent declaration is best understood as an infomercial, selling President Martelly – a.k.a. compas musician “Sweet Micky” – and reading his lines for a government show called “Haiti is open for business,” a slogan recently challenged by the U.N. Penn’s performance distracts attention from other grim realities, particularly the almost 350,000 people still living under tents in Haiti. But he is far from the only actor playing make-believe. Here’s a list of what might be considered Haiti’s Oscar-winning performances.
Best Make-up and Costume:
Goes to the United Nations. After over 20 months of vociferously denying overwhelming epidemiological and genetic evidence that UN occupation troops brought a deadly strain of cholera to Haiti in October 2010, unleashing an epidemic that has now killed over 8,000, the world body finally rebuffed a suit demanding compensation for victims, arguing that “the claims are not receivable” and that it is not responsible for damages. The UN also should be nominated for “Best Humanitarian Actor in a Supporting Role” for this cover-up, and “Best Special Effects” for claiming diplomatic immunity.
Best Picture:
This prize goes to former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, who stole hundreds of millions in foreign aid, which went into private Swiss bank accounts and to fund his secret police – the Tontons Macoutes – which killed or "disappeared" tens of thousands of Haitians. Despite this embezzlement (which even the International Monetary Fund has documented1), Duvalier brazenly returned to Haiti in January 2011, probably to make a claim on $5 million in a Swiss bank account which the Swiss government froze. Since then he has been living large. On Feb. 28, he finally showed up in a Haitian court to answer questions about the multitude of human rights abuses under his regime. He was ordered to come back on Mar. 7, but his lawyer now says he is sick in an unspecified hospital. Haiti’s justice system is also nominated for “Best Special Effects.”
Best Supporting Actor:
For this prize, it is a tie between the international community, humanitarian agencies, and the Haitian government for supporting the climate of fear and violence against Haiti’s IDPs. In a December report, Oxfam estimates that 233,000 people in 247 camps face forced eviction, a situation condemned by international human rights groups like Amnesty International and others. I have writtenabout the terrible assault on the residents at the Hancho camp near Port-au-Prince’s Industrial Park. As funds for relocation have all but dried up, many IDPs who remain are in a constant state of fear. Near midnight on Feb. 16, hundreds of people’s makeshift homes were burned to the ground in camp ACRA 2 in Pétionville’s Juvenat near the Karibe Convention Center. According to Jackson Doliscar of FRAKKA, “This camp was always under threat. The more then 4,000 families said they don’t have anywhere to go. They sleep in the streets or the corridors between people’s houses. People fled this act of violence and returned to find that assailants continued to burn other tents. Ms. Dilia Mari had five children in her tent, including a one month old baby named Cadet Ismaélla, whom she luckily saved. But according to witnesses, there were three people burned [to death], including a child. It’s important to point out that the camp was burned one and two days in advance of the CARICOM [Caribbean Common Market] assembly,” held at the Karibe Convention Center. Human rights groups confirmed that as of today no formal investigation has yet been made, and like with cholera, the victims haven’t received any word about compensation for damages.
Best actor in a lead role:
A mission group has raised over $3 million to build homes for people seeking emergency shelter in their compound. That said, the 537 families still in Grace Village, in the sprawling suburb of Carrefour, have been living in constant fear of eviction for the past year and a half. In a recent video, the journalist group Haiti Reporters not only documents slow progress in relocating Grace Village’s IDPs, but questions the fundraising by Grace Village’s U.S.-based nonprofit parent, Grace International Inc.. As Haiti Reporters pointed out, Grace International has claimed on its website that each “Permanent Sustainable Home for a Family” would cost $7,000. However, Michael Jeune, Grace Village’s administrator, told Haiti Reporters that each house cost only $900 to build. It’s possible that the Grace International website and Michael Jeune were referring to two different projects, and it’s common practice for nonprofits to charge overhead, typically justified as necessary due to the scarcity of funds for general operating expenses. However, it appears that this large mark-up may well be a case of profiteering (or what is wryly called in NGO circles “non-profiteering”), especially in the light of a discrepancy in Grace International’s annual reports to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The NGO’s 2010 tax return reported “current year” revenues as $981,183, up from $311,157 in the previous year. In their 2011 report, for the “previous year” (2010), Grace International reported $2,831,683. Perhaps due to the Haiti Reporters’ exposé, or to the lack of progress in IDP resettlement, or to the authoritarian shift in the political climate as President Martelly has unilaterally renamed all but two of Haiti’s municipal governments, the owners of Grace Village have increasingly responded to the IDPs stranded on their grounds with threats of violence. A leader of IDPs in Grace Village, Marcel Germain, who was interviewed in Haiti Reporters’ documentary, outlined the violent tactics increasingly used. The following is a transcript of a testimony given at an international colloquium on IDPs and aid held at the Faculté d’Ethnologie, hosted by the Development Sciences Department, to commemorate International Human Rights Day, on Dec. 10-11, 2012. Marcel’s testimony was cut short because the police fired teargas into the university complex in their attempt to quell an unrelated student protest. (The previous international colloquium held at the school last February had also been teargassed.)
Every day is a dilemma where Joel Jeune beats people up, forces them out, threatens people, everything. What’s worse, three people inside have lost their lives. One person [who died] we call “TiFrè” [Little Brother]. During a Brazil-Ecuador football game, there was a discussion. [Grace Village’s chauffeur] took an electric stick they had inside and he hit TiFrè with it in the heart. The second person who died had bullets in his forearm, the same time. But his brother works as a security guard at Joel’s house. They corrupted him, promising that they’d give him medical care. They have a clinic, here. They said they’d give him a little money, a little rice. This guy didn’t have anything. So they had him stay. He didn’t go to the Justice. He didn’t do anything. The third person they killed was Jean. They killed him on March 23. Jean had gone out and returned with a bucket full of wood beams and put it in front of his tent. Two children played with the bucket and he told them to stop, that the wood would injure you. He took a coconut leaf and brushed the children’s feet when he saw the kids insisted.
Categories: Haitian blogs
PetroCaribe’s Oil to the Poor: Chavez’s Legacy in Haiti and Latin America
By Kim Ives - Haiti Liberte
Tens of thousands of Haitians spontaneously poured into the streets of Port-au-Prince on the morning of Mar. 12, 2007. President Hugo Chavez had just arrived in Haiti all but unannounced, and a multitude, shrieking and singing with glee, joined him in jogging alongside the motorcade of Haiti’s then President René Préval on its way to the National Palace (later destroyed in the 2010 earthquake). There, Chavez announced that Venezuela would help Haiti by building power stations, expanding electricity networks, improving airports, supplying garbage trucks, and supporting widely-deployed Cuban medical teams. But the centerpiece of the gifts Chavez brought Haiti was 14,000 barrels of oil a day, a Godsend in a country that has been plagued by blackouts and power shortages for decades.
The oil was part of a PetroCaribe deal which Venezuela had signed with Haiti a year before. Haiti had only to pay 60% for the oil it received, while the remaining 40% could be paid over the course of 25 years at 1% interest. Under similar PetroCaribe deals, Venezuela now provides more than 250,000 barrels a day at sharply discounted prices to 17 Central American and Caribbean countries, including Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Cuba, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. The cost of the program is estimated at some $5 billion annually. But the benefits to, and gratitude from, PetroCaribe recipients are huge, particularly during the on-going global economic crisis. In short, Caracas is underwriting the stability and energy security of most economies in the Caribbean and Central America, at the same time challenging, for the first time in over a century, U.S. hegemony in its own “backyard.” Washington’s alarm over and hostility to PetroCaribe is layed bare in secret diplomatic cables obtained by the media organization WikiLeaks. Then U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Janet Sanderson rebuked Préval for “giving Chavez a platform to spout anti-American slogans” during his 2007 visit, said one cable cited in an article which debuted in June 2011 a WikiLeaks-based series produced by Haïti Liberté and The Nation. Reviewing all 250,000 secret U.S. diplomatic cables which were later released, one realizes that Sanderson wasn’t the only U.S. diplomat wringing her hands about PetroCaribe. “It is remarkable that in this current contest we are being outspent by two impoverished countries: Cuba and Venezuela,” noted U.S. Ambassador to Uruguay Frank Baxter in a 2007 cable released by Wikileaks. “We offer a small Fulbright program; they offer a thousand medical scholarships. We offer a half dozen brief IV programs to ‘future leaders’; they offer thousands of eye operations to poor people. We offer complex free trade agreements someday; they offer oil at favorable rates today. Perhaps we should not be surprised that Chavez is winning friends and influencing people at our expense.” We can now expect the Washington’s “contest” with Venezuela to escalate dramatically as it attempts to take advantage of the Bolivarian regime’s vulnerability during the transition of power. Already Vice President Nicolas Maduro, whom Chavez asked Venezuelans to make his successor, has sounded the alarm. "We have no doubt that commander Chavez was attacked with this illness," Maduro said on Mar. 5, repeating a suspicion voiced by Chavez himself that Washington was somehow responsible for the fatal cancer he contracted. "The old enemies of our fatherland looked for a way to harm his health." Maduro also announced on national television on Mar. 5 “that a U.S. Embassy attache was being expelled for meeting with military officers and planning to destabilize the country,” the AP reported. A U.S. Air Force attaché was also expelled. In short, just as the imperative to secure oil has driven the U.S. to multiple wars, coups, and intrigues in the Mideast over the past 60 years, it is now driving the U.S. toward a major new confrontation in Latin America. With Chavez’s death, Washington sees a long awaited opportunity to roll back the Bolivarian Revolution and programs like PetroCaribe. In recent years, Chavez has led Venezuela to nationalize dozens of foreign-owned undertakings, including oil projects run by Exxon Mobil, Texaco Chevron, and other large North American corporations. The future of the hydrocarbon resources in Venezuela’s Maracaibo Basin and Orinoco Belt, recently declared to be the world’s largest, will soon reveal itself to be the central economic and political issue, and hottest flashpoint, in the hemisphere. In the case of Haiti, Hugo Chavez often said that PetroCaribe and other aid was given “to repay the historic debt that Venezuela owes the Haitian people.” Haiti was the first nation of Latin America, gaining its independence in 1804. In the 19th century’s first example of international solidarity, Haitian revolutionary leaders like Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Alexandre Pétion provided Francisco de Miranda and Simon Bolivar, South America’s “Great Liberator,” with guns, ships, and printing presses to carry out the anti-colonial struggle on the continent. And this was the dream that inspired Hugo Chavez: a modern Bolivarian revolution sweeping South America, spreading independence from Washington and growing “21st century socialism.” PetroCaribe was Chavez’s flagship in that “contest,” as Ambassador Baxter called it. Ironically, it was former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide who first foiled U.S. election engineering in Latin America in December 1990, but his electoral victory was cut short by a September 1991 coup. Hugo Chavez was the next Latin American leader to successfully carry out a political revolution at the polls in 2000. His people defeated the U.S.-backed coup that tried to unseat him in April 2002. Due to his strategic acumen, his popular support, and the goodwill created with PetroCaribe, Chavez’s prestige grew in Venezuela and around the world during his 13 years in power up until his death today, which will bring a huge tide of mourning across Latin America. The eulogies will be many, but former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who personally knew and worked with Chavez, made a prescient observation in January that stands out: “In my opinion, history will judge the contributions of Hugo Chavez to Latin American as greater than those of Bolivar.”
In the case of Haiti, Hugo Chavez often said that PetroCaribe and other aid was given “to repay the historic debt that Venezuela owes the Haitian people.”
Tens of thousands of Haitians spontaneously poured into the streets of Port-au-Prince on the morning of Mar. 12, 2007. President Hugo Chavez had just arrived in Haiti all but unannounced, and a multitude, shrieking and singing with glee, joined him in jogging alongside the motorcade of Haiti’s then President René Préval on its way to the National Palace (later destroyed in the 2010 earthquake). There, Chavez announced that Venezuela would help Haiti by building power stations, expanding electricity networks, improving airports, supplying garbage trucks, and supporting widely-deployed Cuban medical teams. But the centerpiece of the gifts Chavez brought Haiti was 14,000 barrels of oil a day, a Godsend in a country that has been plagued by blackouts and power shortages for decades.
The oil was part of a PetroCaribe deal which Venezuela had signed with Haiti a year before. Haiti had only to pay 60% for the oil it received, while the remaining 40% could be paid over the course of 25 years at 1% interest. Under similar PetroCaribe deals, Venezuela now provides more than 250,000 barrels a day at sharply discounted prices to 17 Central American and Caribbean countries, including Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Cuba, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. The cost of the program is estimated at some $5 billion annually. But the benefits to, and gratitude from, PetroCaribe recipients are huge, particularly during the on-going global economic crisis. In short, Caracas is underwriting the stability and energy security of most economies in the Caribbean and Central America, at the same time challenging, for the first time in over a century, U.S. hegemony in its own “backyard.” Washington’s alarm over and hostility to PetroCaribe is layed bare in secret diplomatic cables obtained by the media organization WikiLeaks. Then U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Janet Sanderson rebuked Préval for “giving Chavez a platform to spout anti-American slogans” during his 2007 visit, said one cable cited in an article which debuted in June 2011 a WikiLeaks-based series produced by Haïti Liberté and The Nation. Reviewing all 250,000 secret U.S. diplomatic cables which were later released, one realizes that Sanderson wasn’t the only U.S. diplomat wringing her hands about PetroCaribe. “It is remarkable that in this current contest we are being outspent by two impoverished countries: Cuba and Venezuela,” noted U.S. Ambassador to Uruguay Frank Baxter in a 2007 cable released by Wikileaks. “We offer a small Fulbright program; they offer a thousand medical scholarships. We offer a half dozen brief IV programs to ‘future leaders’; they offer thousands of eye operations to poor people. We offer complex free trade agreements someday; they offer oil at favorable rates today. Perhaps we should not be surprised that Chavez is winning friends and influencing people at our expense.” We can now expect the Washington’s “contest” with Venezuela to escalate dramatically as it attempts to take advantage of the Bolivarian regime’s vulnerability during the transition of power. Already Vice President Nicolas Maduro, whom Chavez asked Venezuelans to make his successor, has sounded the alarm. "We have no doubt that commander Chavez was attacked with this illness," Maduro said on Mar. 5, repeating a suspicion voiced by Chavez himself that Washington was somehow responsible for the fatal cancer he contracted. "The old enemies of our fatherland looked for a way to harm his health." Maduro also announced on national television on Mar. 5 “that a U.S. Embassy attache was being expelled for meeting with military officers and planning to destabilize the country,” the AP reported. A U.S. Air Force attaché was also expelled. In short, just as the imperative to secure oil has driven the U.S. to multiple wars, coups, and intrigues in the Mideast over the past 60 years, it is now driving the U.S. toward a major new confrontation in Latin America. With Chavez’s death, Washington sees a long awaited opportunity to roll back the Bolivarian Revolution and programs like PetroCaribe. In recent years, Chavez has led Venezuela to nationalize dozens of foreign-owned undertakings, including oil projects run by Exxon Mobil, Texaco Chevron, and other large North American corporations. The future of the hydrocarbon resources in Venezuela’s Maracaibo Basin and Orinoco Belt, recently declared to be the world’s largest, will soon reveal itself to be the central economic and political issue, and hottest flashpoint, in the hemisphere. In the case of Haiti, Hugo Chavez often said that PetroCaribe and other aid was given “to repay the historic debt that Venezuela owes the Haitian people.” Haiti was the first nation of Latin America, gaining its independence in 1804. In the 19th century’s first example of international solidarity, Haitian revolutionary leaders like Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Alexandre Pétion provided Francisco de Miranda and Simon Bolivar, South America’s “Great Liberator,” with guns, ships, and printing presses to carry out the anti-colonial struggle on the continent. And this was the dream that inspired Hugo Chavez: a modern Bolivarian revolution sweeping South America, spreading independence from Washington and growing “21st century socialism.” PetroCaribe was Chavez’s flagship in that “contest,” as Ambassador Baxter called it. Ironically, it was former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide who first foiled U.S. election engineering in Latin America in December 1990, but his electoral victory was cut short by a September 1991 coup. Hugo Chavez was the next Latin American leader to successfully carry out a political revolution at the polls in 2000. His people defeated the U.S.-backed coup that tried to unseat him in April 2002. Due to his strategic acumen, his popular support, and the goodwill created with PetroCaribe, Chavez’s prestige grew in Venezuela and around the world during his 13 years in power up until his death today, which will bring a huge tide of mourning across Latin America. The eulogies will be many, but former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who personally knew and worked with Chavez, made a prescient observation in January that stands out: “In my opinion, history will judge the contributions of Hugo Chavez to Latin American as greater than those of Bolivar.”
In the case of Haiti, Hugo Chavez often said that PetroCaribe and other aid was given “to repay the historic debt that Venezuela owes the Haitian people.”
Categories: Haitian blogs
Former Dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier’s First Court Hearing
By Yves Pierre-Louis and Kim Ives (Haiti Liberte)
On Feb. 28, 2013, former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier had to show up at the Port-au-Prince Appeals Court to hear various charges against him for crimes against humanity. After not responding to three previous summonses in February, the former “President for Life” had to bow to the court’s authority or risk arrest for contempt. Duvalier was due to report to court again on Mar. 7, but his lawyer claims that he is sick in an unspecified hospital. Nonetheless, many suspect that the hearings summoning Duvalier are nothing more than “show business” aimed at rubber-stamping the Jan. 30, 2012 finding of examining magistrate Jean Carvès. He ruled that the statue of limitations has expired for prosecuting Duvalier for his human rights crimes. These hearings are for an appeal to overturn that ruling.
Duvalier ruled Haiti with an iron fist from 1971 to 1986, during which time tens of thousands were extrajudicially killed, imprisoned, exiled, or disappeared. With many of his victims in the audience, Duvalier responded to questions from members of the Court, the prosecution, the plaintiffs, and defense counsel. When the court asked about “repression, torture, beatings, crimes against humanity, political killings, and human rights violations” under his regime, Duvalier dead panned that “every time an anomaly was reported to me, I intervened so that justice could be done. I want to stress that I sent a letter to all department commanders, to all section chiefs, asking them to strictly apply the law around the country, and these directives also applied to the Corps of the Volunteers for National Security,” better known as the infamous Tontons Macoutes, who were the eyes, ears, and fists of the Duvalier regime. Asked again later about “murders, political imprisonment, summary execution under your government, and forcing people into exile,” Duvalier replied: “Murders exist in all countries. I did not intervene in police activities... As for imprisonment, whenever such cases occurred, I intervened to stop abuses being committed.” Duvalier never betrayed a trace of remorse or regret, arguing that “I did everything to ensure a better life for my countrymen... I'm not saying that life was rosy, but at least people could live decently.” He claims that he on his return, “I found a ruined country, with boundless corruption that hinders the development of this country. And on my return, it’s my turn to ask: what have you done to my country?” He suggested that he was close to journalist Jean Léopold Dominique (slain in 2000), “who accompanied me often in my inspections in the province” and that he helped Dominique obtain his radio station, Radio Haïti. Former soccer star Robert “Bobby” Duval, the founder of the Haitian League of Former Political Prisoners (LAPPH), was also in the courtroom as one of the plaintiffs appealing Judge Carvès Jean’s ruling. Duval spent 17 months imprisoned in the infamous Fort Dimanche prison without charges. But Duvalier claimed that Duval “was arrested for subversive activities,” saying that “during a search at the François Duvalier airport, we found weapons in his possession and he was released a few years later by an act of clemency by the Head of State.” Duvalier claimed that Duval’s suit against him “is a real joke” and that Duval “was treated well” and that “a family member brought him food three times a day.” Asked what he thought about the charges against him, Duvalier said “it makes me laugh” because people are just “inventing fantasies.” The hearing lasted more than three hours, after which Duvalier’s victims and representatives of human rights organizations said they were satisfied and encouraged that the Appeals Court judges were not intimidated by government pressure. They said they felt more determined than ever to talk about the suffering and torment caused by the murder, imprisonment, disappearances, and other crimes committed under Duvalier’s dictatorship. They were also galled by Baby Doc’s contemptuous attitude during the hearing. After the hearing, Bobby Duval scoffed at Duvalier’s assertion that he had been arrested for illegal possession of firearms. Of the 13 Haitian political prisoners whom Amnesty International championed at that time in the late 1970s, Duval is one of the three survivors. "Their goal was to kill me," he said, adding that he would not have survived much longer in prison. Henry Faustin was another former political prisoner who attended the trial. Arrested on Jun. 15, 1976, Faustin spent two months in a dungeon in the Dessalines Barracks (other political prison under Duvalier, located behind the National Palace). Only 20 years old, Faustin was then transferred for another 16 months (until December 1977) to Fort Dimanche. "Fort Dimanche was not child's play,” he said. “You arrived there as a prisoner, with clothes, but then they stripped you naked as a worm." International human rights organizations are following the Duvalier hearings closely. “If someone like Duvalier is not judged, how can one judge someone who has stolen a chicken to feed his family?” asked Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch. “How do you establish the rule of law when he who is accused of the worst crimes gets away with it? But Haiti has always been considered an exception. Moreover it is interesting to see that the big countries like France and the United States have never requested that Duvalier be tried, because they have disdain for Haiti. Haiti is not entitled to justice. It's good enough if Haiti just gets a little to eat, or if the population has a little shelter. They don’t make the link between the lack of justice for the vast majority and the lack of social justice as well."
Former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier was contemptuous and arrogant when responding to questions in the first hearing into his human rights abuses.
On Feb. 28, 2013, former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier had to show up at the Port-au-Prince Appeals Court to hear various charges against him for crimes against humanity. After not responding to three previous summonses in February, the former “President for Life” had to bow to the court’s authority or risk arrest for contempt. Duvalier was due to report to court again on Mar. 7, but his lawyer claims that he is sick in an unspecified hospital. Nonetheless, many suspect that the hearings summoning Duvalier are nothing more than “show business” aimed at rubber-stamping the Jan. 30, 2012 finding of examining magistrate Jean Carvès. He ruled that the statue of limitations has expired for prosecuting Duvalier for his human rights crimes. These hearings are for an appeal to overturn that ruling.
Duvalier ruled Haiti with an iron fist from 1971 to 1986, during which time tens of thousands were extrajudicially killed, imprisoned, exiled, or disappeared. With many of his victims in the audience, Duvalier responded to questions from members of the Court, the prosecution, the plaintiffs, and defense counsel. When the court asked about “repression, torture, beatings, crimes against humanity, political killings, and human rights violations” under his regime, Duvalier dead panned that “every time an anomaly was reported to me, I intervened so that justice could be done. I want to stress that I sent a letter to all department commanders, to all section chiefs, asking them to strictly apply the law around the country, and these directives also applied to the Corps of the Volunteers for National Security,” better known as the infamous Tontons Macoutes, who were the eyes, ears, and fists of the Duvalier regime. Asked again later about “murders, political imprisonment, summary execution under your government, and forcing people into exile,” Duvalier replied: “Murders exist in all countries. I did not intervene in police activities... As for imprisonment, whenever such cases occurred, I intervened to stop abuses being committed.” Duvalier never betrayed a trace of remorse or regret, arguing that “I did everything to ensure a better life for my countrymen... I'm not saying that life was rosy, but at least people could live decently.” He claims that he on his return, “I found a ruined country, with boundless corruption that hinders the development of this country. And on my return, it’s my turn to ask: what have you done to my country?” He suggested that he was close to journalist Jean Léopold Dominique (slain in 2000), “who accompanied me often in my inspections in the province” and that he helped Dominique obtain his radio station, Radio Haïti. Former soccer star Robert “Bobby” Duval, the founder of the Haitian League of Former Political Prisoners (LAPPH), was also in the courtroom as one of the plaintiffs appealing Judge Carvès Jean’s ruling. Duval spent 17 months imprisoned in the infamous Fort Dimanche prison without charges. But Duvalier claimed that Duval “was arrested for subversive activities,” saying that “during a search at the François Duvalier airport, we found weapons in his possession and he was released a few years later by an act of clemency by the Head of State.” Duvalier claimed that Duval’s suit against him “is a real joke” and that Duval “was treated well” and that “a family member brought him food three times a day.” Asked what he thought about the charges against him, Duvalier said “it makes me laugh” because people are just “inventing fantasies.” The hearing lasted more than three hours, after which Duvalier’s victims and representatives of human rights organizations said they were satisfied and encouraged that the Appeals Court judges were not intimidated by government pressure. They said they felt more determined than ever to talk about the suffering and torment caused by the murder, imprisonment, disappearances, and other crimes committed under Duvalier’s dictatorship. They were also galled by Baby Doc’s contemptuous attitude during the hearing. After the hearing, Bobby Duval scoffed at Duvalier’s assertion that he had been arrested for illegal possession of firearms. Of the 13 Haitian political prisoners whom Amnesty International championed at that time in the late 1970s, Duval is one of the three survivors. "Their goal was to kill me," he said, adding that he would not have survived much longer in prison. Henry Faustin was another former political prisoner who attended the trial. Arrested on Jun. 15, 1976, Faustin spent two months in a dungeon in the Dessalines Barracks (other political prison under Duvalier, located behind the National Palace). Only 20 years old, Faustin was then transferred for another 16 months (until December 1977) to Fort Dimanche. "Fort Dimanche was not child's play,” he said. “You arrived there as a prisoner, with clothes, but then they stripped you naked as a worm." International human rights organizations are following the Duvalier hearings closely. “If someone like Duvalier is not judged, how can one judge someone who has stolen a chicken to feed his family?” asked Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch. “How do you establish the rule of law when he who is accused of the worst crimes gets away with it? But Haiti has always been considered an exception. Moreover it is interesting to see that the big countries like France and the United States have never requested that Duvalier be tried, because they have disdain for Haiti. Haiti is not entitled to justice. It's good enough if Haiti just gets a little to eat, or if the population has a little shelter. They don’t make the link between the lack of justice for the vast majority and the lack of social justice as well."
Former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier was contemptuous and arrogant when responding to questions in the first hearing into his human rights abuses.
Categories: Haitian blogs
Morne Bossa Neighbors Nervous
by Haiti Grassroots Watch and Inter Press Service
The population of Cardouche, a small village about 12 kilometers south of Cap-Haïtien in Haiti’s North department, is nervous about three new mining exploitation permits granted last December in an opaque and secretive process. Located near the Morne Bossa deposit, the Cadouche economy is based mostly on agriculture. Families work day and night to take care of their needs. And they ask themselves if they are invisible to the authorities in Haiti’s capital. Recently, over a hundred people living in Cardouche met to learn more about the mining industry. One after another, they asked questions and expressed their frustrations. “Until today, not one single member of the government or of the company has consulted the population to hear our complaints or ask for our agreement to the mining of the Morne Bossa deposits,” said Mezadieu Toussaint, a teacher and farmer in his fifties. “If the mine benefits the population, that would be wonderful. But we are worried that it will poison our environment.”
Steno Chute, a member of the Democratic Movement for the Development of Quartier-Morin (Fédération du mouvement démocratique pour le développement de Quartier-Morin - FEMODEQ) who grows corn, beans and sorghum, said he is afraid of mining. “Mining can have disastrous consequences,” he told the crowd. “We are really anxious and nervous. The water and environment will be polluted.”
A view of the Morne Bossa plain.
Credit:HGW/Ben Depp
The population of Cardouche, a small village about 12 kilometers south of Cap-Haïtien in Haiti’s North department, is nervous about three new mining exploitation permits granted last December in an opaque and secretive process. Located near the Morne Bossa deposit, the Cadouche economy is based mostly on agriculture. Families work day and night to take care of their needs. And they ask themselves if they are invisible to the authorities in Haiti’s capital. Recently, over a hundred people living in Cardouche met to learn more about the mining industry. One after another, they asked questions and expressed their frustrations. “Until today, not one single member of the government or of the company has consulted the population to hear our complaints or ask for our agreement to the mining of the Morne Bossa deposits,” said Mezadieu Toussaint, a teacher and farmer in his fifties. “If the mine benefits the population, that would be wonderful. But we are worried that it will poison our environment.”
Steno Chute, a member of the Democratic Movement for the Development of Quartier-Morin (Fédération du mouvement démocratique pour le développement de Quartier-Morin - FEMODEQ) who grows corn, beans and sorghum, said he is afraid of mining. “Mining can have disastrous consequences,” he told the crowd. “We are really anxious and nervous. The water and environment will be polluted.”
A view of the Morne Bossa plain.
Credit:HGW/Ben Depp
Categories: Haitian blogs