Meager Living of Haitians Is Wiped Out by Storms

 

Ariana Cubillos/Associated Press

Many Haitians, used to poverty and suffering, have lost everything to four recent storms. The city of Gonaïves remained flooded. More Photos >

By MARC LACEY

Published: September 10, 2008

GONAÏVES, Haiti — Their cupboards were virtually bare before the winds started whipping, the skies opened up and this seaside city filled like a caldron with thick, brown, smelly muck.

Multimedia

 

Haiti Struggles After Being Hit by Storms

 

The New York Times

The city of Gonaïves, in a flood plain, is especially vulnerable. More Photos »

Suffering long ago became normal here, passed down through generations of children who learn that crying does no good.

But the enduring spirit of the people of Gonaïves is being tested by a string of recent tropical storms and hurricaneswhose names Haitians spit out like curses: Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike.

After four fierce storms in less than a month, the little that many people had has turned to nothing at all. Their humble homes are under water, forcing them onto the roofs. Schools are canceled. Hunger is now intense. Difficult lives have become untenable ones and, if that was not enough, hurricane season has only just reached the traditional halfway mark.

One can see the misery in the eyes of Edith Pierre, who takes care of six children on her roof in the center of Gonaïves, a city of about 300,000 in Haiti’s north. She has strung a sheet up to shield them, somewhat, from the piercing sun. The few scraps of clothing she could salvage sit in heaps off to a side. “Now I have nothing,” she said before pausing a minute, staring down from the roof at the river of floodwater and then saying again in an even more forlorn way: “Nothing.”

At the home of Daniel Dupiton, who leads the local Red Cross, displaced relatives, friends and complete strangers have moved in, more than 100 in all, taking up every inch of floor space as well as the surrounding yard. “There are official shelters, and then there are unofficial ones, like my house,” he said.

More misery in Haiti is an almost unfathomable thing. Already the poorest place in the Western Hemisphere, it has become even more destitute. Haitians were struggling to feed themselves before the hurricanes battered their agricultural lands, killed their livestock and washed away their tiny stores of rice. Now, the country will be even more dependent on imports, and the high food prices across the globe will only increase the sting.

“Life was very, very difficult even before this,” said Raphael Chuinard, who is organizing the distribution of emergency aid in Gonaïves for the United Nations World Food Program. “The malnutrition rate was too high. People were resigned to suffer.”

And now that suffering has been turned up a notch. The hurricanes have struck all 10 of Haiti’s regions, and by knocking out bridges and washing away roads they have created isolated pockets of misery across the countryside. Relief workers and Haitian authorities have reported more than 300 deaths, most from Hanna, and they are just beginning to reach all the trouble spots.

In Gonaïves, still largely cut off from the rest of Haiti, sunny skies have helped bring the water levels down in recent days, but still residents move through the streets with their ankles, their knees and sometimes even their hips submerged in effluent. The hospital is covered with floodwater. So are thousands of homes.

At the main cathedral, the water rushed in the front door, toppling pews and leaving the place stained with mud and smelling of sewage. Upstairs, dozens of people have taken refuge, huddled together on the concrete floor. When a visitor arrived, they rubbed their bellies and pleaded for nourishment.

Getting food to the hungry is no easy task, dependent on planes, ships and helicopters — including a nearby United States Navy vessel — since trucks are getting stuck in the mud. Once food reaches a place like Gonaïves, the crush of desperate people turns handouts into melees. As a solution, food trucks, protected by heavily armed Argentine soldiers serving with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the country, have begun setting out before dawn to distribute high-energy biscuits while most of the city still sleeps.

Haitian politicians, known more for their infighting than for comforting the country’s poor, were busy squabbling when the storms were striking. The legislature voted out President René Préval’s last prime minister in April, after food riots broke out, and then rejected two subsequent nominees. That left the government, ineffectual at the best of times, adrift.

Taking over as prime minister in the midst of the recovery effort is Michèle Pierre-Louis, who tried to reach Gonaïves by motorcade in recent days but could not get through. She flew over the disaster zone on Tuesday, prompting grumbling on the ground in Gonaïves that she did not land.

The Navy vessel is now shuttling food and United Nations personnel between Port-au-Prince and Gonaïves. As for the extent of the damage, Mr. Préval told The Miami Herald, “This is Katrina in the entire country, but without the means that Louisiana had.”

Gonaïves, the worst of the worst on the scale of the death and destruction, has always been especially vulnerable when hurricanes strike. A northern port city, it is located in a flood plain and fills up fast when rivers break their banks and rain rushes down mountains long ago stripped of trees. But that same geography gives the place agricultural potential, and much of the rice grown in the country is from the area around here.

It was just four years ago that Hurricane Jeanne hit Gonaïves, killing about 3,000 people and leveling much of the city. The ensuing years have been spent rebuilding.

This time, though, there is talk about whether it makes sense to try to recreate the same old place again. Authorities are talking about shifting some of the population away from the lowest-lying areas.

There is discussion of strengthening building codes so that structures are not so easily leveled in the next storm — and everyone knows there will be one. The local emergency operations center was flooded, and Yolène Surena, its coordinator, vowed that the new one would move to higher ground. “We should have done it before,” she acknowledged with a shake of her head.

In Port-au-Prince, Patrick Élie, a presidential adviser who is preparing a report on whether Haiti ought to reform its army, said the string of storms made it clearer than ever to him that the country’s biggest enemies were not other armies.

“We need a civil defense system,” he said. “These storms have pointed out the weakness of the Haitian state. Why are we surprised every time a storm hits when we know another one will come?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/world/americas/11haiti.html

Children in Servitude, the Poorest of Haiti’s Poor

By MARC LACEY

Published: September 13, 2008

GONAÏVES, Haiti — Thousands of desperate women pushed and shoved to get at the relief food being handed out on the outskirts of this flooded city last week. Off to the side were the restaveks, the really desperate ones.

Enlarge This Image

Ariana Cubillos/Associated Press

Women fought for rice on Thursday at a distribution center in Gonaïves, Haiti. Even more desperate are some child laborers who grab the meager grains that the women accidentally drop.

 

 

As woman after woman hauled off a sack of rice, a bag of beans and a can of cooking oil, the restaveks, a Creole term used to describe Haiti’s child laborers, dropped to their knees to pick up the bits that were inadvertently dropped in the dirt.

The hurricanes and tropical storms that have whipped across the western half of Hispaniola, the island divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, in the past month have laid bare the poverty and the deep divisions in Haitian society, where there are rich, poor and downright destitute.

Nobody illustrates that last group better than the restaveks, the thousands of young Haitian children handed over by their poor parents to better-off families, most of whom are struggling themselves.

The term restaveks literally means “stay with,” and that is what the children do with their hosts, working as domestic servants in exchange for a roof over their head, some leftover food and, supposedly, the ability to go to school.

In practice, though, the restaveks are easy prey for exploitation. Human rights advocates say they are beaten, sexually abused and frequently denied access to education, since many host families believe that schooling will only make them less obedient.

Unicef estimates that 300,000 Haitian children were affected by the recent storms, many of them forced to relocate to shelters or rooftops.

But young Haitians suffered significantly even before the skies darkened during Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike, and more than 300 lives were lost. The country has the highest mortality rate for children younger than 5 in the Western Hemisphere, as well as a high death rate among infants and women giving birth. Just slightly over half of school-age children are actually enrolled in school. Attendance among restaveks, of course, is much less than that.

“Many of them are treated like animals,” said a United Nations official who spoke on condition of anonymity because she did not have authority to speak on the delicate issue. “They are second-class citizens, little slaves. You feed them a little and they clean your house for nothing.”

Gonaïves, a city in Haiti’s northwest, was no boomtown when the storms hit, having been devastated by a hurricane in 2004, from which it was still recovering. But that did not stop many poor families from taking in restaveks, the offspring of the poorest of the poor.

“Almost everybody has one,” said one of the women jockeying in the relief food line.

They are children like Widna and Widnise, twin 12-year-old girls who have been in the same Gonaïves home for the past two years.

They get up at dawn to fetch water, collect wood, cook, mop and clean. They watch as their host family’s two children, who are about the same age, eat breakfast and then go off to school. The twins eat nothing in the morning and stay home working.

The twins have it better than most, they say. They are hit on their palms if they are disobedient but do not receive lashings on their head, as they say many of the restaveks in nearby homes receive.

In the evening, they eat with the two other children and sleep on mats on the floor, just as those children do. They had shoes, unlike many of their contemporaries, although they lost those in the flooding.

But the girls said they did not like their situation. There is the teasing they get from other children, who tell them over and over that they will never grow up, that they will always be servant girls.

And they miss their mother, who works in the countryside as a domestic servant and visits the girls when she can. She tells them that she will bring them home as soon as she can afford to feed them.

“Our mother is too poor to take care of us,” said Widna, the more talkative of the pair, adding emphatically, “We don’t want to be restaveks.”

What they wanted most immediately on Thursday afternoon was food. Their host family had fled its flood-damaged home, leaving the girls alone. They arrived at a school in the Praville neighborhood where United Nations relief food was being handed out but were told that only women were allowed in line.

The pint-size girls sat off to the side until they noticed that some rice and beans were being dropped amid all the confusion. The girls looked at each other and then sprang into action with some of the other restaveks, scooping up the specks of food from the ground one by one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/world/americas/14haiti.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

Woman gets 7 years in Haitian slave case

A former schoolteacher and her husband were sentenced Tuesday for forcing a Haitian teenage girl to work as a slave in their home.

Posted on Wed, May. 21, 2008

BY ANI MARTINEZ

armartinez@MiamiHerald.com

For six long years, Simone Celestin spent her weekdays — up to 15 hours — cleaning, cooking and washing clothes for a Cutler Bay family. On weekends, she did the same at the family’s Miramar home. At night, the young Haitian girl bathed with a bucket, ate leftovers and slept on the floor.

On Tuesday, Celestin, now 25, sat in silence in the back of a federal courtroom in Fort Lauderdale listening to a judge punish the people who kept her as a modern-day slave.

U.S. District Judge Jose A. Gonzalez Jr. sentenced Maude Paulin, a former middle-school teacher, to seven years and three months in prison and ordered her to pay $162,765 in restitution to Celestin.

Her ex-husband, Saintfort Paulin, was sentenced to 18 months of probation, which includes six months of house arrest in his New Jersey home.

In March, Maude Paulin, 52, who taught at a Miami-Dade school, was convicted of human trafficking and conspiring to deprive Celestin of her civil rights by holding her against her will.

Paulin’s mother, Evelyn Theodore, and Saintfort Paulin, were found guilty of a lesser charge — harboring Celestin for purposes other than profit. Theodore, who recently suffered a stroke, will be sentenced at a later date.

COURTROOM APOLOGY

Maude Paulin apologized in the courtroom as her family members sobbed and buried their heads in their hands. She dried her tears and looked away during much of the three-hour sentencing hearing, begging the judge for a second chance.

”I love Simone with all my heart,” Paulin said. “I regret it and blame myself.”

”I did this with my heart and didn’t think with my head,” she said repeatedly.

The story of how Celestin got justice for the savage treatment she suffered at the hands of these two families began in the young woman’s homeland of Haiti, according to prosecutors.

Celestin was taken from her mother at age 5 and sent to a Haitian orphanage before being smuggled to South Florida in 1999. That year, Theodore arranged to bring the girl, then 14, to Miami under the pretext that she was a “niece.”

Saintfort Paulin told authorities he was under the impression Celestin was going to be treated like a foster child, but instead his relatives forced her to work in slave-like conditions.

Maude Paulin’s attorney Richard Dansoh said his client’s “intention in this case was good, but the execution was disastrous.”

At trial, Celestin took the stand and told the jury she spent weekdays at Maude Paulin’s Cutler Bay home and weekends at the Miramar home of Claire Telasco, 43, Maude Paulin’s sister.

Celestin said she was repeatedly hit by Theodore and Paulin — they used shoes, brooms, even a mortar, which is used for grinding food. But she said Paulin’s husband intervened several times to stop the beatings. He also tried to enroll her in school but was unable to because of her language barrier.

It wasn’t until June 2005 when Celestin was freed from the family. A friend of Celestin’s mother, who still lived in Haiti, arranged her escape with help from a Little Haiti social service agency and a South Florida immigration advocacy group.

SYMPATHY SOUGHT

At the sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Maude Paulin’s friends and family painted a sympathetic portrait of her in hopes the judge would be lenient. They talked about the time and money she has donated to Haitians living in Haiti and the United States.

”Two months ago in this courtroom there was a woman described as a monster, someone unloveable, but that’s not my mother,” Maude Paulin’s daughter, Erika, told the judge. “She is my inspiration.”

Saintfort Paulin tried to hold back his tears as he stood before the judge.

”I thought Simone was coming for completely good intentions,” he said. “I was not around as much as I should have been. I’m sorry to Simone.”

Although the judge sentenced Maude Paulin to the low end of federal guidelines, the seven-year sentence represented a victory for prosecutors who sought seven to nine years. ”This is an extremely serious crime,” said prosecutor Edward Chung. “This was a public school teacher who should have known better, yet she did nothing to help this girl.”

Maude Paulin must surrender to the court before 12 p.m. on July 30 and will be taken to a South Florida prison. When she is discharged, she must serve three years of supervised release. The Florida Department of Education has also revoked her teaching license.

Saintfort Paulin must begin serving house arrest on July 2 and pay the court $500.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/haiti/story/540996.html

Colombia, Venezuela and Haiti are the most violent

The most violent countries in the hemisphere are Colombia, Venezuela and Haiti, and they are also among the most violent in the world, according to the 2008 Global Peace Index, a ranking that compares the nations in terms of peace that was released on Tuesday in London.

Iraq occupies the last position in the ranking of 140 nations prepared by the analysis division of British economic magazine The Economist, in close cooperation with an international expert team. More than 20 variables are considered in the probe, AFP reported.

In Latin America, Chile is the most peaceful country -19 in the list, and Colombia ranks 130 out of 140, with the highest levels of internal violence.

Venezuela ranks 123, Haiti 109, Honduras 104, Guatemala 103 and Ecuador 100. Variables in the ranking include violent crime, political unrest, number of police officers, number of murders, number of imprisoned people and access to weapons.

 

http://english.eluniversal.com/2008/05/20/en_pol_art_colombia,-venezuela_20A1592199.shtml

 

Canadian medical aid worker kidnapped in Haiti

Posted on Thu, May. 22, 2008

Associated Press

 

PORT-AU-PRINCE – 

Haitian and U.N. police were searching Thursday for a Canadian medical aid worker who was kidnapped in the hills above the Caribbean nation’s capital. 

Nadia Lefebvre was seized early Wednesday, said U.N. police spokesman Fred Blaise. The 32-year-old is on a short-term assignment in Haiti for the Paris-based medical organization Medecins du Monde, also known as Doctors of the World.

A spokeswoman for the group declined to comment.

The upscale Tomasin neighborhood where Lefebvre was captured is home to many foreigners and upper-class Haitians, and officials say they are monitoring a kidnapping network that has been working in the area for months.

Lefebvre’s is the 20th confirmed kidnapping in Haiti this month. At least 139 people have been kidnapped nationwide in 2008 — 10 percent more than during the first five months of last year, Blaise said. Most kidnappings occurred in the capital.

The increase in kidnappings-for-ransom is likely linked to strengthening gang activity, Blaise said, and not desperation over the rising cost of living, which sparked deadly riots that toppled the prime minister in April.

Reports that a ransom has been demanded for Lefebvre could not be confirmed independently.

 

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/haiti/story/543516.html

USAID to send $25 million more

The U.S. Agency for International Development gave $25 million more in food aid for Haiti, bringing its total to $45 million.

Posted on Sat, May. 24, 2008

BY JACQUELINE CHARLES

jcharles@MiamiHerald.com

The U.S. Agency for International Development, which last week announced that it was sending $20 million in emergency food aid to Haiti, will be sending $25 million more, the agency’s top administrator said Friday.

”We know that we are not the full solution, we are a part. We are trying to be supportive and we are trying to help,” USAID Administrator Henrietta Fore said.

Fore flew from Washington to Miami to personally deliver the news, inviting Haitian-American leaders to the USAID warehouse in West Miami-Dade County. The funds, she said, will help provide 36,000 tons of food staples to 2.5 million Haitians through three types of programs targeting the disabled, orphans, mothers, children and the elderly.

The programs will be administered by the World Food Program, Catholic Relief Services and World Vision, and will pay Haitians with food in exchange for helping to rebuild irrigation systems and roads to boost domestic production efforts.

”As close neighbors, the United States has a vital stake in providing both emergency assistance as well as long-term support for Haiti’s economic, social and economic development,” she said.

Friday’s announcement was welcomed by South Florida’s congressional delegation including U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who introduced Fore at the event. Diaz-Balart noted that the U.S. Congress in a ”bipartisan basis” had approved $250 million.

”Today the United States takes another step characteristic of its generosity of [helping] Haiti,” he said.

The announcement comes six weeks after deadly riots over rising food prices rocked Haiti, leaving several people dead and the country without a working government. Haitian senators fired the prime minister on April 12, blaming him for the crisis, and he has yet to be replaced.

While Haitian community leaders from Miami-Dade and Broward counties also welcomed the news, they were not without their criticism of USAID, saying despite millions of dollars spent and years of U.S. involvement in Haiti, abysmal poverty persists in the Caribbean nation.

”What we are doing here today . . . it’s only for short-term relief,” said Marleine Bastien, executive director of Haitian Women of Miami, who recently visited the country as part of a delegation led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

“The U.S. has been engaged in Haiti for almost 200 years now. I think it’s time for us to reasses our intervention and understand it is better for us to invest in bringing Haitian agriculture to its past grandeur.”

Fore said the agency was re-evaluating its work in Haiti and had recently formed an executive task force to review programs and redirect efforts to help Haitians produce domestic crops.

”Come to visit our website, see the programs that we have. Give us your voices, your thoughts back. Make sure that we are focusing our existing programs in the right way,” she told the audience.

Leonie Hermantin, deputy director of Lambi Fund of Haiti, which works with peasants, urged Fore to include peasants and other beneficiaries of aid on the task force.

Later in an interview with The Miami Herald, Fore said that while the tons of food will address the immediate need, USAID was helping Haiti’s long-term needs, including providing loan assistance through two Haitian banks to assist farmers.

 

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/haiti/story/545798.html

Haiti’s president names new prime minister choice

Posted on Mon, May. 26, 2008

By JACQUELINE CHARLES

jcharles@MiamiHerald.com

Haitian President Rene Preval has named a new choice to be his prime minister: adviser and confidante, Robert “Bob” Manuel.

Manuel previously served as state secretary for public security in 1996 during Preval’s first presidential term, before resigning from the post.

According to sources close to the president, Preval informed the presidents of both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate late Sunday night of his nomination. The decision came after a week tensed with speculation and consultations with lawmakers and political party leaders over who the next nominee would be.

Haiti has been without a working government or prime minister ever since the Haitian senate fired Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis following a week of deadly food riots in the Caribbean nation.

Two weeks ago, members of the lower chamber rejected Preval’s first choice, international banker Ericq Pierre.

It remains to be seen whether lawmakers will approve Manuel, who is scheduled to present his official documents on Monday in order to get the process started. Lawmakers must first decide if he’s qualified to hold the post before he can move to the second and final step: ratification.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/haiti/story/546867.html

 

Dominican Crackdown Leaves Children of Haitian Immigrants in Legal Limbo

 

Francesco Broli for The New York Times

Ángel Luis Joseph, 17, training with a friend near San Pedro de Macoris, the Dominican Republic. His status as the child of Haitian immigrants threatens his dream of playing in the United States.

By MARC LACEY

Published: May 25, 2008

SAN PEDRO DE MACORIS, Dominican Republic — Two obsessions define this country: baseball and Haiti. Ángel Luis Joseph, a teenage outfielder with a hot bat, is caught between Dominicans’ devotion to the one and disdain for the other.

 

The New York Times

San Pedro de Macoris has produced many baseball players.

So many major leaguers have emerged from this sugar town that agents keep an eye on even pint-size players with potential. Ángel, 17, was only a lanky grade school boy when his coach noticed he showed all the signs of becoming a standout. Before long, the San Francisco Giants came calling with a $350,000 offer, he said.

But then politics interfered with his dream. To obtain a visa to the United States, Ángel went to a local government office to get a copy of his birth certificate. Little did he know that the Dominican government had recently begun a crackdown on the children of Haitian immigrants, even those like him who have lived their whole lives in the Dominican Republic.

“If your last name is weird, they won’t give you your documents,” he said. “Same thing if your skin is dark like mine.”

Ángel’s request for his birth record was denied, prompting the Giants to withdraw the offer.

His parents, like hundreds of thousands of others, moved from Haiti to the Dominican Republic in the 1970s to work in the sugar cane fields. Their children were born in the Dominican Republic, grew up here and became, in their eyes at least, full-fledged Dominicans. They speak Spanish, dance merengue and play “pelota,” the popular name for the Dominican pastime baseball.

“They don’t play baseball in Haiti,” said Melanie Teff, who has studied the issue for Refugees International, an advocacy group in Washington. “That shows how Dominican this guy and many people like him are.”

The government does not necessarily agree, and Ángel awaits a ruling on his appeal for access to his Dominican birth record.

The issue arose with a fury several years ago when advocates took the government to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, whose jurisdiction the Dominican Republic acknowledges, to protest the denial of birth certificates to two ethnic Haitian children.

While the case was in process, the government changed its migration law in 2004 to specifically exclude the offspring of Haitian migrants from citizenship. The Dominican Constitution grants citizenship to those born on Dominican soil, except the children of diplomats and those “in transit.” That has long meant that the children of immigrants, no matter their legal status, gained Dominican citizenship.

After the international court ruled against the Dominican government in 2005, ordering that damages be paid to the two children, the Dominican Supreme Court said that Haitian workers were considered “in transit” and that their children were therefore Haitian, not Dominican.

Last spring, the government agency in charge of identity documents, the Joint Electoral Council, issued a memorandum telling its employees to watch for the offspring of foreigners trying to identify themselves as Dominican. It now hangs at every clerk’s office and is shown to people thought to have Haitian blood.

“The issue of Haiti has become very combustible in the Dominican context,” said Daniel Erikson, director of Caribbean programs at the Inter-American Dialogue, a research group in Washington. “You have a deep resentment of Haiti, and that’s driving these responses that don’t reflect favorably on the country.”

Government officials point out the strain that poor illegal immigrants from Haiti put on the Dominican Republic. The two countries share the island of Hispaniola but have vastly different levels of development.

Of course, Haitians contribute, too. They have long worked in the jobs Dominicans did not want to do, mostly cutting cane on plantations that supply sugar to the United States. The government has not just known of their presence for decades but has in some cases encouraged their arrival.

The Dominican government says the new crackdown is a security matter, aimed at wiping out fraud. And in some cases over the years, young Haitians who had crossed the border illegally claimed to have been born on the Dominican side.

But opponents accuse the government of applying its 2004 law retroactively, which they call an illegal practice that has longstanding societal animosity against Haitians at its heart.

“The racist beliefs of some are being used to twist our laws,” said Cristóbal Rodríguez Gómez, a Dominican constitutional law professor at Ibero-American University, who is acting as counsel for another descendant of Haitians who lacks documents. “This is a crime, a monstrous crime.”

In a recent report, two United Nations experts found “a profound and entrenched problem of racism and discrimination” in the Dominican Republic, mostly affecting people of Haitian origin. The report said Haitians and their descendants face “extreme vulnerability, unjustified deportations, racial discrimination, and are denied the full enjoyment of their human rights.”

The Dominican government rejected the conclusions, portraying the relationship between the neighbors as one of solidarity.

Ángel is one of many who find their lives in limbo under the new rules. Emildo Bueno Oguis, 33, a college student who recently married an American woman, could not get his birth certificate either and therefore cannot apply to the American Embassy for residency to join her in Florida.

Mr. Oguis, whom Mr. Rodríguez represents, challenged the government’s decision in court, accusing the council of denying his rights. But his claim was rejected, despite the fact that he had previously been issued a Dominican identity card and a Dominican passport.

Confusing the matter, a lower court judge ruled in favor of another descendant of Haitian immigrants, Nuny Angra Luis, who had been denied her birth certificate. That decision was announced the same week in April as the other, diametrically opposed ruling.

Demetrio F. Francisco de Los Santos, a government lawyer, dismisses the notion that anyone’s rights are being violated. Descendants of Haitians, he argues in court documents, can simply go to the nearest Haitian consulate for their documents.

While Haitian law does grant citizenship to the offspring of Haitians, the issue is complex. Ángel’s parents would have to prove they are Haitian for him to get citizenship in Haiti, a country which he has never visited.

While some are indignant about the Dominican crackdown, Ángel seems surprisingly calm.

Before a recent practice, in which he flagged fly balls and then fired them into the infield, Ángel said his mother could not sleep after he lost the Giants contract. (“Ángel Luis Joseph is one of a number of players in the Dominican that clubs are finding do not have the proper paperwork to prove their identity or age,” the Giants said in a statement, indicating that the team had been forced to look for someone else.)

Ángel may have another shot. The Cleveland Indians have come calling, he said, visiting the humble shack that he shares with his parents and seven siblings just outside a sugarcane field.

The Indians’ offer was about a third of that put forward by the Giants, but still a windfall for a boy from a batey, the name for the workers’ camps that grow up around sugar cane plantations.

But while he awaits a ruling, he acknowledges worrying that he will see his dream disappear a second time.

“God wants me to be a baseball player — that I know,” he said. What he does not know is whether the Dominican Republic, the country he considers himself from, agrees.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/world/americas/25dominican.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=lacey%20and%20macoris&st=cse&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Report Details Child Abuse

Group Cites Aid Workers, U.N. Troops

By Colum Lynch

Washington Post Staff Writer 
Wednesday, May 28, 2008; Page A10 

UNITED NATIONS, May 27 – U.N. peacekeepers and international aid workers from 23 organizations have engaged in sexual exploitation of children, including some as young as 6, in Haiti, Ivory Coast and South Sudan, according to a report by Save the Children, a British-based aid agency.

THIS STORY

• ‘SIGNIFICANT LEVELS’: Report Details Child Abuse
• Save the Children UK Report

The organization said its findings, combined with reports of similar abuse elsewhere, suggest that efforts to rein in such abuse over the past decade have failed. It concluded that sexual abuse of children — often involving exchanges of food for sex — probably occurs in virtually every post-conflict zone, and it called for creation of a global watchdog organization to probe such abuse.

“Our research suggests that significant levels of abuse of boys and girls continue in emergencies, with much of it going unreported,” said the report, titled “No One to Turn To.” “The victims include orphans, children separated from their parents and families, and children in families dependent on humanitarian assistance.”

The 28-page report — based on interviews with 250 children ages 10 to 17 — concluded that it is impossible to know the extent of the problem, since few victims report abuse and few U.N. agencies or private charities compile data on abuse by their personnel. Save the Children acknowledged receiving eight allegations of sexual misconduct involving minors last year by its own field staff, including three that were proven to have merit and led to the perpetrators’ dismissal.

“Who would we tell?” said one Haitian boy, explaining why victims of sexual abuse seldom report the crime. “We wouldn’t tell the police because they are afraid of the [U.N.] peacekeepers. . . . Anyway, I’ve heard that the police do this.”

U.N. peacekeepers have been “identified as a particular source of abuse,” especially in Haiti and Ivory Coast, according to the report. But it praised the U.N. peacekeeping department for exhibiting “managerial courage and transparency” in making the allegations public.

The United Nations ordered the repatriation of more than 100 Sri Lankan peacekeepers from Haiti in November, after reports that they had sexually exploited local women and underage girls. Last summer, Moroccan peacekeepers in Ivory Coast came under investigation for sexually abusing local woman and minors.

Those cases follow a spate of reports on sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeepers and aid workers stretching back to Cambodia in the early 1990s. Reports of sexual abuse plagued U.N. missions over the past eight years in Bosnia, Congo, Liberia and several other countries.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the report’s frank assessment and said abuse by peacekeepers and aid workers is “a very serious issue.” He vowed to investigate the allegations and take any “necessary measures.”

Jasmine Whitbread, the chief executive of the British relief agency, said the United Nations and others have made commitments to resolving the problem in the past — without success.

“All humanitarian and peacekeeping agencies working in emergency situations, including Save the Children UK, must own up to the fact that they are vulnerable to this problem and tackle it head-on,” she said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/27/AR2008052701346.html

Charity: Aid workers raping, abusing children

 Stephanie Busari
For CNN 

LONDON, England (CNN) – Humanitarian aid workers and United Nation peacekeepers are sexually abusing small children in several war-ravaged and food-poor countries, a leading European charity has said.

  

Children like this 15-year-old girl have suffered abuse at the hands of some UN soldiers and aid workers.

1 of 2

Children as young as 6 have been forced to have sex with aid workers and peacekeepers in return for food and money, Save the Children UK said in a report released Tuesday.

After interviewing hundreds of children, the charity said it found instances of rape, child prostitution, pornography, indecent sexual assault and trafficking of children for sex.

“It is hard to imagine a more grotesque abuse of authority or flagrant violation of children’s rights,” said Jasmine Whitbread, chief executive of Save the Children UK.  Watch a report on the abuse »

In the report, “No One To Turn To” a 15-year-old girl from Haiti told researchers: “My friends and I were walking by the National Palace one evening when we encountered a couple of humanitarian men. The men called us over and showed us their penises.

“They offered us 100 Haitian gourdes ($2.80) and some chocolate if we would suck them. I said, ‘No,’ but some of the girls did it and got the money.”

Save the Children says that almost as shocking as the abuse itself is the “chronic under-reporting” of the abuses. It believes that thousands more children around the world could be suffering in silence.

According to the charity, children told researchers they were too frightened to report the abuse, fearful that the abuser would come back to hurt them and that they would stop receiving aid from agencies, or even be punished by their family or community.

“People don’t report it because they are worried that the agency will stop working here, and we need them,” a teenage boy in southern Sudan told Save the Children.

The charity’s research was centered on Ivory Coast, southern Sudan and Haiti, but Save the Children said the perpetrators of sexual abuse of children could be found in every type of humanitarian organization at all levels.

Save the Children is calling for a global watchdog to tackle the problem and said it was working with the U.N. to establish local mechanisms that will allow victims to easily report abuse.

“We are glad that Save the Children continues to shed a light on this problem. It actually follows up on a report that we did in 2002 with Save the Children. I think every population in the world has to confront this problem of exploitation and abuse of children,” said Ron Redmond, chief spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, Switzerland.

“The United Nations has a zero-tolerance policy. It’s one that UNHCR takes very, very seriously. In refugee camps, we have implemented very strong reporting mechanisms so that refugees can come forward to report any abuses or alleged abuses.”

In 2003, U.N. Nepalese troops were accused of sexual abuse while serving in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Six soldiers were jailed.

A year later, two U.N. peacekeepers were repatriated after being accused of abuse in Burundi, and U.N. troops were accused of rape and sexual abuse in Sudan.

Last year, the U.N. launched an investigation into sexual abuse claims in Ivory Coast.

The vast majority of aid workers were not involved in any form of abuse or exploitation but in “life-saving essential humanitarian work,” Save the Children’s Whitbread said.

But humanitarian and peacekeeping agencies working in emergency situations “must own up to the fact that they are vulnerable to this problem and tackle it head on,” she said.

The aid agency said it had fired three workers for breaching its codes and called on others to do the same. The three men were dismissed in the past year for having had sex with girls aged 17, which the charity said is not illegal but is cause for loss of employment.

Other UK charities said they supported Save the Children’s call for a global watchdog.

“Oxfam takes a zero-tolerance approach to sexual misconduct by its aid workers. All our staff across the world are held accountable by a robust code of conduct,” said Jane Cocking, Oxfam charity’s humanitarian director.

“We support Save the Children’s calls for a global watchdog. We will do all we can to stamp out this intolerable abuse.” 

 

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/05/27/charity.aidworkers/?imw=Y&iref=mpstoryemail

Brazilian leader’s visit to Haiti eagerly awaited

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is coming to Haiti amid mounting pressure for him to serve as a moderating force in the Caribbean nation’s political impasse.

Posted on Wed, May. 28, 2008

BY JACK CHANG AND JACQUELINE CHARLES

jcharles@MiamiHerald.com

ARIANA CUBILLOS/AP PHOTO

A U.N. Brazilian peacekeeper stands guard as children wait outside a school in the Cite Soleil section of Port au Prince Tuesday. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will arrive in Haiti Wednesday.

 

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil –

With the largest battalion of United Nations peacekeepers patrolling the streets of Haiti, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been one of the Caribbean nation’s leading defenders, championing its fledging democracy both at home and abroad. 

But as Haiti continues to drift politically, some are hoping that Lula’s arrival Wednesday will be the political nudge the troubled nation needs to get back on course.

”No one knows what he’s going to do,” a foreign diplomat said about Lula, who has received talking points in anticipation of his meeting with Haitian President René Préval.

”He knows what his colleagues from other countries are expecting,” said the diplomat, who asked for anonymity because he’s not authorized to speak on the matter.

Lula’s six-hour visit comes as Haiti is entering its seventh week without a functioning government or prime minister following food riots that left at least six people dead including a U.N. peacekeeper.

PRIME MINISTER FIRED

In its wake, Haitian senators fired Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis on April 12, accusing him of mismanaging the economy and triggering the crisis.

But as the crisis looms, so do frustrations and concerns in an impoverished country where Haitian and foreign observers are increasingly worried that the political impasse — coupled with the spike in global food and fuel prices — could force the country further into chaos.

”When I came into office, I thought this country was going to progress,” said Eric Jean-Jacques, president of Haiti’s lower chamber of deputies.

“But it’s the same old history that is being repeated. There is always a handicap.”

NOMINEE REJECTED

Two weeks ago, 51 of Jean-Jacques’ colleagues in the lower chamber rejected Préval’s choice to replace Alexis, international technocrat Ericq Pierre.

In frustration, both the ambassadors of Canada and the European Union went on Haitian radio warning that the longer Haiti remained without a government, the more it risks losing the gains it had made following Préval’s February 2006 presidential election.

On Sunday, Préval offered up a new nominee: political advisor and close friend, Robert ”Bob” Manuel.

But as a 53-member voting bloc in the lower chamber met on Tuesday to discuss wether they would support Manuel’s nomination, analysts remained divided over his chances.

Lula’s foreign ministry said the main purpose of his trip will be to figure out what role Brazil and the 7,060-strong U.N. Stabilization Mission, known by its French acronym MINUSTAH, can play in the “restoration of democracy in Haiti.”

NO ADVICE

”Our job isn’t to give advice,” said a spokeswoman in Brazil’s foreign ministry. “Haiti is a sovereign country. We’re only going to see what role we can play in rebuilding the country.”

Both Préval and Lula are expected to discuss the progress of various bilateral technical programs, such as a food program where Brazil has donated $200,000 and a trash collection program in Port-au-Prince that India, Brazil, and African countries have contributed to.

Brazil and Haiti are expected to sign five different accords.

They’ll also talk about the in-flow of international donations and evaluate whether it’s been satisfactory.

Lula is trying to organize a meeting for Haiti among international donors during next week’s annual World Food Program meeting in Rome.

MORE ENGINEERS

Recently, Brazilian lawmakers approved Lula’s request to increase his 1,246-strong blue helmet soldiers in Haiti by an additional 100 engineers.

But like his Chilean and Argentine counterparts, Lula is facing domestic pressure to pull his troops out of Haiti.

”At this moment, the Brazilian position has been to renew our work with MINUSTAH. We don’t have the intention of leaving,” said the Brazilian foreign ministry spokeswoman.

Rubens Barbosa, a Brazil-based consultant who served as Brazil’s ambassador to the United States from 1999 to 2004, said that while he believes Brazil should end its mission in Haiti because of the costs, he sees the South American nation staying involved for the foreseeable future.

As for Lula’s ability to get Préval to listen to the international community, he said. “Lula will certainly try, but without the international community there to help, it’ll be very difficult for the country to come back.”

To read more about Haiti and South Florida’s Haitian community go to miamiherald.com/haiti/

 

 

Haitians mourn teen killed in kidnapping wave

Posted on Wed, May. 28, 2008

Associated Press

 

PORT-AU-PRINCE – 

Relatives and sobbing classmates overflowed the church in the Haitian capital, mourning the latest victim of a relentless kidnapping wave that has seen one person abducted nearly every day this year. 

Sixteen-year-old Karim Xavier Gaspard was tortured and killed by his captors last week, a horrific finish to one of 145 kidnappings registered across the country so far this year, said Fred Blaise, police spokesman for the 9,000-member U.N. peacekeeping mission.

Police are investigating the case but have not announced any arrests.

U.N. and Haitian police said they had no new information Tuesday about Nadia Lefebvre, the 32-year-old Canadian intern with medical aid organization Medecins du Monde who was seized May 21 near her house in the hills above the capital.

Kidnapping is up 10 percent from last year but has not matched the nearly 180 kidnapping victims recorded in the first five months of 2006, Blaise said. Twenty of the 26 abductions registered in May have occurred in the capital.

Gaspard’s death has shaken even this violence-wracked Caribbean nation. The Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste reported that the teenage son of a local banker was executed after less than four days of captivity even though his parents paid a ransom.

His body was found Friday in an open-air market. Alongside a Tuesday article about the case, Le Nouvelliste posted a blank photo box and the message: “The parents did not wish to publish the photograph of the victim, whose body was so mutilated.”

On Tuesday afternoon, classmates in school uniforms joined hundreds in black suits and dresses, filling pews and spilling onto the porch of a large Catholic church set among concrete homes outside the upscale suburb of Petionville.

Facing a framed photo of Gaspard and a gold urn containing his ashes, mourners sang hymns and hugged grieving relatives. Huddled teenagers sobbed near the doors.

 

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/haiti/story/549327.html

Politics as usual endangers Haiti

On Sunday, the U.N. military and police force in Haiti known by the acronym MINUSTAH will observe its fourth anniversary. After a slow and rocky start, the mission has done a good job of offering a respite from the incessant political and gang violence that made life in Haiti so chaotic during the rule of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and after his departure into exile in February, 2004. Sadly, Haiti’s political class has largely squandered the opportunity to create a stable and enduring government that the people of Haiti can support.

New prime minister

Since April 12, when the Senate fired Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis for his alleged failure to offer strong leadership and manage the economy, the nation has been without a functioning government. President Rene Préval’s first pick to replace him, Ericq Pierre, an agronomist with the Inter American Development Bank, was rejected by lawmakers, ostensibly because of a failure to prove his citizenship. But the real reason was that Mr. Pierre’s very strengths — his technical experience as an international-aid expert — made him a suspect figure in Haiti’s clannish political circles.

Mr. Préval did little to support Mr. Pierre’s nomination, which sank by a 51-35 vote in the Chamber of Deputies. Most members of Mr. Préval’s own Lespwa political coalition voted against it. This was a major setback for a variety of reasons.

Most urgently, the existence of a caretaker government leaves Haiti unable to sign new aid deals or accept millions of dollars in outside aid following food riots that left at least six people dead in April. On a more fundamental level, the fiasco was all too typical of the petty rivalries and selfish concerns that have kept the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country in a state of arrested political development for decades. It suggests that Haiti’s political leaders have learned nothing from past mistakes.

Now Mr. Préval has put forward a new candidate for prime minister — his longtime advisor Robert Manuel. He may not possess Mr. Pierre’s technical expertise, but he cannot be faulted on political grounds. Haiti’s parliament should approve Mr. Manuel and restore a working government. Then Mr. Manuel must put capable managers in the Cabinet who can show progress on the political and economic fronts.

Boost for MINUSTAH

Today, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, whose country has done more than any other to bolster MINUSTAH, will visit Haiti. He should use the occasion to engage in sober talk about the responsibility of holding power. The international community is willing to continue helping, but MINUSTAH can’t stay forever. If Haiti’s leaders want to offer their country a better future, it is past time for them to show that they are up to the challenge.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/haiti/story/548891.html

Brazil to send more troops to Haiti

Associated Press

 

PORT-AU-PRINCE – 

Brazil says it will send additional troops to Haiti to help build roads and stabilize the impoverished country. 

Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim says 100 soldiers from the engineering division will arrive in the Caribbean country soon. He could not specify when.

Brazil experts will also improve water resources and help Haitian farmers produce new vegetable varieties, he says. Deadly riots in April over rising food prices left seven dead and cost the prime minister his job.

Jobim arrived Wednesday with President Luíz Inacio Lula da Silva and other ministers for a one-day visit. They met with President René Préval and some of the 1,200 Brazilian troops stationed there.

The troops are part of a 9,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/haiti/story/549943.html

 

Haïti : l’aide au compte-goutte

Article publié le 25/04/2008 Dernière mise à jour le 25/04/2008 à 15:25 TU

Bientôt trois semaines après les émeutes de la faim en Haïti, la situation alimentaire est toujours aussi préoccupante. Le secrétaire d’Etat français à la coopération, Alain Joyandet, présent sur l’île en milieu de semaine, a promis que l’aide alimentaire française passerait de 1,8 à 3,8 millions d’euros. La mission des Nations unies (Minustah), violemment prise à parti lors des émeutes, participe à la distribution de riz à la population.

http://www.rfi.fr/actufr/articles/100/article_65449.asp

Haïti : la situation reste tendue

Article publié le 27/04/2008 Dernière mise à jour le 27/04/2008 à 14:51 TU

Les ministres de l’Agriculture de plusieurs pays d’Amérique centrale et des Caraïbes se sont retrouvés samedi à Managua au Nicaragua pour tenter de prendre des mesures et faire face à la crise alimentaire actuelle provoquée par la flambée des prix. 630 millions de dollars devraient être investis pour augmenter la production agricole locale. Un sommet consacré à la crise alimentaire réunira les présidents d’Amérique centrale le 7 mai. En Haïti, théâtre d’affrontements récents, la situation reste extrêmement tendue. Reportages.

 

A Haïti, alors que la Minustah (Mission des Nations unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti) distribue du riz, une file d’attente est constituée.
(Photo : Philippe Nadel)

Avec notre envoyé spécial à Haïti, Jean-Pierre Boris

Malgré les pressions internationales, et elles sont nombreuses, le président René Préval fait traîner la nomination d’un Premier Ministre. Depuis que, il y a deux semaines, le Sénat a renversé le gouvernement de Jacques-Edouard Alexis, le fonctionnement de l’administration haïtienne est paralysé.

En province les maires se plaignent de l’assèchement de leurs finances. « Plus rien ne se fait », se lamente le maire de Miragoane, un port à environ cent kilomètres de la capitale. Au pied de sa mairie, les travaux d’aménagement de la place centrale ont été arrêtés sine die. Pas moyen de payer les entreprises. Plus encore que dans les administrations, c’est dans les quartiers pauvres qu’on attend la décision de René Préval.

Après les émeutes du début avril, le chef de l’Etat haïtien avait annoncé une baisse des prix du riz. Cette annonce n’a pas eu d’impact réel. Si le président Préval s’obstine à jouer la montre ou nomme un chef de gouvernement dont le profil politique n’est porteur d’aucune promesse de changement, la jeunesse haïtienne, à bout de patience, se tient prête à reprendre la rue. C’est ce qu’assurent tous les milieux informés en Haïti. Certains ajoutent même que le président Préval pourrait être obligé de partir.

Dans la ville de Les Cayes

Première ville haïtienne à s’être soulevée au début du mois d’avril, Les Cayes, au sud du pays, est toujours au bord de l’insurrection.

 

http://www.rfi.fr/actufr/articles/100/article_65515.asp

Ericq Pierre nommé Premier ministre

par Sylvain Biville

Article publié le 28/04/2008 Dernière mise à jour le 28/04/2008 à 15:01 TU

 

Pierre Ericq, nouveau Premier ministre haïtien, sur une photo datant de mai 2006.
(Photo : AFP)

Après deux semaines de crise politique, le président haïtien René Préval a nommé Ericq Pierre, économiste à la Banque interaméricaine de développement, au poste de Premier ministre. Il doit encore être confirmé par le Parlement. Il aura la lourde tâche de rétablir la stabilité dans le pays, après les émeutes de la faim qui ont conduit, le 12 avril, au renversement de son prédécesseur, Jacques-Edouard Alexis.

La première urgence pour Ericq Pierre consiste à remettre la main sur le certificat de naissance de ses grands-parents. Avant même de solliciter la confiance du Parlement, le tout nouveau Premier ministre doit en effet présenter aux élus des pièces justificatives de sa nationalité. Pour avoir négligé cette formalité, Ericq Pierre a échoué une première fois à devenir Premier ministre. C’était en 1997. René Préval accomplissait son premier mandat présidentiel (1996-2001). Et déjà, il avait choisi cet économiste de la Banque interaméricaine de développement (BID), agronome de formation comme lui, pour diriger le gouvernement. L’absence de certificats de naissance avait à l’époque servi de prétexte au Parlement pour rejeter la nomination.

 

Onze ans après cette déconvenue, Ericq Pierre espère aujourd’hui, à 63 ans, entamer enfin une carrière politique. Cela fait presque deux décennies qu’il vit à Washington, siège de la BID. C’est précisément son profil de technocrate, qui n’est pas directement affilié à une formation partisane, qui a permis à son nom d’émerger dans les tractations menées pour trouver un successeur à Jacques-Edouard Alexis, renversé par un vote de censure du Sénat le 12 avril. Le Premier ministre sortant a payé pour les émeutes de la faim qui ont secoué le pays au début du mois. Le mouvement de colère de la population face à l’augmentation du coût de la vie a débuté le 3 avril aux Cayes, la troisième plus grande ville du pays, avant de prendre de l’ampleur pour finalement atteindre la capitale, Port-au-Prince, le 7 avril.

Un pays sous perfusion

« Nous préférons mourir par balles que de faim », clamaient les manifestants, qui ont tenté de forcer la grille du Palais présidentiel, protégé par les blindés de la Mission de stabilisation des Nations unies en Haïti (MINUSTAH), forte de 9000 casques bleus. Bilan d’une semaine de manifestions et de pillages : 7 morts, dont un policier de l’ONU nigérian. Après un long silence, le président René Préval a fini par annoncer, le 12 avril, une diminution du prix du sac de 23 kg de riz, qui est passé de 51 à 43 dollars, grâce à un effort conjoint des importateurs et du gouvernement. Mais selon l’envoyé spécial de RFI en Haïti, Jean-Pierre Boris, cette mesure, limitée à 30 jours, n’a eu qu’un impact limité sur une population qui, dans sa grande majorité, tente de survivre avec deux dollars par jour.

Haïti traverse aujourd’hui sa plus grave crise économique et sociale depuis l’élection de René Préval pour un second mandat en février 2006. Le chef de la MINUSTAH, le Tunisien Hédi Annabi, a déploré sur RFI des tentatives d’ « instrumentalisation politique » des émeutes et il a estimé que cette flambée de violence faisait faire un pas en arrière au pays, après les timides progrès enregistrés ces dernières années dans le domaine de la sécurité. Dans ce contexte très instable, l’ensemble de la communauté internationale s’est inquiétée du vide politique, depuis le renversement du gouvernement. Ces derniers jours, les émissaires se sont se sont succédés auprès du chef de l’Etat pour le presser de nommer au plus vite un nouveau Premier ministre (le Secrétaire général de l’Organisation des Etats américains, le secrétaire d’Etat français à la Coopération, le chef de la diplomatie espagnole).

Dans son choix, René Préval a dû tenir compte aussi bien des bailleurs de fonds, qui tiennent le pays sous perfusion, que de la classe politique particulièrement émiettée. En l’absence de majorité claire au Parlement, Ericq Pierre devra convaincre une coalition suffisamment large pour obtenir l’investiture. Il devra surtout donner des gages à une population de plus en plus impatiente. S’il est confirmé, une des ses premières tâches sera d’organiser au plus vite la conférence des donateurs, qui était prévue le 25 avril à Port-au-Prince et a été reportée sine die en raison de la crise politique. Sans aide extérieure massive pour faire face à la crise alimentaire, les manifestations peuvent reprendre d’un jour à l’autre.

http://www.rfi.fr/actufr/articles/100/article_65564.asp

Hungry Haitians head to sea as food prices soar

More boat people try to leave island each week than usually attempt it in a month, official says

Apr 24, 2008 04:30 AM

JOSEPH GUYLER DELVA 
REUTERS NEWS AGENCY
MONTROUIS, Haiti–Acute hunger and the rising cost of living could send a new wave of boat people from Haiti, where rising food prices set off deadly riots two weeks ago and drove the prime minister from office, officials and analysts say.

In the port town of Montrouis, about 80 kilometres north of Port-au-Prince, desperate Haitians say they will seize the first opportunity to take a boat toward the U.S. coast to escape the misery that plagues Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country.

“I will leave with the next boat going to Miami because I can no longer resist this hunger,” said Marcel Jonassaint, 34.

“I have four children and I don’t have a job and everything is expensive, even for those who are working. So what do you want me to do?”

Montrouis overlooks the island of La Gonâve, reputed as a key launching point for migrant boats.

“I left earlier this year,” said 29-year-old Rachel Chavanne. “Our boat was intercepted in the high seas, but I will try again.”

Haitian legislators fired prime minister Jacques Eduard Alexis this month to quell anger over rising food prices that sparked violent protests and looting that left six people dead in a week.

The director of the country’s national migration office, Jeanne Bernard Pierre, said since the food crisis, her agency has received more repatriated Haitian boat people in a week than it used to receive in a month or more.

“We have received 212 repatriated last week, we have just received 227 and we are receiving 114 tomorrow,” Pierre said.

“It is clear that more boat people have been leaving the country and you should expect even more if they cannot find an alternative,” said Pierre, who urged the government and the international community to set up programs to ease the plight of the poorest and most vulnerable.

The U.S. Coast Guard has intercepted 972 Haitian migrants at sea since Oct. 1, compared with 376 during the same period last year. But the numbers typically fluctuate and it’s impossible to link any spike to any one event such as the recent food riots, Petty Officer Barry Bena said.

 

Pierre said her office is doing its best to persuade suffering Haitians to stay home, but “they believe the only alternative left for them is to leave.”

http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/417740

 

Search is on for missing Haitian migrants

BAHAMAS | TRAGEDY AT SEA

Rescuers are looking for missing Haitians in Bahamian waters amid growing concerns about organized criminal smuggling rings operating in the Florida Straits.

Posted on Tue, Apr. 22, 2008

BY JACQUELINE CHARLES

jcharles@MiamiHerald.com

BRENT DEAN / AP

A Haitian migrant, right, that survived after his boat sank off Nassau, Bahamas, is questioned by a Bahamian official at the Nassau Harbour Patrol Unit on Sunday, April 20, 2008. Haitians fleeing their impoverished homeland met tragedy when their boat went down off the Bahamas, killing at least 20 people and leaving only three known survivors, including the alleged migrant smuggler, authorities said Monday.

» More Photos

•  Interview | Interview with Coast Guard Petty Officer Jennifer Johnson

The government of the Bahamas and the U.S. Coast Guard will resume their search of Bahamian waters on Tuesday for missing Haitian migrants presumed to be among 25 in a “migrant smuggling operation gone bad.”

Fourteen bodies, mostly women, have been plucked from shark-infested waters off Nassau since Sunday, said Ralph McKinney, a Royal Bahamas Defence Force chief petty officer.

Authorities said one woman survived the ordeal by holding onto a body.

All day Monday U.S. Coast Guard jets and helicopters hovered while good Samaritan boaters assisted Bahamian and U.S. Coast Guard vessels searching 14 miles north of Nassau. The search area extended as far east as the Eleuthra chain and west to Lyford Cay.

”We will resume at first light,” McKinney said from Nassau on Monday.

Only three survivors — a Haitian man and a woman and one Honduran man — had been rescued in the trip that Bahamian authorities believe involved as many as 25 passengers.

The alleged smuggler now in custody: the Honduran, who told authorities he was out fishing but was identified by one of the survivors as the boat captain.

”All signs point to migrant smuggling,” said U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Nick Ameen. ‘It’s a smuggling operation gone wrong, and that is why we always try to get the message out: `This is so dangerous.’ People usually place themselves in harm’s way, and unfortunately in this case, we didn’t find them until it was too late.”

SMUGGLING RINGS

The latest events come as U.S. authorities intensify efforts to shut down organized criminal smuggling rings amid growing concerns about a spike in migrant deaths at sea and a three-year increase in smuggling operations from Cuba.

It also comes as the Bahamas and nearby Turks and Caicos grow increasingly alarmed about illegal migration from Haiti, where recent deadly street demonstrations over rising food and fuel prices destabilized the government, raising fears that more Haitians will take to the high seas in search of better opportunities abroad.

”This is the season for Haitians to try and jump on a boat to come to the United States, and also for Cubans,” said U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Miami, who during a visit Monday with Haitian President René Préval offered his condolences over the deaths and raised concerns about illegal migration. “But I think with the unrest . . . in Haiti, it continues to promote the thinking that one can take to the sea and find a better life in the United States.”

Bahamian officials said that while the deaths at sea put the spotlight on the human toll, migrant smuggling has never gone away. It is a constant and ongoing battle for an island chain caught between Haiti’s economic hardship on one end and Cuba’s political change on the other.

”It’s a tremendous strain on our limited resources,” said Tommy Turnquest, the Bahamas minister of national security. “Last year alone just in terms of apprehension and repatriation exercises cost us a lot of money. Not only that, but then there are those that are here and the strain on our healthcare system, social services system.”

Turnquest did not immediately have dollar figures for his government’s repatriation of 7,000 illegal migrants last year. He said the island chain has attempted to address the problem by patrolling its porous border with the help of the U.S. Coast Guard.

`ILLEGAL ENTRY’

”Because of our proximity, over the years quite a number of persons have tried to gain illegal entry into the United States by using the Bahamas as a stepping stone,” said Vernon Burrows, director of immigration for the Bahamas. “They are looking at us.”

They include not just Haitians and Cubans, but also Brazilians.

While a U.S. Coast Guard cutter was en route from Miami to the Bahamas Sunday to help search for survivors, crew members came across a disabled vessel with 10 Brazilians aboard. They were trying to gain illegal entry into the United States, both Bahamian and Coast Guard officials confirmed.

”The Brazilians at one time used to enter the United States illegally by crossing the Mexican border,” Burrows said. “The Mexican government, in order to more or less curtail that, implemented a visa requirement out of Mexico. . . . Now they are looking for alternative routes.”

50-MILE GAP

That alternative is the Bahamas, where just 50 miles separate the island of Bimini from the South Florida coastline.

The female survivor revealed to officials that the passengers were headed to Bimini after leaving the docks of Nassau under the cover of darkness in an overcrowded vessel with an engine, Burrows said. From there, they were supposed to be transported to the United States.

”She said she was in Nassau for two weeks,” Burrows said, adding that the woman indicated she was originally from the Cap-Haitien area.

The woman, he said, is in very bad physical health after being in saltwater for so long.

The survivors told Bahamian officials they had been in the water since 10 a.m. Saturday. No sign of the boat has been found.

About 4:45 a.m. Sunday, a crew member of a fishing vessel heard people screaming in the water. After they searched for an hour, they notified the Bahamian Air Sea Rescue Association. At 7 a.m. the U.S. Coast Guard was notified and launched a helicopter from nearby Andros Island in the Bahamas. About 10 a.m. Sunday, they found five bodies in the water.

Realizing they needed to search a larger area, the Coast Guard contacted its Miami office for help.

McKinney said he couldn’t be certain that all of the migrants were Haitian because “of the pigmentation of the skin.”

”This is a terrible thing to do to people,” he said.

Jhacson Brave of Sebring told The Palm Beach Post that his cousin Roselene Almonor, 31, of Haiti was on the boat and expected to meet up with relatives in Miami.

He told The Post that Almonor had been living in the Bahamas for a few months and was planning to come to the United States to be with her boyfriend.

Miami Herald staff writers Erika Beras and Trenton Daniel contributed to this report.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/haiti/story/504636.html

US Coast Guard says bodies of 20 migrants found near Bahamas

2 hours ago

NASSAU, Bahamas — The bodies of 20 migrants have been recovered from the sea near the Bahamas after their boat apparently capsized, the U.S. Coast Guard said Monday as it searched for survivors.

The bodies of 19 Haitians and one Honduran were recovered and three survivors — two Haitians and one Honduran — have been found, said Barry Bena, a Coast Guard spokesman in Miami. Authorities are interviewing the survivors to determine what happened.

The search-and-rescue mission began Sunday after fishermen heard people screaming in the water.

The accident happened about 15 miles northwest of Nassau, Bahamas, according to the Coast Guard. A cutter, helicopter and a jet from the Coast Guard and two Bahamas military vessels continued searching the area Monday, Bena said.

Every year, thousands of Haitians try to leave the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country aboard rickety, overloaded boats for other islands or the United States.

Soaring food prices have pushed many into abject poverty and triggered riots earlier this month in Haiti, but this has not translated so far into a spike in the number of migrants.

Last year a migrant boat capsized near the Turks and Caicos islands, pitching Haitians into shark-infested waters. At least 61 people died.

http://www.comcast.net/news/articles/general/2008/04/21/Bahamas.Migrants.Drown/