Haiti

If you have twenty extra dollars or more, you could help 31 children in Haiti’s second city, Cap Haitian, finish their school year. Let me explain. I recently completed my third trip to Haiti as an independent journalist investigating the ongoing impact of the US-France-Canada coup d’état of 2004. It is no exaggeration to say that this event and the policies which followed have left 8 million people in a desperate state. When I was introduced to Madame Bwa, a key community activist in the poorest community of Haiti’s second city, Cap Haitian, I was faced with a startling sight: 26 young people, aged 4 to 18 who had all been sent home from school in the previous 2 weeks because their families couldn’t afford their children’s basic school fees. Madame Bwa informed me that there were five more, bringing the total to 31, but that they were not present that day.

I have maintained close contact with Madame Bwa since returning to Canada. She has done the math, and says that she needs $650 to pay the school fees for all of these children so they can finish the year. This is the current reality in Haiti. The state has been crippled by the last two coup d’états and is unable to subsidize anyone’s education. People are left to themselves in a society where unemployment sits at 70%. 96% of Haitian children never finish high school because of poverty. Your donation will not solved Haiti’s economic crisis. It will however ensure that 31 young people finish the 2008 school year. If you have some extra money, please contribute.

Canadian photographer Darren Ell's films, photographs, interviews, podcasts and weblinks about Canada's involvement in the 2004 coup d'état in Haiti and its ongoing impact is all online now with the National FilmBoard of Canada website Citizenshift. This work was released several months ago, but there were problems with the video pieces. Everything is now fully functioning! So dive in and learn!

Yves Engler is the co-author with Anthony Fenton of the most significant book on Canada's involvement in the 2004 overthrow of democracy in Haiti: Canada in Haiti: Waging War On the Poor Majority. The full audio interview with Yves Engler regarding Canada's involvement in the crisis in Haiti since 2004 is now online with the NFB website Citizenshift. The interview develops further ideas not presented in the video interviews published in Darren Ell's Citizenshift dossier about Haiti and Canada. In particular, Yves addresses the role of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the Canadian Embassy in blocking meaningful progress in Haiti.

Independent journalist and occasional Dominion contributor Darren Ell's The Damage Done: Canada and the Coup in Haiti is up on the CitizenShift web site. The documentary (and accompanying interviews, podcasts and weblog entries) looks at Canada's role in the coup against democracy in Haiti and the ensuing human rights catastrophe.

Canadian photographer Darren Ell and the National FilmBoard website CitizenShift have published a new online resource about Canada and the 2004 coup d'état in Canada. The site includes new short films and captioned photographs by Ell as well as photos by young Haitian journalist Wadner Pierre; it also includes podcasted interviews, links to important websites, as well as texts and links to interviews Ell has published about the ongoing impact of the coup. The focus of all the material is Canada's involvement in the coup, it's violent legacy, and digital tools for getting involved. It's called The Damage Done: Canada and the Coup in Haiti

Darren Ell may be reached at darren.e@sympatico.ca

It has been over a month since the kidnapping of Haitian human rights activist Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine. Roger Annis, a member of the Canada Haiti Action Network and one of the last people to have seen Antoine in Port-au-Prince, recently wrote this statement on the international media's silence related to his kidnapping.

[Photo by Darren Ell]

Paul Farmer, a graduate doctor of the University of Harvard, originating in the center of also titular Florida of a doctorate in Anthropology, came for the first time to Haiti in 1981 after having worked with Haitian immigrants on farms of Florida and Carolina. And he founded "Zanmi Lasante/Partners in Health" at Cange, in the central region of Haiti.

There health is free for all, the poor people come from all over the region just to receive health care, and “Zanmi Lasante” it is one of NGOs in Haiti which works closely with Haitian people. Dr. Farmer wants to provide Health for the poor because the poorest people don't have any money to go to the hospital, but they have the right to health care. Some Americans Doctors come to work free and they love to give their time for those who need treatment.

"Plateau Central," "Hinche” or City of Chalmagne Peralte, the 3rd national road whom link it from "Port-Au-Prince" to "Cap-Haitian" doesn't build; it is very difficult to go there. It is an injustice against the people who are living at "Plateau Central", said lawyer Mario Joseph who drove me.

One week like volunteer has Socio-educational Complex and Medical at Cange, it is an occasion to be useful and request with the poorest and most vulnerable persons.

nwanpi(at)gmail.com

[lifted from Upside Down World]

Port au Prince, Haiti
Contacts: Eugenia Charles and Jacob François
Phone 011-509-698-8134, 011-509-448-3672

Our international human rights delegation seeks the safe return of Lovinsky Pierre Antoine. A long-time defender of human rights and advocate of the poor, Lovinsky Pierre Antoine has not been seen since 10:00 pm Sunday, August 12, 2007. Our delegation has made numerous attempts to contact him but thus far has been unsuccessful.

Roger Annis is in Haiti, posting regular reports on human rights issues on the Toronto Haiti Action Committee web site.

An anonymous source recently pointed out the markedly partisan bias of the U.S. government's crackdown on drug trafficking in Haiti. According to the source, the six biggest Haitian drug traffickers at the time of the coup d’etat of February 29, 2004 were Jean Nesly Lucien, Fourel Celestin, Oriel Jean, Guy Philippe, Dany Toussaint and Youri Latortue.

For the good summary of the general case of the critics of the pig eradication program in Haiti, see the excerpt below from Free speech, neo-colonialism and micro-powered broadcasting in Haiti.

Anse d’Hainault’s isolation, however, did not save it from an earlier agricultural catastrophe: the eradication of the kreyol pig. In the early 80s, while the dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier was still in power, there was a rumored outbreak of African swine fever among Haiti’s pigs. At the behest of the US government, ever mindful of the interests of its pork industry, the Haitian government wiped out nearly the entire pig population.

In Haiti, the divide between the capital and the rest of the country, between center and periphery is so great that one author has spoken of the “two worlds” of Haiti. Yet life in the periphery is not totally unconnected to the tumultuous events of the center. Anse d’Hainault, a seaside fishing village that has the distinction of the town furthest from Port-au-Prince, gave us a first-hand view of this dynamic.

On our way from the airport to the center of Jeremie, a town on the tip of Haiti’s southern peninsula, we pass a contingent of UN soldiers decked out in shorts and Oakley shades going for a jog along the road. Our driver informs us that this is part of their usual routine: down to the beach for some swimming or volleyball in the day, jogging in the afternoon, a little game of soccer in the evening. In other words, a military man’s Club Med. It’s deployments like these that have earned MINUSTAH the popular nickname of “TOURISTAH” among Haitians.

I've just published a new article about the UN's propaganda machine in Haiti and the way it has been misrepresenting its humanitarian work in the country. The article deals with the mass arrests in February in Cite Soleil and the photo ops and lies that followed each phase of these arrests. These lies continue to this day via the UN News Service and were unexamined by Canadian journalist Jean-Michel Leprince (Radio-Canada) when he was embedded with MINUSTAH in February during these missions. To read the article, go to Montreal Serai Magazine.

When in Haiti recently, I conducted an extensive interview with Mario Joseph, the head lawyer of the Bureau des avocats internationaux, the only legal firm working on the tens of thousands of human rights violations that preceeded and followed the Feb 29th, 2007 coup d'etat. In the interview, Mario discusses the impact of the coup on the justice system, the struggle to rebuild the rule of law, the thorny problem of MINUSTAH, the continued problem of foreign (including Canadian) hypocrisy and more.

Can anyone have info or links regarding the Quebec Government's involvement in education in Haiti? darren.e@sympatico.ca

One of the few Haitian journalists reporting from the point of view of the poor majority needs your assistance. Wadner Pierre has been regularly contributing to important solidarity sites such as HaitiAction and HaitiAnalysis and the Institute for Democracy and Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), but his camera is barely functioning. Darren Ell and the IJDH are selling 8x10 photographs taken by Wadner and Darren in the last year in Haiti to raise money for a new camera.

The need for strong independent voices in Haiti is greater than ever. Here is your chance to support the work of a young Haitian photojournalist whose work is appearing on HaitiAction.net, Haitianalysis and other media important to the struggle for democracy. Wadner Pierre has been living and working with Father Gerard Jean-Juste for the last ten years. For the last two years, he has been reporting and photographing important human rights issues in Haiti. He brings to the world information and analysis directly from Haiti’s poor, something absent in the mainstream media.

To see the latest version of facts by Canadian mainstream TV on recent operations in Cite Soleil, go to the link below. It's in French, but my summary and criticism below is in English.

http://www.radio-canada.ca/actualite/v2/tj22h/#

It's a report called "Au coeur du mal" (Into the heart of Evil) by a big dude with Radio-Canada: Jean-Michel Le Prince. Let's ignore the title of the report. His report just reached probably over a million Quebecois and a couple hundred thousand Francophones outside of Quebec. In the report, he's embedded with the MINUSTAH troops and follows the recent mass arrests and gang hunt in Cite Soleil. I was there for the end of the operation. Check out the report and blog in your comments. Here's mine:

A representative of Doctors Without Borders in Haiti has asked me to remind people to the work they are doing with women in Haiti as a way of marking International Women's Day. If you go to their site, you'll find the following the informationl below.

English Site: http://www.msf.ca/en/news/newsreleases/2007/021907_haiti.html

French Site:
http://www.msf.ca/fr/news/newsreleases/2007/021907_haiti.html

- a brief introductory article to the Jude Anne hospital project
- web video interview with our Head of Mission on obstetric needs of women in Port au Prince
- photo slide show with captions