From nminiaci@uoguelph.ca Wed Aug 3 21:35:03 2011 Received: from esa-annu.mail.uoguelph.ca (esa-annu.mail.uoguelph.ca [131.104.91.36]) by lists.cupe.ca (8.12.11.20060308/8.12.11) with ESMTP id p741Z2Be023698 for ; Wed, 3 Aug 2011 21:35:02 -0400 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AkgLAEf2OU6DaFvW/2dsb2JhbABCgwJ/RqIugWSBQgIDAQEBCRcrIyEcAggFGQIpAQkmGRYDAwEBAQKHT6BXjk+BX49ogSuEB4EQBJBvggyRAA X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.67,313,1309752000"; d="scan'208";a="129965530" Received: from simcoe.cs.uoguelph.ca (HELO zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca) ([131.104.91.214]) by esa-annu-pri.mail.uoguelph.ca with ESMTP; 03 Aug 2011 21:34:56 -0400 Received: from zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca (Postfix) with ESMTP id 24DB52C950 for ; Wed, 3 Aug 2011 21:34:56 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2011 21:34:56 -0400 (EDT) From: Nicholas Miniaci To: hag@lists.cupe.ca Message-ID: <776472878.832096.1312421696110.JavaMail.root@simcoe.cs.uoguelph.ca> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Originating-IP: [172.17.91.203] X-Mailer: Zimbra 6.0.10_GA_2692 (ZimbraWebClient - SAF3 (Mac)/6.0.10_GA_2692) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by lists.cupe.ca id p741Z2Be023698 Subject: [Haiti Action Guelph] Two articles: On prisoner rights; on womens rights X-BeenThere: hag@lists.cupe.ca X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.8 Precedence: list List-Id: Haiti Action Guelph List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2011 01:35:05 -0000 Two items posted here: ********************************************** August 3, 2011 Hello Reader, You are invited to click the link below and listen to a report from Port au Prince of the Health and Human Rights in Prisons Project (HHRPP) of the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI--Office of International Lawyers). The seven minute report is by Iringo Hockley, an IJDH-BAI staff attorney. The HHRPP is a collaboration between IJDH-BAI and Partners in Health that com­bines the orga­ni­za­tions’ rec­og­nized exper­tise in law and health­care to holis­ti­cally address the vio­la­tions of pris­on­ers’ civil, polit­i­cal, social and eco­nomic human rights. Prison conditions in Haiti are some of the world's worst. In this podcast, Iringo gives an update on the post-earthquake conditions of Haiti's prisons and also shares two success stories of HHRPP advocacy. She reports on three prisons where the HHRPP has succeeded in winning the releases of prisoners held in illegal detention and assisting in bringing health care treatment. To listen to Iringo's Podcast, click here To listen to more "Messages from Haiti," click here Iringo Hockley holds a Mas­ters degree in Law from the Uni­ver­sity of Berne, Switzer­land and stud­ied at the Uni­ver­sity of British Colum­bia, Van­cou­ver, where she spe­cial­ized in Inter­na­tional Human Rights and Inter­na­tional Crim­i­nal Law. She taught Law at the Béné­dict School of Com­merce in Berne, worked for three and a half years as a Case Lawyer at the Swiss Fed­eral Admin­is­tra­tive Court in Berne, and spent eight months work­ing for the law firm Rupp and Albi­etz in Riehen, Switzer­land. At IJDH-BAI, she is a staff attorney who focuses on HHRPP. Email: iringo@ijdh.org ************************************************* "Until the Day I Die": Gerta Louisama on Haitian Women Winning Their Rights By Beverly Bell, Other Worlds, Tuesday August 2, 2011 http://www.otherworldsarepossible.org/another-haiti-possible/until-day-i-die-gerta-louisama-haitian-women-winning-their-rights Gerta Louisama is a member of the Executive Committee and the National Women’s Committee of Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen, Heads Together Small Producers of Haiti, Haiti’s largest and oldest peasant group. She is also head of the local Tèt Kole Women’s Committee in her village of Savanette. Here she speaks about the Tèt Kole’s efforts to win recognition, social equality, and economic rights for rural Haitians, especially women. I am a peasant women and the daughter of two peasants. I’ve been a victim of this society which ostracizes women. My father was a member of Tèt Kole and I chose to follow him and join the organization. I’ve gotten all my knowledge through Tèt Kole. I’m illiterate, but thanks to the organization, after women helped me for three months, I could even spell my name and write a little. Even though I’m getting older, I’ll keep going to school. Tèt Kole started on September 6th, 1986 and the Jean-Rabel massacre was on July 23, 1987. We lost 139 peasants [when the two largest landowner families in the region hired hit men to stop Tèt Kole’s work for land reform]. Then we had a second massacre in Piatte in 1990. The big land owners, the army, and the local police are responsible for those blood baths. It was asking for these necessities that got the peasants slaughtered. They were well-planned massacres to subdue us. It’s like the peasants have no rights because they don’t have access to clean water, no access to roads, no access to health care, no access to free schooling. And if we protest for those rights we’re entitled to, they will send in the police or MINUSTAH [UN peacekeeping troops] and they’ll spray tear gas, arrest people and beat them up. You don’t even have the right to protest for your rights. Legally speaking, both men and women have the same rights. In this country, we have plenty of laws. They’re on paper, they’ve just been set aside. Part of our movement is to get these laws respected. Us Haitian women, we have a lot of challenges, but as peasant women we have even more. We truly carry the burden of society. We’re the ones who hustle to feed the household and send the sick to the hospital if need be. We women, we work the land, we raise cattle, we transport merchandise like plantains, yams, and black beans to the capital. If we don’t work, there won’t be any flow of goods. One of the priorities of the women in Tèt Kole is to get things working in our favor. We have to address economic problems and social problems. We need ways to process the foods we produce, we need access to seeds. We need to help women who’ve been victims of domestic violence get support in the courts. What the women do in Tèt Kole is to group ourselves together in teams of 10 to 15 women. We work in the fields together, we do laundry together. We do personal development training. The chances for peasant women to go to school are small because they don’t have the financial means, so the trainings are designed to remind them that they’re also human and part of the society, even though society has marginalized them. They help peasant women understand their strength in society and understand that as for those services they’re entitled to. The government’s not doing them favors, they’re their rights. We’re asking the government to do a thorough agrarian reform. Most times, the peasants don’t own the land they are working on. The peasants should have ownership of the land they’re working. Land needs to be taken away from people who aren’t using it, and the state needs to let go of land it holds on to that could be used for farming, and be given to the peasants who are working it, with the other [agricultural] resources they need to farm. Actually, the women have been tirelessly working the small plots of land they’ve been able to get their hands on, so we should be the ones to own them. We peasant women think the government has to have in its agricultural plan a way to help us hold onto our land in the mountains so we can produce food, and help us get seeds and tools. We don’t have tools to work with, we don’t have seeds, we don’t have technical support. The problem is even worse for women because both the family and the society keep us from owning land or other big assets. We’re not entitled. If the land isn’t in the hands of the government or the church, it’s mostly for the sons. Say my father dies. If he owned three hectares of land and he had two sons and me as a daughter, he’ll never say that I can have one hectare and each son receives one hectare. Me, I’ll only be entitled to 1/4 hectare or at most 1/2 hectare, and the extra will be divided among my brothers. And if I was living in common-law with a man, if he died, I’d need to race to get myself off the land, even if I didn’t have anywhere else to sleep. I wouldn’t have any right to stay on the premises. Another priority for the Women’s Committee is all the people who don’t have birth certificates. The state has no respect for the peasants. People may have a piece of paper but it might not be valid, because the number on it might be the same as on 15 or 20 other certificates; only one person has the actual birth certificate and all the others are just photocopies. This comes out when the children of the peasant women have to go study or take care of something [legal]. Also, they used one birth certificate for people from urban areas and one for those from the countryside [this has since been changed]. I’m 42, and up til this day, I don’t even know if my birth certificate is valid. Maybe if I go to get a passport one day, I’ll find out. The lack of respect for peasants is also why today cholera is spreading throughout the country. There was no plan from early on, and that’s why it’s killed so many in all the departments [states], especially the poorest who can’t get medical care for themselves. In remote areas, people might need to carry the person with cholera four to five hours on a stretcher to make it to the hospital. [Cholera can kill within 4 to 6 hours after infection.] Where I’m from there’s a joke: since [the village of] Savanette has no roads, cholera can’t travel there. Actually, if it were to hit Savanette, no one would survive. They talked about sending Clorox, but we haven’t gotten any. They’ve told peasants to use soaps to wash their hands but some of them don’t have the money to buy soap, which costs 12 gourdes [33 cents]. Cholera is an even bigger burden on peasant women because they’re the ones that have borne their children and that are responsible for the household. If there were to be cases of cholera in Savanette, we as an organization would have to get involved. We’d have to go to the local radio stations and tell people to do preventive medicine. Where we are, we only see outsiders when there are elections and the public officials need votes. Once the officials have been elected, you won’t see the senators again. Let’s not even talk about the president. The fight to change the conditions of women living in the country is coming from men as well as women of Tèt Kole. This isn’t a movement of women against men, but really against the society which has isolated women. Women and men have to join together to fight. Generally as peasants, whether men or women, young or old, we’re all fighting for our rights, and men have to have that same mindset of aligning themselves with the women in this struggle. You find there are men who really misunderstand women. They assume that the women are increasing their strength against men. But in Tèt Kole, we’ve made lots of efforts to show that our work is to change the conditions of all peasants. We’re showing that this isn’t a movement of women against men but rather a movement against the society which has isolated women. Based on how things are going, we can almost say we’re losing the battle fast. We are slowly but surely going backwards. But as long as we are breathing, we can’t get discouraged. We are responsible for changing the conditions of our country so we’ll continue to fight. But so far, we haven’t seen any real positive outcome. That’s why we say we’ll continue to fight, even though we won’t see the changes; our kids will see them. I have one daughter and I have given all my energy to the organization. I have given back what the organization has done for me as a peasant woman who struggles against a society that excludes us. If it wasn’t for Tèt Kole, I wouldn’t have any value in this society. I never have thoughts of life after I leave Tèt Kole, because I see myself being involved until the day I die. Many thanks to Patricia Bingué And Bill Davis for translation, and Deepa Panchang for help editing. Beverly Bell is Program Coordinator of Other Worlds, a women-driven, multi-media education and movement-building collaborative. Read more about Other Worlds here: http://www.otherworldsarepossible.org/who-we-are . *** Friendly reminder -- If you would like to subscribe to (or unsubscribe from) the CHAN email list, just go to: http://lists.cupe.ca/mailman/listinfo/chan From nminiaci@uoguelph.ca Wed Aug 3 21:37:21 2011 Received: from esa-jnhn.mail.uoguelph.ca (esa-jnhn.mail.uoguelph.ca [131.104.91.44]) by lists.cupe.ca (8.12.11.20060308/8.12.11) with ESMTP id p741bLja023780 for ; Wed, 3 Aug 2011 21:37:21 -0400 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: Ao4QAGz3OU6DaFvW/2dsb2JhbAAoGoJ2AYFQk1GOXoFkgTMBBQENHQYyDAYDCgE5Ag0ZAkcSLQIDAQGFLAGCKCOgMI5PgV+PaYErhAeBEASSe5EATQ X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.67,313,1309752000"; d="scan'208";a="133348175" Received: from simcoe.cs.uoguelph.ca (HELO zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca) ([131.104.91.214]) by esa-jnhn-pri.mail.uoguelph.ca with ESMTP; 03 Aug 2011 21:37:01 -0400 Received: from zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca (Postfix) with ESMTP id 979BE2C8EA for ; Wed, 3 Aug 2011 21:37:01 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2011 21:37:01 -0400 (EDT) From: Nicholas Miniaci To: hag@lists.cupe.ca Message-ID: <759791855.832181.1312421821580.JavaMail.root@simcoe.cs.uoguelph.ca> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Originating-IP: [172.17.91.202] X-Mailer: Zimbra 6.0.10_GA_2692 (ZimbraWebClient - SAF3 (Mac)/6.0.10_GA_2692) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by lists.cupe.ca id p741bLja023780 Subject: [Haiti Action Guelph] News from Haiti on August 3, 2011 X-BeenThere: hag@lists.cupe.ca X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.8 Precedence: list List-Id: Haiti Action Guelph List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2011 01:37:21 -0000 Four articles to follow: Haiti Senate Rejects Gousse As Prime Minister By Kim Ives, Haiti Liberte, August 3 - 9, 201,1 Vol. 5, No. 3 >From "This Week in Haiti", the English section of HAITI LIBERTE newsweekly. Visit the website at http://www.haitiliberte.com At 10 p.m. on Tuesday, August 2, the Haitian Senate voted to not ratify former de facto Justice Minister Bernard Honorat Gousse to be President Michel Martelly’s Prime Minister. The vote came after hours of rancorous, sometime chaotic, debate, and two brief closed sessions requested by Senators Youri Latortue and Andre Riche, both Gousse/Martelly supporters. In June, Haitian deputies rejected Martelly’s first nominee, businessman Daniel-Gerard Rouzier, making this the new president’s second political defeat since he came to office on May 14. This evening debate on August 2 reached a stalemate around the “technical” stage of the Prime Minister’s review. A nine-member Senate commission submitted a report on whether Gousse was qualified to fill the post, according to six criteria from the Constitution’s Article 157. The commission reviewed whether Gousse was: Haitian-born, never having renounced his nationality; 30 years old or more; unconvicted of any crimes; an owner of property in Haiti and practicing a profession there; a resident of Haiti for the last five consecutive years; and “relieved of his responsibilities if he has been handling public funds,” as the Constitution stipulates. The commission determined that there was “controversy” around the final criteria. They found that it was not the Parliament but Prime Minister Gerard Latortue’s de facto government (installed after the 2004 coup against former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide) which “discharged” Gousse from his Justice Ministry in 2005, that is, which certified that he did not engage in corruption or other illegal activities. But as Senator Jean Baptiste Bien-Aime, a commission member, argued in the session, “the executive branch cannot discharge someone from the executive branch.” For that reason, the commission effectively kicked the final determination on Gousse’s eligibility back to the full 30-seat Senate for a general vote. Senators allied to Martelly and Gousse insisted that the commission had to give a yes-or-no verdict on Gousse’s qualifications. Sen. Latortue, who was Gousse’s most vocal partisan during the debate, asked the report to be sent back to the commission. Pro-Gousse senators also argued that former Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis was ratified on the basis of an “executive discharge” in June 2006 under President Rene Preval. Some anti-Gousse senators said that ratification was unjustified; others argued that Alexis’ circumstances were different. An absolute majority of 16 senators from Preval’s Unity party had formed a block vowing to vote down Gousse’s nomination. As Unity’s leader, former Senate president Joseph Lambert said, “the vote on Mr. Gousse must be and should be political.” He compared Gousse’s nomination to the hypothetical nomination of Roger Lafontant, a former Tonton Macoute chief and leader of a failed January 1991 coup. “A majority of senators would vote against that too, for political reasons,” he said. Latortue and Riche were joined by Senators Anick Joseph, Steven Benoit, and Melius Hyppolite, among others, in condemning the commission and the Group of 16 for introducing political considerations into the “technical” stage of the ratification process. But Sen. Moise Jean-Charles took the podium to say that the hours of debate were nothing but “theater” because Gousse’s defeat was already guaranteed. Jean-Charles also asserted that Gousse had at one point even withdrawn his candidacy, knowing it was doomed. The charge prompted Latortue to call for the second closed-door session. If Gousse had been cleared through the technical stage, he would have then had an opportunity to present to the Parliament and the nation his “general policy” declaration. That would have been followed by a debate and a vote, in which he would have also been rejected. But the whole struggle this Tuesday was between those who wanted Gousse to have his moment in the spotlight and those who did not. The Group of 16 had written an open letter to President Martelly asking for him to withdraw the nomination, saying that Gousse was unacceptable for the “repression, arbitrary arrests and killings in the neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince” that were carried out under his auspices in 2004 and 2005. Some 4,000 people died from putsch-related violence during the 2004-2006 coup d’etat, according to a study in the British medical journal The Lancet. On the day of the debate, lawyer Mario Joseph of the Collective of Progressive Haitian Jurists (CJPH) wrote to the senators asking them “to reject Mr. Bernard Gousse as the Prime Minister-designate, to condemn the coup of Feb. 29, 2004, and to make him make amends for his involvement in the wrongs committed against the Haitian people during his time heading the Justice Ministry.” The pro-Gousse senators accused the Group of 16 of intransigence, illegal procedures, and holding Haiti hostage to their political agenda. Lambert responded that it was Martelly who was being intransigent and illegal, because the Haitian Constitution instructs the President to select a Prime Minister nominee “in consultation” with the Presidents of both parliamentary houses. Martelly has unilaterally nominated both Rouzier and Gousse. Rouzier was also rejected in the “technical” stage. The principal reason was because his Haitian passport had no U.S. visa markings in it, despite the fact that he owns a home in Florida, where his wife mostly lives, and frequently travels there. This led the deputies to suspect that he, as was rumored, may have obtained U.S. citizenship, thereby disqualifying him for the post. The pro-Gousse/Martelly senators attempted to hobble the vote, neither voting for Gousse nor abstaining. Toward the end, Sen. Hyppolite bitterly accused the Group of 16 of rushing to a vote before Gousse could present his general policy declaration, because “they don’t have the courage to defend their position before us, their fellow senators, or before the population.” But Sen. Evaliere Beauplan made several passionate interventions saying that the pro-Gousse faction was dragging the Senate through an unnecessary debate although it knew that he and his colleagues were “unshakable” in their resolve to vote Gousse down. “I would vote against Gousse even if all the 29 other Senators voted for him,” Beauplan said, “because in 2004, he made me have to flee into exile.” (Note: According to the AFP news agency, Bernard Gousse's nomination for prime minister passed a vote in Haiti's Legislature, with 58 members voting in favor. But a majority is also required in the Senate in order for the nomination to be approved.) FORCED EVICTIONS CONTINUE UNDER PRESIDENT MARTELLY By the Center for Economic and Policy Research, August 2, 2011 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/forced-evictions-continue-despite-public-opposition-from-martelly On July 21, President Martelly declared “my government is against forced evictions,” but as of yet has done little to stop this systematic violation of rights. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA ) reports that over 125,000 people face the imminent threat of eviction every day. On Aug. 1, the residents of Camp Django in Delmas protested for their right to adequate shelter and for Martelly to live up to his promises after having faced the constant threat of eviction for months. In June, Bill Quigley and Jocelyn Brooks of the Center for Constitutional Rights, reported: “Last Saturday, a group of five men, some armed with guns, stormed into the camp and threatened the residents. Four of the men were wearing green t-shirts that read “Mairie de Delmas” (The Office of the Mayor of Delmas). “The Mayor’s men told the people that they would soon destroy their tents. They bragged they would mistreat people in a manner worse than “what happened at Carrefour Aero port,” referring to the violent unlawful eviction of a displacement camp at that location by the same mayor and police less than a month ago. “The Mayor’s men pushed their way through the camp, collecting the names and identification numbers of heads of household and marking tents with red spray painted numbers. “When the men pounded on the wooden door of the tarp covered shelter where 25-year-old pregnant Marie lived with her husband, she tried to stop them from entering. Marie tried to explain that her husband was not home. But the leader of the group, JL, violently slammed open the wooden door of her tent into her stomach, causing her to fall hard against the floor on her back. “Three days later, Marie remained in severe pain and bed ridden, worried sick about her baby… Jeena Shah, a BAI [Office of International Lawyers] attorney, arrived at Camp Django while government agents were still there. Jeena asked JL [the leader of the group] who had sent his group to Camp Django and why they had marked the tents with numbers. JL was evasive, repeating over and over that “the government” had sent him. Finally he stated that “the National Palace,” a reference to current President Michel Martelly, had sent him.” On Jun. 28, Jeena Shah gave an update on Camp Django: “At around 9 am this morning, two truckloads of police officers along with one of the mayor’s agents returned to the camp. By this time, Camp Django residents had begun protesting just outside of their camp. The police officers proceeded to beat camp residents with their batons and boots and arrest them. Several victims required medical attention. One family’s tent – that of the camp leadership’s spokesperson, who had spoken out against the Mayor’s past threats against the camp – was ransacked by police officers as they searched for her to arrest her. The mayor’s agent and police officers were unaccompanied by a judicial officer, and neither did they present any judicial order to evict the residents, as required under Haitian law.” What happened to Camp Django was not an isolated incident. In mid-July some 500 families were forcibly evicted, illegally, from the area around Sylvio Cator Stadium in Port-au-Prince. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights characterized the eviction as not respecting the right to adequate housing and added that “the former camp residents will be much more vulnerable than they were in the camp.” Amnesty International added that: “Port-au-Prince's Mayor must stop these illegal forced evictions of earthquake victims until adequate alternative housing can be found for all the displaced families,” said Javier Zuñiga, Special Advisor at Amnesty International. By pushing families out in the street for a third time since last year’s earthquake, Haitian authorities have failed to protect their rights to an adequate standard of living and basic shelter.” Amnesty noted that “City authorities had designated a small plot of marshland two kilometres away to relocate the displaced people. However, there has only been space to accommodate approximately 100 families there and the site has no facilities whatsoever. It is not known where the other families have gone.” Previous studies have shown that many leave the IDP camps for damaged homes. As Dr. Miyamoto explained to anthropologist Timothy Schwartz in a USAID-sponsored report: “Occupied yellow and red houses are extremely dangerous since many are a collapse hazard. People occupy these houses despite communications and warnings from MTPTC engineers since they have nowhere to go but the camps. People do not want to stay in these tents. Security is poor and they are exposed to diseases. I see little children sleeping next to the heavily cracked walls every day.” As both Amnesty and OCHA pointed out, the stadium was on a list of priority sites for relocation that the Martelly government distributed after his taking office. Yet OCHA noted that “the municipal authorities took the decision to relocate the families without consulting the humanitarian community, while the site where some of the families have been relocated was not planned.” Oxfam has called on the authorities to “implement a relocation strategy” that “must ensure that these people have access to basic services such as drinking water, sanitation services, health care, education and employment opportunities so that they can finally start to rebuild their lives.” In response, Patrick Rouzier, an advisor to the president, told AP: "I understand Oxfam's position but we have a comprehensive plan that we are finalizing... This has been in the works for the past three months... We are on it 100 percent." But in the face of such flagrant abuse of Haitian citizens, patience is dwindling. In a public statement released on Jul. 29, Rep. Donald Payne (D-NJ) “strongly condemned” what has become a regular pattern. “Words cannot fully describe how disappointing it is to hear of such vicious attacks towards the people of Haiti,” he wrote. “Members of Congress have previously condemned Mayor Jeudy’s forceful evictions and we will continue to do so until such actions come to a halt… The United States government did not invest dollars, resources, and manpower to have the people of Haiti mistreated by their own government.” Payne notes that “women, children, men and the elderly continue to be abused and displaced, in violation of Haitian and international law.” In this hostile environment, human rights advocates, NGOs, the international community, and – most importantly – the hundreds of thousands of displaced continue to wait for a comprehensive relocation plan. Haiti camp dwellers hold peaceful demonstration against planned eviction By Associated Press, August 1, 2011 http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/americas/haiti-camp-dwellers-hold-peacef ul-demonstration-against-planned-eviction/2011/08/01/gIQAHFC1nI_story.html PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti--Protesters pitched tents and laid down in the middle of one of the busiest streets in the Haitian capital Monday to protest efforts to remove them from a private lot where they have been living since the January 2010 earthquake. The approximately 60 to 80 protesters began the peaceful protest in the Delmas section of Port-au-Prince about 6 a.m. local time after more than a dozen police officers showed up, apparently to evict them from a lot where several hundred people have been living in tents and small shacks. About a dozen armed police officers looked on and motorists were forced to take alternate routes during the protest, which lasted several hours. Employees from the mayor's office in Delmas came to the car mechanic lot-turned-quake-survivor camp last week and offered each family $125 to leave, camp leader Jean-Rony Alexis said. But the amount wasn't enough to help them secure housing, he said. "The mayor's office needs to sit down with us and offer us more money or a place to go," Alexis, 26, said as protesters behind him carried cardboard signs asking for justice for tent dwellers. Delmas spokesman Saby Ketteny declined to comment. Haitian officials have stepped up forced removals in recent weeks even though President Michel Martelly has said he is opposed to them. Two weeks ago, the mayor of Port-au-Prince paid families $250 a piece to leave the National Stadium in downtown Port-au-Prince. Some of the families went to a field along Rue Bicentanaire, a major street that runs alongside the bay. The soccer arena is among six public spaces from which the Martelly administration wants to relocate 30,000 people and into 16 redeveloped neighborhoods. That's only 5 percent of the displaced population. The number of people in impromptu settlements was once as high as 1.5 million but the number dropped, in part because of evictions. In dozens of places, from shopping plazas to school yards, property owners have made people move out. The evictions come as tent-and-tarp shanties begin to swell across the hillsides surrounding Port-au-Prince. An estimated 630,000 Haitians are still without homes after last year's quake, according to the International Organization for Migration. The United Nations and rights groups have called for a moratorium on evictions until the government comes up with a better housing solution. Tropical Storm Emily barrels towards fragile Haiti AFP, August 3, 2011 http://ca.news.yahoo.com/tropical-storm-emily-barrels-towards-fragile-haiti-095159862.html Haiti hurried on Wednesday to prepare for incoming Tropical Storm Emily, urging evacuations ahead of the roiling system that could bring flash floods to the impoverished nation still struggling to recover from a devastating earthquake. A tropical storm warning was in effect for Haiti as well as the neighboring island of Hispaniola, the Dominican Republic, and for the US territory of Puerto Rico, the US National Hurricane Center said. Haiti's weather service chief Ronald Semelfort said heavy rains could start pounding the country late Wednesday, warning this "represents a great danger for the country still fragile from the January 2010 earthquake." Tens of thousands of Haitians remain in makeshift camps more than 18 months after the quake, which killed an estimated 225,000 people. Authorities were spreading the word and "are asking people in refugee camps... to evacuate vulnerable locations," said Haiti's civil defense chief Alta Jean-Baptiste. "We will review this evacuation strategy based on the probability of damage from the storm," he added. The Miami-based National Hurricane Center warned heavy rain from Emily could trigger deadly flash floods in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. Emily is currently forecast to drop between four and six inches (10 to 15 centimeters) of rain on Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, "with isolated maximum amounts of 10 inches possible," the NHC said. "These rains could cause life-threatening flash floods and mudslides in areas of mountainous terrain," the NHC said. Haiti has in the past witnessed dozens of deadly landslides with many of the hills which surround the capital stripped bare of trees. At 0600 GMT, Emily was some 220 miles (355 kilometers) southeast of Santo Domingo, packing winds of 50 miles per hour as it bore down on the island. "Some slight strengthening possible before the center moves over the high terrain of Hispaniola," US forecasters cautioned. The storm was moving towards the Dominican Republic and Haiti at 12 miles per hour, and on the forecast track its center "will be near the coast of Hispaniola on Wednesday," the NHC said. The Dominican Republic declared an alert for portions of the country, called for mandatory evacuations in a dozen villages near dams and urged residents to take precautions in other areas. "Residents in high-risk areas, who live next to rivers, streams and creeks... should take precautions and be aware of the recommendations of the relief agencies," the government's office of emergency services said. A tropical storm watch was in effect for the US Virgin Islands, southeast Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos. In the Pacific Ocean, meanwhile, Hurricane Eugene strengthened to a category three storm but still posed no threat to land, the weather service said. At 0300 GMT, Eugene was around 580 miles (935 km) southwest of the southern tip of Baja California, moving west-northwest into open waters with sustained winds of 115 miles per hour. The hurricane center said it may strengthen further Tuesday, but then should weaken as it moves over cooler waters. From nminiaci@uoguelph.ca Fri Aug 12 09:25:36 2011 Received: from esa-jnhn.mail.uoguelph.ca (esa-jnhn.mail.uoguelph.ca [131.104.91.44]) by lists.cupe.ca (8.12.11.20060308/8.12.11) with ESMTP id p7CDPa4R004707 for ; Fri, 12 Aug 2011 09:25:36 -0400 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AjQHAB4pRU6DaFvW/2dsb2JhbAAgIYRIlCSQAoFHI0NIAg0ZAlmIDJoojlSRRIEshAuBEASTEJEN X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.67,362,1309752000"; d="scan'208";a="134210877" Received: from simcoe.cs.uoguelph.ca (HELO zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca) ([131.104.91.214]) by esa-jnhn-pri.mail.uoguelph.ca with ESMTP; 12 Aug 2011 09:25:36 -0400 Received: from zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3E9D72C8CB for ; Fri, 12 Aug 2011 09:25:36 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2011 09:25:36 -0400 (EDT) From: Nicholas Miniaci To: hag@lists.cupe.ca Message-ID: <276386079.1074760.1313155536198.JavaMail.root@simcoe.cs.uoguelph.ca> In-Reply-To: <321541528.2725313.1313093637638.JavaMail.root@jaguar7.sfu.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Originating-IP: [172.17.91.201] X-Mailer: Zimbra 6.0.10_GA_2692 (ZimbraWebClient - SAF3 (Win)/6.0.10_GA_2692) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by lists.cupe.ca id p7CDPa4R004707 Subject: [Haiti Action Guelph] =?utf-8?q?Cables_Expose_How_U=2ES=2E_Blocke?= =?utf-8?q?d_Aristide=E2=80=99s_Return_After_2004_Coup?= X-BeenThere: hag@lists.cupe.ca X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.8 Precedence: list List-Id: Haiti Action Guelph List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2011 13:25:36 -0000 http://canadahaitiaction.ca/content/wikileaks-cables-expose-how-us-blocked-aristide%E2%80%99s-return-after-2004-coup AMY GOODMAN: ... "Canada had a clear position in opposition to the return of Aristide." Two Canadian diplomatic officials met with U.S. embassy personnel, saying, "We are on the same sheet [with U.S.]" with regards to Aristide. KIM IVES: Canada played a support role to the U.S., just as France did trying to block Aristide’s return through third countries, blocking commercial lines so he couldn’t get back. So they all played it. From nminiaci@uoguelph.ca Sat Aug 13 19:17:19 2011 Received: from esa-jnhn.mail.uoguelph.ca (esa-jnhn.mail.uoguelph.ca [131.104.91.44]) by lists.cupe.ca (8.12.11.20060308/8.12.11) with ESMTP id p7DNHJsW001681 for ; Sat, 13 Aug 2011 19:17:19 -0400 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AsIAALoER06DaFvW/2dsb2JhbABBMIQYk2SQQ4E5AQ0YCyYQDgFVGQJZGRQBAQSHWpZjjlSQBoU3gRAEkxKREQ X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.67,368,1309752000"; d="scan'208";a="134331573" Received: from simcoe.cs.uoguelph.ca (HELO zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca) ([131.104.91.214]) by esa-jnhn-pri.mail.uoguelph.ca with ESMTP; 13 Aug 2011 19:17:18 -0400 Received: from zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca (Postfix) with ESMTP id E432B2C903 for ; Sat, 13 Aug 2011 19:17:18 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2011 19:17:18 -0400 (EDT) From: Nicholas Miniaci To: hag@lists.cupe.ca Message-ID: <1626496803.1107430.1313277438864.JavaMail.root@simcoe.cs.uoguelph.ca> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_Part_1107428_1463677248.1313277438860" X-Originating-IP: [172.17.91.202] X-Mailer: Zimbra 6.0.10_GA_2692 (ZimbraWebClient - SAF3 (Win)/6.0.10_GA_2692) Subject: [Haiti Action Guelph] News from Haiti on Aug 13, 2011 X-BeenThere: hag@lists.cupe.ca X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.8 Precedence: list List-Id: Haiti Action Guelph List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2011 23:17:19 -0000 ------=_Part_1107428_1463677248.1313277438860 Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary="----=_Part_1107429_598330751.1313277438860" ------=_Part_1107429_598330751.1313277438860 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Three items posted here:=20 1. On Haiti's housing crisis.=20 2. Two new books on the history of slavery.=20 3. Physicians for Haiti (in Boston) seeking interns and volunteers to join = its team.=20 The following is a commentary by Dr. John Carroll of Peoria, Illinois on hi= s very informative blog. The commentary posting includes the Associated Pre= ss article by Trenton Daniel of August 10 (posted earlier to this mail list= and to the CHAN website here ) reporting on the Martelly government's plan= to forcibly clear the Champ de Mars tent city of its estimated 20,000 resi= dents. (The tent city is adorned with banners imploring President Martelly = to "not forget" the people--see my photo below). RA=20 History Tends to Repeat Itself=20 B y Dr. John Carroll=20 >From Dr. Carroll's blog, "Dying in Haiti", Friday, August 12, 2011=20 http://dyinginhaiti.blogspot.com/2011/08/photo-by-frandy-dejean.html=20 Photo: This is Haiti's National Palace shortly after the earthquake. Direct= ly in front of the crumbled National Palace is a tent city in Champ de Mars= with 20,000 people. They are living in horrid conditions and the mayor of = Port-au-Prince wants the tent city cleared of people, tents, and garbage.= =20 This scenario in Haiti's capital reminds me of Washington DC four decades a= go. In May of 1968, one month after Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assass= inated, the Poor People=E2=80=99s Army converged on Washington DC. They cam= ped out on the Mall and the encampment was called Resurrection City.=20 More than two thousand people of all colors and backgrounds came from diffe= rent parts of the United States. Ralph Abernathy, Jesse Jackson, and Andrew= Young were in charge. This city was meant to be a deliberate eye sore to f= orce the U . S . government to pay attention to the problem of systemic pov= erty.=20 Some of the objectives of the Poor People=E2=80=99s Army was to end hunger = in America and to rebuild the nation=E2=80=99s worst inner-city ghettos. Ho= wever, by the second week, things in Resurrection City began to unravel. Th= e leaders started to bicker. Teenage gang members harassed and beat up repo= rters. The rains came for two weeks leaving people living in brown slush. W= orried health department officials warned that outbreaks of dysentery and t= yphoid may occur. And the Poor People=E2=80=99s Army had run out of steam a= nd cash.=20 Ramsey Clark, perhaps alone among high-ranking Lyndon Johnson administratio= n officials, responded to the problems in the Mall: =E2=80=9CLincoln smiled= kindly, but the American people saw too much of the truth. For poverty is = miserable. It is ugly, disorganized, rowdy, sick, uneducated, violent, affl= icted with crime. Poverty demeans human dignity. The demanding tone, the in= articulateness, the implied violence deeply offended us. We didn=E2=80=99t = want to see it on our sacred monumental grounds. We wanted it out of sight = and out of mind.=E2=80=9D=20 Sounds like Port-au-Prince today.=20 Banner over Champ de Mars camp urges Martelly "Don't forget the people", ph= oto Roger Annis, June 2011=20 Review: The American Crucible: A survey of slavery, emancipation and human = rights=20 by Robin Blackburn=20 The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights; By Robin Bla= ckburn, Verso Books, 2011=20 and, An Unfinished Revolution: Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln; By Robin Blac= kburn, Verso Books, 2011=20 Reviewed by Greg Grandin, The Guardian, July 8, 2011=20 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jul/08/american-crucible-robin-blackbu= rn-review?INTCMP=3DSRCH=20 It is tempting to see Robin Blackburn's The American Crucible as the capsto= ne of an influential career. As a founding editor of the New Left Review an= d Verso, leading activist in the London university protests of the late 196= 0s, and author of a number of important studies of New World slavery and gl= obal economics, Blackburn has long pondered many of the themes related to h= uman freedom he explores here. But this new book, monumental though it is, = shouldn't be read as a culmination but rather a catching of breath, and a c= ontinuation of arguments initially made by the great original theorists of = the Atlantic World system, Eric Williams, CLR James , and WEB Du Bois , who= , writing in the early 20th century, were among the first to stress the imp= ortance of slavery in the creation of western culture and society.=20 Because it tied together so many threads of human interaction =E2=80=93 tra= nsportation, communication, warfare, labour, finance, trade, consumption, m= anufacturing, agriculture, inter-imperial rivalry, territorial expansion = =E2=80=93 slavery is the last institution that historians can still call a = "system" without feeling like relics from the 1970s. Still, there are now f= ew big books making the argument that slavery and its overthrow made the mo= dern world.=20 A group of slaves outside their quarters on a Georgia plantation. A group of slaves outside their quarters on a Georgia plantation. Photograp= h: Corbis=20 The American Crucible =E2=80=93 which covers half a millennia, all of the A= mericas, and a good deal of Europe and Africa =E2=80=93 bucks this trend. A= long with Williams, a descendent of both slaves and slave traders who was e= lected the first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Blackburn stresses = slavery's role in underwriting the west's industrial expansion. With James,= also a descendent of slaves, Blackburn credits the importance of political= struggle and ideas in rendering slavery morally indefensible. And with Du = Bois, likewise also descended from Caribbean slaves, Blackburn explores the= psychic and ideological construction of white supremacy following slavery'= s formal end.=20 The centrepiece of The American Crucible is Blackburn's measured reconstruc= tion of the chronology of the Haitian revolution and its influence on freed= om movements in the United States, Spanish America and Brazil, a persuasive= rebuttal of scholarly assessments that the revolution was exceptionally bl= oody or that its leaders instituted a new form of anti-European racism. It = wasn't and they didn't, certainly to no greater extent than that which occu= rred in other chapters in the age of revolution. But Blackburn does more th= an defend James's argument that Haitians universalised European ideals of l= iberty, fraternity and equality. He extends it across all of the Americas: = "Momentous clashes over slavery," Blackburn writes, generated new notions o= f "human freedom and human unity" that would inform modern social democracy= and human rights. The American Crucible likewise amasses substantial data = to support Williams's famous but disputed thesis that slavery financed the = industrial revolution.=20 Beyond direct profit from the trade itself, embryonic British industrialism= was nurtured, Blackburn writes, through a range of supplementary economic = activity, including manufacturing exports to Africa, revenue generated by p= lantations, the import of cheap and abundant raw material from those planta= tions, and the extension of credit that financed slavery.=20 Blackburn, though, rejects the notion associated with Williams and other ec= onomic determinists that slavery ended only because it had become a drag on= capitalist profits. Instead, leavened by James and Du Bois, as well as by = more recent scholarship, he describes emancipation in all its vexed, indete= rminate grandeur, propelled by violent clashes, public debate, harrowing ex= pos=C3=A9s, and the consolidation of new notions of freedom and equality.= =20 Karl Marx himself was keenly aware that capitalism could easily support, ev= en thrive on, chattel slavery and other forms of human bondage =E2=80=93 a = point Blackburn underscores in his other new book, An Unfinished Revolution= : Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln (Verso, =C2=A312.99).=20 Marx's analysis of the causes of the civil war holds up well compared to th= e smug liberal London opinion of his day, whose organs, such as the Economi= st, were certain that the conflict was really about tariffs. Marx knew, wel= l before hostilities broke out, that the crisis was about slavery.=20 The "dirty dogs of the Confederacy" were inherently expansionist, he though= t, and would spread not just west but into Mexico and the Caribbean if unch= ecked. The north, for its part, "wages war" in a way expected of "a bourgeo= is republic, where fraud has so long reigned supreme", its fractiousness co= ntained only by the resolve of the "singled-minded son of the working class= ," as Marx described Lincoln. Far from advocating white-skin socialism, Mar= x in his copious writings on the American civil war and its aftermath =E2= =80=93 the most important of which are reproduced here, along with those of= Lincoln and others =E2=80=93 demonstrates universalism: the "rescue of an = enchained race", Marx wrote to Lincoln, would lead to the "reconstruction o= f a social world".=20 Actual reconstruction, carried out half heartedly by Lincoln's successors, = was something else entirely. Slaves were unchained, the union saved, but, a= s Blackburn points out, no unified central government emerged that could ch= eck the repression launched against the executors of emancipation's full po= tential: free blacks in the south, agrarian radicals in the west, and a mil= itant working class in the north. In other words, the prerequisite for a ma= ss-based labour party =E2=80=93 a strong state that could regulate capital = and contain the violence of its night riders and company goons =E2=80=93 di= dn't exist, leading militants, including many German-Americans allied with = Marx's International, to forsake electoral politics and pursue pure syndica= lism.=20 What would have happened, Blackburn asks, had Marx =E2=80=93 who in Europe = supported both union and party building =E2=80=93 relocated to New York or = Chicago? His answer is necessarily wistful: just as Marx "saw the importanc= e of slavery at the start of the civil war, so he would surely have focused= on 'winning the battle of democracy'" by urging his comrades towards a mor= e flexible, potentially successful strategy to secure both political libert= y and social equality, which Blackburn, like Marx, understands to be indivi= sible.=20 An Unfinished Revolution is an apt coda to The American Crucible =E2=80=93 = the latter a probing exploration of the moral world slavery and its aboliti= on created, the former a meditation on a world that could have been.=20 Physicians for Haiti (Boston) is expanding and we hope you are interested i= n being part of our team!=20 Whether you are new to Physicians for Haiti or a have been with us from the= beginning, whether you are in the medical field, social sciences, business= , public health, education or work in the community, we have a way that you= can inspire, empower, and support the development of leaders among Haiti's= next generation of health professionals.=20 Please visit us on our website to learn more about the roles you can help f= ill. The deadline to apply is September 6th.=20 We are looking for:=20 1. Administrative Officer=20 2. Communications Officer=20 3. Treasurer=20 4. Development Officer=20 5. Boston Haitian Community Mapping Intern=20 6. Medical Education French Translation Intern=20 7. Medical Education Conference Intern=20 8. Medical Education Needs Assessment Intern=20 9. Information Technology Intern=20 If you have any questions, please contact us at ccurry@physiciansforhaiti.o= rg=20 We look forward to hearing from you!=20 Physicians for Haiti=20 Aug 13, 2011 www.physiciansforhaiti.org=20 ------=_Part_1107429_598330751.1313277438860-- ------=_Part_1107428_1463677248.1313277438860-- From nminiaci@uoguelph.ca Tue Aug 16 09:43:15 2011 Received: from esa-jnhn.mail.uoguelph.ca (esa-jnhn.mail.uoguelph.ca [131.104.91.44]) by lists.cupe.ca (8.12.11.20060308/8.12.11) with ESMTP id p7GDhFeo024831 for ; Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:43:15 -0400 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AscIAMlySk6DaFvW/2dsb2JhbABBgnaBUqJqBgyBZUVuBgECCyM2DQYFASAcAg0EFQJPCiILCoUpgiMKmH+OVYFgkCaBLIIOgX6BEASTEpER X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.67,380,1309752000"; d="scan'208";a="134542703" Received: from simcoe.cs.uoguelph.ca (HELO zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca) ([131.104.91.214]) by esa-jnhn-pri.mail.uoguelph.ca with ESMTP; 16 Aug 2011 09:43:14 -0400 Received: from zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2D0D32CAC7 for ; Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:43:14 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:43:14 -0400 (EDT) From: Nicholas Miniaci To: hag@lists.cupe.ca Message-ID: <2058621509.1184409.1313502194100.JavaMail.root@simcoe.cs.uoguelph.ca> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Originating-IP: [172.17.91.203] X-Mailer: Zimbra 6.0.10_GA_2692 (ZimbraWebClient - SAF3 (Win)/6.0.10_GA_2692) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by lists.cupe.ca id p7GDhFeo024831 Subject: [Haiti Action Guelph] Fwd: Haiti's WikiLeaks Cables X-BeenThere: hag@lists.cupe.ca X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.8 Precedence: list List-Id: Haiti Action Guelph List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2011 13:43:15 -0000 WikiLeaks Cables Show Haiti as Pawn in U.S. Foreign Policy July 27, 2011 http://www.coha.org/wikileaks-cables-show-haiti-as-pawn-in-u-s-foreign-policy/ This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate Katie Soltis • The U.S. tried to undermine Haiti’s oil deal with Venezuela in order to protect the vested interests of U.S. oil corporations. • Under the Obama administration, the U.S. embassy worked with major textile companies to cap the minimum wage in Haiti at 31 cents per hour. • Election monitors from the U.S. and the international community knowingly supported elections that did not remotely follow accepted democratic standards of procedure. When WikiLeaks announced its plan to release tens of thousands of classified U.S. diplomatic cables to the public, the U.S. government feared a massive international backlash and threat to national security. Although WikiLeaks’ impact on Latin America does not severely jeopardize U.S. security, the diplomatic cables could nevertheless cause irreparable harm to U.S. relations with several Latin American nations. Information released by WikiLeaks points to a continuation of U.S. dominance and the application of “neo-imperialist” diplomacy in Latin America, and the cables regarding Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, exemplify the persistence of U.S. interference. Haiti’s history is one of brutal colonial exploitation followed by systematic neocolonial intervention, and today the country faces extreme poverty and political turmoil. According to the UN Development Program, 78 percent of Haitians live on less than USD 2 per day and 54 percent of the population, or around four and a half million people, currently live on less than USD 1 per day. [1] In light of the problems facing this troubled nation, the new information revealed by WikiLeaks concerning U.S. involvement in Haiti is particularly disconcerting. Janet Sanderson, the previous U.S. Ambassador to Haiti, once dubbed the U.S. “Haiti’s most important and reliable bi-lateral partner,” but the cables released by WikiLeaks show a much more one-sided relationship. [2] Instead of helping Haiti develop economically and politically, Washington’s foreign policy seems completely dominated by influential and well-connected U.S. economic interests. Petrocaribe: Haiti and Venezuela René Préval became president of Haiti in 2006 and immediately attempted to improve U.S.-Haiti relations. U.S. Ambassador Sanderson reported in a cable that Préval “wants to bury once and for all the suspicion in Haiti that the United States is wary of him. He is seeking to enhance his status domestically and internationally with a successful visit to the United States.” [3] Yet despite his desire to improve relations, newly elected President Préval unintentionally began alienating the United States on the very day of his inauguration. On this day, Préval signed a deal with Venezuela to join the Caribbean oil alliance, Petrocaribe, which allowed Haiti to buy subsidized oil from Venezuela. The government of Haiti would pay only 60 percent up front and then pay the rest at 1 percent interest over the next 25 years. [4] This payment schedule would save the Haitian government USD 100 million per year, with which the government planned to supply basic needs and services to 10 million Haitians and increase investment in social projects like hospitals and schools. [5] Additionally, the Petrocaribe deal would help lower and stabilize the cost of oil in Haiti after several years of high prices. However, the new Haiti-Venezuela alliance unnerved Washington, and Ambassador Sanderson abetted U.S. interests in Haiti. Apparently determined to hold a tough stance against the oil deal, she wrote in a cable on April 19, 2006, that “Post [the Embassy] will continue to pressure Préval against joining Petrocaribe.” [6] For two years, the U.S. government worked with ExxonMobil and Chevron, the two U.S. oil companies operating in Haiti, to undermine the new deal between Petrocaribe and Venezuela. The U.S. oil companies feared that they would have to buy their oil directly from the government of Haiti and would lose their profit margins as a result. As Thomas C. Tighe, a U.S. official in Haiti, wrote in a cable, “Chevron country manager Patryck Peru Dumesnil confirmed his company’s anti-Petrocaribe position and said that ExxonMobil, the only other U.S. oil company operating in Haiti, has told the Government of Haiti that it will not import Petrocaribe products.” [7] Because Chevron and ExxonMobil controlled shipping and distribution channels, these two companies were able to prevent the Petrocaribe deal for two years simply by refusing to transport Petrocaribe oil and blocking their shipments. Throughout this time, Tighe said the Haitian government was “enraged that ‘an oil company which controls only 30% of Haiti’s petroleum products’ would have the audacity to try and elude an agreement that would benefit the Haitian population.” [8] Chevron eventually signed the agreement in 2008, but the two-year fight against the deal exemplifies Washington’s willingness to disregard Haiti’s interests for its own economic and political agenda. The real problem for the United States in this arrangement appears to be not just the challenge to U.S. economic interests but also the development of a lasting Haiti-Venezuela relationship. The U.S. is inevitably skeptical of Haiti’s ties with Venezuela, a nation whose leader fiercely opposes the United States. Préval continued to develop Haiti’s relationship with Venezuela, first with the proposed Petrocaribe deal in 2006 and, subsequently, with Préval’s attendance of the ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas) summit in Venezuela in 2007. At the summit, Préval received a deal for an energy aid package from Cuba and Venezuela. Yet despite the proposed benefits for the Haitian people with both the Petrocaribe agreement and the later energy package, U.S. officials fought against the deals because they did not trust Haiti’s possible close relationship with these two demonstrably anti-American governments. However, the United States’ determination to undercut these agreements seems unwarranted. Although Venezuela and Cuba are outspoken in their opposition to the United States, Haiti does not participate in their leftist, anti-American rhetoric. In fact, Washington was cognizant of the fact that Haiti’s participation in these agreements did not reflect an alliance against the United States. Sanderson reported in one cable that “at no time has Préval given any indication that he is interested in associating Haiti with Chávez’s broader ‘revolutionary agenda.’” [9] Instead, Préval’s relations with these other governments stemmed from his desire for socioeconomic improvement. The U.S. government acknowledged this, as seen by Sanderson’s report that Préval “will manage relations with Cuba and Venezuela solely for the benefit of the Haitian people, and not based on any ideological affinity toward those governments.” [10] Despite this recognition, the U.S. government fought strongly against these agreements, evidencing the true priorities of U.S. policies towards Haiti. The U.S. earlier stated that it is “Haiti’s most important and reliable bi-lateral partner,” but these cables show the limits of Washington’s commitment to aid Haiti. Rather than supporting Haitian attempts at development, the U.S. was willing to undermine beneficial agreements in order to continue its anti-Chávez policies and to protect the interests of big oil companies. Textiles: U.S. Interference in Wage Laws In another instance of U.S. interference documented by WikiLeaks, the Obama administration tried to prevent minimum wages in Haiti from rising above 31 cents an hour. In 2009, Port-au-Prince passed a law that raised the minimum wage from an astonishingly low 24 cents to 61 cents an hour. [11] This law would have increased the minimum wage by 150 percent to about USD 5 a day, but, even with this large increase, the new measure would still have fallen short of the estimated USD 12.50 a day needed to provide for a family of four in Haiti. [12] The proposed wage increase was of course enormously popular with Haitians, who argued that the increase was necessary because of the rising cost of living. However, U.S. textile companies with factories in Haiti, including Fruit of the Loom, Hanes, and Levi Strauss, fought the measure, while the U.S. State Department also exerted pressure on the government of Haiti. David E. Lindwall, a deputy chief of mission, said the minimum wage increase “did not take economic reality into account” and was a populist measure for “the unemployed and underpaid masses.” [13] U.S. plant owners argued that, should the cost of labor rise substantially, these U.S. companies would have to close their factories in Haiti and relocate. Based on the insistence of these U.S. textile companies and the U.S. embassy, the Haitian government agreed to limit the increase to only 7 cents, at 31 cents an hour. [14] The recent fight over the proposed wage increase is merely the most recent instance where U.S. foreign companies have tried to keep wages low by threatening to close production facilities in the country. The Haitian Platform to Advocate Alternative Development (PAPDA) argues that every time the government of Haiti has proposed a minimum wage increase, lead industries “cried wolf” and threatened to halt production in all major factories in the nation, further jeopardizing economic stability in the country. However, according to PAPDA, “in every case, it was a lie.” [15] PAPDA implies that closing factories is an empty threat made by U.S. businesses to extort low wages. Based on the actual cost of the minimum wage increase relative to overall profits, this is likely the case. According to a U.S. embassy cable, it would cost Hanes USD 1.6 million a year to pay its workers an extra USD 2 a day. This cost is very low compared to the company’s registered profits of USD 211 million with sales of USD 4.3 billion. [16] Furthermore, Haiti already has some of the lowest paid workers in the world, so finding cheaper labor would be unlikely. Yet whether or not U.S. factories would actually pull out of Haiti, the cables are significant in pointing to the weight of U.S. influence in Haiti. The degree of power U.S. businesses exert over the government of Haiti is particularly alarming as it prioritizes U.S. financial gains over fundamental economic improvements for 25,000 poverty-stricken textile workers. Elections: International Support for Non-Democratic Process Leaked cables also provide further information about the international community’s support for Haiti’s 2009 elections. International election donors, including ambassadors, members of NGOs, and leaders from the UN, were charged with monitoring the election procedures and reporting instances of electoral fraud. Yet these donors ignored their responsibility to uphold democratic standards, as they supported these elections despite unfair electoral procedures. Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), which was appointed by then-President Préval, decided to exclude the political party Fanmi Lavalas (FL) under the guise of not having proper documentation. FL, the party of exiled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is a leftist political party that is also very popular among the poor. However, its influence has waned since Aristide was overthrown in 2004 and exiled in a U.S.-supported coup. Since Aristide’s removal from office, Préval’s party has worked to curtail the FL’s influence and popularity, and the party has been excluded in several elections. The FL’s exclusion caused concern among international donors charged with overseeing the electoral process. Canadian Ambassador Gilles Rivard questioned the impact that this exclusion would have on the elections: “If this is the kind of partnership we have with the CEP going into the elections, what kind of transparency can we expect from them as the process unfolds?” [17] Furthermore, leaked U.S. cables said the decision of the electoral council was “almost certainly in conjunction with President Préval,” as an attempt to rig the outcome of the election. [18] International donors recognized the dangers of supporting the elections: they would not only be undermining democratic procedures but also would be seen as supporting Préval. Despite these initial concerns, the international community decided to support the elections. A cable sent by U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Merten recorded the views of a European Union representative, who said, “the international community has too much invested in Haiti’s democracy to walk away from the upcoming elections, despite its imperfections.” [19] Furthermore, Merten argued that the elections should proceed because “without donor support, the electoral timetable risks slipping dangerously, threatening a timely presidential succession.” [20] In total, international donors gave an estimated USD 12.5 million to finance the election—about 72 percent of the total cost—even though they knew that the election was not free or fair. [21] The Organization of American States adjudicated the disputed first round results and decided that the run-off candidates would be Michel Martelly and Mirlande Manigat. Martelly proceeded to win the election, but, notably, only 23 percent of Haitians participated. This marks the lowest participation rate in the entire hemisphere since 1945. The lack of voter participation has been attributed to disappointment about the exclusion of the FL and dislike of the two candidates. [22] The circumstances of the election reflect a difficult situation for the international community’s involvement in Haiti. Its disregard for standard democratic procedures, with open and fair elections, undermines a commitment to democratic ideals. On the other hand, if they had refused to support the elections, Haiti could once again fall into political turmoil. Such chaos would plague other international investments in the nation, while potentially further stalling the realization of stability and development in Haiti. Conclusion The repercussions of the WikiLeaks Haiti cables are a far cry from the massive national security breaches that the U.S. government originally feared. The cables detailing U.S. relations with Haiti do not contain the same devastating potential as other cables might have, and the information leaked here will not jeopardize national security. Whether or not WikiLeaks was justified in releasing this classified information, these cables shed valuable light on the hypocritical nature of U.S. foreign policy in one of the world’s most troubled nations. Based on these cables, we see a disturbing image where U.S. foreign policy is shaped by the interests of the rich and is geared toward underhanded interference in the affairs of other nations. From nminiaci@uoguelph.ca Tue Aug 16 09:43:21 2011 Received: from esa-jnhn.mail.uoguelph.ca (esa-jnhn.mail.uoguelph.ca [131.104.91.44]) by lists.cupe.ca (8.12.11.20060308/8.12.11) with ESMTP id p7GDgR9v024793 for ; Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:43:21 -0400 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: As4PAMlySk6DaFvW/2dsb2JhbAAgCxaCdgGBUaRhRQFtAQUBAgsjNg8MOgINAhcCWTiFKAGCIgqYf45VgWCQJoEsgXKCGoEQBJMSkRE X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.67,380,1309752000"; d="scan'208";a="134542596" Received: from simcoe.cs.uoguelph.ca (HELO zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca) ([131.104.91.214]) by esa-jnhn-pri.mail.uoguelph.ca with ESMTP; 16 Aug 2011 09:42:16 -0400 Received: from zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8FDAB2C949 for ; Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:42:16 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:42:16 -0400 (EDT) From: Nicholas Miniaci To: hag@members.cupe.ca Message-ID: <1498594430.1184360.1313502136547.JavaMail.root@simcoe.cs.uoguelph.ca> In-Reply-To: <1313482733.44198.YahooMailClassic@web160309.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Originating-IP: [172.17.91.203] X-Mailer: Zimbra 6.0.10_GA_2692 (ZimbraWebClient - SAF3 (Win)/6.0.10_GA_2692) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by lists.cupe.ca id p7GDgR9v024793 Subject: [Haiti Action Guelph] Economist mag discusses Martelly's struggle to get his way X-BeenThere: hag@lists.cupe.ca X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.8 Precedence: list List-Id: Haiti Action Guelph List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2011 13:43:21 -0000 Though I strongly disagree with the Economist magazine's neo-liberal/neo imperialist agenda I am a long time subscriber to the magazine. The writing and analysis is far better than what one finds in the New York Times and the Globe and Mail. Below is the latest article from the Economist on Haiti, which helpfully notes Martelly's close ties to " Michel François, a much-feared police chief accused of drug trafficking who was a key figure in a military coup in 1991." The article goes on to describe Martelly's struggle to get his way in Haiti and the thuggish candidate he chose for Prime Minister. Two weeks ago the Economist reviewed Paul Farmer's new book on Haiti, unfairly attacking him for speaking the truth about Aristide. The review did note that Farmer had a good summary of the situation since the earthquake but it was a total smear job none the less. Haiti’s new president A bitter baptism for “Sweet Micky” http://www.economist.com/node/21525402 Political deadlock may trigger unrest on the streets and fatigue among donors, hindering the slow recovery from last year’s earthquake Aug 6th 2011 | MIAMI | from the print edition ALMOST three months after Michel Martelly took office as president, Haiti’s political affairs are still in limbo. The country’s parliament this week again refused to accept his nominee for prime minister, a prerequisite for a new government to be sworn in. Acting ministers, held over from the previous government, have not been to a cabinet meeting in three months, and are able to handle only day-to-day payments. Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, can ill afford this gridlock: decisions are needed to speed recovery from the devastating earthquake of January 2010, the hurricane season is entering its peak and children are due to go back to school next month. International officials responsible for the $10.2 billion in aid pledged after the earthquake are wringing their hands. Haiti has been down this road before, with disastrous results. It went without a prime minister from June 1997 to March 1999. René Préval, the president then (and again from 2006 until this year) dissolved parliament in January 1999 and ruled by decree until elections the next year. Donors froze aid. This time the root of the deadlock lies in part in the flawed general election of last November, which featured chaos and widespread claims of fraud; only 1.1m of a potential electorate of 4.7m managed to cast their votes. Mr Martelly only got on to the ballot for a presidential run-off, held in March, after the Organisation of American States and other outsiders stepped in and forced a recount in which he was found to have more votes than Mr Préval’s candidate. He won 68% in the run-off (but only 23% of the electorate voted). Mr Martelly is a political novice. He was once known to Haitians merely as “Sweet Micky”, a popular singer with a reputation for bawdy stage antics. His foes point to his past ties to some unsavoury figures such as Michel François, a much-feared police chief accused of drug trafficking who was a key figure in a military coup in 1991 that overthrew Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a left-wing president. Mr Martelly’s supporters say that in those days such links were the price for being allowed to perform. He was elected on a promise to break with the political instability and corruption that has dogged the country since the end of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986. But in the parliament it is Mr Préval’s allies who dominate. Mr Martelly has not shown himself to be a builder of consensus—a necessity given his lack of support in the legislature. “He doesn’t understand cohabitation and he should realise that we were elected, too,” says Simon Desras, a senator. Mr Martelly’s first choice for prime minister was a successful businessman and fervent Catholic. When he was rejected the president proposed Bernard Gousse, a former justice minister who used the job to persecute political opponents, including some current legislators. Mr Gousse was rejected by the Senate this week. Perhaps because of his experience as a stage performer, Mr Martelly has hitherto gone down well with ordinary Haitians. But he faced his first protest in late July: he was pelted with plastic bottles and stones on a visit to Cap Haïtien, the country’s second city. He reacted by ordering an investigation into what he claimed was a plot to kill him. His friends say that while he is hard-working and a good listener, he is still adjusting to the demands of governing. “Sweet Micky should let Michel Martelly be the president,” says one of them. Many worry that the vacuum could prompt unrest after four years of relative calm. UN peacekeepers have mounted raids in some of the rougher slums in Port-au-Prince, the capital, to keep criminal gangs in check. Another fear is donor fatigue. Only about a third of the $5.6 billion pledged at a donors’ conference more than a year ago has been disbursed. About 600,000 earthquake victims are still living in tent camps. Mounds of rubble have yet to be removed from the capital’s streets. “The amount of debris still littering the streets could fill 8,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools,” the UN Development Programme reported recently. Some of those still in the tent cities see them as a better option than renting. And a lot of rubble has been cleared. By laying waste to much of the capital, the quake exacerbated Haiti’s pre-existing weakness of government capacity and infrastructure, points out Josef Leitmann, who manages the World Bank’s Haiti Reconstruction Fund. So Haiti has also fallen victim to exaggerated expectations Mr Martelly is working on a plan to shift the residents of six of the camps to new housing. But he will need to move fast. The patience of Haitians is not infinite, and neither is that of Haiti’s financial backers. From nminiaci@uoguelph.ca Tue Aug 16 09:43:23 2011 Received: from esa-annu.mail.uoguelph.ca (esa-annu.mail.uoguelph.ca [131.104.91.36]) by lists.cupe.ca (8.12.11.20060308/8.12.11) with ESMTP id p7GDgo14024795 for ; Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:43:23 -0400 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: Ap4EAJxySk6DaFvW/2dsb2JhbAA4CYRIpGGBRyNKBDUIAg0ZAksOLgEGh1iYe45VgWCQJoEsgXyCEIEQBJMSkRE X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.67,380,1309752000"; d="scan'208";a="131202145" Received: from simcoe.cs.uoguelph.ca (HELO zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca) ([131.104.91.214]) by esa-annu-pri.mail.uoguelph.ca with ESMTP; 16 Aug 2011 09:42:40 -0400 Received: from zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca (Postfix) with ESMTP id 809772C8E8 for ; Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:42:40 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:42:40 -0400 (EDT) From: Nicholas Miniaci To: hag@lists.cupe.ca Message-ID: <1145061536.1184376.1313502160505.JavaMail.root@simcoe.cs.uoguelph.ca> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Originating-IP: [172.17.91.203] X-Mailer: Zimbra 6.0.10_GA_2692 (ZimbraWebClient - SAF3 (Win)/6.0.10_GA_2692) Subject: [Haiti Action Guelph] Constructing a Safer Haiti X-BeenThere: hag@lists.cupe.ca X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.8 Precedence: list List-Id: Haiti Action Guelph List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2011 13:43:23 -0000 Constructing a Safer Haiti Stacey McMahan Stacey McMahan Sustainability Advisor and Design Fellow with Architecture for Humanity GET UPDATES FROM Stacey McMahan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stacey-mcmahan/constructing-a-safer-haiti_b_927072.html Working in Haiti is full of challenges -- whether the ongoing work to clear the rubble still strewn across the tiny country, to a continued focus on designing and constructing safe buildings. At one time, Haiti had its own comprehensive building and zoning code, with a semblance of enforcement. However, due to political instability over the past 30-40 years, this 'structure' has become non-existent. Since the earthquake, the responsibility for the country's health, safety and welfare when it comes to construction now lies with individual designers and builders and their skills and understanding. Many Haitian architects and engineers are familiarizing themselves with seismic code and refusing to design non-seismic structures. Change within the construction industry, though, is a tougher nut to crack as most laborers are continuing to build as they have always practiced. I've helped address this as the 2010 fellow of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and Architects for Humanity. With several other on-the-ground colleagues, we've developed the Rebuilding 101 Manual, a how-to guide on the basics of building, chock full of graphics and written in four languages. Being here has made me and my colleagues find that job-site education and hands-on training are essential to breaking this cycle, so each of our projects has on-site construction training and tight construction oversight built into each project. Projects are also all competitively bid on by local contractors who, in turn, are required to use labor local to the project area. Unfortunately, some of these local laborers will be unskilled and inexperienced but this does lend itself well to training a new generation of workers with the necessary skills. Each selected construction team is given onsite training by a partner organization called BuildChange -- an NGO providing training to local builders and homeowners in earthquake disaster zones. The organization's focus is housing, but they have developed a special three-day program in partnership with AFH for the basics of masonry and concrete school buildings. 2011-08-15-Haiti1.jpg Working to make wire ties for Ecole la Dignite in Cayes Jacmel. Photo by Build Change The progress has been slow -- but steady. In the beginning, we visited our only construction site once per week and made the contractor tear out a lot of work because they thought it was OK to skimp on rebar or pour foundations on a slant, etc. Learning from that lesson, we put our field engineers on the construction site four days per week, overseeing construction and making daily reports. If there is a problem or the workers start getting off track, it is immediately corrected. The fifth day is spent in the office with our two construction managers who also spend one day on the jobsite. All the reports are reviewed and a weekly summary report is created. All reports and photos are posted to the Open Architecture Network -- one of our projects, Ecole la Dignite', is a good example. Reports can be found on the Updates and Files tabs. Funders love this because they can check on progress anytime. The best part about our construction administration staff is that they are all young Haitian engineers who are doing an outstanding job and who will continue to help make buildings safe long after we leave Haiti. 2011-08-15-Haiti3.jpgThe locals we have been working with practicing confined masonry. Photo by Build Change Education on safe building practices is just one of the many issues being addressed here. But this is an important step in the process. Education will help to avoid this issue in the future. Recovery in Haiti will continue for decades, properly implementing education on safe structures are just the first steps down the long path. As always, track our progress down on the ground at The Haiti Rebuilding Center or AIA for Haiti . In solidarity Ajamu Nangwaya All art is propaganda....I do not care a damn, for any art that is not used for propaganda. - W. E. B. Du Bois At the level of popular history, the vulgar Afrocentrists glorified in an oversimplistic manner the African heritage of black Americans. In their writings, they rarely related the actual complexities of the local cultures, divergence of languages, religions and political institutions, and tended to homogenize the sharply different social structures found within the African diaspora. They pointed with pride to the dynasties of Egypt as the classical foundation of African civilization, without examining with equal vigor or detail Egypt's slave culture. - Manning Marable in Beyond Black and White: Transforming African American Politics, p. 192. Even the scholarly Afrocentric approach elevated a neo-Kantian idealism above even a dialectical idealist analysis, much less speaking to historical materialism except to attack it as such. Populist Afrocentrism was the perfect social theory for the upwardly mobile black petty bourgeoisie. It gave them a sense of ethnic superiority and cultural originality, without requiring the hard, critical study of historical realities. It provided a philosophical blueprint to avoid concrete struggle within the real world.... It was, in short, only the latest theoretical construct of a politics of racial identity, a world-view designed to discuss the world but never really to change it. - Manning Marable. The foundation of irreligious criticism is this: man makes religion, a religion does not make man. But man is no abstract being squatting outside of the world. Man is the world of man, the state, society. This state, this society, produces religion's inverted attitude to the world, because they are an inverted world themselves. Thus the struggle against religion is directly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.... Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feeling of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless circumstances. It is the opium of the people.... - Karl Marx in Marx by David McLellan (1986), p. 31 From nminiaci@uoguelph.ca Mon Aug 22 12:13:15 2011 Received: from esa-annu.mail.uoguelph.ca (esa-annu.mail.uoguelph.ca [131.104.91.36]) by lists.cupe.ca (8.12.11.20060308/8.12.11) with ESMTP id p7MGDEJS005278 for ; Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:13:14 -0400 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AnQGANN+Uk6DaFvW/2dsb2JhbABBhEuULZANgUcjgQsCDRkCWYgOlUeOW5EZgSyEDIEQBJMUkRM X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.68,263,1312171200"; d="scan'208";a="131840431" Received: from simcoe.cs.uoguelph.ca (HELO zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca) ([131.104.91.214]) by esa-annu-pri.mail.uoguelph.ca with ESMTP; 22 Aug 2011 12:13:12 -0400 Received: from zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca (Postfix) with ESMTP id 20ACA2C977 for ; Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:13:12 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:13:12 -0400 (EDT) From: Nicholas Miniaci To: hag@lists.cupe.ca Message-ID: <2084325571.98679.1314029592060.JavaMail.root@simcoe.cs.uoguelph.ca> In-Reply-To: <1313959164.34129.YahooMailNeo@web121818.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Originating-IP: [172.17.91.203] X-Mailer: Zimbra 6.0.10_GA_2692 (ZimbraWebClient - SAF3 (Win)/6.0.10_GA_2692) Subject: [Haiti Action Guelph] 53 Positions advertised for Haiti on Devex X-BeenThere: hag@lists.cupe.ca X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.8 Precedence: list List-Id: Haiti Action Guelph List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2011 16:13:15 -0000 Forward: Devex is a website linking international development professionals to jobs in the developed and developing world. It is interesting to see what positions are being advertised for Haiti---one gets a sense of which players are involved (both big and small) in the reconstruction process, and how things are moving along. It is not difficult to ascertain why no progress is being made on the territory, and why Haitians are not benefiting from this process. Non-Haitian expats, however, are really benefiting from this disaster. Lorraine. http://www.devex.com/en/jobs/search?keywords=HAITI&reset_base=1 From nminiaci@uoguelph.ca Fri Aug 26 11:20:13 2011 Received: from esa-annu.mail.uoguelph.ca (esa-annu.mail.uoguelph.ca [131.104.91.36]) by lists.cupe.ca (8.12.11.20060308/8.12.11) with ESMTP id p7QFKDQe028714 for ; Fri, 26 Aug 2011 11:20:13 -0400 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: Ap0EABO5V06DaFvW/2dsb2JhbAA5CYRMpE2BRyOBCwINGQJZLgWHXJk9jlqRZYEsgX2CEoERBIN7jx+GVQ2KOg X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.68,285,1312171200"; d="scan'208";a="132346564" Received: from simcoe.cs.uoguelph.ca (HELO zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca) ([131.104.91.214]) by esa-annu-pri.mail.uoguelph.ca with ESMTP; 26 Aug 2011 11:20:04 -0400 Received: from zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca (Postfix) with ESMTP id F41752C914 for ; Fri, 26 Aug 2011 11:20:03 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2011 11:20:03 -0400 (EDT) From: Nicholas Miniaci To: hag@lists.cupe.ca Message-ID: <206234530.236987.1314372003938.JavaMail.root@simcoe.cs.uoguelph.ca> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Originating-IP: [172.17.91.202] X-Mailer: Zimbra 6.0.10_GA_2692 (ZimbraWebClient - SAF3 (Win)/6.0.10_GA_2692) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by lists.cupe.ca id p7QFKDQe028714 Subject: [Haiti Action Guelph] United Nations Denies Dumping Feces in Haiti Water Sources X-BeenThere: hag@lists.cupe.ca X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.8 Precedence: list List-Id: Haiti Action Guelph List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2011 15:20:13 -0000 United Nations Denies Dumping Feces in Haiti Water Sources • Print • Email http://defend.ht/politics/articles/defense/1585-united-nations-denies-dumping-feces-in-haiti-water-sources Details Category: Defense Published on Thursday, 25 August 2011 12:20 Written by Samuel Maxime Citizens protest PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti ( defend.ht ) - The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) has released a formal denial of fecal-dumping near Haiti's rivers following a series of news articles claiming the contrary and new scientific studies linking the cholera outbreak to its soldiers. The denial was released on Thursday in which the organization said: "The United Nations Mission for Stabilization in Haiti (MINUSTAH) formally denies being responsible for the dumping of waste in Hinche or elsewhere in the territory of Haiti." MINUSTAH also wished to claim an absence of motive for the acts saying: "MINUSTAH wishes to recall that the camp in Hinche has been equipped since June 15, 2011, with a treatment plant and disposal of sewage and waste that is inside the camp. Sewage and waste are dumped at the plant three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Under no circumstances the sewage or other waste is transported outside the camp. The existence of this plant wastewater treatment and waste can be easily found on the spot." The denial comes on the heels of several reports from news agencies, journalists, citizens and politicians, including the mayor of Hinche, who some say to have seen the MINUSTAH vehicles dumping the waste and others who have investigated to discover the waste sites, within 15 meters of the population's water sources. The credibility of the United Nations mission has been under constant scrutiny as new scientific studies have linked the cholera outbreak to the organization suggesting it has not been forthcoming, or predisposed to accepting responsibility. In July, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention found faulty waste practices at a MINUSTAH camp in Mirebalais to be the source of the cholera outbreak which has killed more than 6,000 of Haiti's citizens. Furthermore, on Tuesday a study on the microbial level, conducted between Nepalese and Danish researchers came to a molecular conclusion that the cholera outbreak came from the Southeast Asian continent where the soldiers in the Mirebalais camp had migrated from. The United Nations and its Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon have since denied being the cause of the cholera outbreak in Haiti. Social organizations and government leaders have called the organization to accept blame and compensate for the damages caused. Related 08.23.2011: Study Finds 'Closest Molecular Proof' Linking Haiti Cholera to MINUSTAH Related 08.19.2011: 5 UN Soldiers Sent Home for Pointing Guns at Airport Customs Officials Related 08.14.2011: Mayor Renard Appalled by MINUSTAH's Denial of New Feces Dumping Related 08.14.2011: Port-Salut Demands Withdraw of MINUSTAH for Sexual Abuse and Prostitution of Minors Related 08.10.2011: Authorities Peeved over New MINUSTAH Feces Dumping Related 08.10.2011: Haitians Condemn New Disposals of MINUSTAH Feces near River in Hinche Related 07.07.2011: Haitians Overwhelmingly Confident in Local Police for Security Related 06.29.2011: U.S. CDC Determines Source of Cholera to be MINUSTAH Camp Source: United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti In solidarity Ajamu Nangwaya If the master’s house caught on fire, the house Negro would fight harder to put the blaze out than the master would. If the master got sick, the house Negro would say, “What’s the matter, boss, we sick?” We sick! He identified himself with his master more than his master identified with himself. And if you came to the house Negro and said, “Let’s run away, let’s escape, let’s separate,” the house Negro would look at you and say, “Man, you crazy. What you mean, separate? Where is there a better house than this? Where can I wear better clothes than this? Where can I eat better food than this?” That was that house Negro. In those days he was called a “house nigger.” And that’s what we call him today, because we’ve still got some house niggers running around here. - Malcolm X All art is propaganda....I do not care a damn, for any art that is not used for propaganda. - W. E. B. Du Bois At the level of popular history, the vulgar Afrocentrists glorified in an oversimplistic manner the African heritage of black Americans. In their writings, they rarely related the actual complexities of the local cultures, divergence of languages, religions and political institutions, and tended to homogenize the sharply different social structures found within the African diaspora. They pointed with pride to the dynasties of Egypt as the classical foundation of African civilization, without examining with equal vigor or detail Egypt's slave culture. - Manning Marable in Beyond Black and White: Transforming African American Politics, p. 192. Even the scholarly Afrocentric approach elevated a neo-Kantian idealism above even a dialectical idealist analysis, much less speaking to historical materialism except to attack it as such. Populist Afrocentrism was the perfect social theory for the upwardly mobile black petty bourgeoisie. It gave them a sense of ethnic superiority and cultural originality, without requiring the hard, critical study of historical realities. It provided a philosophical blueprint to avoid concrete struggle within the real world.... It was, in short, only the latest theoretical construct of a politics of racial identity, a world-view designed to discuss the world but never really to change it. - Manning Marable. From nminiaci@uoguelph.ca Fri Aug 26 11:21:18 2011 Received: from esa-annu.mail.uoguelph.ca (esa-annu.mail.uoguelph.ca [131.104.91.36]) by lists.cupe.ca (8.12.11.20060308/8.12.11) with ESMTP id p7QFLH9W028751 for ; Fri, 26 Aug 2011 11:21:17 -0400 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: Au0QABO5V06DaFvW/2dsb2JhbAADAQEjBA0CBzCDVUeha3QcgVKBOQ4MDgEIJhAIBwMGBB0cAg0CEAcCWSILAgMGh1cjmRqOWoFgkAWBLIFzAQkGggyBEQSTGpEc X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.68,285,1312171200"; d="scan'208";a="132346826" Received: from simcoe.cs.uoguelph.ca (HELO zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca) ([131.104.91.214]) by esa-annu-pri.mail.uoguelph.ca with ESMTP; 26 Aug 2011 11:21:17 -0400 Received: from zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by zcs4.mail.uoguelph.ca (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0767C2C917 for ; Fri, 26 Aug 2011 11:21:17 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2011 11:21:16 -0400 (EDT) From: Nicholas Miniaci To: hag@lists.cupe.ca Message-ID: <538429675.237023.1314372076970.JavaMail.root@simcoe.cs.uoguelph.ca> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Originating-IP: [172.17.91.202] X-Mailer: Zimbra 6.0.10_GA_2692 (ZimbraWebClient - SAF3 (Win)/6.0.10_GA_2692) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by lists.cupe.ca id p7QFLH9W028751 Subject: [Haiti Action Guelph] Haitians in the Dominican Republic: three articles on maternal care, citizenship rights, HIV treatment X-BeenThere: hag@lists.cupe.ca X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.8 Precedence: list List-Id: Haiti Action Guelph List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2011 15:21:18 -0000 The following three articles are published by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University in a series, "Stateless in the Dominican Republic." Seventeen students traveled to the Dominican Republic to investigate how immigration and border policies are affecting the country’s large Haitian population. They worked under the direction of Cronkite faculty members Rick Rodriguez, the former executive editor of the Sacramento Bee , and Jason Manning, former political editor for washingtonpost.com. The articles are published on the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting website. Every Monday for the next three weeks, FCIR will publish additional stories from the series . Haitian Women Cross Border to Give Birth By Lauren Gilger, Cronkite Borderlands Initiative Published by Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, August 22, 2011 (A condensed version of this article was published in the Washington Post, August 12 ) Just beyond the quiet porch, everything is chaos: dust, smoke, heat and the angry roar of motorbikes. Suddenly, one of the bikes kicks up dirt and heads directly for the clinic. It is driven by a teenage boy in shorts and on the back sits a woman wearing spandex pants, a pink scarf tied around her head. The woman struggles to get off the bike. “I’m bleeding,” she tells Dr. Camila Perozo. The woman, three months pregnant, has just crossed the border from Haiti to see the Dominican doctor. She has no immigration papers or money to pay a fee. The same is true for thousands of pregnant Haitian women, many of them ready to give birth, who cross the border each year. Haitian women make up a large portion of the patients giving birth in Dominican hospitals. In the capitol, hospitals estimate that up to 35 percent of the patients in their maternity wards are Haitian. On the border, the numbers are higher still. One hospital director estimated that three out of four of his patients are Haitian women who come there to give birth. They come because they don’t have access to hospitals and health care in Haiti, especially after last year’s earthquake. They come to have their babies in hospital beds instead of on the floors of their homes. But many come too late. In the Dominican Republic, 17 of every 1,000 newborns died in 2009, according to the latest numbers available from UNICEF. And the lifetime risk of maternal death is one in 320. Still, those odds are much better than what women face if they stay in Haiti, where 27 of every 1,000 newborns died in 2009 and the odds of a woman dying giving birth is one in 93. So the women cross the border. Their children may have a better chance of survival, but they also end up in a legal no man’s land they may never escape. In Arizona, these children might be called “anchor babies.” They might be born on U.S. soil to immigrants from Mexico or Guatemala who illegally came to this country. They might become the center of the emotional debate about immigration and the U.S. Constitution that’s being waged in 14 states, in the halls of Congress and on the streets of Phoenix. But the children will be U.S. citizens. In the Dominican Republic, these children have no “anchor.” In a series of changes to its Constitution over the past decade, the Dominican government has done what some powerful conservative politicians are attempting in Arizona and around the country — revoke birthright citizenship for many. A child born to illegal immigrants in the Dominican Republic is no longer a citizen of that country. At the same time, without registration in their parents’ home country, they are not citizens there either. They are stateless. But that doesn’t stop a pregnant Haitian woman from getting on the back of a motorbike and making the dusty crossing into the Dominican Republic. She knows the doctors there won’t turn her away: Although the Dominican Republic is a relatively poor country, it treats everyone needing medical assistance regardless of immigration status. As a result, these women are overwhelming an already stressed Dominican health care system. “We are poor,” said Jose Delancer, director of the Ministry of Health with the Department of Women and Children. From money to beds to doctors and nurses, “the Dominican Republic was not set up to handle this.” Still, Delancer understands why they come — and why they will keep coming. “If I were Haitian,” he said. “I would do the same thing as them.” Refugee from an Earthquake “Life in Haiti is hard,” said Ludia Baptiste, 25. She sits upright on the side of her bed in a one-room shanty in Bateye San Isidro, a tight-knit, impoverished Haitian community outside of Santo Domingo. The walls of her room are covered in newspaper and magazine clippings written in English; American celebrities smile out from the pages. Nothing is out of place: A small Bible sits on her pillow and a sheet serves as a curtain separating the kitchen from her bed. Baptiste came to the Dominican Republic along with thousands of other refugees after the earthquake in early 2010 left Haiti — already the poorest country in the Western hemisphere — devastated. “The house in Haiti collapsed,” she said in broken French. “The people who live in Haiti have a hard life. The house collapsed. And the food — everything people had in Haiti — they have no food anymore.” The hospitals are gone, too, she says, which is why she crossed the border. Five months pregnant with no father in sight, she is waiting for her baby to be born. Then she will return home. “I want to go back to Haiti because my family is there,” she said, nodding and adding an emphatic “Uh huh.” Here, she lives alone in this small, tidy room. She cannot work because she has no papers, and hunger has followed her across the border. Still, Baptiste smiles widely and laughs as she looks at the sonogram she’s just pulled out of her purse. She has been to Centro Materno Infantil San Lorenzo de Los Mina hospital five times since she found she was pregnant. “Each month,” she said with pride. “You get free vitamins here, and you get free consultations here. You get a lot of things for free, which is better than in Haiti.” This will be her first child and she laughs at the suggestion that she might have another in the future. But if that happens, she will come back to this country to give birth — if she can. “If I have papers,” she said. But this child, she’s not worried about. “The baby will be Dominican,” she said. “Your baby will be Dominican?” “Yes.” She nods her head and frowns. “Uh huh.” Here’s the truth: Children born to illegal parents in the Dominican Republic are not citizens of that country. Nor are they citizens of Haiti. They are stateless. A Place for Women “I picked this area because it is too poor.” Camila Perozo’s voice is drowned out by a motorbike that is circling her clinic for the third or fourth time, the engine screaming. Perozo worked for four years as a doctor in Haiti before she and her husband spent their life savings building a clinic on a dirt road one block from the public hospital in Jimani. They painted it clean white and baby blue with the words “Centro Clinico Diagnostico, Dra. Perozo” painted in gold lettering on the front. Her name is in cursive. “There are other border crossings. But this is the one that takes people directly from the capital,” Perozo said in Spanish. “This is why we have so much movement.” Jimani is just an hour’s drive from Port-au-Prince. Food, trucks, cars, goods and workers move across the border between these two countries at a frenzied pace. And then there are the women who walk to the dusty border crossing and pay a man with a motorbike to drive them into the Dominican Republic when their babies are about to come. They arrive in the throes of labor and with a myriad of other health problems: malnourishment, anemia, septicemia and poverty. Few have had any prenatal care. “Here we call them ‘time bombs,’” said Francis Moquete, director of Hospital General Melenciano, Jimani’s public hospital. He’s watched for years as countless Haitian women come to the hospital and leave with newborns. “They come here; this is where they want to come. One wants to go where there is better service,” he said. “This is how it is.” Of the 40 or so deliveries performed at his hospital each month, about 30 are Haitian births, Moquete said. “And of those 30, at least four come without any type of (medical) check,” he said. “This is what most worries us when they come like this — suddenly, with nothing, absolutely nothing.” Overwhelming the System Across the country, on their half of this small island, Dominican hospitals and clinics are being overwhelmed by Haitian women. “The border is imaginary. It’s just a door,” said Delancer of the national Ministry of Health, sitting at his desk in a crowded office with bright blue walls in Santo Domingo. “There are clinics and hospitals that are 100 meters away from the border line, and 50 to 60 percent of the births that occur here are Haitian. “It’s a problem of poverty; it’s a problem of education; it’s a problem of empowering of women.” And it’s a problem of access. In the Dominican Republic, medical treatment is provided free of charge whether the individual has documentation or not, Delancer said. More than 150 miles away on the border, Moquete nods his head in agreement. “In this we are clear — no matter a person’s poverty, religion, race, they have to be given medical attention,” he said. He spins his cell phone between his two hands on top of a spotless desk and frowns. “This is a right of all human beings.” Joaquin Recio, vice director of nursing at the public hospital in Jimani, was born inside these walls. He has worked here for nearly a quarter-century and brings a religious fervor to the care he provides to Haitians. “If God has given you this gift to give service to others — this special service, of health — then you have to give it with quality, warmly, with love, to whomever — no matter their creed or race, their color — it does not matter,” he said as he sat inside the hospital, a fan buzzing behind him to stave off the Caribbean heat. “You have to give service to the person,” he added with conviction. “This is what is important.” But what is important comes up against a harsh reality: The Dominican health care system is designed to care for about 7 million people, according to Delancer. There are nearly 10 million living in the Dominican Republic, and more than a million of them are Haitians — with more coming every day. Delancer worries about those numbers: “How many of them are in reproductive age? How many of them need health care?” How can the system support so many? “There isn’t a system that counts the total number of Haitian citizens who live in this country,” Delancer said. “Everyone knows that.” “How do you count an illegal population, a population that is registered nowhere?” Clinging to Citizenship At the Jimani public hospital an hour from Port-au-Prince, two women, still in their street clothes, lie on small cots. A nurse in a tight, white uniform uses a needle to inject a clear liquid into their IVs. A baby lies next to each woman on her bed. They are hours old. Neither yet has a name. “Where are you from?” “Here,” they both say. “My husband is Dominican,” one woman offers without being asked. This is an important detail: If it is true, her child is legal. The new Dominican law says that if one parent has Dominican citizenship, the child is Dominican. The nurse doesn’t blink; she hears such claims every day. But she clarifies that the women are of Haitian descent. The two women agree. The nurse files birth certificates for every child born in the hospital. “She fills out a record — a card,” Recio said. “And she puts her name, what she is called, her last name. And with this, nothing more, the baby is registered.” The nurse writes down whatever name the mothers give her on the certificate — Spanish or French. She’s not an immigration officer. She doesn’t tell them that their children won’t be citizens until they are officially registered with the Dominican government and that they can be officially registered only if they can prove that they or their husbands are legal residents of the country. It’s a complicated process, fraught with challenges and delays that can be triggered simply by a surname that sounds more French than Spanish. By that afternoon, the women are gone, taking their new babies with them. The beds are stripped and the hallways quiet. The babies have their birth certificates, but they are not citizens — not yet. They are stateless. The Association of Haitian Physicians Abroad www.amhe.org is having an international conference in Washington, D.C. September 22-23. L inks to articles on birth centers: Cambridge Health Alliance (Mass.) birth center: http://www.challiance.org/ob_gyn/BirthCenterInteractiveTour/index.html http://www.midwiferytoday.com/articles/amicus1.asp http://www.birthcenters.org/ http://www.babycenter.com/0_birth-centers-alternatives-to-hospitals_2007.bc http://www.birthcenters.org/open-abc/bc-experience/cost-containment.php http://articles.latimes.com/1991-12-06/local/me-667_1_birthing-center Thousands Find Themselves Stateless in the Dominican Republic By Whitney Phillips, Cronkite Borderlands Initiative Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, published on August 22, 2011 SANTO DOMINGO , Dominican Republic – While politicians in at least 14 states are arguing the merits of birthright citizenship in the U.S., this country is already ruling out citizenship for thousands of people. Over the past seven years, the Dominican government has re-written its Constitution, re-interpreted old laws and passed new ones, effectively eliminating birthright citizenship. Today, a child born in the Dominican Republic is no longer automatically a citizen; citizenship goes only to those who can prove they have at least one documented parent. Further, vigorous enforcement of the new rules means that hundreds of thousands of people, mostly of Haitian descent, are finding it increasingly difficult to get access to their birth certificates, which are required to get married, obtain a high school diploma, start a business, get a driver’s license or passport or even sign up for a phone plan. It is also needed to get a cédula, the national identity card that is essential for voting and conducting a licensed business activity such as banking. Without proper documentation, these residents have no legal status in the Dominican Republic, and many who have been in this country for years are unable to prove they are legal citizens of Haiti, either. They are, in effect, stateless – citizens of no country. Cristobal Rodríguez, a Dominican human rights attorney and law professor, puts it another way: “Here a civil genocide is being committed,” he said. No Future Miledis Juan looks down at her 1-year-old son Henry, his nose running and eyes swollen from a cold. His arms stretch upward, and Juan picks him up. She and her son were both born in this country, and that, Juan says, gives them every right to be Dominican citizens. But the Dominican government has another view of the matter, and that leaves Juan worried about her son’s future and her own. “He practically doesn’t exist,” she said. “Without documents you are nobody.” Dominican officials say the country’s laws were never meant to grant birthright citizenship to the children or descendants of illegal immigrants. And they argue against the term “stateless” as applied to those of Haitian descent born in the Dominican Republic. José Ángel Aquino, a magistrate for the country’s civil registry, the Junta Central Electoral, said Haitian descendants can go back to Haiti and obtain citizenship as long as they can prove their parents are Haitian. “Because of this, in the case of the Haitians, for us, you can’t speak of the ‘stateless,’” Aquino said in Spanish. “These Haitian citizens always have the possibility of declaring themselves in their consulate…or simply in Haiti.” But for many Haitian immigrants, like Juan, the situation is more complex. Born in December 1985 when laws and attitudes were different, Juan was granted a Dominican birth certificate and a national identification card. She has no papers proving she is from Haiti, and to become a naturalized Haitian citizen, she would have to go through a five-year application process, said Liliana Gamboa, a project director for the Open Society Justice Initiative in Santo Domingo. Besides, Juan doesn’t want Haitian citizenship; she has never lived in the country. “I know that Haiti exists because there is a map that I can see where it is, but I actually have no connections with it,” she said. Her life is in Batey Esperanza, a poor, mostly Haitian-Dominican community just outside the nation’s capital, Santo Domingo, where she works long days at an embroidery machine in a free-trade zone. Although she went to college to become a teacher, she is unable to get a teaching job because she can’t get a new copy of her birth certificate. The country’s civil registries retain every citizen’s original birth certificate and issue duplicates upon request. Official duplicates are necessary for every legal act, from applying to a university and purchasing property to obtaining a marriage license and securing most jobs. Each duplicate can be used for only one purpose and expires in a few months. Juan said that when she went to the civil registry, she was told her she should never have been registered as a Dominican citizen because her parents came without documents from Haiti. “Practically, my hands are tied,” she said. “There’s nothing I can do because without that birth certificate, I’m paralyzed.” She also needs her birth certificate to get Henry one of his own. Without it, he cannot access public health services or attend school past the eighth grade. “My biggest fear is that he’s in the country without documents,” Juan said. “He is nobody in the country.” Changing the Ground Rules Before birthright citizenship was abolished, the Dominican Constitution stated that anyone born in the country was a citizen, with the exception of children born to people “in transit,” a term generally interpreted to mean those in the country fewer than 10 days. The first of the changes passed in 2004 redefined “in transit” to mean those in the country illegally. A year later, the Dominican Supreme Court upheld the 2004 law as constitutional. Six years later, the Dominican government revised its Constitution to further limit citizenship. Since Jan. 26, 2010, citizens must prove they have at least one parent of Dominican nationality to be recognized. At the same time, the Junta Central Electoral, which oversees the civil registries, issued an order known as Circular 17, which directs government employees not to give duplicates of birth certificates and other identity documents if they have any reason to believe the person should not have Dominican citizenship. According to Gamboa, this means the JCE “decides …if you are worthy of your documentation” and has led to the targeting of people with French-sounding last names and dark skin. That’s what Modesta Michel believes happened to her. Michel applied for her national ID card when she turned 18 in 2007. Cédulas are issued at age 18 and must be renewed every six years or when the government issues a new version. At first, all went well. She had an approved copy of her birth certificate, and the civil registry office approved her cédula, giving her a receipt that verified the information that would appear on her identification card. But then she was told that she would not get the official, laminated card after all because her parents immigrated from Haiti, she said. And shortly after, when she needed a copy of her birth certificate to take the national test for a high school diploma, that, too, was denied, she said. “Every year goes by, and I sometimes feel like hope is going away, but I have to trust God that eventually this will get solved because studying is the only way that I can actually move forward in life,” Michel said through a translator. “It’s the only option that I have.” Mounting Challenges Government officials say Circular 17 simply upholds the original intent of the Constitution. People who are in the country illegally were never meant to have Dominican citizenship and some have gotten it only because of errors and corruption on the part of civil registry employees, JCE magistrate Aquino said. But many advocates for the stateless, including Gamboa, contend that retroactive application of the new law is forbidden by international treaties to which the Dominican Republic is party, including the American Convention on Human Rights under the Organization of American States. The Open Society Justice Initiative and other human rights organizations have begun fighting the changes in court. They won a key victory in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 2005 with Yean and Bosico v. Dominican Republic, which led to the granting of Dominican citizenship to two young girls of Haitian descent. More recently, they’ve taken up the case of Emildo Bueno. Born in the Dominican in 1975, he had several citizenship documents, including a birth certificate and passport. Even so, in 2007 when Bueno went to obtain a copy of his birth certificate for a visa to join his wife in the U.S., he was turned down because his parents were Haitian nationals. With Rodríguez, the Dominican human rights attorney, representing him, Bueno took his case to a Dominican national court in 2008, claiming a violation of his basic human right to nationality. The case was unsuccessful. “In spite of all evidence and proof and the fact that legally I was good, the judge took a decision against me,” Bueno said in Spanish. He submitted an appeal to the Dominican Supreme Court in 2009, but the court has yet to rule. Meanwhile, Francisco Quintana, a deputy program director and litigator for the Center for Justice and International Law, has submitted the case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Gamboa said a favorable ruling from the international could draw attention to the problem and pressure the Dominican government into changing its policies. “At the end of the day, it will be political pressure that will bring the result we expect, which is the recognition of nationality of people of Haitian descent,” she said. But in the meantime, they have another worry. The Dominican Republic is working on a new national identity card system aimed at eliminating fraudulent citizenship by requiring residents to submit fingerprints and biometric photos that are entered into a national data bank. Aquino said the JCE has received fingerprints and photos from 4 million people so far. The JCE is “15 years behind” in fully implementing the system, Aquino, said, but is working hard to make up the time. He said the JCE also has presented a proposal to the Dominican government asking for approval to do a full “biometric census” of all foreigners in the country. Gamboa and other human rights activists fear that these new programs will lead to every person of Haitian descent being classified as illegal. “The problem is going to be huge,” Gamboa said. “I hope, and maybe I have faith, that it will not happen, that the DR realizes before that that it cannot commit such a crime.” “I think people without an identity, without a nationality, are really the ones who are most unprotected in the world,” she added. “When no country wants to recognize you as a citizen, then there’s nobody to protect you.” Though the political situation for Haitian immigrants and their children has been bleak, there may be a glimmer of hope on the horizon. Aquino said that he supports a regularization program for Haitian workers. In late July another JCE magistrate, Eddy Olivares, said in a televisions interview that the children of Haitian immigrants should be given identity papers — especially those that came to the Dominican Republic under labor agreements with Haiti. He further stated that the Dominican Republic’s immigration agency, not the JCE, has the authority to make decisions on the validity of identity documents and the JCE, therefore, should not be invalidating documents because a person’s parents are immigrants. In the end, however, a major political and legislative shift would have to occur, throughout the Dominican government, to turn the tide against immigrant rights. Their Future There isn’t much Juan, Michel or Bueno can do while citizenship continues to be redefined in the country of their birth. Juan goes to work each day at the clothing factory, although she would much rather be teaching. Bueno made it to the U.S. after finally obtaining his visa. He works at a security company in Florida while his case for Dominican citizenship is being appealed. He has temporary residence in the U.S., but has no official citizenship anywhere. Bueno spoke for them all when he said, “We have no country now.” Along with thousands of others, they hope they are not wrong when they call themselves Dominican. Island of Hisp aniola Struggles to Control HIV By Serena Del Mundo, Cronkite Borderlands Initiative Published on Florida Center for Investigative Reporting August 22, 2011 SAN PEDRO DE MACORIS, Dominican Republic — Rammon ran into the makeshift hovel, kicked off his dusty shoes and jumped into the arms of his waiting brothers and sisters. The 5-year-old’s forehead was smeared with green paint – evidence of a school day filled with art and activity. Victoria Guzman, his stand-in mother, picked him up and planted a slobbery kiss on one plump cheek. The only difference between Rammon and his brothers and sisters, said Guzman, is the “vitamin” he takes every morning. That “vitamin” is Zidovudine – an antiretroviral that keeps Rammon’s HIV load low and his infection-fighting CD4 cells high. Rammon contracted HIV from his biological mother, who left him in Guzman’s care when he was just 25 days old. The drugs he takes would normally cost almost $2,000 a year, but he gets them free, thanks to international health agencies that fund much of the HIV treatment in the Dominican Republic. Now that funding is in jeopardy. The Global Fund, the world’s leading financer of programs to fight AIDS, TB and malaria, gave the Dominican Republic almost $82 million over a seven-year period for HIV prevention and treatment efforts. But that funding is expected to drop dramatically in coming years. Ironically, the country may be too rich. Even though more than 40 percent of its 10 million people live in poverty and the average per capita income is just $8,300 a year, the Global Fund categorizes the Dominican Republic as “lower-middle income.” Compounding the problem is the fact that the Global Fund’s overall support for HIV treatment is down. At an October meeting with its donors in New York, the fund’s managers asked for $21 billion for countries seriously affected by HIV, spokeswoman Marcela Rojo said. Donors pledged just $11.7 billion. Funding took another hit after The Associated Press reported in January on corruption in the administration of grants supported by the Global Fund. The AP cited the fund’s own investigative report into grant recipients suspected of forging documents and pocketing money. Global Fund officials attacked the article for “serious misrepresentations and factual inaccuracies.” A follow-up AP story cited fund officials and outside experts who said the Global Fund has less corruption and fights it more aggressively than most aid organizations, but Rojo said the damage had been done. “Some donors have suspended their contributions to the Global Fund,” she said. “We are at a critical crossroads,” said Sharonann Lynch, HIV/AIDS policy adviser for Doctors Without Borders during an open webcast. “You have a situation that the funds available for treating HIV, for scaling up prevention is shrinking right at the moment we can get ahead of new infections.” HIV Help The island of Hispaniola, which the Dominican Republic shares with Haiti, has the highest HIV rates in the world outside of sub-Saharan Africa, according to the United Nations. In three of the largest cities, including the capital of Santo Domingo, HIV rates range from 1 percent to 9.9 percent. The U.S. rate of HIV infection, by comparison, is about 0.2 percent of the general population. Far fewer people die of AIDS than once was the case. AIDS-related deaths have dropped worldwide by 40 percent since antiretroviral drugs have become widely available, according to the United Nations. Expensive antiretrovirals were largely unavailable to poor people in developing countries like the Dominican Republic until the late 1990s and the early 2000s when international humanitarian agencies and world leaders made it a priority. Among the agencies that have been working on the problem are the Global Fund, former President George W. Bush’s President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Clinton Foundation, founded by former President Bill Clinton. Not only do the drugs save the lives of those being treated, they save the lives of those closest to them. Patients on these medications have a decreased viral load, making it less likely for HIV to spread from mother to child or from husband to wife. There is less maternal mortality, less infant mortality, less tuberculosis – the benefits go and on, Lynch said. For children like Rammon, the medications mean the chance to live a reasonably normal life. “When Rammon entered our clinic, he was a bag of bones,” said his physician, Michael Dohn. His transformation is nothing short of a miracle, Dohn said. But that miracle depends in large part on international aid, said Bethania Betances, program officer in Santo Domingo for UNAIDS, the United Nations program to combat and prevent the disease. “The HIV response in the country is being moved by international funds,” she said. Betances worries that the Dominican government will have to fill in the treatment gaps as funding dries up, which would strain an already overloaded public-health system. Health care is available to all Dominican residents. Anyone can go to their local hospital, get tested for HIV and, if they test positive, get the necessary medications. However, that doesn’t mean health care is equal for everyone. “The Dominican Republic claims universal access to health care, but that’s not the case even for poor Dominicans,” said international public health specialist Judith Kaine. “The roll-out of services is imbalanced and unequal.” There are two main branches of the Dominican health system – public and private. Eddy Perez-Then, director of the country’s National Research Center for Maternal and Child Health, said the private branch is largely available only to wealthier Dominicans. The public branch provides access for about 75 percent of the population, but there is no guarantee to access or quality of services. If the government has to pay the costs of expensive drugs, procedures and prevention for HIV patients, some fear that at-risk groups could be pushed out of the system based on their immigration and economic status. “What we’re hoping for the Global Fund to see is that even though we are a middle-class country, there is a lot of inequity,” said UNAIDS Monitoring and Evaluation Adviser Yordana Dolores. And that would leave people like Pablo, a Haitian man without papers, living with HIV in San Pedro de Macoris, unable to get treatment. One Man’s Treatment When Pablo, who did not want to give his last name, comes into the local clinic’s office, he creates a buzz. He is tall and handsome and has an infectious smile that remains even as he recounts his personal struggle. “When I found out I had HIV, I wanted to die,” he says matter-of-factly. Pablo becomes animated as he tells his story of living as a gay man with HIV in a country in which 95 percent of the population is Catholic and gay people often encounter strong disapproval. When he was diagnosed with HIV, Pablo assumed he was going to die, just like his partner before him. “The people in his barrio, his mom and dad, think he died of lung cancer,” Pablo said of his partner. “I know he died of HIV.” Soon after his partner’s death, Haiti was hit by the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people and left 1 million homeless. “All of my family died in the earthquake,” Pablo said. “And the pain was killing me.” What saved him, Pablo said, was support from Clínica Esperanza y Caridad and the encouragement of clinic staff members like Daysi Payano. Clínica Esperanza y Caridad, like many other health clinics, was started with funds from the Clinton Foundation. It continues to operate with public and private funding. Payano heard about Pablo’s case and went to his house. She told him again and again that he was not going to die. She told him that she, too, was living with HIV. “I know firsthand . . . how to live with it, because it’s in my blood, so I want to help people who have it” Payano said. Payano is a force at the clinic. People seek her out constantly, interrupting meetings and thrusting messages in her face. She glides through the clinic and calmly handles all demands. She says she is a consultant at the clinic, but she is much more: She is an advocate for people living with HIV, like Pablo. With his family now gone, Pablo said he consider Payano and the people at the clinic his family. He celebrates holidays with the clinic staff and members of his therapy group for people living with HIV. “They don’t discriminate, and they don’t care if I’m gay,” he said. And every day, Pablo takes his medication — antiretrovirals that physician Luisa Reyes said are provided by the Global Fund. “I have a cell phone that I set for 9 a.m. and 9 p.m., and I take one pill each time,” Pablo said. These pills allow Pablo to leave his house and embrace life again. And they make it possible for Rammon to run home from school covered with green paint. For now.