Ezili’s HLLN tells the non-colonial narrative on Haiti and promotes self-sufficiency not NGO dependency. Zili Dlo is an HLLN project for clean water, renewable power, cultural education and skills transfer for Haiti

HLLN’s Zili Dlo is a Haiti-led, Haiti-capacity building humanitarian program to make renewable energy and clean water/sanitation access a reality for the poorest and most marginalized rural and urban communities in Haiti through relevant high-tech skills transfer and indigenously relevant culturally grounding education.

This video was made from a collection of still photos of our works and shows our first four peasant rural mothers who will solar electrify two remote villages and run a mini power plant at a community energy center for their community.

Zili Dlo is life and health for Haiti. Zili Dlo cultural orientation, identifies Haiti riches, wonders and famous landmarks for our peasant solar mothers to be informed ambassadors of Haiti during their six-month (Sept 2012 to March 17, 2013) course in solar power at Barefoot College in Tilonia, India.

The video is interspersed with Haiti riches and treasure- a constant and often-repeated Ezili Dantò/HLLN theme to counter the exploitative colonial narrative on the “natural poverty” of Black Haiti.

In fact, the opposite is true. Haiti or Ayiti is, along with Cuba, the oldest (over 1 billion years old) landmass in the Americas. The land is rich with every conceivable wealth. Take, for one, Massif de La Hotte or Lake Azuéi as detailed in the video harboring fauna, flora and animal species in patterns not found anywhere else in the world. The biggest caves in the Caribbean, like the Grotte Marie-Jeanne at Port-A-Piment, are in Haiti. Haiti possesses the largest and richest heritage of cave art in the Caribbean, and probably the most important collection in the Americas. – (http://on.fb.me/16XBfb3)

Also strategically, the US denies Haiti mineral riches and vast oil reserves. But Haiti riches is, in fact, the economic reasons the US took down Haiti’s democratically elected government in 2004, installed the US occupation behind UN guns with the humanitarian invasion. For years it denied the over $20billion in Haiti gold until its mining companies had a puppet Haiti government to sign off on OPEN PIT mining in the time of UN-imported cholera. Haiti geologist say Haiti oil reserves is “an olympic pool to Venezuela’s glass of water.” The US is still strategically denying Haiti oil while carting it off, for almost ten years now, behind UN “peacekeeping” guns.

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Our Haiti model for real relief with human rights, healing, self- reliance and dignity

“Haiti is rich and you can see that by looking at the four beautiful women in our solar power project. Just a few months ago these women where traveling down their rural mountain villages on donkeys or a motorcycle taxi and some didn’t even have a birth certificate much less a passport to travel to India. Today, they’ve had a global experience. Met the former president of Chile (UN Women executive director, Michelle Bachelet), know how to fabricate, install, use and maintain solar panel equipments to light up their own villages. Know how to operate our Zili Dlo high tech Max-Pure 01 solar-powered water filtering unit and may confidently sit at any international interview to answer questions about the most famous Haiti landmarks, their village’s historical significance and say a bit about the cultural uniqueness of Haiti. Haiti’s population is made up of 70 to 80% farmers. These Zili Dlo women farmers/market women represent that majority.

Zili Dlo’s purpose is to help the majority population in Haiti, these semi-literate and literate rural women are given the tools and skills to improve their villages, personal lives and make a better future for their children. This is relief for Haiti. It’s not about paying salaries to foreigners, purchasing useless foreign products or the money laundering of the Paul Farmer NGO subsidiaries to the US/Euro governments that’s laughably called “aid to Haiti” and which collected $9 billion in earthquake relief supervised under the Obama administration by Bill and Hillary Clintons leaving little footprint or domestic development in Haiti. We Haitians are very proud to put this model for Haiti development out there as an example of the road to fundamental change. We set this forth in our 14 points for relief with dignity and human rights when the earthquake happened. But the powers who live off misery and poverty obviously have no interests in doing things differently.” — Ezili Dantò of HLLN, March 2013, in a Haiti radio interview about the return of the Zili Dlo merchant/farmer women who became solar technicians and are also trained in rainwater roof harvesting.

Ezili Dantò with Haiti solar power mothers – Marie Andrea Saint Felix, Marie Ilma Meriste, Madeleine Saint Louis at Toussaint Louverture airport on Sept. 29, 2012 reading itinerary, giving final travel instruction to India to Haiti solar mothers traveling to attend 6-months course, sponsored by the Indian government (ITEC/SCAAP). Photo Credit: Dominique Esser, HLLN, September 29, 2012

Four Zili Dlo solar mothers (Marie Andrea Saint Felix, Marie Ilma Meriste, Madeleine Saint Louis and Magalie Luc) in traditional Haiti rad karabela dress at Toussaint Lourverture airport in Port au Prince Haiti flanked by Zili Dlo executives, Rea Dol and Ezili Dantò . Photo Credit: Dominique Esser, HLLN and professional photographer/photojournalist – September 29, 2012

Zili Dlo Clean water and renewable energy for Haiti is authentic relief from Haiti suffering and containment in poverty with human rights, healing, self-reliance and dignity. These Zili Dlo solar mothers will earn income from the sums they receive from the community they service which sets a monthly contribution amount for their services to the village.

Toussaint Louverture Airport on September 29, 2012 escorting the first four Zili Dlo solar engineer team. Ti Paul, Mark Jacob, Ezili Dantò, Mme Rea Dol, co-executive director of Zili Dlo in Haiti
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The Journey Begins for four Haiti farmers/market women
Sept 2013

Zili Dlo: Dream of a lifetime for our four Haiti women entering immigration at Toussaint Louverture Airport, Port au Prince, September 29, 2012

Waiving goodbye and smiling are Haiti mothers: Magalie Luc (35 years old, 4 children), Madeleine Saint Louis (35yrs old – 6 children ) from Okadè (6th Section Aux Cadet) Laferriere, Petionville and Marie Ilma Meriste (44yrs old from- 4 children), Marie Andrea Saint Felix (48yrs old – 3 children) from Fon Batis (7th Section), Arcahaie.

These mothers are simple market women, merchants and peasant farmers, the backbone of Haiti’s informal economy and of Haiti. They are the community leaders in Haiti most in need of authentic help to raise up the living standards of their communities and provide a sustainable future for their children, families and Haiti as a whole.

Zili Dlo women arrive in India. Pictured here with Barefoot College founder, Bunker Roy, UN women executive director Michelle Bachelet and other poor farmers/peasant women from Central America, Haiti, Guatemala , El Salvador. Photo credits: Batas at picasa album source here. Michelle Bachelet was the President of Chile from March 11, 2006 to March 11, 2010. She was the first female president of Chile.

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The Return to Haiti, March, 2013

Our beautiful Zili Dlo solar mothers are back in Haiti ready to solar-electrify their remote rural villages!

Four Zili Dlo solar power mothers (Marie Ilma Meriste, Marie Andrea Saint Felix, Magalie Luc and Madeleine Saint Louis) return to Haiti March 17, 2013 after six months of Zili Dlo sponsored training in Tilonia India on how to fabricate, install, use and repair solar panels and solar lighting equipment.

Magalie Luc, Madeleine Saint Louis show off the equipments they will install on 100 houses in their villages. Thank you to the Indian government for all their help and for the ITEC/SCAAP program.

Zili Dlo Solar mothers being interviewed in Haiti at Nouvelliste upon their return to Haiti.   Seated at teh Nouvelliste offices are: Marie Andrea Felix, Magalie Luc, Madeleine Saint Louis and Marie Ilma Meriste.

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HLLN’s Zili Dlo is renewable energy, SUSTAINABILITY, PUBLIC HEALTH, ENVIRONMENTAL SAFETY, sanitary infrastructure, community development and transferring useful life skills that’s practical, relevant relief with human rights and dignity and that meets Haiti’s urgent needs for self-reliance.

We’d like your help to continue this work, please donate to encourage and continue supporting this work.

To support this work and for updates, “Like” the Ezili Dantò public page on Facebook

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Visit our website: www.ezilidanto.com/zili

Oil in Haiti -Economic Reasons for the US occupation behind UN guns and why tiny Haiti has the fifth largest US embassy in the world. Oil in Haiti and Oil Refinery – an old notion for Fort Liberte as a transshipment terminal for US supertankers by Ezili Dantò

Ezili Dantò performs Red, Black & Moonlight: Memoir of a Poet – A Burnt Offering to the Ancestors

US False Benevolence in Haiti

Haiti is back on the plantation: UN claims to be above the law, denies responsibility for cholera deaths in Haiti

Ezili Dantò of HLLN, Photo credit: Kesler Pierre, August 12, 2011

Human rights attorney Ezili Dantò of Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN) discusses on Black Agenda Report with Glen Ford the US occupation forces claiming absolute immunity for bringing cholera deaths and water poisoning to Haiti, February 22, 2013, (Download – UN denies liability for bringing cholera to Haiti.)

End the killing and illegal US occupation of Haiti behind UN coalition guns

HLLN has never subscribed to the callous and profiting-on-misery notion of letting the UN independently investigate itself while Haiti’s people die unmercifully.

Ezili’s Clean Water  and Renewable Energy for Everyone in Haiti Project (Donate to support Zili Dlo – Clean water and renewable power for Haiti)

On February 21, 2013, the United Nations officially rejected legal responsibility for damage claims to Haiti cholera victims. Martin Nesirky, Spokesman for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, stated:

“Consideration of the claims would necessarily involve a review of political and policy matters. Accordingly, the claims are not receivable, pursuant to Section 29 of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, which was adopted by the General Assembly on 13 February 1946.”

It is established national and international law that tort claims or disputes of a private law character are excepted from the absolute immunity privileges afforded to governments and state officials. That is to also say, it is established national and international law that personal injuries accidentally occurring that are outside of an authorized governmental function are generally subject to tort laws. But, with this announcement, the UN and thus its employer, the US, has made legal history with “the Haiti exception” to international and national established laws. Basically saying it is legal to kill 8,000 and infect over 647,000 Haitians. That Haitians have no recourse to legal redress as a matter of UN and thus US “politics and policy?!” With this decision, the US, veiled within a UN-coalition cloak, is directly saying that Haitians have no individual rights under the law. No private law rights. We live at the discretion of UN and thus US politics and policy.

There you go folks. They’ve come right out and actually told us the truth of the matter and very clearly. What else is there to know? HLLN has been saying the UN is killing Haitians for the coup detat powers and the ruling international community as a matter of policy and politics in Haiti since 2004, no? (See, also, Aljazeera Video – Haiti: Victimising the victims?; UN Capitalizing on Cholera: playing arsonists and firemen ; U.N. Says it Will Not Pay Compensation for Haiti’s Cholera Victims.)

A UN document prepared by their Office of Legal Affairs, readily available on the UN website helps us to decode this UN announcement. It explains the relevant provision of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations and is for perusal by everyone. It provides:

“The de facto “absolute” immunity of the United Nations is mitigated by the fact that article VIII, section 29, of the Convention requires the United Nations to “make provisions for appropriate modes of settlement of: (a) disputes arising out of contracts or other disputes of a private law character to which the United Nations is a party”. The General Convention’s obligation to provide for alternative dispute settlement in case of the Organization’s immunity from legal process can be regarded as an acknowledgment of the right of access to court as contained in all major human rights instruments.”

The accused UN cannot investigate itself” – Ezili Dantò, Oct 30, 2010 interview with Yves Point Du JourHaiti elections and Cholera interview with Ezili Dantò of HLLN, Oct. 22, 2010, Gorilla Radio. Ezili speak on transcending the 2002 Ottawa Initiative for Haiti Felipe Luciano interviews Ezili Dantò, 3 years after the quake. *** It is an exercise in futility to go to the perpetrators and executioners of human rights crimes in Haiti in hopes of getting justice for our people.–Ezili Dantò of HLLN, Foreign violence against Haiti is the normand Haiti: Jan 1, 2013: Another Independence Day Under Occupation

The UN representative, Martin Nesirky, said that the claim for damages for bringing cholera to Haiti is “not receivable” because they concern “a review of political and policy matters“. What this says outright is that it’s “policy” to poison Haitians, kill them and then provide no due process, no legal redress, no right of access to court, no obligation of the UN (and thus in reality its boss, the US) to make provisions for appropriate modes of settlement. If you didn’t know Haitians were under attack and at war for their very lives, you should be clear on this now. The UN said it. Its legal to kill 8000 Haitians with impunity.

At Ezili’s HLLN we don’t have the luxury of the grand denials others not in need of immediate injunctive relief can roll in. And,  as the UN has rejected or been non-responsive to virtually every human right violation claims made by Haitians since the US occupation began in 2004, we at HLLN also had no past UN behavior that provided a logical basis to expect a different answer from the UN other than the one it announced.

HLLN advocates the strategic use of the cholera case (and all the other symptoms rooted in the occupation) to expose and help take down the US occupation in Haiti,  free the world from UN cloaking of imperialism

HLLN does not advocate relying on the oppressors to give Haiti back its stolen liberty. But, in addition to urging Haitians in the diaspora to help provide Haiti with clean water, renewable power and sanitation, demanding an end to the cholera killings, we do advocate the strategic use of the cholera case to take down the US occupation; help the cause of world freedom by exposing and stopping the US use of UN missions to cloak its colonizing and genocidal rampages across the world. It’s just been announced, for instance, that the UN (and thus in reality, the US/Euro superpowers) will use drone warfare in the Congo against the “rebels?”.  (The Security Council has approved the use of surveillance drones over Eastern Congo; UN to expand the largest peacekeeping mission: Existing DR Congo peace mission to be enhanced with addition of at least 2,000 ‘intervention’ troops and use of drone aircraft.)

Someone asked today how does HLLN respond to the denial of the Brian Concannon/IDJH administrative letter of demand to the UN after 15-months of UN deliberations? I referred them to the interview herein posted I did with Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report that addresses the expected and continual UN denial of accountability in Haiti, quoted some excepts from our non-colonial complaint against the US/UN occupiers for importing cholera to Haiti, reminded everyone of our different strategy as a Haiti-led, Haiti-capacity building Network to use this case, not because we expect justice from our oppressors, but to help lift the UN cloak on US imperialism, suggested folks listen to the Haiti position as we expressed it on the Yves Point Du Jour show the week the cholera epidemic was imported to Haiti, at the Haiti elections and Cholera interview on Oct. 22, 2010 for Gorilla Radio and also said this:

“The US and thus for now the Obama administration runs the UN. How does the US fare in keeping Blacks healthy in the US, in Africa…why would anyone think the UN acting for the US would care how many Blacks their imported disease killed? They own the law, military, media, banks, why not our human rights?”

Below are excerpt 1 and 2 from the un-edited HLLN non-colonial narrative complaint written not long after the cholera importation. I think the announcement of the UN claiming absolute immunity, saying it will not compensation for Haiti’s cholera victims, is a good time as any to begin publishing the Haiti non-colonial legal narrative of this issue.

Try as we may no deep pocket law firm or Hollywood celebrity is willing to help fund the

Ezili Dantò, Euvonie Georges August and Sister Sandy Muhammad. Zili Dlo clean water and renewable power is life and health for Haiti, Photostream 2011. See Zili Dlo 2012 Solar project

non-colonial Haiti narrative on the US occupational forces illegal occupation in Haiti and the deadly fruits of their rotten presence unlawfully authorized by Gerald Latortue/UN Status of Force Agreement (SOFA) in 2004.

HLLN has not found a courageous law firm, with staff and resources, to help Haitians like us take on the class action suit categories harmed by the US occupation forces in Haiti. No one yet willing to break with precedent, set new legal precedent and work outside the orbit of the usual suspects taking on every Haiti human rights case, raising celebrity monies and losing each and every one with a whimper. It is as it should be: no white savior stakeholder in the capitalist system will put game changing resources behind a Haitian who is not working FOR them. So, HLLN publishes parts of our complaint that one day, if not in this generation than the next, Haiti shall one day use to bring the US and its employee, the UN, before independent courts of law.

The UN justifies its presence in Haiti through a Status of forces agreement (SOFA) agreement supposedly signed for Haiti by former UN employee, Gerald Latortue, and presumably ratified under the reign of the puppet Haitians governments elected to power since 2004 by the Washington coup d’etat forces and their international cohorts.

HLLN address this illegality in our complaint against the US for bringing in the UN to uphold instability and against the UN for unleashing cholera, thus:

EXCERPT ONE:

from HLLN complaint against the US/Obama occupational forces for bringing UN cholera to Haiti. (c) 2013 Ezili Dantò, All rights reserved

- Excerpt from HLLN complaint against the US occupational forces for bringing cholera to Haiti

The indignity of the illness is almost, if not more horrible, than the physical pain. See our Haiti photos at the epicenter of the cholera outbreak in Mirebalais, one year later: UN Imported Cholera in Mirebalais: The hard reality of ill and discombobulated adults reduced to infancy.USAID ordered 200,000 body bags at the beginning of the outbreak, spending more monies with US firms providing these death bags than in providing purified clean drinking water or guaranteeing the UN troops disease carriers. Ezili at Mirebalais Cholera Center, Photo Credit: Jean Ristil Jean Baptise, HLLN. More Cholera Thursday at Mirebalais Photos on Flickr

“Article 5, Par. 23 of the SOFA provides that “MINUSTAH and the Government shall cooperate with respect to sanitary services and shall extend to each other the fullest cooperation in matters concerning health, particularly in respect to the control of communicable diseases in accordance with international conventions.”

“The purpose of immunity is so that diplomats are not harassed…however this does not mean that there should be more privileges and immunities abandoned because they serve certain purposes for the UN.” Immunity does not mean impunity. Liability to Haitians for cholera is not “harassment,” it would be UN accountability.

Moreover, it ought to be noted by the Court that the SOFA broad immunity given to UN was:

A) Signed by a transitional defacto Haiti government, supported by the US/UN and unelected by the Haiti masses. Haiti’s duly elected Prime Minster, Yvon Neptune, was put in jail for years while the defacto Prime Minister signed the SOFA.

Gerald Latortue, a resident of Boca Raton Florida was the UN/US supported, defacto Prime Minister, unconstitutionally installed after the departure of President Aristide following the 2004 US-backed-coup/kidnapping. Gerald Latortue who signed SOFA legitimizing the UN occupation of Haiti was a former career UN employee and unelected by the Haiti masses.

The US (and, to a lesser extent France and Canada) played a critical role in financing the counter-revolutionary Haiti opposition that destabilized Aristide’s second tenure in office. It was a US rendition plane, along with US Special Forces, that escorted – deported – Haiti’s duly elected President Aristide to the Central Africa Republic on February 29, 2004. The US’s own State Department translator verified that the democratically elected Haiti president, Jean Bertrand Aristide, did not voluntarily resigned.

Instead of coming in to restore the democratically elected President and duly appointed Prime Minister, the UN/MINUSTAH mission, which took over from the US-commanded multi-national force that came into Haiti per UN Resolution 1329 after February 29, 2004, has been a partisan force to solidify the rule of the Haiti oligarchy, private investor interests not Haiti’s masses and to return the Duvalierists back to power through the facade of democratic elections.

Since then, under the UN and US occupation of Haiti, Haiti’s largest political party, the Lavalas party of President Aristide, has been forbidden to participate in elections.

Zili Dlo: Solar engineers for Haiti. Support Haiti-led, Haiti-capacity building.

B) The SOFA’s Article 105 Convention immunity clause, giving the MINUSTAH troops absolute immunity, is tempered by the provisions at article 54 and 55 of SOFA which requires that immunity for third party personal injury claims against UN soldiers are subject to there being an adequate dispute resolution mechanism.

SOFA’s individual claims procedure for third party personal injury claims that falls outside of operational necessity, is inadequate thus operates as a waiver of UN immunity. Or, at least requires UN to exercise its duty to waive in order to avoid injustice to Haitians and not impede the course of justice…”

“Introduction
I. NATURE OF HLLN ACTION

1. The majority of Haiti’s population of ten million lack access to sanitary infrastructure and clean water. In late October 2010 the United Nations (“UN”) Nepalese contingent from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (“MINUSTAH”) brought cholera to Haiti, a novel, virulent strain previously unknown in the Western Hemisphere. Before the arrival of the UN soldiers, Haiti had not had a single case of cholera in a century, if ever. Haitian had no antibodies to act as immune defense against the UN-imported lethal biogerm. The UN was well aware of Haiti’s lack of sanitary infrastructure and higher needs for clean water, yet failed to maintain sanitary conditions at their base. The UN had a greater responsibility not to negligently nor recklessly add to the public health challenges of a country they were sent to protect. The UN’s complete lack of care is impunity that the laws granting immunity do not support. The UN had a greater responsibility not to negligently nor recklessly poison the people with a vicious foreign germ effectively acting, given the unique public health circumstances in Haiti, as a weapon of mass destruction – in two years killing over 8,000 Haitians and infecting over 647,000 of the population with 200 new people infected each day.

2. The UN organization had a greater responsibility – given they are the guardians and arbiters of human rights norms, standards and guidelines in the world, given their mission in Haiti as well as their documented knowledge of Haiti’s health challenges, to be more accountable and vigilant to the population they were sent to protect. The UN is in violation of the explicit purposes of the Charter of the United Nations promoting and encouraging respect for human rights.

Fon Batis energy committee
Zili Dlo: 2012 Solar power and Clean water for Haiti. Support Haiti-led, Haiti-capacity building.

3. As evidenced through the international sanitary rules and conventions incorporated within the Status of Force Agreement (SOFA) agreement between Haiti and the UN, it is clear that contemporary law of nations has expanded to prohibit a tort such as the reckless transmission of a contagious disease and cover-up of the outbreaks source. Multilateral treaties, customary international law as well as domestic prohibitions on transmission of anthrax, HIV, syphilis, cholera and other highly contagious diseases evidence specific, universal, obligatory prohibition of official transmission of infectious diseases.

4. Under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO), conventions and agreements, including, inter alia, the International Health Regulation 2005, nearly all the world’s nations have banned together to ensure the containment and global eradication of infectious diseases. Containing contagious disease is a definable, universal and obligatory norm for the UN member nations. UN peacekeepers and missions are fundamentally accountable to the global, multilateral consensus and efforts of UN member nations to participate in globally containing and eradicating the spread of contagious diseases. The UN is not a super state with powers and immunities that exceeds the powers of those it represents. The commitment to contain communicable diseases and hold those responsible for their spread applies to the UN mission in Haiti.” – (Excerpt from HLLN’s 100page complaint against the US occupational forces for bringing cholera to Haiti (c) 2013 Ezili Dantò, All rights reserved.)

EXCERPT TWO:

from HLLN complaint against the US/Obama occupational forces for bringing UN cholera to Haiti. (c) 2013 Ezili Dantò, All rights reserved

HAITIANS HAVE A RIGHT TO LIFE, HEALTH, LEGAL REDRESS, ACCESS TO COURTS AND A FAIR AND IMPARTIAL HEARING

“It is a principle of International Law that any violation of an international obligation that has caused damages triggers the duty to make adequate amends.” — Inter-American Court of Human Rights, (Case of the Miguel Castro Prison, Merits, Reparations, and Cost, Judgment, Int-Am. Ct. Hum Rts. (ser. C) No. 160, par. 335 (Nov. 25, 2006)

Haiti plaintiffs are entitled to legal redress and remedy. UN provisions under the SOFA agreement allowing UN absolute discretion to certify or not certify whether Plaintiffs has a legitimate personal injury claim in light of the aforementioned political bias of UN, is not sufficient at law. Plaintiffs require immediate relief to stop cholera from becoming endemic in Haiti and causing further injuries and deaths. The UN has a duty to take corrective measures. Injunctive relief to Plaintiff that orders UN to immediately prevent the further spread of its contaminable disease onto a poor and vulnerable peoples denied the basic right to life, health and non-UN contaminated Haiti water, which UN has gotten away with imposing on Plaintiff for over a year now, is urgently need to prevent further irreparable harm. Plaintiffs are not disposable people who may be so negligently degraded, grossly devalued, utterly betrayed without legal consequence.

The Alien Tort Statute (28 U.S.C. § 1350)
The Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) is a section of the United States Code that reads: “The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” This statute is notable for allowing United States courts to hear human rights cases brought by foreign citizens for conduct committed outside the United States.

– Excerpt from HLLN’s 100page complaint against the US occupational forces for bringing cholera to Haiti

“UN IS AN OCCUPATION, NOT A NEUTRAL FORCE in Haiti

1. There’s more violence in the U.S. colonies of Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands than there is in Haiti. The UN’s 2011 Global Study on Homicide show Haiti’s violence rate is only marginally higher than that of the United States. There’s more violence in Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Bahamas, indeed in most of the Caribbean and the Americas than there is in Haiti. Brazil, whose forces command the UN mission in Haiti has more violence in their own country than there is in Haiti. There is more acute violence in Washington, D.C. and in other parts of the United States then there is in the country of Haiti. Yet, there are no UN peacekeeping missions in these countries where there’s more violence than there is in Haiti. Even if there was a plausible disturbance of the peace in 2004, it was orchestrated by the member states and their Non Governmental Organizations benefiting from the current US occupation in Haiti behind the UN guns. And, since 2006 there’s purportedly been a duly elected government so UN denial of Haiti sovereignty is absolutely unwarranted.

2. The UN presence in Haiti in 2004 was not warranted in accordance with international law. There was no peace agreement to enforce. US/international interests in installing a puppet Haiti government more interested in pursuing US/international corporate, commercial and Haiti oligarchy interests at the expense of the public safety, security, welfare and health of the majority of Haitians is illegal under international and national laws, does not merit a UN Chapter VII intervention.

3. MINUSTAH’s presence in Haiti is a violation of the UN Charter, the American Convention on Human Rights, national laws, international laws, Plaintiffs human rights, dignity, right to self-determination…

Zili Dlo 2012: Ezili Dantò with Haiti solar mothers – Marie Andrea Saint Felix, Marie Ilma Meriste, Madeleine Saint Louis at Toussaint Louverture airport on Sept. 29, 2012 reading itinerary, giving final travel instruction to India to Haiti solar mothers traveling to attend 6-months course at Barefoot College in Tilonia, Rajasthan.

4. Neither the Security Council at the UN nor the US/Euro superpowers nor Canada have the authority or can vest in the UN the authority to deploy armed forces on sovereign territory when the conflict is manufactured by other member states (US/Canada/France) to serve as a pretext for their landing to restore order. The UN Charter states that “the organization is based upon the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members” and that the United Nations shall not “intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.” In 2004, the UN Security Council had a fiduciary responsibility to assist the democratically elected, Constitutional Aristide/Neptune government in Haiti to stop the tiny US-supported and financed military aggressors invading from the Dominican Republic, a US client state. Instead, the UN sanctioned the US imperial aggression against defenseless Haiti with UN Resolution 1329 approving the US commanded multi-national force that invaded Haiti beginning February 29, 2004, later legitimizing the US-led action to restore the Duvalierist factions to power with the UN’s MINUSTAH mission responsible for bringing and spreading cholera in October 2010 to the Western Hemisphere. UN/MINUSTAH effectively provided cover for the tiny right wing local Oligarchs and Duvalierists to neutralize the supporters of Haiti’s fledgling efforts to establish participatory democracy.

5. Since 2004, MINUSTAH has used UN military authority, moral weight, force and power to take the side of the foreign-orchestrated and funded Haiti Insurgents returning the Duvalierists and morally repugnant Haiti oligarchy to power, disenfranchising nearly ten million Haitians in violation of the rule of law, the UN charter, American Convention on Human Rights, Haiti constitution and international treaties and conventions.

A Chapter VII mission under these circumstances is an act of war against a nation without an army by the world body charged and authorized with the powers to intervene against the threat to the peace, breach of the peace or acts of aggression against a sovereign state…” — Excerpt from HLLN’s 100page complaint against the US occupational forces for bringing cholera to Haiti (c) 2013 Ezili Dantò, All rights reserved.

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Forwarded by Ezili’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
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Support Dantò’s work

“Like” Ezili Dantò public page on Facebook and Follow Ezili Dantò @Ezilidanto on Twitter.  Check below and on this website for more excerpts to come from HLLN’s 100+page complaint against the US occupational forces for bringing cholera to Haiti and generally on the subject of the UN casually exonerating itself with absolute immunity although their SOFA, on its face, provides exceptions to their diplomatic immunity. — HLLN

MORE BACKGROUND INFORMATION
on the illegality of the US occupation of Haiti. Its responsibility for employing UN forces that brought in cholera deaths.

- The Alien Tort Statute (28 U.S.C. § 1350) is a section of the United States Code that reads: “The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” This statute is notable for allowing U.S. courts to hear human-rights cases brought by foreign citizens for conduct committed outside the United States.

“On July 28, 2010, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly agreed to a resolution declaring the human right to “safe and clean drinking water and sanitation.” The resolution, presented by the Bolivian government, had 122 countries vote in its favor, while 41 countries – abstained.”

“An estimated $9 billion of public and private funding has been spent on disaster recovery in Haiti since the 2010 earthquake. Of that, $2.25 billion in public funding has been disbursed by the United States alone. But despite the large amount of public money involved, it is nearly impossible to track how it has been spent and what has been achieved. ” – US Spending in Haiti: The Need for Greater Transparency and Accountability , Feb. 19, 2013; Foreign violence against Haiti is the norm and Haiti: Jan 1, 2013: Another Independence Day Under Occupation.

Featured HLLN links on Cholera:
Haiti: Ezili Dantò on Wash Post Cholera editorial
Washington Justice For Haiti

http://bit.ly/Kp57D8

The accused UN cannot investigate itself” – Ezili Dantò, Oct 30, 2010 interview with Yves Point Du Jour

Haiti elections and Cholera interview with Ezili Dantò of HLLN, Oct. 22, 2010, Gorilla Radio.

Ezili’s HLLN denounces massacres of Haiti Vodouist, holds UN responsible

http://bit.ly/mRLrhf

Haiti Message on UN responsibility for importing cholera – Demand a stop to the denials http://bit.ly/jjqWlj )

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“The UN plays the role of both arsonist and fireman in Haiti’s cholera epidemic. UN announces a rehashed 10-year plan for clean water that is unfunded. Kristof’s white savior bridge characters, filled with conflicts of interests, declare cautious success. They help throttle justice for Haitians, put bandages on plunder, help prolong Black and indigenous world suffering. UN plans for Haiti are not solutions. The UN is the problem.” — Ezili Dantò at UN Capitalizing on Cholera: playing arsonists and firemen  http://bit.ly/12EQiU7

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“Washington Justice For Haiti:
In support of Paul Farmer’s pharmaceuticals and the Farmer groups – Brian Concannon/IDJH – asking the UN to judge itself guilty on behalf of Haiti cholera victims, Washington Post opines, justice for the Haiti cholera victims would be collectively awarding $40million to Paul Farmer pharmaceuticals for cholera vaccines  http://bit.ly/Kp57D8

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HLLN analysis of Times’ cholera article

http://bit.ly/X1TVD4

Haiti Message on UN responsibility for importing cholera

http://bit.ly/jjqWlj

Demand a stop to the denials.

The UN is accountable for not controlling its own troops’ hygiene, for importing a communicable disease, for not controlling that communicable disease, for the damage done, the lives lost, the Haiti farmers and Artibonite breadbasket that’s been contaminated. The UN’s failure to properly dispose of its human fecal waste, is not a “state action” subject to state immunity. It’s a personal injury inflicted upon a vulnerable people the UN says its mandated to protect. The UN is paying itself almost $1 billion ($860million) dollars per year for said “protection.” The UN is not above the law, immune for violating international sanitary standards, nor for failing to control the spread of its own disease.

In a nutshell, the UN imported the deadly cholera disease to Haiti, but blames the fatal injury on the victim’s pre-existing conditions. (Blaming their injustice on their defenseless victims is not new for the UN forces in Haiti.) —Ezili Dantò of HLLN  http://bit.ly/jjqWlj

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UN Calls Haiti Cholera Claim “Not Receivable,” O’Brien & Ban Leaving Town

By Matthew Russell Lee, Source: Inner City Press

UNITED NATIONS, February 21 – More than a year after a complaint about introducing cholera into Haiti was filed with the UN (video here), on Thursday afternoon Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s spokesman Martin Nesirky announced that the claim was “not receivable.”

  Inner City Press asked him to explain what the phrase meant, immunity or impunity, and why it had taken the UN so long. February 21 video here, from Minute 10.

  Nesirky first declined to explain, saying it is not the UN’s practice to discuss in public the details of claims filed. Then he cited the “privileges and immunities” resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly on February 13, 1946.

  He said that since considering the claims would involve reviewing “political and policy matters,” the claim was not receivable.

   Why take more than a year then, Inner City Press asked. Nesirky explained that the UN had engaged in “serious consideration” for the time necessary of the claims in all their aspects.

   Repeatedly since the claim was filed, Inner City Press asked for the status or for Ban Ki-moon’s top lawyer Patricia O’Brien to answer questions. The new Free UN Coalition for Access also made this request, that O’Brien as an Under Secretary General hold a press conference. It never happened.

  Now Patricia O’Brien is about to leave the UN, to go represent Ireland at the UN in Geneva. To skeptics it appears that the UN waited until now, to get the disturbing decision out of the way before a new UN top lawyer comes in. They note that Ban Ki-moon is about to leave New York on a trip.

  But how can the UN preach “rule of law” while holding itself exempt? How can it even try to avoid explaining how it exonerated itself? Who will hold this UN to account? Watch this site.

Footnote: Inner City Press has also asked the head of UN Peacekeeping Herve Ladsous what safeguards if any he’s implemented to avoid spreading cholera elsewhere.

  Ladsous refused to answer, then after FUNCA protested, on February 6 purported to answer Inner City Press on cholera – with no reference to safeguards. This continued, this week, in the UN Special Committee on Peacekeeping. UNlawful…

From the February 21, 2013 UN noon briefing transcript:

Inner City Press: I want to ask you a question about the Haiti announcement you made, when you say it is not receivable, what is the legal argument? Was a Standing Claims Commission, as required by the status-of-forces agreement, established? It makes it sound like it is a legal determination, but is there going to be some kind of a memo? What’s the basis? What took so long, and “not receivable” in what way? It was received. Is it basically a claim of immunity by the UN? Can you say more about what this “not receivable” means?

Spokesperson Martin Nesirky: Well, I am not in a position to provide you with any details. It’s not the United Nations practice to discuss in public the details of and the response to claims filed against the Organization. Let me also say I can confirm that we have informed counsel for the claimants that the claims are not receivable. Consideration of the claims would necessarily involve a review of political and policy matters. Accordingly, the claims are not receivable, pursuant to Section 29 of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, which was adopted by the General Assembly on 13 February 1946. Just to answer your question about the time taken: we gave serious consideration to the matter, and took the time necessary to properly review the various claims raised in all their aspects.

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“The slave-raids of today...white invaders and aggressors are joined by treacherous African petty bourgeoisie parasites, such as Obama, Kagame, Museveni, Kabila and others whose main demands have been integration into the command and leadership of the white capitalist parasitic political economy.” – Down with Kagame, Museveni and Kabila! The imperialist war against Congo continues unabated! ; Youtube – Congo 20million dead the role US and its allies played .

Django, white saviors, false benevolence and the Haiti earthquake: Media Portrayal Problematic

Human rights attorney Ezili Dantò of Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network discusses on Uhuru Radio with Norman (Otis) Richmond aka Jalali of Diasporic Music: Haiti three years after the earthquake, the role women played in the Haitian Revolution and the way forward.   January 20, 2013, (Download – Zili_UhuruRadioJan20_2013).

Zili_Django-Feb 3, 2013 Ezili Dantò discusses the liberal white savior, his exceptional Black sidekick, a trusted colonial blueprint, its racism and imperial indoctrination, Uhuru Radio.)

The third anniversary of the earthquake came and went in the same manner as the first in terms of the international news media’s coverage.

Each year, the white saviors (from the Left and Right, play their good cop/bad cop white supremacist games) lay out the stark statistics of how much international aid failed Haiti, talk about Haiti’s weak government and the NGO’s lack of coordination with Haitians. It’s beyond boring to watch them these days.

Everyone who has been following Ezili Dantò’s work KNOWS that international monies were never MEANT to help Haiti’s domestic economy, growth or reconstruction. Yet, these repugnant folks write on and on about what aid has not done in Haiti.  As if it was SUPPOSED to have lifted up Haiti’s domestic economy and African-centered community development. The subtext is that Haiti, that perennially failed state of uncivilized savages, can’t absorb the white settlers’ epic generosity and compassion.

In the interviews, I could not give legitimacy after a while by answering the same old narrative: What happened to the aid monies sent to Haiti?

Hello? Most of it never left Washington, Paris or Toronto. Besides if the collaborating Haiti experts or journalists insist on not focusing on the NGOs, the UN, the US officials’ real mission in Haiti, but only asking the racist questions, it is not our job to be so imposed upon.

As I said in the last interviews, I’d like to take this opportunity and platform to remember that on January 12, 2010, over 300,000 human beings lost their lives in 33 seconds.

Isn’t that a HUGE story in and of itself? Who where they? Who saved Haitians in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake as the majority waited and waited for skilled crisis rescuers but got Obama’s twenty thousand troops and the airport shut down? Let’s remember the neighbors who rushed from house to house lifting steel and concrete with their bare hands. The Haitians from the South of Haiti, the North of Haiti, all over Haiti who WALKED, ran and got there by any means necessary to help lift up tons of concrete off crushed limbs with bleeding hands. Where are their stories? We gave them an award? Yes we should remember the heroic street youths who rushed from place to place, even to the Parliament building and dug out the living entombed under the rubble. I’d like to use this time to send strength and courage to the survivors, their families, those left behind. Some 400,000 still under tarps and tents while the Clintons and Ban Ki Moons speak of progress in Haiti because there are more foreigners there than since the first US occupation, owning more lands, making more monies, poisoning and imprisoning more poor Haitians than the anti-democratic Haiti oligarchs ever considered.

This is what the Europeans and white settler stakeholders in Haiti consider development.

The foreign Haiti “experts” from the so-called “Left,” desperate to show some success with their fake lawsuit against the UN for importing cholera, even went so far as to write that the puppet Martelly government asked the UN for $2 billion for the cholera victims (“Recently the Haitian government likewise demanded over $2 billion from the international community to address the scourge of cholera” written at Counterpunch and UK Guardian articles.)  As if the Martelly government was legitimate. Wasn’t just a token put at the Ban Ki Moon announcement ceremony as a Haitian face told to rubber stamp the US/UN/WHO/Paul Farmer re-hashed cholera cover-up.  Playing arsonist and firemen, the UN announced it will raise $ 2.2 billion. It’s fake aid for eradicating cholera plainly another attempt to keep the US/UN in Haiti for another ten years while attempting to privatize Haiti water, raise more funds to pay themselves, fund Farmer’s pharmaceuticals, grease the palms of their various Haiti collaborators, pay more World Bank administrative fees.

Let us repeat the ONLY sustainable and direct aid to Haiti, that has no anti-democratic strings attached, is the $2.5 billion yearly in diaspora remittances. Haiti doesn’t need false charity or the cannibalistic, imperialistic North’s false benevolence. Haitians do not need US-style development. Haitians need for Haiti to be free.

When Haitians like at HLLN say it, it has no effect. So here is a US

university saying it:

“Haiti is…poor but it has unique features that mitigate the poverty found there. For example, while in most other poor countries poverty means
landlessness, many of Haiti’s poor are land owners..Land is a source of pride, and provides subsistence for extended families despite their poverty. It also allows them to participate in the so called “informal sector” economy – that is, the portion of the economy that isn’t taxed, regulated, or measured by the government. The oft-cited ranking of Haiti as the poorest country in the Western hemisphere is based on its Gross Domestic Product, a measurement that excludes the “informal sector” economy. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that the informal labor market in Haiti accounts for roughly 90 percent of the country’s total labor market – in other words, most of the economic activity in the country isn’t counted in the measurement most commonly cited when calling it the poorest in the hemisphere…” (Media Portrayal of Haiti Problematic, Says UConn Researcher By Tom Breen, January 11, 2013 – http://bit.ly/10mcqp1 ; HLLN 2008- Does the Western economic model and calculation of economic wealth fit Haiti, fit Dessalines’ idea of wealth? No!)

The point Ezili HLLN makes is that Haiti won’t be “developed” or its domestic economy counted, or growth measured, until the Clintons, Bushes and Obama-ilks have put up US businesses and sweatshops to take entrepreneurial Haitians off their lands and transformed them into wage earners without lands or have used the momentum given to them by the fake progressives to finance Farmer’s pèpè hospitals, pèpè vaccines, pèpè education and the US occupation’s pèpè university in the North with the Dominican Republic to keep the mental colonization going. Then, Haiti shall be declared  developed like the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Bahamas, Rwanda, et al. When foreigners own more Haitian lands and the people are backdrops for Northern tourists and are easy semen receptacles for Paul Farmer’s colleagues, like the pedophile Douglas Perlitz. Then Haiti shall be “developed” for these perverts and disgusting power elites.

Recently I came across one of the best commentaries about the latest Quentin Tarantino bloody cinematic feast at the Son of Baldwin blog. Part of what I found resonant is the author’s clarity when he notes that racism is not something practiced by obviously mentally deranged white peoples. This is something Haitians know too well. The genocide in Haiti and in Africa, is being conducted by pasty-looking, Harvard grounded Paul Farmer-ilks and otherwise average, normal, well-intentioned, nice, loving white people. In the context of the Django Unchained movie, the blogger basically says that writer-director Quentin Tarantino made the movie on slavery fun for white folks to watch and fun for Black establishment folks to watch because they don’t relate to the monsters portrayed in the movie.

Disassociating allows for the anarchic humor of the gallows, for the public to accept cheap trashy thrills and gratuitous violence that wasn’t about ending the US system of slavery. (10 Things You Should Know About Slavery and Won’t Learn at ‘Django’)

More serious movies about slavery, such as Oprah’s Beloved and Spielberg’s Amistad, though also problematic in their attempts at diluting Black resistance in certain ways, were not box office successes. But Django Unchained is because Quentin Tarantino brilliantly made the intricate movie fun so white folks could watch it and Black folks got some revenge at the end so they wouldn’t be too offended.

That’s why we know the answer to these questions: “Why isn’t Django allowed to obtain his own autonomy without the help of the white savior? Why are all the racists portrayed as cartoonishly, ridiculously, over-the-top super-evil monsters when actual racism is mostly committed by average, normal, well- intentioned, nice, loving white people? Why does Samuel L. Jackson, an already dark-skinned black man, have to appear in blackface to play his role of House Negro?” (To be Unchained – Son of Baldwin blog).

Notwithstanding the factual errors and disturbing misuse of slavery as backdrop to sell entertainment, Tarantino’s movie is worthy for the international dialogue  on race it’s engendered. It’s a must see for the depiction of the Uncle Tom character alone, played

brilliantly by Samuel Jackson and his symbiotic and complex relationship with the plantation  master character played by actor, Leonardo Dicaprio.

But I am a human rights lawyer from a lineage of struggle against European slavery. A cultural activist performer concerned with promoting empathy, ethics,  justice and debunking the seductive lies that block movement towards a more equitable world. And though I can watch Django Unchained, appreciate the skillful work of all the actors involved. See Tarantino’s clinical, soulless, commerce-driven choices in awe. Shudder, cringe and close my eyes during the extremely pitiless violent scenes only to hear the gruesome gore more sharply and curse. Though I even laughed at his Uncle Tom character’s antics, I know too much history, too much about our current reality. The past is not just lingering, the past is not even the past. The minorities still rule the world. The owners of our neo-feudalistic world system still control the purse strings.

Here’s where the Haiti white savior and black collaborator parallels also come in. When I write I name names so that folks won’t dissociate from their evil in Haiti.  The truth is offensive. It is.

“The slave-raids of today...white invaders and aggressors are joined by treacherous African petty bourgeoisie parasites, such as Obama, Kagame, Museveni, Kabila and others whose main demands have been integration into the command and leadership of the white capitalist parasitic political economy.” -Excerpted from Down with Kagame, Museveni and Kabila! The imperialist war against Congo continues unabated!, UhuruNews ; Youtube – Congo 20million dead the role US and its allies played.

Is it a coincidence or a reflection of our times that famed film director Tarantino approvingly crafts a blockbuster fictional Black hero – Django, the Jamie Fox character – as a Black slave trader?  Aren’t we living at a time, in a political climate, where  Black collaborators of the white capitalist parasitic political economy (Susan Rice, Condi Rice, Cheryl Mills, Colin Powell, et al, arguably the modern day slave traders or in-house consultant archetypes) have been integrated, are sharing leadership and command?

Is it such a wonder that in the time of the Obama presidency that Hollywood feels comfortable making a fun movie about slavery – a time when Liberals or the Left eschew tension, sacrifice and real agitation for justice to make as many convenient alliances as they please with the far right and the Wall Street corporatocracy to the detriment of Main Street, ethics and justice?

Although her character has little to say in the movie, obviously talented actor Kerry Washington plays Django’s wife and the reason for the rescue plot. Did director Tarantino choose Kerry Washington in a vacuum unrelated to the character she is associated with in Scandals on ABC and what the BIG house insider black woman that character is associated with or loosely based on? Maybe its just a triviality that Kerry Washington also stars in an ongoing TV serial playing the part loosely based on either Condi Rice to some minds, or on the real life of Judy Smith, a consultant and former White House Press secretary under President George H.W. Bush? But its noteworthy to mention.

What’s telling is that even in the era of the Obama presidency, Black directors in Hollywood are not allowed the requisite budget to make an epic movie on slavery but Tarantino is and like Paul Farmer in Haiti, he feels uhmm “Black enough” and cool enough to go beyond fiction-making, – as Farmer goes beyond scamming for the US occupation to making decisions about Haiti reconstruction – to LECTURE Black society -”give Black American males a Western hero, a cool folklorique hero?” Maybe this is just an off-hand comment. But, in saying this, Tarantino boils our epic and honorable struggle, its many faces and stories, to telling young Black males what’s cathartic, how to struggle, roundly nixing Harriet Tubman or the historical resistance of the enslaved African from jump?  What would the Black autochtones, Black aboriginals who were in America before Columbus landed say, David Walker of David Walker’s Appeal or even John Brown say? (See, for instance Hidden Colors is a documentary about the real and untold history of the African and aboriginal peoples; Official Trailer: Hidden Colors, part 1 and Hidden Colors 2: The Triumph Of Melanin-Official Trailer .)

(T)he greatest fiction of all however, the big lie…is the backdrop to all of Django’s exploits-the contented, happy domestic and well-dressed field workers who occupy the plantations and the vast vacuous spaces of Tarantino’s mind. On Tarantino’s plantations simple minded enslaved African women contentedly play on a swing as one of their sisters is about to be whipped by a brute of an overseer…Tarantino’s depictions of contented slave life could easily have been copied from the depictions on 19th Century confederate money that showed happy go lucky Blacks chopping cotton. It’s all a lie and Tarantino, not a stupid person, knows it. In fact, the antebellum South was one of the most militarized regions on the planet whose progeny, the right wing gun rights movement,is with us to this day. It was militarized in order to keep often rebellious enslaved Africans under lock and key.” — Jean Damu, Django Unchained: the pornication of Black history

White arrogance allows Tarantino to elevate his film but dismiss the TV drama Roots as “inauthentic?”  In trying to sell his movie, Tarantino comes out of the fiction realm and say he’s telling Black history, the reality of the lives of the enslaved in the Antebellum South? He’s owning our very suffering? Racism and colonialism allows these white saviors the budget and power to do so and be heroes to other wanna-be young white “philanthropists,” saviors.

There are Haitian heroes all over Haiti.  But the racists Establishment opines the world will not consume authentic heroes with Black skin unless there’s a white savior animating their success.  Is this just the ruling elite’s fear or is empathy for the non-white so engrained? Nonetheless, white journalists of the Nicholas Kristoff mindset simply cannot find the Haitian heroes littering the streets of Haiti or Africa, or Asia. These self-serving media hacks, who cannot lose access, must have a white “bridge character” at the ready in order to help sell their articles, their books, their documentaries, their controversial films to the corporate distributors they serve.

In his unique voice, flushed within the white dude prism, eccentric yet establishment Tarantino with his penchant for gory sex and vivid violent scenes, duly captures in Django Unchained the US/Euro genocidal group thirst for blood and violence as entertainment. And, like the old white plantation owner, Tarantino actually has the modern day power as said director to hire, fire, promote. He has the power to meter out power, put Blacks in roles of power or abject humiliation in his film. He can script in the overly-dark-skinned Uncle Tom or token producer (slave trader) or field negro or sex vessel humiliation on his fictional plantation set, while Black  directors and veteran actors like Danny Glover cannot get a film of the Haiti Revolution done whatsoever.

There’s no white savior in that narrative where the purpose was to end European enslavement.

The violent and tyrannical white culture Tarantino has mastered would not associate with and laugh if presented with a film on the white settlers and European enslavers from the Haitian warrior perspective.

In 1804, Haitians won their freedom, ended slavery, the savage triangular trade, forced assimilation and direct colonization by beating, in combat, at the height of the Maafa, the greatest armies of France, Britain, Spain, US mercenaries and a formal US embargo.

There are ordinary whites, of course, such as the brave Polish and Germans who chose the moral high ground during the Haiti revolution and went against their own nations, went against Napoleon Bonaparte and Thomas Jefferson, for instance, and fought alongside the African warriors on their terms – loading the warriors guns, to end slavery. But the tyrannical group mentality is stronger than the individual unwashed brain. As Dr. Martin Luther King once observed:

“(I)t is a historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but…groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

It’s been a long struggle against Euro-development in Haiti. That struggle continues, even as the largest US embassy in the Western Hemisphere, located in tiny Haiti, works out multiple scenarios to attain Haiti’s submission.

Nou pap bay legen.

As for the white saviors speaking for Haiti, especially from the Left of Washington’s duopoly, who continually give legitimacy to the US occupation or to US and UN humanitarian aid as if Haiti is not under US occupation behind a UN front, most of them have NO LEGITIMACY and are as exposed today as the Obama branding of US imperialism across the world.

“Everybody is talking about aid, and at the end of the day, we find out that
it is actually loans; and our tax money is used to pay it back, at a higher
interest rate,” says Pierre Laborissiere, co-founder of the Haitian Action
Committee. “The word must go out that these donor entities are keeping the
Haitian people under control by destroying the grassroots economy.”(Shameless
shell games hurting Haiti? By Saeed Shabazz , Final Call, http://bit.ly/WZXuVg ;
Nouvelles du 11 janvier 2013 L’aide humanitaire à Haïti représente avant tout
des occasions d’affaires pour les entreprises des pays donateurs, selon un
sociogue québécois d’origine haïtienne. )

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr said “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” So, next time you have the misfortune to be presented with the establishment Blacks or white Haiti saviors on CNN, Aljazeera, NYT, Counterpunch, cepr.net, et al, ignore every word that comes out of their outlets. US aid, US presence in Haiti, NGO aid, UN aid is ALL about debt, domination, dependency, Black deaths, white supremacy and destroying the informal Haiti economy in the long term. That’s a period, no comma.

“I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection..” –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963 ( Youtube ) – (Text)

Ezili Dantò of HLLN
Li led li la
January, 2013

“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” — Lily Watson

MORE BACKGROUND LINKS:

“Frankly, it is up to each and every Haitian capable to make a way out of no way for Haiti to beat its great powerful enemies at their own game, but on our own battlefields, upholding Dessalines law and ideals with our own and very substantial and indomitable inner and outer sources. The Haitian government may help. But, in my experience any initiative they take that denies BIG BUSINESS their umpteenth profit, will be used against Haiti and Haitians, living at home and abroad. ” – Ezili Dantò 2007 from “Does the Western economic model and calculation of economic wealth fit Haiti, fit Dessalines’ idea of wealth distribution? NO!”

Video: CrossTalk - on first anniversary of earthquake

10 Things You Should Know About Slavery and Won’t Learn at ‘Django’

Django Unchained: the pornication of Black history by Jean Damu

To be Unchained

Feb 3, 2013 – Discussion on the film Django Unchained continues with human rights attorney  Ezili Dantò. Dantò is also a writer, performance poet, and founder and President of Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN). Zili interviewed on Uhuru Radio for Diaspora Music with producer/host Norman (Otis) Richmond aka Jalali about Quentin Tarantino’s film, Django Unchained, discussing the liberal white savior his “exceptional black” colonial blueprint model, its racism and imperial indoctrination in film for the masses

Felipe Luciano/WBAI interviews Ezili Dantò of HLLN on Haiti, three years after the earthquake. Broadcast on Jan 11, 2012

Civil Alert interview (177:03min): Ezili Dantò of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN) speak on Haitian Revolution, current events and Haiti’s hidden history, January 3, 2013, Civil Alert/BlogTalkRadio.

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UN Capitalizing on its imported cholera to privatize clean water in poverty-stricken Haiti

The Haitian struggle – the greatest David vs. Goliath battle being played out on this planet  http://bit.ly/2vqDXL

Janjak Desalin (Jean Jacques Dessalines) – The women who influenced him, his ideals and legacy remembered  http://bit.ly/76fkOZ

The truth not so easily buried, will rise Aljazeera video & our own Yves Point Du Jour speaking the Haiti non-colonial narrative – http://bit.ly/12EQiU7

Red, Black & Moonlight (RBM) Video Reel
RBM series are written and performed by Ezili Dantò
Documents the often tragic journey of Haitians in the US and abroad for human justice, the monologues cover Vodun cosmology, Haitian history, culture and US humanitarian imperialism in Haiti, written 1998

Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of imperialism
by Kwame Nkrumah

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Down with Kagame, Museveni and Kabila! The imperialist war against Congo continues unabated!

Petty bourgeoisie parasites Paul Kagame (L), Yoweri Museveni and Joseph Kabila (R)

It is an exercise in futility to go to the perpetrators and executioners of
human rights crimes in Haiti in hopes of getting justice for our people.–Ezili Dantò of HLLN, Haiti: Jan 1, 2013: Another Independence Day Under Occupation

For whose entertainment shall we sing our agony? To the destroyers, aspiring to extinguish us, reveling in their own fantastic success? The last imbecile to dream such dreams is dead, killed by the saviors of his dreams.” –Ezili Dantò of HLLN, Haiti: Jan 1, 2013: Another Independence Day Under Occupation

Stop NGO pillage of Haiti – London Protest, May 1, 2012. Women of Colour and Global Women’s Strike campaigners gathered outside the British Red Cross in the capital in solidarity with the people of Haiti. See, Haiti by the Numbers, Three Years Later

HLLN open letter regarding “Haiti Among the Safest Destinations in the Americas”

Dear Mr. Jean Pierre
(press@primature.ht)

Re: “Haiti Among the Safest Destinations in the Americas”

In article titled “Haiti Among the Safest Destinations in the Americas, you wrote that:

“In 2012 according to the UNODC, Haiti’s violent death rate of 6.9 out of every hundred thousand Haitians is among the lowest rates in the Americas, and the same as Long Beach, California. This is mainly attributable to a strong focus on the strengthening and modernization of its security forces.”

Ezili Dantò of HLLN, 2010: 14-Points for Rebuilding with Human Rights, Healing and Dignity

“Though Haiti violence towards foreigners is rare, foreign excruciating and harrowing violence towards Haiti is practically and historically the norm”

You write that “While the rest of the region experiences difficulty in
containing violent crime rates, Haiti shows positive trends largely as a result of the strengthening of the Haitian National Police, the incorporation of human resources and new technologies into its anti-crime strategies, and, the establishment of a welcoming political and economic climate.”

As a pro-democracy, anti-US occupation Haiti advocacy organization we take the time to point out that Haiti has one of the lowest rates of violence in the Americas because the Haiti masses have always been a naturally peaceful people who endure senseless oppression and state sponsored violence.

The comparably lower rate of violence in Haiti is NOT because of the US occupation behind UN front, nor because of the disenfranchising political and economic climate for the masses that’s welcoming for the foreigner, nor the US/Euro training of the coup d’etat security forces in Haiti. On the contrary, there was even less violence in Haiti according to international sources BEFORE the 2004 bicentennial occupation when Haiti only had about 3000 police in its National Police Force.

The disenfranchising of Haiti’s peoples since 2004 and the US occupation behind the UN front, the impunity of the paramilitary coup d’etat death squads, the repeal of basic rights under the revised constitution along with the organize Ninja and foreign troop kidnapping sprees, increased the instability, crime and violence of a naturally peaceful Haiti.

Since the February 29, 2004 regime change by US special forces with the complicity of Canada and French military forces and its attendant further local militarization of Haiti, the violence rate in Haiti, though still the lowest in the Western Hemisphere fluctuates towards increased organized violence, more foreign pollution, more foreign environmental devastation, more Clorox hunger, and the UN-imported cholera deaths, foreigner and charity workers’ molesting Haiti women and children has significantly increased.

Though the UNODC doesn’t note the pedophilia increases, the poisoning/ pollution deaths in Haiti since the occupation, it does show, as you mention, the murder rate today is 6.9 per 100,000. But we encourage you to note that back in 2007, the UNODC reported the violence rate in Haiti at 5.6 homicide per 100,000. (See HLLN coverage from 2007 at: Pointing Guns at Starving Haitians: Violent Haiti is a myth and Comparing crime, poverty and violence in the rest of the Hemisphere to Haiti.)

Nonetheless, HLLN does wish to take this moment to congratulate the Haitian police for its many positive efforts to protect the disenfranchized public, including its work that helped take down Douglas Perlitz, the American charity worker molesting Haiti boys at an orphanage in Cap Haitian, the national police taking down the largest kidnapping ring – part of the Haiti oligarch – kidnapping ring in the country and paving the way for a stop to the racists penchant that criminalizes the poor in Haiti for political purposes.

We wish to also congratulate and encourage the Haiti official and his police team who designed and used the advanced software that helped to track the Brandt kidnapping ring. We are confident such initiatives will help Haiti free itself from the international complicity that is founded on the lie that Haitians are not competent to govern themselves without foreign advisers.

Finally, though the facts don’t bare out your assertions as to the reasons why Haiti is one of the safest destinations in the Americas, we agree with you sir that “Haiti is one of the safest destinations; not just in the Caribbean, but throughout all the Americas…Haitian citizens are generally more concerned with economic issues such as the cost of living, than with crime. The notice issued by the U.S. State Department warning US citizens about the persistent danger of violent crime does not take into account .. kidnapping and murder of U.S. citizens is extremely rare in.. Haiti.”

But, for the suffering masses, HLLN also herein notes that though Haiti violence towards foreigners is rare, foreign excruciating and harrowing violence towards Haiti is practically and historically the norm.

Stop building luxury hotels with money meant for homeless people! – London Protest, May 1, 2012

Today, the organized violence of the US, UN, Canada, France and their foreign MINUSTAH troops and of the money laundering international NGOs in Haiti is not rare. Since the earthquake, $7.5 billion in so-called aid to Haiti, which is actually aid to the NGOs and the US-Euro elites, has basically left no meaningful footprint, exacerbating Haiti misery, grief and sustainable development. Yet, the US and Canada rush to put out special advisories against travel to Haiti when Haiti has less violence than the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Brazil, Bahamas and parts of the US. Canada announces “freezing aid” as if its money transfers to its NGOs

US/UN false benevolence and the NGO pillage in Haiti

was actually aid to Haiti. These combined actions by Canada and the US, just days before the 3rd anniversary of the earthquake seems to be nothing less than attempts to deflect from the failure of their intervention in Haiti and a racist attempt to turn public scrutiny on the “violent, corrupt and incompetent Haitians unable to absorb the beautiful Westerners’ aid and godly benevolence.” These sorts of international violence and stark racism, including the kidnapping and trafficking of our defenseless children by foreigners, the cholera deaths, and open pit mining in an already environmentally devastated Haiti, all evidences the genocidal rampage of the anti-democratic, US/Canada/France/OAS/UN policy orchestrators for Haiti.

Ezili Dantò
President, Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN)
January 6, 2013
For Haiti: Bouquet of Tears & Light
Foreign violence against Haiti is the norm. Haiti struggles on, paying an untenable price, lighting a path for justice with its soul intact.
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Watch: Al Jazeera video: Interview on UN repackaging its fictitious, non-existent cholera aid to Haiti

“..Haitians and those still blind or in denial and who are participating in the International crime and travesty going on in Haiti right now are urged to recall the Ottawa Initiative .

What is the Ottawa Initiative? Why is there a UN, Chapter 7 peace enforcement mission in Haiti for 8 years? A country not at war, without a peace agreement to enforce and with less violence than most countries in the Western Hemisphere? (See the UN’s own Global Study on Homicide at page 93).

What is the Ottawa Initiative? In 2002, high level Western officials secretly got together in Ottawa, Canada and made plans for Haiti because Haiti with popular democracy was a “threat to North American countries. “The expressed and reported concern was that “Haiti might have, by some estimates, a population of 20 million by 2019…It is a time bomb, the high level Canadian diplomat said, ‘which must be defused immediately.’” (The Ottawa Initiative; and Transcending the 2002 Ottawa Initiative.) Go to – Haiti: A time bomb which must be defused immediately

Ottawa, Canada took the Initiative to murder Haiti democracy in 2004, force back dictatorship behind sham elections that would serve Canada and US open pit mining plans . Today, days before the 3rd anniversary of the earthquake, with its international crimes revealed, its false benevolence and aid money laundering starkly exposed, Canada attempts to distract from its brutal crimes by freezing “aid?” to the Haiti puppet government it set up to serve its US-Euro corporatocracy greed while disenfranchizing the population. (Ezili Dantò – Haiti violence towards foreigners is rare, foreign violence against Haiti is practically and historically the norm. See, Haiti: A time bomb which must be defused immediately ,  Corruption uninterrupted and the The Plantation Called Haiti: Feudal Pillage Masking as Humanitarian Aid.)

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“We are the Haitians – from the womb to the tomb our lives is about struggle – n ap lite – against Western oppression and re-colonization. Nou La! – We are here! Still. After two centuries of struggle. No force has taken us down, none shall.” –Ezili’s HLLN

Ezili Dantò Vodun Remembrance

To Honor Quake Victims

Ezili Dantò rememberances for the quake victims, Feb. 2010

“Over 300,000 Haitians gone in 33 seconds at 4:53 on the 12th of January. Pour libation. Beat the drums, beat the drums. Louder please. Louder for those alive and living under sheets, tarps, tents and old cardboard. Suffering still. Endlessly before January 12th. Unimaginably after. Our blood and suffering waters the Haitian soil, 517-years still…Never felt so much pain…Si kriye te leve lanmò, manman nou tout t ap la – If crying could raise the dead, every mother would still be alive...Jete dlo, jete dlo, jete dlo. Into the Ancestors’ hands we place all our souls… Legba ouvri baryè a pou nou. Pitit Ginen, the next part is left to us. Gade byen wa wè. Nou la. Zanset yo e Timoun yo vini. Our love is stronger and survives every energy transformation. We Are The Haitians. Nou fè yon sèl kò.” – Ezili Dantò of HLLN, February 2010

“Haiti has been a reflection of Euro/US inhumanity towards the poor and African since their “New World” and updated feudal social order began. It’s still an international crime scene hidden behind false benevolence, false brotherhood, false charity, false aid. Those billed as the “do-gooders” are about initiating or exacerbating catastrophe then capitalizing on catastrophe. That’s the profitable, parasitic formula. The privately-owned relief groups, the UN and US/Euro military, they’re mostly protecting the Montana Hotel and the like, tourism, resource extraction monopolies and other profitable industries, not the human rights of the majority to shelter, medicine, food, water, justice, inclusion, dignity and living-wage jobs. Duplicity and hypocrisy is hard to absorb, especially as the media coverage mostly trumpets, ad nausea, the private world relief organizations’, large NGOs and UN/US policymakers’ “good intentions” in Haiti in comparison, that is, to Haiti’s always corrupt and presumably evil-intended governments. Don’t take the path of least resistance. Mare vent nou byen rèd – face the evil, the malice and bottomless avarice directly my people. No matter how hard it is to absorb, how disemboweling, how marginalizing, how unpopular, how science-fiction it is to believe. Believe it. The paradoxical is yours to use. Ginen poze. No one can give you what’s yours naturally. Only a Haiti-led force shall mobilize the people-to-people international tsunami torrents to lift up the ugly colonial truth and sweep away Haiti’s containment-in-poverty, dependency, debt and domination.” –Ezili Dantò Vodun Remembrance  To Honor Quake Victims and The Plantation Called Haiti: Feudal Pillage Masking as Humanitarian Aid.

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Judge Arterton, a US District Court judge that sentenced US charity worker Douglas Perlitz for molesting homeless Haiti boys nightly for the 10-years he was in Haiti running an orphanage to “help” put it this way: “If one digs a well to supply water to those who have never had water, and then that person poisons the water, was building that well a good deed?”

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“An analysis of all that money — at least $7.5 billion disbursed so far…chief accomplishment is to have finally cleared away most of the rubble…no permanent footprint… only a portion went to earthquake reconstruction..much of the so-called recovery aid was devoted to costly current programs, like highway building, H.I.V. prevention, and to projects far outside the disaster zone, like an industrial park in the north and a teaching hospital in the central plateau. Meanwhile, just a sliver of the total disbursement — $215 million — has been allocated to the most obvious and pressing need: safe, permanent housing… Bill Clinton …“build back better” mantra … came to be undercut by the enormousness of the task, the weakness and volatility of the Haitian government, the continuation of aid business as usual and the limited effectiveness of the now-defunct recovery commission that had Mr. Clinton as co-chairman. ” —Rebuilding in Haiti Lags After Billions in Post-Quake Aid  http://nyti.ms/U5Zco1

“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” — Lily Watson

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MORE BACKGROUND INFORMATION
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‘Most everything went wrong’: Three years after an earthquake devastated Haiti, the reconstruction has barely begun

How the International Community Failed Haiti, Jan 7, 2013
Hundreds of Thousands Homeless in Haiti Three Years After the Earthquake Despite Billions in Aid Funneled to NGOs, Contractors and Internationals

Haitians won’t play Baseball in the time of cholera

“Stop NGO pillage of Haiti” – protest, London

Read HLLN legal position on filing a UN cholera lawsuit — do a find for “HLLN legal position”

Haiti Still waiting for recovery http://econ.st/VzuSDv

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Haiti Among the Safest Destinations in the Americas

Haiti Prime Minister: Country is safe

By Jacqueline Charles, Miami Herald, Mon, Jan. 07, 2013

Collin Reid / AP file

Julian Fantino

Haiti’s Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe is pushing back at suggestions that his nation is unsafe.“We would like to reassure the tourists, the diaspora, people who want to visit….Haiti is one of the safest destinations that they could visit,” Lamothe said Monday at a press conference in Port-au-Prince, quoting U.N. crime statistics.

The latest figures from U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime show that in 2010 Haiti had a recorded murder rate of 6.9 for every 100,000 persons. The rate is close to one-quarter that of Jamaica and less than half of the neighboring Dominican Republic. Still, U.N. officials note that statistics are always subject to “under-reporting and under-recording.”

Lamothe’s declaration comes after the United States issued a strongly-worded travel warning and Canada modified its advisory. Last week, Canada further irked Haitian officials after new International Co-operation Minister Julian Fantino was quoted in a Montreal newspaper as saying that future aid had been put “on ice” because Ottawa wasn’t satisfied with the pace of progress.

“We are not getting the results that Canadians have a right to expect,” said Fantino, who visited Haiti in November where he met with President Michel Martelly.

Lamothe did not address Fantino’s comments, but Haitian officials have said that all Canadian aid goes to non-governmental organizations, not the Haitian government. The warnings come as the country prepares to mark the third anniversary of the Jan. 12, 2012 earthquake.

A spokesperson for the Canadian International Development Agency, which Fantino heads, said previously committed projects remain unchanged. Still, Canada continues to be concerned “with the slow progress of development in Haiti due to its weak governing institutions and corruption.”

“Canada is reviewing long-term engagement strategy with Haiti to maximize Canadian taxpayer dollars to improve the results achieved and better address the needs and priorities of the Haitian people,” the spokesperson said.

Fantino’s statements have raised concerns about whether other donors would also follow suit.

“The U.S. government is NOT going to stop aid to Haiti and has no intention to slow down assistance,” an official with the U.S. Agency for International Development said in an email. The United States is the largest of Haiti’s donors.

But just days after Christmas, the U.S. government made its own headlines when it warned against travel to Haiti.

A U.S. State Department official told The Miami Herald that protecting U.S. citizens overseas is one of the U.S. government’s highest priorities and that travel warnings “do not reflect the nature of our bilateral relations with a country.”

The travel advisory warned that travelers arriving from the U.S. “were attacked and robbed shortly after departing the airport,” and at least two U.S. citizens were shot and killed in robbery and kidnapping incidents in 2012.

“U.S. citizens have been victims of violent crime, including murder and kidnapping, predominantly in the Port-au-Prince area. No one is safe from kidnapping, regardless of occupation, nationality, race, gender, or age.”

On Jan. 2, Canada updated its Haiti travel advisory, saying Canadians “should exercise a high degree of caution due to high crime rates,” especially in certain slum neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince. However, a spokeswoman for Canada’s Foreign Affairs and International Trade Office said that “Canada has not revised its travel report to any significant degree.”

Haiti observers accuse the U.S. and Canada of sending mixed messages. In October, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, visited the country to inaugurate the Caracol Industrial Park that is touted as evidence of the international community’s commitment to rebuilding Haiti.

U.S. Ambassador Pamela White also has publicly lauded Haiti’s progress.

“Both Clintons went to Caracol and hailed the thing as the ‘New Haiti,’ ” said Robert Fatton, a Haiti expert and professor of political science at the University of Virginia. “The secretary of state says, ‘Go to Haiti,’ and they present it to us as the ‘Great breakthrough’ that will change the country and then two months after, you have a warning that you shouldn’t go to Haiti? If you tell tourists they shouldn’t go, why would businessmen go to Haiti?”

“I don’t understand what is the policy of the international community vis-a-vis Haiti,” said Fatton. “I don’t think they know what to do with the country. They are kind of reckless with Haiti.”

Albert Ramdin, assistant secretary general for the Organization of American States, said “generally when we look at the whole hemisphere, the security situation in Haiti is far less than in other countries.

“We have to be careful that by taking certain action we are not becoming counterproductive to what we want to achieve,’’ he said. “Haiti needs tourists, Haiti needs investors and anything that can limit or become a deterrent is going to be a negative.”

Ramdin said members of the international community also need to reevaluate their own efforts to help Haiti, which also must do its part.

“I have found a lack of willingness on the part of the international community to coordinate better in Haiti because everybody wants to plant their flags. They want to be recognized,” Ramdin said. “Haiti’s government, despite its goodwill, has been distracted by domestic issues and also by financial disaster.”

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Haitian officials say U.S. travel advisory unwarranted

(Reuters) – A recent advisory by the Obama administration warning that Americans were victims of murder and kidnappings in Haiti could unfairly hurt efforts to get the earthquake-crippled nation back on its feet, Haiti’s government officials said on Monday.

“Haiti is one of the safest destinations, not only in the Caribbean, but in all of Latin America,” Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe said in a press conference, flanked by several other cabinet members.

The State Department advisory issued on December 28 said: “U.S. citizens have been victims of violent crime, including murder and kidnapping, predominantly in the Port-au-Prince area. No one is safe from kidnapping, regardless of occupation, nationality, race, gender or age.”

This stern warning came at a time when violent crime for the year, especially murder and kidnapping, had in fact begun to decline, Haitian officials said.

The most violent month in Haiti last year was July, when 136 murders were reported by the Haitian National Police. That number sharply declined in the following months. The highest number of kidnappings for 2012 came in October, with 21 reported cases, but it fell to only 9 cases in December.

The U.S. State Department travel advisory undermined Haiti’s attempts to rebuild its tourism industry and lure foreign investment in the wake of the January 2010 earthquake that decimated the capital city, Lamothe complained.

“With the meager resources that the state has, we’re investing in tourism,” he said, suggesting that Haiti had been unfairly singled out by the Obama administration. “Other countries have problems, too,” he said.

Though it has long endured a reputation as a dangerous, lawless place, Haiti is in fact safer than its neighbor, the Dominican Republic, in terms of homicide. Haiti’s murder rate in 2011 of 6.9 per 100,000 residents was dwarfed by that of neighboring Dominican Republic, which had a rate of 24.9 for the same period. Jamaica had a murder rate of 40.9 for 2011.

Arnaldo Arbesu, a spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in Haiti, said that the State Department’s travel warning was not meant to discourage visitors and was part of a periodic series of updates.

“We do want people to come, but it’s the Embassy’s job to tell people to take precautions,” said Arbesu.

In a statement issued last week, the U.S. Embassy noted that crime rates had fallen over the course of the year, and that “the government is on the right track and serious about addressing these issues,” he noted.

Haiti does have the highest number of kidnappings in the region. Some 162 cases of kidnapping were reported in 2012, three fewer than the previous year, according to Haiti’s police.

This past December, which usually sees a heightened number of abduction cases, only nine kidnappings were reported. When kidnapping was at its peak in 2005, more than 240 cases were reported that December alone.

Members of the Haitian diaspora, including those with American citizenship, have been targeted in the past by kidnappers. At least eight foreign nationals were briefly taken in a series of abductions in mid-2012, but no further abductions of foreign nationals have been reported since then.

Canada’s ambassador to Haiti, Henri-Paul Normandin, dismissed rumors on Monday that his embassy had upped their warning to travelers as well.

“We haven’t substantially changed our advisory in several months,” Normandin said on a leading Haitian radio station.

(Editing by David Adams and Lisa Shumaker)

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‘Most everything went wrong’: Three years after an earthquake devastated Haiti, the reconstruction has barely begun

New York Times, National Post Wire Services | Dec 28, 2012 11:19 PM ET | Last Updated: Dec 29, 2012,  Source: National Post Services

DISBURSED SO FAR

At least $7.5-billion in aid has been disbursed. More than half has gone to relief aid, which saves lives and alleviates misery, but carries high costs and has no permanent effect — tents shred; emergency food and water are consumed; short-term jobs expire; transitional shelters, clinics and schools are not built to last. Only a portion went to earthquake reconstruction strictly defined. Instead, much of the recovery aid was spent on costly programs, like new highways and HIV prevention, and projects far from the disaster zone, like an industrial park in the north and a teaching hospital in the central plateau. Meanwhile, just a sliver of the total disbursement — $215-million — has been allocated to the most obvious and pressing need: safe, permanent housing. “Housing is difficult and messy, and donors have shied away from it,” said Josef Leitmann, manager of the Haiti Reconstruction Fund (HRF).

DISBURSED, BUT NOT SPENT

Disbursed does not necessarily meant spent. Sometimes, the money has simply been shifted from one bank account to another as projects have bogged down. That is the case for nearly half the money for housing. The U.S., for instance, long ago disbursed $65-million to the HRF for the largest housing project planned for Port-au-Prince. The fund, which issued a January 2011 news release promising houses for 50,000 people, transferred the money to the World Bank, which is executing the project. And there almost all of it still sits, with contracts just signed. The U.S. still has more than $1-billion allocated for Haiti sitting in the Treasury, and the global Red Cross movement has more than $500-million. Spain has disbursed $100-million to Haiti’s water authority for infrastructure desperately needed during the continuing cholera epidemic, but only $15-million has been spent so far. Millions have been allocated to build and renovate 21 schools, but only one has been completed.

ADMIN COSTS

Almost all contracts have been awarded to foreign agencies, nonprofit groups and private contractors who, in turn, subcontract. Each layer adds 7% to 10% in administrative costs, says a paper by the Center for Global Development. “All the money that went to pay the salaries of foreigners and to rent expensive apartments and cars for foreigners while the situation of the country was degrading — there was something revolting about it,” Ms. Pierre Louis said. In a sentiment many Haitians share, Reginald Boulos, who runs a car dealership in the capital, said foreigners in Haiti “do everything at a cost five times higher.” Oxfam spent $96-million over two years, and devoted a third to management and logistics. Doctors Without Borders spent 58% of its $135-million in 2010 on staff and transportation.

BUILDING FLAWS

More than two years ago, Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Secretary of State, and Bernard Kouchner, the then-French foreign minister, signed an agreement to reconstruct Haiti’s largest medical centre in the capital. The shattered General Hospital, with some temporary renovations keeping it functional, still awaits its $70-million overhaul. Meanwhile, Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) is spearheading a multi-year school rebuilding program being carried out by a Haitian public institution. The bank was hoping up to 21 new schools would open this fall. But a bank inspection last spring detected serious design flaws and construction errors. A fuller audit found the schools, despite being built after the earthquake, did not comply with anti-seismic or anti-hurricane standards. How much beyond the $15.4-million cost it will take to make them safe has yet to be determined, said Pablo Bachelet, a bank spokesman.

FOREIGNERS TAKE OVER

In the months after the earthquake, foreigners, arriving by the planeload, took over. They did not mean to; nobody in the humanitarian world wanted to sharpen Haiti’s dependency on foreign help. But Haiti’s government was as shattered as its people, and old patterns of interaction are hard to break. Co-ordinating the disaster response, foreign humanitarians met on the isolated, gated United Nations logistics base and divided into clusters dealing with issues like shelter and health. Something was missing, though: “In the initial confusion and loss of life after the earthquake, the clusters effectively excluded their Haitian counterparts,” said Nigel Fisher, the UN’s humanitarian co-ordinator. “Little by little, we brought them in.” Still, many locals never shook off the feeling they were an afterthought and their institutions and businesses were being bypassed and undermined. Many of the best-educated Haitians were lured away from government and private-sector jobs by higher salaries offered by foreigners. “We called it the second earthquake,” said Jean-Yves Jason, mayor of Port-au-Prince at the time.

THE OLD IDEALS

Idealistic discussions were not just about building back better. Former president René Préval wanted to use the initial exodus to the countryside to decongest Port-au-Prince permanently. Decentralization became the second mantra, guiding early commitments to spend significant reconstruction money outside the disaster zone. “There were all sorts of fantasies about shutting down the mess that is Port-au-Prince before people started to understand that there is a huge amount of capital built up in the city and, chaotic as it is, you don’t throw it out,” said Mr. Leitmann. The largest new settlement under construction is a $48-million Haitian government initiative on a barren, isolated site 16 kilometres east of Port-au-Prince in Morne à Cabri. Ms. Pierre-Louis says the houses look like “little tombs in the desert.” Critics also questioned the location of the U.S.-subsidized settlement in rural Caracol, far from the disaster, as well as the high cost of its one-bedroom homes. They are being built by a Minnesota company on a site prepared by a Maryland firm for $31,400 a house. A small one-family house in Port-au-Prince can be built for $6,000. Although the Caracol houses were supposed to be occupied by December, only 70 of 750 had been finished by November because of bad weather and logistical problems.

A NEW PRAGMATISM

New president Michel Martelly won international help to close six highly visible tent camps, repair 16 neighbourhoods and shut down the Champ de Mars settlement in downtown Port-au-Prince. Some Haitians felt he was trying to sweep the homelessness problem from view without resolving it — the neighbourhood repairs have lagged the camp closings . Others expressed relief he was taking action because a temporary solution was better than none at all. From the start, grand ambition had got in the way of tackling what was doable. “Early on, it seemed fairly clear that the only viable approach was to rebuild existing neighbourhoods,” said Priscilla Phelps, a U.S. consultant who advised the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) on housing. “But it took six to eight months to get the government used to that, and another four to six months to make the donors comfortable. Nobody wanted to think reconstruction might be a giant slum-upgrading project. They wanted little pastel houses and kids with ribbons in their hair to put on the cover of their annual report.” Mr. Boulos said, “I told the head of the American Red Cross, in front of Bill Clinton, ‘Let’s put the entire money in housing construction. Let’s repair the houses.’ But they had all kinds of reasons why not.”

BILL CLINTON STEPS IN

In April 2010, Mr. Clinton was named co-president of the IHRC. Two months later, at a luxury hotel in the hills above Port-au-Prince, the commission had its first meeting. It would hold only six more, though, before the Haitian Parliament declined to renew its mandate and it faded into history, its website decommissioned and its public records erased. “As a tool for Bill Clinton, the commission was good; it helped him attract attention to Haiti,” said Mr. Boulos, a commission member. “As a tool to effectively coordinate assistance and manage the reconstruction, it was a failure.” Alexandre Abrantes, the World Bank’s special envoy to Haiti, disagreed: “Everybody badmouths it, but I miss it. It created a level of co-ordination, with everybody around the same table, which you find in few countries. I think people had unreasonable expectations that it would be an implementing agency.” But Ms. Phelps said, “It was like in a play — the facade of a reconstruction project. We never took a pro-active role in deciding what the country needed to get back on its feet and then asking the donors to finance those priorities instead of doing their own thing.”

A COSTLY EXPOSITION

Initially, Mr. Clinton and Haitian leaders thought the private sector would play a larger role in rebuilding Haiti’s devastated housing. One relic of those aspirations is the abandoned site of a 2011 exposition in Zoranje, where scores of colourful prototype homes now sit empty, some padlocked, others plundered and used as toilets. Dreamed up at a meeting at Mr. Clinton’s home in Chappaqua, N.Y., the expo cost millions in public and private money. By the time the exposition took place, the thinking about housing had changed and most contracts were going to be awarded for urban fix-it work instead. Next to the expo site is the only large new housing project completed. With $8.3-million in financing, mostly from IADB, most of its 400 small houses remained unoccupied for half a year, except in some cases by squatters, because authorities could not figure out how to connect the complex to water.

THE FUTURE

Mr. Fisher, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator, said current projections are 200,000 Haitians will still be living in camps a year from now, on the fourth anniversary of the earthquake.

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Rebuilding in Haiti Lags After Billions in Post-Quake Aid

By DEBORAH SONTAG

New York Times, December 23, 2012

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A few days after the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake, Reginald Boulos opened the gates of his destroyed car dealership to some 14,000 displaced people who settled on the expansive property. Seven months later, eager to rebuild his business, he paid the families $400 each to leave Camp Boulos and return to their devastated neighborhoods.

At the time, Dr. Boulos, a physician and business magnate, was much maligned for what was portrayed as bribing the homeless to participate in their own eviction. But eventually, desperate to rid public plazas of squalid camps, the Haitian government and the international authorities adopted his approach themselves: “return cash grants” have become the primary resettlement tool.

This represents a marked deflation of the lofty ambitions that followed the disaster, when the world aspired not only to repair Haiti but to remake it completely. The new pragmatism signals an acknowledgment that despite billions of dollars spent — and billions more allocated for Haiti but unspent — rebuilding has barely begun and 357,785 Haitians still languish in 496 tent camps.

“When you look at things, you say, ‘Hell, almost three years later, where is the reconstruction?’ ” said Michèle Pierre-Louis, a former prime minister of Haiti. “If you ask what went right and what went wrong, the answer is, most everything went wrong. There needs to be some accountability for all that money.”

An analysis of all that money — at least $7.5 billion disbursed so far — helps explain why such a seeming bounty is not more palpable here in the eviscerated capital city, where the world’s chief accomplishment is to have finally cleared away most of the rubble.

More than half of the money has gone to relief aid, which saves lives and alleviates misery but carries high costs and leaves no permanent footprint — tents shred; emergency food and water gets consumed; short-term jobs expire; transitional shelters, clinics and schools are not built to last.

Of the rest, only a portion went to earthquake reconstruction strictly defined. Instead, much of the so-called recovery aid was devoted to costly current programs, like highway building and H.I.V. prevention, and to new projects far outside the disaster zone, like an industrial park in the north and a teaching hospital in the central plateau.

Meanwhile, just a sliver of the total disbursement — $215 million — has been allocated to the most obvious and pressing need: safe, permanent housing. By comparison, an estimated minimum of $1.2 billion has been eaten up by short-term solutions — the tent camps, temporary shelters and cash grants that pay a year’s rent.

“Housing is difficult and messy, and donors have shied away from it,” said Josef Leitmann, manager of the Haiti Reconstruction Fund.

Benefactors and Dysfunction

Beyond the numbers, the sluggish reconstruction has been the latest dispiriting chapter in the chronically dysfunctional relationship between Haiti and its benefactors.

After the earthquake, with good will and money pouring into Haiti, international officials were determined to use the disaster as a catalyst for transforming not only the intractably poor country but the world’s ineffectual strategies for helping it.

Bill Clinton, the United Nations special envoy for Haiti, invoked the “build back better” mantra he had imported from his similar role in South Asia after the tsunami. And Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton cautioned donors to stop working around the government and instead work with it, and to stop financing “a scattered array of well-meaning projects” rather than making “deeper, long-term investments.”

But an examination by The New York Times shows that such post-disaster idealism came to be undercut by the enormousness of the task, the weakness and volatility of the Haitian government, the continuation of aid business as usual and the limited effectiveness of the now-defunct recovery commission that had Mr. Clinton as co-chairman.

With no detailed financial plan ordering reconstruction priorities, donors invested most heavily in the sectors that they had favored before the earthquake — transportation, health, education, water and sanitation — and half their financing for those areas went to projects begun before 2010.

“One area where the reconstruction money didn’t go is into actual reconstruction,” said Jessica Faieta, senior country director of the United Nations Development Program in Haiti from 2010 through this fall.

Moreover, while at least $7.5 billion in official aid and private contributions have indeed been disbursed — as calculated by Mr. Clinton’s United Nations office and by The Times — disbursed does not necessarily meant spent. Sometimes, it simply means the money has been shifted from one bank account to another as projects have gotten bogged down.

That is the case for nearly half the money for housing.

The United States, for instance, long ago disbursed $65 million to the Haiti Reconstruction Fund for the largest housing project planned for this devastated city. The fund, which issued a January 2011 news release promising houses for 50,000 people, then transferred the money to the World Bank, which is executing the project. And there almost all of it still sits, with contracts just signed.

“Building takes time; it’s destruction that’s rapid,” said President Michel Martelly at a recent end-of-construction ceremony for the new teaching hospital. But building is only half the battle; the gleaming white structure, erected by the nonprofit Partners in Health in the provincial city of Mirebalais, has not yet secured its first-year operating budget of $12.5 million to $13 million.

In contrast, here in the disaster zone, where the devastated National Palace has only just been demolished and destroyed federal buildings have yet to be replaced, the country’s largest medical center remains in a strikingly dilapidated state. More than two years ago, Mrs. Clinton and Bernard Kouchner, then the French foreign minister, signed an agreement to reconstruct it, but the shattered General Hospital, with some temporary renovations keeping it functional, still awaits its $70 million overhaul. Like that hospital, many recovery projects have lingered on the drawing board or gotten delayed by land and ideological disputes, logistical and contracting problems, staffing shortages and even weather. The United States still has more than $1 billion allocated for Haiti sitting in the Treasury, and the global Red Cross movement has more than $500 million in its coffers.

“It’s not a problem of the availability of money but of the capacity to spend it,” said Rafael Ruipérez Palmero, a Spanish development official in Haiti.

Spain has disbursed $100 million to Haiti’s water authority for infrastructure desperately needed during the continuing cholera epidemic, but the authority has only spent $15 million of it thus far. It has disbursed millions to build and renovate 21 schools but only one has been completed.

In the minority of cases where donors let the Haitian government take the lead, the volume and complexity of new projects has strained the resources of the agencies that they are working to strengthen. This sometimes causes frustrating problems.

The Inter-American Development Bank, for instance, is spearheading a multiyear school rebuilding program that a Haitian public institution is executing. The bank was hoping that as many as 21 new schools, which are being built by Haitian firms, would open this fall.

But a bank inspection last spring detected serious design flaws and construction errors. A fuller audit then found that the schools, despite being bankrolled after the earthquake, did not comply with anti-seismic or anti-hurricane standards.

How much beyond the $15.4 million cost it will take to make them safe has yet to be determined, said Pablo Bachelet, a bank spokesman. But construction has been halted.

In the mountain town of Furcy, meanwhile, the children study in a couple of plywood structures without plumbing or electricity planted in the midst of one of the construction sites. Surrounded by half-built cinder-block walls, jutting rebar and piles of stone and sand, some 480 students cram into 10 makeshift classrooms illuminated only by the natural light that seeps through the gap between the partial walls and the tin roofs.

Then, no strangers to life’s setbacks, they trudge miles home over muddy, treacherous mountain roads as darkness descends.

Foreigners Take Over

In the months after the earthquake, foreigners, arriving by the planeload, took over. They did not mean to; nobody in the humanitarian world wanted to sharpen Haiti’s dependency on foreign assistance. But Haiti’s government was as shattered as its people, and old patterns of interaction are hard to break.

Coordinating the disaster response, foreign humanitarians met on the isolated, gated United Nations logistics base and divided into clusters dealing with issues like shelter and health. Something was missing, though: “In the initial confusion and loss of life after the earthquake, the clusters effectively excluded their Haitian counterparts,” Nigel Fisher, humanitarian coordinator for the United Nations, said. “Little by little, we brought them in.”

Still, many Haitians never shook the feeling that they were an afterthought and that their institutions and businesses were being bypassed and undermined. Many of the best-educated Haitians were lured away from government and private-sector jobs by the far higher salaries offered by foreigners.

“We called it the second earthquake,” said Jean-Yves Jason, mayor of Port-au-Prince at the time.

In retrospect, the numbers tell the story: Donors provided $2.2 billion of humanitarian aid in response to the earthquake. The United States Department of Defense got nearly a fifth of that aid to carry out its relief operation, which involved 22,000 troops. The Haitian government got less than 1 percent.

More of the recovery aid — 15 percent — has been channeled through the Haitian government, and the United States ambassador to Haiti, Pamela A. White, says that a shift in approach has led international donors to align “our investments with Haiti’s priorities in a truly country-led manner.”

But thus far almost all contracts have been awarded to foreign agencies, nonprofit groups and private contractors who, in turn, subcontract to others, with each layer in the process adding 7 to 10 percent in administrative costs, as noted in a paper published by the Center for Global Development.

“All the money that went to pay the salaries of foreigners and to rent expensive apartments and cars for foreigners while the situation of the country was degrading — there was something revolting about it,” Ms. Pierre Louis said.

In a sentiment that many Haitians share, Dr. Boulos said that foreigners in Haiti “do everything at a cost five times higher.”

Dr. Boulos said he spent $780,000 to close Camp Boulos and 6 percent went to administrative costs — essentially the salary of a pastor who oversaw the resettlement. Following in his footsteps more than a year later, international groups have done things more carefully, inspecting apartments before handing out rental subsidies and conducting follow-up visits. But they are ringing up operational costs of about 35 percent.

It is difficult to ascertain precisely what the hundreds of nongovernment groups in Haiti spent on their response to the earthquake — at least $1.5 billion, probably much more — and how they spent it.

Among the more visible and transparent groups, Oxfam, its name emblazoned on thousands of latrines, provided water and sanitation to the camps and Doctors Without Borders ran field hospitals, mobile clinics and cholera treatment centers.

The services they provided were vital, but, as both groups make clear in their public reporting, they were costly, too. Oxfam spent $96 million over two years and devoted a third to management and logistics. Doctors Without Borders spent 58 percent of its $135 million in 2010 on staff and transportation costs.

Not all costly foreign initiatives were equally valuable — or appreciated.

One American taxpayer-financed program, scrutinized by the Agency for International Development’s inspector general, was intended to provide short-term jobs for Haitians and to remove significant rubble. But the program, and in particular the work carried out by two Beltway-based firms, was less than successful on both fronts, the inspector general said: It generated only a third of the jobs anticipated and it appeared to demonstrate that using manual labor to clear debris was so inefficient as to slow the rebuilding effort.

One of the firms, Chemonics International, which was awarded $150 million in post-earthquake contracts, built a $1.9 million temporary home for the Haitian Parliament. The American ambassador presented it as a gift to Haitian democracy, but many legislators were more irked than thankful because the building was delivered devoid of interior walls and furnishings, as The Global Post reported, and it took almost half a year to scrounge together the money to finish it.

Occasionally toward the end of that first year after the earthquake, the Haitian government succeeded in pushing back against internationally imposed agendas it did not like.

The American Red Cross had pledged to spend $200 million of the nearly $500 million raised for Haiti by the first anniversary of the disaster. That presented a real challenge for an organization with limited experience in the country. So it operated primarily as a financier, issuing grants to other organizations with greater capacity here.

But a linchpin of its own programming was a plan to dispense $50 million in cash, no strings attached, to 400,000 household heads in the camps.

Other humanitarian leaders considered the idea of a broad, unconditional cash distribution misguided. But it was not until the Haitian government formalized its opposition in a letter — “It would unfortunately encourage a massive exodus from the provinces, thus increasing the number of people living in the camps and making conditions even worse” — that the Red Cross dropped the plan.

Dr. Boulos said he proposed an alternative. “I told the head of the American Red Cross, in front of Bill Clinton, ‘Let’s put the entire money in housing construction. Let’s repair the houses.’ But they had all kinds of reasons why not.” Shortly after the earthquake, international advisers proposed different ways that Haiti could manage its reconstruction, including a Haitian-owned recovery agency embedded in the government. But a United States proposal to establish a stand-alone commission jointly led by the Haitian prime minister and “a distinguished senior international figure engaged in the recovery effort” won out.

Bill Clinton Steps In

In April 2010, Mr. Clinton was named co-president of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, referred to as the I.H.R.C. Two months later, at a luxury hotel in the hills above Port-au-Prince, the commission held its first meeting. It would hold only six more, though, before the Haitian Parliament declined to renew its mandate and it faded into history, its Web site decommissioned and its public records erased with it.

“As a tool for Bill Clinton, the commission was good; it helped him attract attention to Haiti,” said Dr. Boulos, a commission member. “As a tool to effectively coordinate assistance and manage the reconstruction, it was a failure.”

Alexandre V. Abrantes, the World Bank’s special envoy to Haiti, disagreed. “Everybody badmouths it, but I miss it,” he said. “It created a level of coordination, with everybody around the same table, which you find in few countries. I think people had unreasonable expectations that it would be an implementing agency.”

Given that so much time and money was invested in creating it, people did, in fact, expect that the commission would take charge of the reconstruction process and deliver tangible results. But by the end many believed it had been little more than an exercise in assembling and then dismantling what one United Nations official called a pseudo-institution. “It was like in a play — the facade of a reconstruction project,” said Priscilla Phelps, an American consultant who served as the commission’s housing expert.

“We never took a proactive role in deciding what the country needed to get back on its feet and then asking the donors to finance those priorities instead of doing their own thing,” she said. “The way reconstruction money got spent was totally chaotic, and the I.H.R.C. was emblematic of that.”

From the start, the commission faced two major challenges. First, President René Préval did not really support it, seeing it as a usurpation of power, several former commission members said. Second, it had no money of its own to hand out — although the separate Haiti Reconstruction Fund, a pot containing 14 percent of the reconstruction dollars, could not make grants without its approval.

The commission’s secretariat worked out of a giant white inflatable tent on the grounds of the old United States Embassy compound, crisply air-conditioned and lined with banks of desktop computers. For a long while, the spacious tent was almost eerily empty because the commission, with a budget of $8.79 million its first year, got off to a slow start.

The commission did not engage an executive director until five months into its 18-month existence. The director, Gabriel Verret, moved haltingly to hire other key employees. The vacuum, meanwhile, was filled by William J. Clinton Foundation staff members and volunteer consultants from McKinsey & Company and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

As pro bono consultants to the commission, PricewaterhouseCoopers designed a performance and anticorruption office, and the firm subsequently won a $2.4 million contract to run it over the objections of France’s board member, who called it “a pure conflict of interest which damages the integrity of the office.”

Their first — and last — monitoring report was the only real record of the commission’s work. It summarized the 75 projects valued at over $3 billion that had been approved. The numbers themselves are not very meaningful because they included projects without any or enough money — a $1 billion “funding gap” existed, an international official said.

Still, the report indicated just how broadly recovery was being defined. At least $1.4 billion represented big-ticket, multiyear projects that were not directly related to the earthquake, among them improving the education system, developing agriculture in central Haiti and building roads all over the country

Katherine Gilbert, aid policy adviser in Mr. Clinton’s United Nations office, said, “The argument for those activities being recovery is that the whole country was affected economically and every initiative is in a sense helping the country rebuild.”

But, she added, “Another definition of recovery would be assisting those affected by the earthquake.” Although the commission’s bylaws called for it to “conduct strategic planning, establish investment priorities and sequence implementation of plans and projects,” its mode of operation was to respond, project by project, to those who sought the commission’s approval.

The large board consisted of foreign diplomats and representatives of the Haitian government and society. Early on, the Haitian members felt excluded when they learned about Mr. Verret’s appointment from the media. Their frustration deepened, culminating in a confrontation with Mr. Clinton and Jean-Max Bellerive, the Haitian prime minister, at their December 2010 meeting.

An account was pieced together from the meeting’s minutes and interviews with participants.

When Mr. Clinton was delayed in arriving at the Santo Domingo Hilton, where the meeting was taking place because of post-electoral violence in Haiti, a dozen Haitian board members crowded into a hotel room to prepare a written statement.

Rising to read it at the meeting, Suze Percy Fillipini, an elegant former diplomat, described how the Haitian members felt like “bit players” and “tokens” who were called on to “rubber stamp” a hodgepodge of projects that “collectively do not respond to the urgency of the situation or provide the foundation for the sustainable rebuilding of Haiti.”

Attending by Skype, Mr. Bellerive appeared livid and said the board members were merely “individuals,” which, in a Haitian context, meant they were nobodies, according to several members. Ms. Fillipini, her eyes flashing with tears, defended herself and the other appointees. Another member, Jean-Marie Bourjolly, a Haitian-Canadian business professor, complained that the executive director and chairmen did not respond to e-mails, saying it was neither good manners nor good governance.

After the meeting, Professor Bourjolly recounted, Mr. Clinton approached him, put a hand on his shoulder and said, “You embarrassed me.”

“It was really tough,” said the professor, summarizing the commission’s work as “such a waste.”

Again, Dr. Abrantes disagreed. “They created a formal mechanism to receive proposals, and a vetting system that was important. Eventually, they developed sector strategies, some sketchy but others well-developed, that guide us to this day.”

When the recovery commission died, the Haiti Reconstruction Fund was paralyzed, unable to make new grants. The fund, created to set aside at least some money to support the Haitian government, had “ended up significantly focused on two areas where the donors don’t have standing expertise — debris removal and housing,” Ms. Gilbert said.

“No one wanted to do debris removal,” Mr. Leitmann, the fund’s manager, said. “It’s not sexy. There are no ribbons to cut. The results disappear. So we filled that niche. Housing is another example. Half our resources are going there.”

Though as much as $104 million remains available for allocation, it has taken the Haitian government more than a year to create and convene a successor entity to the commission. The group, in Mr. Martelly’s words, will “restore to Haiti its sovereignty in aid management and especially its priorities.”

By late last week, its priorities for the remaining funds had yet to be established.

In the summer of 2011, when President Martelly, a Haitian musical star with no political experience, was struggling to put together a government, he was also grappling with the unavoidable fact that a smattering of housing reconstruction projects existed only on paper while a humanitarian crisis lay at his doorstep in the form of a huge, wretched tent camp in the central Champ de Mars.

The PricewaterhouseCoopers report, then just released, contained a telling if understated aside: “The ‘build back better’ approach does not always align with the objective of quickly finding housing solutions for camp residents.”

A New Pragmatism

The new pragmatism was born. Mr. Martelly secured international assistance to close six highly visible tent camps and repair 16 neighborhoods and to shut down the Champ de Mars settlement. Some Haitians felt he was just trying to sweep the homelessness problem from view without resolving it — indeed the neighborhood repairs have lagged far behind the camp closings — but others expressed relief that he was taking action because a temporary solution was better than none at all.

From the start, grand ambition had gotten in the way of tackling what was doable.

“Early on, it seemed fairly clear that the only viable approach was to rebuild existing neighborhoods,” Ms. Phelps said. “But it took six to eight months to get the government used to that, and another four to six months to make the donors comfortable. Nobody wanted to think reconstruction might be a giant slum-upgrading project. They wanted little pastel houses and kids with ribbons in their hair to put on the cover of their annual report.”

Idealistic discussions after the disaster were not just about building back better. President Préval expressed a keen interest in using the initial exodus to the countryside to decongest Port-au-Prince permanently, and decentralization became the second mantra, guiding early commitments to spend significant reconstruction money outside the disaster zone.

“There were all sorts of fantasies about shutting down the mess that is Port-au-Prince before people started to understand that there is a huge amount of capital built up in the city and chaotic as it is you don’t throw it out,” Mr. Leitmann of the Haiti Reconstruction Fund said. “Another fantasy was, ‘Oh, we’ll just invest in export processing zones and that will keep people from migrating back to Port-au-Prince.’ ”

That first year, the United States government and the Inter-American Development Bank set aside $220 million to finance the new Caracol Industrial Park, which is 175 miles north of the disaster area, and to build a power plant, port and housing development nearby.

Mr. Clinton, who joined Mrs. Clinton at the Caracol inaugural ceremony this fall in a rare public fusion of their diplomatic roles, has long emphasized Haiti’s need for jobs. Some here applaud his support for subsidies to private companies; others, though, question what they see as a trickle-down theory of development, pointing skeptically to decisions like those of the private Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund to make a $2 million equity investment in a new luxury hotel, the Royal Oasis.

Initially, Mr. Clinton and Haitian leaders thought the private sector would play a larger role in rebuilding Haiti’s devastated housing stock, and they were courting international firms to design innovative tract housing for tracts of land that never materialized.

One relic of those aspirations is the abandoned site of a 2011 housing exposition held in Zoranje, where scores of colorful prototype homes now sit empty, some padlocked, others plundered and used as toilets.

Dreamed up at a meeting at Mr. Clinton’s home in Chappaqua, the expo cost millions in public and private money. Competing firms spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to participate in the hopes of winning sizable contracts. But by the time the exposition took place, the thinking about housing had already shifted and most contracts were going to be awarded for urban fix-it work instead.

Adjacent to the expo site in Zoranje is the only large new housing project completed so far. With $8.3 million in financing, mostly from the Inter-American Development Bank, most of its 400 small pastel houses remained unoccupied for half a year, except in some cases by squatters, because the authorities could not figure out how to connect the complex to water. Eventually, the beneficiaries were allowed to move in anyway.

Fertilia Bien-Aimé, a wiry, scrappy, 65-year-old, said she won the keys to her house by accosting President Martelly during a public event in October. “I went up to him and said, ‘Mr. President, I’m too old for a tent. What are you going to do for me?’ ”

Squatters had ripped out the electrical wiring, sinks and toilets, she said, and rain leaks into her house as into others. Some homes lost their roofs during Tropical Storm Isaac, and the complex has had unreliable electricity since Hurricane Sandy.

“But even with all the problems here,” she said, “it’s still so much better than being a displaced person.”

The largest new settlement under construction takes the same exurban approach. A $48 million Haitian government initiative, located about 10 miles east of Port-au-Prince in Morne à Cabri, the project’s thousands of houses are rising on a barren, isolated site. Ms. Pierre-Louis, the former prime minister, described it as looking like “little tombs in the desert.”

Critics have also questioned the location of the American-subsidized new housing settlement in rural Caracol, far from the disaster, as well as the high cost of its one-bedroom homes. They are being built by a Minnesota company on a site prepared by a Maryland firm for $31,400 a house.

That includes site preparation, internal wiring, individual water hookups and flush toilets. But current thinking among humanitarian officials is that those are all extras. A small, simple one-family house in Port-au-Prince can be built for $6,000, they say, and more people can be helped.

Although the Caracol houses were supposed to be occupied by December, only 70 of 750 had been finished by the end of November because of severe weather and logistical problems, an American aid official said.

Progress has been even slower on the other American-built settlement, which is on a large, flat swath of gravel in Cabaret. Only about a dozen of the 156 houses there had a completed structure, minus doors and windows, in early December.

“Lots of money, few results,” said the deputy mayor of Cabaret, Pierre Justinvil. “Look, I personally, with my own hands, have just built a whole school for less than the cost of one of those houses and more quickly. I think we Haitians need to take the wheel.”

In the earthquake-ravaged slum neighborhood of Campeche in Port-au-Prince, Dieudonne Zidor, an elected official, agreed. Gliding gracefully up a rocky pathway, she pointed out the anarchic jumble of condemned homes, makeshift shanties and corroding shelter boxes. “As you can see, conditions are calamitous,” she said. But it is not rocket science to figure out what is needed, she added: houses, streets, electricity, water, health clinics, schools, women’s centers.

Yet, though the local authorities have already approved an urban plan for the neighborhood, the American Red Cross has engaged in a lengthy process to determine how best to spend its $20 million budget to improve Campeche.

Sandrine Capelle Manuel, the organization’s representative in Haiti, said it had been a productive process. “We prioritized all the issues and created a consultative group that is representative of the community fabric,” she said. “We did a strong and deep assessment, and now we need to do a master plan with the community.”

But Ms. Zidor said: “All they do is hold meetings and hand out juice. In the end, they will have spent the whole $20 million giving juice to the people.”

Many other neighborhood reconstruction projects have gotten stuck in the planning stages, too. The reconstruction adviser to President Martelly, in fact, recently asked a World Bank official if millions of dollars could be diverted from that slow-moving $65 million reconstruction program to pay for additional return cash grants.

“He said, ‘Can you help us because we don’t want to go to the third anniversary with so many people still in camps?’ ” Dr. Abrantes said.

Although so much money allocated for reconstruction languishes in the bank, humanitarian financing for Haiti has all but dried up while needs remain acute, said Mr. Fisher, the United Nations’ humanitarian coordinator.

“The donors have made it clear that they feel the humanitarian crisis is over and that development is their focus,” Mr. Fisher said. “But it’s a false dichotomy. Of course, the country needs long-term solutions but until they are in place we still need resources to deal with the problems at hand.”

Current projections, he added, are that 200,000 Haitians will still be living in camps a year from now, on the fourth anniversary of the earthquake.

******
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:Correction: December 25, 2012An article on Monday about the slow pace of reconstruction in Haiti since the massive earthquake in 2010 misstated the date of the quake. It was Jan. 12, not Jan. 10. The article also misstated the name of a new teaching hospital in Mirebalais. It is Partners in Health, not Partners for Health.
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Watch: Al Jazeera video: Interview on UN repackaging its fictitious, non-existent cholera aid to Haiti

Haiti : Still waiting for recovery

Three years after a devastating earthquake, the “Republic of NGOs” has become the country of the unemployed

Jan 5th 2013 |Source: The Economist
PORT-AU-PRINCE

HAITI is open for business”, Michel Martelly, the country’s president since May 2011, likes to proclaim. His government has backed up this talk by making it easier for foreigners to own property and by setting as a goal that Haiti climb into the top 50 countries in the World Bank’s ranking for ease of doing business (it now comes 174th out of 185). In November the president opened a gleaming arrivals hall at Toussaint Louverture airport. Mr Martelly himself is in such constant motion abroad—courting donors and investors, he says—that his peregrinations and the per diemsalleged to be associated with them have become a source of mordant jokes.

But gangbuster growth, hoped for as the country rebuilds itself after the earthquake of January 12th 2010 that wrecked the capital, Port-au-Prince, and killed tens of thousands of people, has failed to materialise. In the 12 months to the end of September the economy expanded by a modest 2.5%. It was the second year of dashed expectations: the IMF had forecast growth of 8% in both 2011 and 2012.

Anperè Jan Jak Desalin siyen li 20 Me 1805
 Travay Lakou New York

Konstitisyon Enperyal Ayiti
Anperè Jan Jak Desalin siyen li 20 Me 1805
Konstitisyon 1805

Janjak Desalin, Haiti’s Founding Father

Konstitisyon Enperyal Ayiti (1805)

“Nan Palè Enperyal la nan Desalin, 20 me 1805, Dezyèm lannen Endepandans Ayiti:

“Noumenm ki sanble la a, A. Kristòf, Klèvo, Vènè, Gaba, Petyon, Jefra, Tousen-Brav, Rafayèl, Lalondri, Romen, Kapwa, Manyi, Kanje, Do, Maglwa Anbwaz, Yayou, Jan Lwi Franswa, Jeren, Ferou, Bazlè, Masyal Bès.

“Nan non pa nou ak nan non pèp Ayisyen an ki legalman mete nan men nou tout enstitisyon leta yo epi ban nou dwa pale pou li.

“Devan Granmèt la, kote nou tout ki gen pou n mouri yon jou egal ego, limenm ki kreye tout kalte diferan kreyati nan 4 pwen kadino pou l montre jan li gran, pou l montre fòs li nan jan l ka fè sa l pito jan l pito;

“Devan lanati, kote san rezon epi pou si tèlman lontan nou t ap viv tankou pitit deyò:

“Nou deklare tout sa k di nan Konstitisyon sila a se volonte nou, se dizon nou, se batman kè nou epi se volonte tout pèp Ayisyen an;

“Nou renmèt Konstitisyon sila a bay Majeste Anperè Jan Jak Desalin, limenm ki te ban nou libète, pou l bay dokiman sila a benediksyon l pou tout sa k di ladan l ka fèt.

Deklarasyon Preliminè

Atik 1: Pèp k ap viv sou zile sila a yo te konn rele Sendomeng nan deside pou l fòme yon peyi lib ki granmoun nan tout kò l, ki pa bese tèt li devan pyès lòt puisans linivè. Peyi sila a ap pote non Anpi Ayiti.

Atik 2: Koze yo bay pou lesklavaj la kaba. Jamè, ogranjamè li pa p janm tounen sou moun ankò.

Atik 3: Tout sitwayen Anpi Ayiti se frè ki egal ego devan lalwa; Sèl lòt tit, avantaj, oswa privilèj ki ka janm egziste se rekonesans ak rekonpans nan sèvis libète ak endepandans peyi a.

Atik 4: Se yon sèl lwa ki genyen pou tout moun, kit se pou l pini kit se pou l pwoteje.

Atik 5: Leta pa ka sèvi ak lalwa pou regle yon bagay ki te fèt anvan lwa a te egziste.

Atik 6: Byen yon moun se yon bagay ki sakre. Se gwo pinisyon pou moun ki ta vyole propriyete prive yon lòt moun.

Atik 7: Lè yon sitwayen Ayisyen kite peyi d Ayiti epi natiralize nan yon peyi etranje moun sila a pa yon sitwayen Ayisyen ankò. Pinisyon pou zak sila a se lanmò epi leta dwe sezi tout byen moun sila a genyen nan peyi a. Yon lòt okazyon yon sitwayen Ayisyen pèdi sitwayènte l se lè lajistis kondane w pou gwo krim majè.

Atik 8: Lè yon sitwayen Ayisyen fè bankrout oswa fayit ekonomik leta gen pou mete stati sitwayen li an sispansyon.

Atik 9: Yon bon Ayisyen se yon bon papa, li yon bon pitit, li yon bon mari, epi sa k pi enpòtan pase tout lòt bagay fòk li yon bon sòlda.

Atik 10: Papa ak manman pa gen dwa dezerite pitit yo sou okenn pretèks.

Atik 11: Tout sitwayen oblije genyen yon metye.

Atik 12: Okenn blan, kèlkeswa nasyonalite l, pa gen dwa pilè tè peyi a kòm mèt esklav oswa propriyetè epi blan pa gen dwa janm gen propriyete nan peyi a.

Atik 13: Atik 12 la pa kenbe pou fanm blanch ki natiralize Ayisyen ak pitit yo genyen oswa yo pral genyen. Atik 12 la pa kenbe tou pou Alman ak Polonè yo ki natiralize Ayisyen.

Atik 14: Chèf leta a se papa fanmi Ayisyen. Pa dwe gen okenn distenksyon koulè nan mitan fanmi an. Apati jodi a nou konsidere tout Ayisyen se moun nwa nou ye.

Sou Anpi a

Atik 15: Anpi Ayiti fòme yon sèl kò. Anyen pa ka separe l. 6 Divizyon militè fòme teritwa a.

Atik 16: Se yon jeneral divizyon ki kòmande chak divizyon militè.

Atik 17: Chak jeneral divizyon yo ap fè travay yo endepandan de tout lòt yo. Y ap genyen pou reponn dirèkteman bay Anperè a oswa ak jeneral an chèf la ke Majeste a limenm li va nonme.

Atik 18: Zile Samana, Latòti, Lagonav, Kayimit, Ilavach, Lasayòn, ak lòt ti zile avwazinant yo fè pati entegral Anpi Ayiti.

Sou Gouvènman an

Atik 19: Gouvènman Ayiti chita nan men yon chèf ki pote tit Anperè epi Chèf alatèt lame a.

Atik 20: Se Jan Jak Desalin pèp la rekonèt kòm Anperè epi Chèf alatèt lame a. Se limenm ki te vanje krim nou t ap sibi yo epi ki te libere nou. Ni limenm, ni madanm li, Enperatris la, nou rele yo Majeste.

Atik 21: Majeste yo sakre epi pèsonn pa gen dwa leve men sou yo.

Atik 22: Leta gen yon montan fiks pou l peye Majeste a ak Enperatris la. Enperatris la ap kontinye jwenn kòb sila a menm aprè Anperè a ta va mouri.

Atik 23: Se nan eleksyon n ap chwazi yon Anperè apre Jan Jak Desalin. Pitit Anperè a pa p vin Anperè senpman paske yo se pitit li.

Atik 24: Tout pitit Anperè a rekonèt kòm pitit li ap jwenn yon montan chak ane.

Atik 25: Menm jan ak tout lòt sitwayen Ayisyen, pitit gason Anperè a ap genyen pou pase de grad an grad nan lame peyi a ak sèl diferans ke y ap rantre nan grad katriyèm demibrigad.

Atik 26: Se Anperè a limenm ki va deside jan l pito ki moun k ap vini apre li nan pozisyon an, anvan oswa apre lanmò li.

Atik 27: Nan moman moun k ap vini apre Anperè a va pran pouvwa a, limenm tou l ap genyen pou l kòmanse touche yon montan fiks.

Atik 28: Ni Anperè a, ni okenn nan chèf ki vini apre li yo pa p janm gen dwa, nenpòt ki jan ni sou okenn pretèks keseswa pou yo fòme yon ekip pou proteksyon oswa antouraj pèsonèl yo, kit yo ta rele l yon gad donè oswa nenpòt lòt bagay.

Atik 29: Nenpòt chèf ki ta vini apre Anperè Desalin ki pa ta respekte sa ki di nan atik nimewo 28 la oswa ki pa ta suiv egzanp Anperè Desalin trase a, oswa prensip ki tabli nan Konstitisyon sila a, n ap konsidere l epi deklare l an gè kont tout sosyete a.

Nan ka sila a konseye deta yo ap rasanble yo pou yo deklare manda chèf sila a fini epi pou yo chwazi nan pami yo sila a ki plis merite responsabilite a. Nan ka chèf òlalwa a pa ta vle aksepte desizyon sila a jeneral yo ki fòme konsèy deta a ap rele pèp la ak lame a pou yo pote lamenfòt pou libète kapab toujou rete sèl kòk chante sou tè sila a.

Atik 30: Se Anperè a ki fè, ki siyen, epi ki gaye tout lwa. Selon volonte li, li nonmen epi l revoke tout minis yo, jeneral an chèf lame a, tout konseye deta yo, jeneral yo ak tout lòt ajan k ap travay pou Anpi a, tout ofisye lame ki sou tè a ak tout sa k sou lanmè, tout manm administrasyon lokal yo, tout komisè gouvènman nan tribinal yo, jij yo ak tout lòt anplwaye leta yo.

Atik 31: Se Anperè a ki fè bidjè leta, li kontrole tout kòb k ap rantre ak tout depans. Li responsab fabrikasyon lajan. Se limenm sèl ki gen dwa pase lòd mete lajan deyò, li deside ki valè kòb la genyen epi ki jan kòb la fèt.

Atik 32: Se Anperè a sèl ki gen pouvwa fè lapè oswa fè lagè. Se li sèl ki ka angaje peyi a nan relasyon politik epi siyen kontra.

Atik 33: Anperè a responsab sekirite nan tout kwen anndan peyi a epi l responsab defann peyi a. Se li ki gen dwa deside selon volonte li ki jan l ap epapiye lame peyi a ni sou tè peyi a ni sou lanmè.

Atik 34: Si ta gen konplo k ap mare pou mete latwoublay nan peyi a, konplo kont Konstitisyon an oswa konplo kont Anperè a limenm, se responsabilite Anperè a pou l fè arete malfektè yo ak tout konplis yo. Se yon konsèy espesyal ki va gen pou jije yo.

Atik 35: Se Majeste a sèl ki gen dwa padone yon moun tribinal jije epi desid k koupab. Se li sèl ki gen dwa retire nan pinisyon yon jij bay.

Atik 36: Anperè a pa gen dwa fè mannigèt pou l al pran teritwa lòt peyi ni pou l al mete latwoublay nan koloni etranjè.

Atik 37: Tout zak leta ap fè dwe fèt ak dizon sila a: “Anperè Ayiti epi Chèf alatèt lame a, ak lagras Bondje epi lalwa konstitisyonèl leta a.”

Sou Konsèy Deta a

Atik 38: Jeneral divizyon yo ak jeneral brigad yo tou manm konsèy deta a epi se yo tout ansanm ki fòme konsèy sila a.

Sou Minis yo

Atik 39: Anpi an ap genyen 2 minis ak yon sekretè deta:

Ministè finans la ki genyen depatman enteryè ladan li;

Ministè lagè a ki genyen depatman lanmè a ladan l.

Sou Minis Finans la ak sa k konsène Enteryè peyi a

Atik 40: Ministè sila a responsab administrasyon trezò piblik peyi a, òganizasyon chak grenn administrasyon, distribisyon lajan ki pou disponib pou minis lagè a ak lòt fonksyonè leta yo, depans leta yo, direktiv pou jere kontabilite administrasyon ak moun k ap peye moun nan chak divizyon yo, agrikilti, komès, lekòl, sistèm pou asire jan pou mezire bagay epi konbyen yon bagay peze, mwayen pou evalye popilasyon peyi a, tout sa peyi a pwodui ak tout byen peyi a kit se sa n ap kenbe pou tèt pa nou ki se sa n ap vann deyò, tè pou anfème, prizon, lopital, antretyen wout, bak yo, salin yo, faktori yo, biwo dwàn yo, epi finalman kontwòl ak fabrikasyon lajan, epi fè respekte lwa ak direktiv gouvènman an nan domèn sila a.

Sou Minis Lagè a ak Lanmè a

Atik 41: Travay ministè sila a se pou sanble, òganize, enspekte, siveye, disipline, jere lame sou tè a epi sou lanmè a, epi tout deplasman lame a se sou kont li yo ye. Li responsab tout moun k ap travay nan domèn sila a, tout zouti lagè, tout ranfò, tout fò, tout poud ak tout kanno. Li la pou l kenbe rejis tout zak ak tout dekrè Anperè a, pou l sikile yo bay lame a epi pou l asire l tout sa Anperè a di, tout desizyon Anperè a rive fèt kòmsadwa. Minis Lagè ak Lanmè a gen devwa pou l rapòte bay konsèy espesyal yo tout sa k pa sa li konnen k fèt nan mitan militè yo epi l gen pou l voye je sou komisè lagè yo ak ofisye sante yo.

Atik 42: Minis yo responsab tout move bagay yo menm yo fè kont sekirite peyi a ak konstitisyon an. Yo responsab tout atak ki fèt sou propriyete prive yon moun epi libète chak moun. Chak 3 mwa yo gen pou yo renmèt yon rapò bay Anperè a sou tout depans ki gen pou fèt, sou fason lajan k te nan men yo te depanse, epi sou tout abi ak dezòd ki te fofile nan divès branch administrasyon peyi a.

Atik 43: Lalwa pa gen dwa fè okenn pousuit kriminèl kont yon minis kit li an fonksyon, kit li pa nan djòb la ankò pou bagay ki te pase nan administrasyon li san dizon pèsonèl Anperè a.

Sou Sekretè Deta a

Atik 44: Sekretè Deta a responsab ekri, pou l fè kopi, epi pou l gaye lwa, direktiv, pwoklamasyon, ak desizyon Anperè a; Li travay kole kole ak Anperè a nan zafè relasyon ak peyi etranje. Se li ki koresponn ak minis yo pou l resevwa nan men yo tout sa y ap mande Anperè a, petisyon ak nenpòt lòt bagay yo vle renmèt li. Tout kesyon tribinal yo genyen pou Anperè a se limenm tou ki resevwa yo. Se responsabilite l tou pou renmèt bay minis yo tout jijman ak tout dokiman Anperè a deside siyen.

Sou Tribinal yo

Atik 45: Pèsonn pa gen dwa anpeche dwa chak moun genyen pou yo regle yon konfli alamyab, san koze a pa bezwen ale devan leta. Moun ki an konfli yo gen dwa pou yo menm yo chwazi moun yo vle k tranche koze a. Lalwa ap rekonèt tout desizyon yo rive antann yo sou li.

Atik 46: Ap genyen yon jijdepè nan chak komin; Jijdepè sila a pa gen dwa deside sou okenn koze ki depase valè 200 goud. Nan ka pati ki an konfli yo pa ta rive antann yo nan tribinal jijdepè a, yo chak va ale pote koze a devan tribinal ki nan zòn pa yo.

Atik 47: Ap genyen 6 tribinal nan diferan vil sila yo:
Sen Mak, Okap, Pòtoprens, Okay, Ansavo, ak Pòdepè.
Se Anperè a ki va deside fason tribinal sa yo va òganize, konbyen y ap ye, bagay yo gen dwa deside sou yo, epi teritwa chak tribinal sa yo ap kapab responsab.
Tribinal yo gen dwa regle tout dosye sivil.

Atik 48: Se konsèy espesyal ki va gen pou jere pwoblèm militè epi se lòt kalite jijman ki va fèt pou regle pwoblèm sa yo. Se Anperè a ki va deside ki jan konsèy espesyal sa yo va òganize epi lè pa gen antant sou desizyon k soti nan konsèy sila yo se Anperè a limenm ki va tranche.

Atik 49: Gen lwa espesyal ki va fèt pou jere kesyon notarya epi tout sa k gen rapò ak ofisye deta sivil yo.

Sou Relijyon

Atik 50: Lalwa pa bay okenn relijyon pye sou okenn lòt.

Atik 51: Tout moun gen dwa pratike relijyon yo pito.

Atik 52: Leta pa p pran responsabilite okenn relijyon oswa okenn responsab yon relijyon.

Sou Administrasyon

Atik 53: Chak divizyon militè ap genyen yon administrasyon prensipal ladan l. Se ministè finans la k ap responsab òganizasyon ak kontwòl administrasyon sila a.

Dispozisyon Jeneral

Atik 1: Se Anperè a ak Enperatris la ki va deside ki moun k ap la ansanm ak yo pou okipe bezwen yo, ki jan pou yo boule ak moun sa yo epi ki jan moun sa yo ap touche pou travay yo.

Atik 2: Apre Anperè ki la jodi a va mouri, lè ta gen yon nesesite pou pase men sou Konstitisyon an, se konsèy deta a ki va rasanble pou fè sa epi se moun ki gen plis laj nan mitan konsèy la ki va prezidan konsèy la.

Atik 3: Se Anperè a ki va fòme epi prezide konsèy espesyal pou jije krim wot trayizon ak krim minis yo ak jeneral yo ta va komèt.

Atik 4: Lame se yon enstitisyon obeyisan. Li annik suiv lòd. Pa gen plas pou okenn diskisyon ak deba fèt nan mitan yon kò ki ame.

Atik 5: Fòk yon dosye parèt devan yon tribinal pou yon jijman rive fèt sou li.

Atik 6: Kay yon moun se yon azil pyès lòt moun pa gen dwa vyole.

Atik 7: Sof si mèt kay la limenm envite w rantre sèl lòt lè ou ka rantre anndan kay yon moun se si kay la pran dife, si gen inondasyon, oswa si gen yon lòd pou sa ki soti nan men Anperè a oswa nenpòt lòt otorite legal.

Atik 8: Si w touye yon moun oumenm tou ou merite lanmò.

Atik 9: Toutotan Anperè a ba bay dizon li okenn jijman pou touye yon moun pa gen dwa aplike.

Atik 10: Pinisyon pou yon moun ki vole yon bagay ap depann sou sikonstans anvan, pandan, epi apre vòl la.

Atik 11: Nenpòt etranje k ap viv nan peyi a gen menm responsabilite ak tout Ayisyen pou l respekte tout lwa peyi a.

Atik 12: Leta peyi a otomatikman epi san pale anpil sezi tout propriyete k te pou yon blan franse.

Atik 13: Tout Ayisyen k t achte yon pwopriyete nan men yon blan franse epi l pa t ko fin peye l, jodi a se leta Ayisyen li dwe rès kòb la.

Atik 14: Maryaj se yon zak sivil leta otorize.

Atik 15: Lalwa rekonèt moun ki marye ka divòse nan sikonstans lalwa prevwa epi lalwa deside yo.

Atik 16: Ap genyen yon lwa espesyal pou tout timoun ki fèt andeyò maryaj.

Atik 17: Fòk yon moun respekte chèf li, pou l suiv lòd li, epi disiplin se yon bagay ki esansyèl.

Atik 18: Leta gen pou l pibliye yon kòd penal epi tout moun dwe suiv li san gade dèyè.

Atik 19: Ap genyen yon lekòl leta nan chak divizyon militè pou lenstriksyon jènès la

Atik 20: Koulè drapo peyi a se nwa ak wouj.

Atik 21: Leta pran angajman pou l onore epi pwoteje agrikilti ki se travay ki pi enpòtan, ki gen plis lonè, epi ki pi itil sosyete a.

Atik 22: Anyen pa dwe fèt pou bare lawout ak komès ki se dezyèm sous pwosperite tout peyi.

Atik 23: Chak divizyon militè ap genyen yon tribinal komès. Se Anperè a ki va chwazi manm tribinal sila yo ki va soti nan pami negosyan yo.

Atik 24: Tout tranzaksyon komès dwe fèt ak bòn fwa epi ak bon jan dizon.

Atik 25: Gouvènman an pran responsabilite sekirite epi pwoteksyon tout peyi ki pa nan paspouki ak peyi zanmi ki deside fè komès ak Ayiti depi yo menm yo respekte tout règ jwèt epi tout mès peyi a.

Atik 26: Leta pran responsabilite pwoteje kontwa epi tout machandiz etranje k ap fè komès nan peyi a.

Atik 27: Ap genyen fèt nasyonal pou fete Endepandans peyi a, fèt Anperè a ak madanm li, fèt Agrikilti, epi fèt Konstitisyon an.

Atik 28: Depi premye kout kanno lalam nan tire tout vil yo ap disparèt epi nanchon an toutantye ap leve kanpe.

Noumenm responsab ki siyen dokiman klè epi kare sila a ki genyen ladan l dwa sakre tout moun ta dwe jwi epi tout devwa sitwayen yo blije akonpli, nou renmèt li nan men majistra yo, papa yo ak manman yo ki responsab fanmi yo, sitwayen yo, ak lame a pou yo voye je sou li epi pwoteje l;

Nou ankouraje neve nou yo respekte l epi n ap voye yon gwo kout chapo bay zanmi libète toupatou, moun ki gen bon kè yo nan tout peyi. Pou nou sa se yon siy klè ke gen yon bondye k bon tout bon, ki limenm atravè lwa pa li ki la pou tout tan te ban nou limyè ak chimen pou n te rive kase chenn lesklavaj epi pou n te rive vin yon pèp lib, sivilize, epi endepandan.

Nou siyen dokiman sila a nan non pa nou epi nan non tout sa yo nou reprezante yo.

Moun ki siyen:
Kristòf, Klèvo, Vènè, Gaba, Petyon, Jefra, Tousen-Brav, Rafayèl, Lalondri, Romen, Kapwa, Manyi, Kanje, Do, Maglwa Anbwaz, Yayou, Jan Lwi Franswa, Jeren, Ferou, Bazlè, Masyal Bès.

Dokiman sila a te parèt devan Anperè a pou msye te siyen li tou. Li te dakò bay dokiman an benediksyon li.

Lè n gade Konstitisyon sila a,
Noumenm, Jak Desalin, Anperè Premye peyi dAyiti epi Chèf alatèt lame a selon lagras Bondye fè nou epi selon lalwa konstitisyonèl leta,
Nou anbrase Konstitisyon sila a nètalkole, nou ba li benediksyon nou, epi nou mande pou tout sa k di ladan l fèt plop plop nan tout teritwa Anpi Ayiti;
Nou sèmante n ap respekte l epi nou sèmante pou n bay dènye gout san nou pou fè tout lòt moun respekte tout sa k di ladan l.

Nan Palè Enperyal la nan Desalin, 20 me 1805, Dezyèm lannen Endepandans Ayiti.

Siyen: Desalin

Moun ki rapòte dokiman an epi siyen l anba siyati Anperè Desalin
Siyen: Jis Chanlat
Sekretè Jeneral
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THE 1805 CONSTITUTION OF HAITI

SECOND CONSTITUTION OF HAITI (HAYTI) MAY 20, 1805.

PROMULGATED BY EMPEROR JACQUES I (DESSALINES)
Source: Webster.edu

The document below was printed in the New York Evening Post, July 15, 1805.

It was transcribed into the version below by Bob Corbett on April 4, 1999. I did not translate it, only transcribed. It was printed in 1805 in English. There is no mention in the newspaper who translated it. But, given that Henri Christophe was involved in the publication and that he had a strong liking of English, perhaps he is responsible. Unless American English has changed in this regard, I suspect a British translator given the use of “colour” and “honour” in the document.

It is not the complete constitution, but close. Articles 40-44 are absent. The document mentions that these are “interior regulations respecting the ministries,” otherwise it is all here.

I have followed the published document in all capitalization and grammar and noted a few spelling oddities.

The Constitution…was promulgated on May 20, 1805.

The reader should note that at this time the entire island of Hispaniola was under the rule of Haiti (Hayti), thus the mention of islands that are today part of the Dominican Republic.

The original newspaper is in the library of Bob Corbett.

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CONSTITUTION OF HAYTI

We, H. Christophe, Clerveaux, Vernet, Gabart, Petion, Geffard, Toussaint, Brave, Raphael, Roamin, Lalondridie, Capoix, Magny, Daut, Conge, Magloire, Ambrose, Yayou, Jean Louis Franchois, Gerin, Mereau, Fervu, Bavelais, Martial Besse…

As well in our name as in that of the people of Hayti, who have legally constituted us faithfully organs and interpreters of their will, in presence of the Supreme Being, before whom all mankind are equal, and who has scattered so many species of creatures on the surface of the earth for the purpose of manifesting his glory and his power by the diversity of his works, in the presence of all nature by whom we have been so unjustly and for so long a time considered as outcast children.

Do declare that the tenor of the present constitution is the free spontaneous and invariable expression of our hearts, and the general will of our constituents, and we submit it to the sanction of H.M. the Emperor Jacques Dessalines our deliverer, to receive its speedy and entire execution.

Preliminary Declaration.

Art. 1. The people inhabiting the island formerly called St. Domingo, hereby agree to form themselves into a free state sovereign and independent of any other power in the universe, under the name of empire of Hayti.

2. Slavery is forever abolished.

3. The Citizens of Hayti are brothers at home; equality in the eyes of the law is incontestably acknowledged, and there cannot exist any titles, advantages, or privileges, other than those necessarily resulting from the consideration and reward of services rendered to liberty and independence.

4. The law is the same to all, whether it punishes, or whether it protects.

5. The law has no retroactive effect.

6. Property is sacred, its violation shall be severely prosecuted.

7. The quality of citizen of Hayti is lost by emigration and naturalization in foreign countries and condemnation to corporal or disgrace punishments. The fist case carries with it the punishment of death and confiscation of property.

8. The quality of Citizen is suspended in consequence of bankruptcies and failures.

9. No person is worth of being a Haitian who is not a good father, good son, a good husband, and especially a good soldier.

10. Fathers and mothers are not permitted to disinherit their children.

11. Every Citizen must possess a mechanic art.

12. No whiteman of whatever nation he may be, shall put his foot on this territory with the title of master or proprietor, neither shall he in future acquire any property therein.

13. The preceding article cannot in the smallest degree affect white woman who have been naturalized Haytians by Government, nor does it extend to children already born, or that may be born of the said women. The Germans and Polanders naturalized by government are also comprized (sic) in the dispositions of the present article.

14. All acception (sic) of colour among the children of one and the same family, of whom the chief magistrate is the father, being necessarily to cease, the Haytians shall hence forward be known only by the generic appellation of Blacks.

Of the Empire

15. The Empire of Hayti is one and indivisible. Its territory is distributed into six military divisions.

16. Each military division shall be commanded by a general of division.

17. These generals of division shall be independent of one another, and shall correspond directly with the Emperor, or with the general in chief appointed by his Majesty.

18. The following Islands are integral parts of the Empire, viz. Samana, La Tortue, La Gonave, Les Cayemites, La Saone, L’Isle a Vache, and other adjacent islands.

Of the Government

19. The Government of Hayti is entrusted to a first Magistrate, who assumes the title of Emperor and commander in chief of the army.

20. The people acknowledge for Emperor and Commander in Chief of the Army, Jacques Dessalines, the avenger and deliverer of his fellow citizens. The title of Majesty is conferred upon him, as well as upon his august spouse, the Empress.

21. The person of their Majesties are sacred and inviolable.

22. The State will appropriate a fixed annual allowance to her Majesty the Empress, which she will continue to enjoy even after the decease of the Emperor, as princess dowager.

23. The crown is elective not hereditary.

24. There shall be assigned by the state an annual income to the children acknowledge by his Majesty the Emperor.

25. The male children acknowledged by the Emperor shall be obliged, in the same manner as other citizens, to pass successively from grade to grade, with this only difference, that their entrance into service shall begin at the fourth demi brigade, from the period of their birth.

26. The Emperor designates, in the manner he may judge expedient, the person who is to be his successor either before or after his death.

27. A suitable provision shall be made by the state to that successor from the moment of his accession to the throne.

28. The Emperor, and his successors, shall in no case and under no pretext whatsoever, have the right of attacking to their persons any particular or privileged body, whether as guards of honour, or under any other denomination.

29. Every successor deviating from the dispositions of the preceding article, or from the principles consecrated in the present constitution shall be considered and declared in a state of warfare against the society. In such a case, the counselors of state will assemble in order to pronounce his removal, and to chose one among themselves who shall be judged the most worthy of replacing him; and if it should happen that the said successor oppose the execution of this measure, authorized by law, the Generals, counselor of state, shall appeal to the people and the army, who will immediately give their whole strength and assistance to maintain Liberty.

30. The Emperor makes seals and promulgates the laws; appoints and revokes at will, the Ministers, the General in Chief for the Army, the Counselors of State, the Generals and other agents of the Empire, the sea offices, the members of the local administrations, the Commissaries of Government near the Tribunals, the judges, and other public functionaries.

31. The Emperor directs the receipts and expenditures of the State, Surveys the Mint of which he alone orders the emission, and fixes the weight and the model.

32. To him alone is reserved the power of making peace or war, to maintain political intercourse, and to form treaties.

33. He provides for the interior safety and for the defense of the State: and distributes at pleasure the sea and land forces.

34. In case of conspiracies manifesting themselves against the safety of the state, against the constitution, or against his person, the Emperor shall cause the authors or accomplices to be arrested and tried before a special Council.

35. His Majesty has alone the right to absolve a criminal and commute his punishment.

36. The Emperor shall never form any enterprize (sic) with the views of making conquests, nor to disturb the peace and interior administration of foreign colonies.

37. Every public act shall be made in these terms: “THE EMPEROR I. OF HAYTI, AND COMMANDER IN CHIEF OF THE ARMY BY THE GRACE OF GOD, AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL LAW OF THE STATE.”

Of the Council of State.

38. The Generals of Division and of Brigade, are of right members of the Council of State, and they compose it.

Of the Ministers

39. There shall be in the Empire two ministers and a secretary of state. The ministers of finances having the department of the interior, and the minister of war having the marine department.

40-44. [Interior regulations respecting the ministry.]

Of the Tribunals.

45. No one can interfere with the right which every individual has of being judged amicably by arbitrators of his own choosing whose decisions shall be acknowledged legal.

46. There shall be a justice of peace in each commune. Any suit amounting to more than one hundred dollars shall not come within his cognizance. And when the parties cannot conciliate themselves at his tribunal, they may appeal to the tribunals of their respective districts.

47. There shall be six tribunals established in the cities hereafter designated, viz. At St. Marc, at the Cape, at Port au Prince, Aux Cayes, Lanse-a-Vaux, and Port-de-Paix… The Emperor determines their organization, their number, their competence and the territory forming the district of each. These tribunals take cognizance of all affairs purely civil.

48. Military crimes are submitted to special councils and to particular forms of judgement.

49. Particular laws shall be made for the national transactions, and respecting the civil officers of the state.

Of Worship

50. The law admits of no predominant religion.

51. The freedom of worship is tolerated.

52. The state does not provide for the maintenance of any religious institution, nor or any minister.

Of the Administration

53. There shall be in each military division a principal administration, whose organization and inspection belongs essentially to the minister of finances.

General Dispositions.

Act. 1. To the Emperor and Empress belong the choice, the salary, and the maintenance of the persons composing their court.

2. After the decease of the reigning Emperor, when a revision of the constitution shall have been judged necessary, the council of state will assemble for that purpose, and shall be presided by the oldest member.

3. The crimes of high treason, the dilapidations of the ministers and generals shall be judged by a special council called and presided by the emperor.

4. The armed force is essentially obedient: no armed body can deliberate.

5. No person shall be judged without having been legally heard in his defense.

6. The house of every citizen is an inviolable asylum.

7. It cannot be entered but in case of conflagration, inundation, reclamation from the interior, or by virtue of an order from the emperor, or from any other authority legally constituted.

8. He deserves death who gives it to his fellow.

9. Every judgment to which the pain of death or corporal punishment is annexed shall not be carried into execution until it has been confirmed by the emperor.

10. Theft shall be punished according to the circumstances which may have preceded, accompanied or followed it.

11. Every stranger inhabiting the territory of Hayti shall be, equally with the Haytians, subject to the correctional and criminal laws of the country.

12. All property which formerly belonged to any white Frenchmen, is incontestably and of right confiscated to the use of the state.

13. Every Haytian, who, having purchased property from a white Frenchman, may have paid part of the purchase money stipulated in the act of sale, shall be responsible to the domains of the state for the remainder of the sum due.

14. Marriage is an act purely civil, and authorized by the government.

15. The law authorises (sic) divorce in all cases which shall have been previously provided for and determined.

16. A particular law shall be issued concerning children born out of wedlock.

17. Respect for the chiefs, subordination and discipline are rigorously necessary.

18. A penal code shall be published and severely observed.

19. Within each military division a public school shall be established for the instruction of youth.

20. The national colours shall be black and red.

21. Agriculture, as it is the first, the most noble, and the most useful of all the arts, shall be honored and protected.

22. Commerce, the second source of the prosperity of states, will not admit of any impediment; it ought to be favored and specially protected.

23. In each military division a tribunal of commerce shall be found, whose members shall be chosen by the Emperor from the class of merchants.

24. Good faith and integrity in commercial operations shall be religiously maintained.

25. The government assures safety and protections to neutral nations and friends who may be desirous of establishing a commercial intercourse with this island, they conforming to the regulations and customs of the country.

26. The counting houses and the merchandize of foreigners shall be under the safeguard and guarantee of the state.

27. There shall be national festivals for celebrating independence, the birth day of the emperor and his august spouse, that of agriculture and of the constitution.

28. At the first firing of the alarm gun, the cities will disappear and the nation rise.

We, the undersigned, place under the safeguard of the magistrates, fathers and mothers of families, the citizens, and the army the explicit and solemn covenant of the sacred rights of man and the duties of the citizen.

We recommend it to our successors, and present it to the friends of liberty, to philanthropists of all countries, as a signal pledge of the Divine Bounty, who in the course of his immortal decrees, has given us an opportunity of breaking our fetters, and of constituting ourselves a people, free civilized and independent.

Signed

H. Christophe, & (as before)

Having seen the present constitution:

We, Jacques Dessalines, Emperor I of Hayti, and Commander in Chief of the Army, by the grace of God, and the constitutional law of the state, Accept it wholly and sanction it, that it may receive, with the least possible delay, its full and entire execution throughout the whole of our Empire. And we swear to maintain it and to cause it to be observed in it integrity to the last breath of our life.

At the Imperial Palace of Dessalines, the 20th May 1805 second year of the Independence of Hayti, and of our reign the first.

DESSALINES

By the Emperor, Juste Chanlatte, Sec. Gen.

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Madi Premye Janvye 2013 / Tuesday January 1st, 2013: Emisyon Espesyal 2 zèd tan pou Premye Janvye ak Premye Konstitisyon Ayiti a, Konstitisyon 1805 la: Im Nasyonal la ak Aluption “Ti Flit” Cadet; “Mèsi Papa Desalin” – Felix Morisseau Leroi; Repòtaj Korespondan Lakou NY lakay Wilner Altidor nan Robino; Refleksyon sou Desalin ak Konstitisyon 1805 la ansanm ak Èzilidantò, Jean Yves Blot, ak Mèt Bano; Liy ouvè ak oditè yo

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INTRO:

Jan 1 – New Year and Haiti Independence Day

Happy New Year everyone. Hope you’re looking forward to a more humane, prosperous, more loving and joyful 2013. Thank you for your support during the past year. It is greatly appreciated and we look forward to all your participation and reflections to come this New Year.

We begin the New Year by celebrating Haiti’s 209th year of independence, even
while we’re under US occupation behind UN front today. The Ancestor’s achievements guides us to another tomorrow.

Lanmou, fòs, kouraj, sante, pwosperite. Wi nou soufri kriz, boulvèsman,
okipasyon Meriken, retou kolon, trayizon restavek yo, tranbleman tè, siklòn,
grangou klorox, lavi chè, vol resous peyi a, e chomaj oksidantal. Men, lan
mitan tout sa, GRANMOUN kompran byen: Ginen poze. Gade andedan w, wap wè: Ayiti se yon plas ansyen li ye, tè sakre nou. Ou se Ayisyen. Veso sakre.
Timoun ki fèk parèt sou latè, ki tou ti bebe e ki panse lamò se lavi etenèl
pakapab vinn ranse ak Ginen Fran. Si w granmoun, Ayibobo pou ou.

May the spirit of the Bwa Kayiman Ancestors guide us more in 2013. Viv
Desalin! Viv Ayiti! Viv Vertyèr! Viv lame endijèn Ayisyen an. Kouwòn pou
Defile. Aba okipasyon. Mèsi papa Desalin.

Love, light and honor,

Ezili Dantò of HLLN
Desalin is Rising!
January 1, 2013
(See also special Jan 1st posting of Desalin’s Constitution (Kreyòl and English))

Desalin is Rising

“For whose entertainment shall we sing our agony? To the destroyers, aspiring to extinguish us, reveling in their own fantastic success? The last imbecile to dream such dreams is dead, killed by the saviors of his dreams.” –Ezili Dantò

^{Al Jazeera on UN repackaging fake cholera aid for Haiti}

^{Enjoy Yves Point Du Jour on Al Jazeera speaking what the white saviors always block, speaking the Haiti majority’s narrative! “Haitians are tired of the US occupation, we won’t play baseball” – Yves Point Du Jour}

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Jan 1, 2013: Another Independence Day Under Occupation

Ours has been a long struggle. It started, 510 years ago in 1503 when the first kidnapped African captives set chained foot on what is now known as Haitian soil.

Back on Jan. 1, 1804, European/U.S. barbarity and savagery received its greatest blow in the Western Hemisphere. We continue to face their guns, greed, foreign germs and odious cruelties. But we also continue to celebrate our victories, humanity and determination never to be as shallow and violent as these enemies. Haitians have been stigmatized and forced to pay with their lives and freedom for that achievement ever since.

HLLN’s Zili Dlo 2012 Clean Water and Solar Power for Haiti delegation standing in the shadow of Janjak Desalin monument at Place d’Armes, Arcahaie Haiti
In photo are Zili Dlo/Barefoot college participants – Marie Andrea Saint Felix, Marie Ilma Meriste with Billy Bataille and Ezili Dantò of HLLN/Zili Dlo

Every Jan. 1st marks Haiti’s freedom day.

Oceans of our blood have poured and watered the soil to nourish civilized co-existence on this planet Earth and continue, this very minute, to soak the earth needlessly, simply because Haitians were the first to counter, in combat, European/U.S. biological fatalism, destroy their myth of white superiority and to do what even Spartacus could not.

How should Haitians mark this anniversary?

Who should we confer with about our awesome burden, our plight, our long struggle to be treated as human beings by the European “discoverers” and settlers? About the U.N. soldiers’ massacres, about the US occupation of Haiti behind the UN front, about the US/Euro open-pit mining for Haiti’s $20 billion in gold in the time of UN-imported cholera; about the savage disenfranchisement of the impoverished with US-supported sham elections since 2004, about their feudal pillage masked as humanitarian aid in Haiti, about $7.5 billion in earthquake dollars collected that’s been put in foreign pockets leaving practically no footprint in Haiti, about the use of Haiti misery by the US/UN/NGOs to cash in, about the arsonist and firemen role played by the fake humanitarians, about the rapes of our women, importation of cholera that’s killed 8000+ and infected 620,000+ innocent Haitians in two years and the repression of Haiti’s defenseless poor? About the lies of the mainstream media and awful propaganda for empire by the likes of Bill Clinton and Dr. Paul Farmer? (Lakou New York interview (in Kreyòl) on Haiti’s Riches, 2008; Open pit mining in the time of UN cholera catastrophe is good for who in Haiti?)

Who should we confer with about this insane Western force that attacks all that is not like itself, even though it had no attackers? About Bartholomew De La Casas’ “New World,” enmeshed in its own armor of materiality, caged in centuries of self-serving lies that defends itself endlessly from the planet’s masses, bringing genocide it veils in false declarations of benevolence?” (See full text of HLLN’s regular Jan 1st essay at Another Independence Day Under Occupation http://bit.ly/wXsPKN)

How do we Haitians get justice?

Who do we tell about the UN repackaging old donor pledges and Dr. Paul Farmer and Obama‘s complicity in denying the earthquake and cholera victims justice and reparations, all the while telling the world they’re bringing stability, democracy and civilization to Haiti. How do we show that Haiti’s violence rate is lower than that of most of the tourist destinations in the Caribbean, has one of the lowest violence rates in the Western Hemisphere when the US has a Chapter 7 UN peace enforcement (tourista/MINUSTAH) mission in Haiti collecting nearly a billion per year when there’s no civil war or peace agreement to enforce? Who do we tell that the kidnappings in Haiti are not the work of impoverished Black youths but mostly the work of the wealthy global elites and began with the kidnapping of democratically elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide by US Special Forces and that the cholera epidemic began under the US occupation of Haiti behind the UN and NGO humanitarian front? How do we show a world, convinced with the false benevolence of the “first world” rulers, absorbed in white gluttony, profit-over-people values, monopolistic and unfettered capitalism of its absolute evil? How should we Haitians, who still live and breathe free, fight on for ourselves, our children, for those who don’t?

In the book “Two Thousand Seasons,” Ayi Kwei Armah writes: “How have we come to be mere mirrors to annihilations? For whom do we aspire to reflect our people’s death? For whose entertainment shall we sing our agony? In what hopes? That the destroyers, aspiring to extinguish us, will suffer conciliatory remorse at the sight of their own fantastic success? The last imbecile to dream such dreams is dead, killed by the saviors of his dreams.”

It is an exercise in futility to go to the perpetrators and executioners of human rights crimes in Haiti in hopes of getting justice for our people.

Those who ousted the constitutional government of Haiti in 2004 – the U.N., which acts as proxy to maintain this international crime, the Haitian lackeys and their Bill Clinton, Paul Farmer and State Department masters – are dead inside and cannot hear the cries of the Haitian masses.

It’s not their mission or mandate. For they don’t represent life, liberty, democracy, development and decency, but its opposite. This officialdom, this authority, rains death, despotism, destruction, cruelty, inhumanity, injustice, and represents all that civilized peoples worldwide struggle to overcome. They write laws but are too “high tech” to live them. They mouth words of “justice” and fairness but their words are DEAD.

To further quote Ghanaian writer, Ayi Kwei Armah: “Those utterly dead, never again to awake, such is their muttering.”

See for yourself, my people, Paul Farmer’s mutterings and back peddling on the UN as the source of Haiti cholera quoted at “Haitians Won’t Play Baseball in the time of Cholera.” The Haitian Blogger, December , 2012 http://bit.ly/W5lx56.

But as you read Dr. Farmer’s racist obfuscations and immoral lies that seek to mask the US occupation behind UN front as Haitian “progress” that is worthy of international support, remember: A zombie’s mutterings are meaningless.

Ayi Kwei Armah explains what’s to be done with such predators and their blan-peyi Haitian lackeys, for they are dead: “Leave them in their graves. Whatever waking form they wear, the stench of death pours ceaseless from their mouths. From every opening of their possessed carcasses comes death’s excremental pus. Their soul itself is dead and long since putrefied. Would you have your intercourse with these creatures from the graveyard?”

NO. Leave the dead in their graves. Speak your righteous message not to these “long rotted ash” but address your message, my people, to the living and look only to Desalin’s descendants worldwide. His legacy is liberty. Speak to liberty lovers. Empower the world’s lovers of liberty.

On freedom day, raise up peaceful co-existence in the name of Janjak Desalin, the father of Haitian independence, author of the concept that a “Haitian” is a “freedom lover,” no matter his or her skin color or from which branch of that Black woman, mother of all the races – our ultimate root – he/ she hails from.

Remember that “Black” as redefined by Desalin means a “Lover of Liberty.” Therefore, any person, of whatever fabricated social “race,” who loves freedom and liberty is Black, not white in the pejorative “tyrant” sense. For, to Haitians, anyone who is a tyrant, no matter what his or her skin color, is deemed “white,” a blan, a stranger, not family. We speak also, for instance, of Barack Obama, the two warmongering Rices or Colin Powell, servants to the Sodom-Gomorrah vampire system.

Black is also, to Janjak Desalin and his knowledgeable descendants, the color and texture of liberty.

It is because of this Desalin philosophy and psychology that Haitian beliefs are marginalized and why Haitians are forever marked for destruction and annihilation. Our concepts, based on the observable facts of our history, experiences and existence, threaten white supremacy to its core. That is why most people in this world only know the lies told and retold about Haiti, about Haiti’s culture, its psychology, its philosophy.

I’ve written in the “Red, Black, Moonlight” monologue series, “Reaching for Black, keeps me from bursting into flames.” For it is that “reaching” which defines and gives texture to our struggle. Our independence and freedom is divine and “as black as primordial space, as black as the firmament from which creation sprang … the color of carbon, the key atom found in all living matter. All who are ‘Haitian’ carry particles of a culture, where every vibratory energy comes out of the dark melanin seed, that Haiti and Africa owns, which captures light and reproduces itself and various hues and shades, full of multidimensional patterns, disparate energies, eternal seeds.”

Remember and celebrate the road traveled

Humbled by the courage of the Haitians who left us a freedom legacy to live, a liberated psychology to help free Africa’s children from all sorts of colonization, a philosophy to extend, on Independence Day, we remember, respect and honor our deep roots even as we continue to face officialdom’s bitter lies, its white despotism and racist disdain. We face its lies and half-truths, such as written by the likes of the fake progressives bringing Hollywood to celebrate the opening of a sweatshop as the height of “building Haiti back better” or their various mainstream press chums, who continually call Haiti “a hell hole,” “violent,” “full of ignorant blacks,” “infectious,” while calling their imposed Martelly/Lamothe regime “progress,” its reign “democracy” and their last sham election-under-occupation “worthy.”

On our Independence Day, Haitians shall come together to stand tall within ourselves against the empire’s lies and stigmas. We’ve survived. We know who we are, what we are and that we’ve got roots to keep us strong.

Our history of survival is our greatest asset and rallying point. We exist still because we have ALWAYS defined ourselves, extended ourselves, given value to ourselves, our life, strengths, ancestors, history and heroes, when the world’s greatest armies, media and superpowers have not.

In fact, white officialdom and its Haitian blan-peyi lackeys are united solely in their refusal to recognize Haiti’s value, its sovereignty and right to self-determination. Death, imprisonment, suffering and sacrifice may be our perennial plight in this, Bartholomew De La Casa’s “New World.” Yet try as the pathetic likes of Bill Clinton/Paul Farmer may to tell Haitians what we are worth, how exclusionary elections are “our due” and that repression is liberty, they fool and shame only themselves and their restavek Haitian lackeys.

Ayi Kwei Armah writes, “A people losing sight of origins is dead. A people deaf to purposes is lost. Under fertile rain, in scorching sunshine, there is no difference: their bodies are mere corpses, awaiting final burial.”

As flesh and blood, endowed by our creator with the right to life, we claim the natural right to just retribution, to self-defense, to equal application of international laws governing human and civil rights. For we are certain, if not in this lifetime, then in our children or great-grandchildren’s time, the day will come when the fiendish fake progressives like Paul Farmers of this world will answer for the Haitian lives they’ve helped to destroy down the centuries and generations. The day will come, as surely as tomorrow is already here, and Haitians all over the world, who have survived the US occupation’s bloody carnage since 2004, will continue demanding an end to the masking of the tyranny as a way of remembering our independence from European/ U.S. official servitude and its manifold injustices.

Every tomorrow will be our Independence Day. Every tomorrow we Haitians shall extend our independence, blocking re-colonization, its modern day applications and their new rods of empire – endless use of progressive credentials of the likes of Paul Farmer, Bill Clinton, Ban Ki Moon and Jim Wong Kim to hide the disconcerting savagery of the US occupation of Haiti since 2004. Every tomorrow, even if placed in jail, forgotten and abandoned like Catholic nun Dona Belizaire and Vodouist, Ougan Zaza (Frantz Jean Raymond) or in exile or contained in poverty, we won’t relent but shall recount our glorious history of struggle ad nauseam, until no doubt remains that we are indeed Desalin’s descendants.

My people, leave the dead in their graves and look to Desalin’s descendants. Gather the living un-coopted Haitians, drink soup joumou, play Desalin’s anthem, recount the StoryofJanjak - the greatest hero to ever live, meditate on Boukman’s prayer. Remember Desalin’s Law, read the two (November 29, 1803 and January 1, 1804) Haitian Declaration of Independence to your children. Call on Defile, Gran Toya, Gran Guiton, Marijann, Kapwa Lamò, Sanit Belè, Bwaron Tonè, Anri Kristof, Boukman, Makandal, Chalemayn Peralt and Katrin Flon.  Like Moriso Lewa, say “Thank you – Mèsi Papa Desalin” and celebrate our living history. Keep making that history. Remember and celebrate the dignity of one of the least violent peoples in the Western Hemisphere, the Ezili Dantò generosity of Haiti’s present and historical women warriors. Remember our roots, our struggle – its vast glory. Nou fè yon sel kò.

Those roots are our living way, our legacy, our path to freedom and our light that’s impossible to lose. Its remembrance calls us, animates us and keeps us moving through these unspeakable sufferings and grief.

On our Independence Day, Jan. 1, 2013, and on every other tomorrow to come, we shall forget the dead living amongst us, sucking our blood like the vampires they are. These parasites have lost sight of Haiti’s origins – its sanctity, divinity and goodness, its gift of liberty and fraternity, when all around the Europeans settlers were bringing only depravity.

Desalin’s descendants hold a sacred trust. Our mission is to live free, not to live as dead zombies, corporate or U.N. sell-outs, servile to gluttonous and inhuman greed like the Bafyòti restaveks and their vampirish white masters.

“Kanga Mundele,” said the spirit of Ezili Dantò that mounted that great mambo Cecile Fatiman, on Aug. 14, 1791, at Bwa Kayiman, the ceremony that began the great Haitian Revolution. Kanga Mundele means “kill the stranger” in Kikongo – “kill the stranger within,” “amongst us” – and also means “long live freedom.”

Indeed our freedom still lives. Despite 503 years of grief, Haitians are still here – standing on truth, living without fear. Nou La! We don’t get much press, but we’re here! Nou la. Kanga Mundele!

Ezili Dantò of HLLN
Li led li la
January 1, 2013
(For more on the non-colonial narrative on Haiti, go to: Jan 1, 2012 Another Independence Day under occupation at http://bit.ly/wXsPKN and, in general at http://www.ezilidanto.com/zili/)

Donate to support Ezili’s HLLN work , Zili Dlo Clean Water, Solar Power and Skill Transfer for everyone in Haiti .

May the clear waters of Simbi and Agwe heal hearts for new beginnings, wash away the pain of those who continually kill the innocent. May Cain be healed so that Able may live free. – Ezili Dantò of HLLN, December 25, 2012

The Haitian struggle – the greatest David vs. Goliath battle being played out on this planet

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Forwarded by Ezili’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
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November 29, 1803  - Haiti’s first Declaration of Independence, “I have saved my country, I have avenged America”–Janjak Desalin, Haiti founding father

January 1, 1804 Haiti Declaration of Independence

HAITI EPISTEMOLOGY

http://bit.ly/fBCE8B

The Bwa Kayiman Call
Spoken in the KiKongo language on August 14, 1791 – The Bwa Kayiman Prophecy and Call, which began the Haiti revolution, is: E, e, Mbomba, e, e! Kanga Bafyòti. Kanga Mundele. Kanga Ndòki. Kanga yo!

Ezili’s English translation: The Supreme Creator (E, e, Mbomba, e, e!), Master of Breath shall foil the black collaborators/traitors (kanga bafyòti). Kill/tie up/stop the tyrannical white settlers/colonists, strangers (kanga mundele). Bind all their evil forces/sorcerers (kanga Ndòki). Stop them!

(Listen to the Welfare Poets’ song Sak Pase and their reciting (2:05) of the Bwa Kayiman invocation: E, e, Mbomba! Kanga Bafyòti. Kanga Mundele. Kanga Ndòki. Kanga li! – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1DnBmvMjkU)

*

At Bwa Kayiman, on August 14, 1791, the enslaved Haitian rejected bourgeois freedom and fought for universal justice and freedom. The struggle for human rights and dignity continues today…”

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MORE BACKGROUND INFORMATION

“…These poor people are being punished because they have the audacity to
hold a huge MIRROR to the face of hypocrites who come to lecture them about
democracy with machine guns in their hands….” Jean (Jafrikayiti) St. Vil
speaking out on the December 22 massacre in Site Soley, Dec. 20, 2006,
ezilidanto 

[ezilidanto] 400 UN soldiers open fire and attack the starving Site Soley community, at least 10 dead, countless civilians wounded, hundreds of residents demand end of the violence and withdrawal of the 8,000-strong UN troops in Haiti.

“…At least 10 people died and 20 were wounded Friday in a UN peace-keeping
operation in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, a UN official said.

The operation was aimed at disarming one of the armed bands in the poverty
district of Cite Soleil, according to Sophia Boutaud, spokeswoman for the
United Nations Mission for the Stabilization of Haiti (MINUSTAH)…” http://bit.ly/RfDK2S

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[ezilidanto] Senate passes HOPE Act | HLLN statement on the new US trade legislation to “help Haitians”, erzilidanto, 12/16/2006

[ezilidanto]“…We at HLLN, fondasyon Mapou and Democracy for Haiti, along with our Network partners abroad and in Haiti giving voice to the plight of voiceless
Haitians, did not endorse it then, and we wish to reaffirm our position now
that the legislation has been passed. HOPE was combined to follow the path of
AGOA, a preferential treatment bill which supposedly should have worked
wonders for the African economy. AGOA has done little for the Africa worker
and African domestic economy, so why will it be any different in Haiti…”

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[ezilidanto] Bon Ane 2007! – New Years Message from President Jean Bertrand Aristide (in Kreyol text and audio) from Pretoria, South Africa | The kidnapping epidemic in Haiti BEGAN with the kidnapping of President Jean Bertrand Aristide and the foreign-sponsored 2004 coup d’etat that ousted Haiti’s democratically elected government, erzilidanto, 12/25/2006

Audio :Bon Ane 2007! – New Years Message from President Jean Bertrand Aristide (in Kreyol text and audio) from Pretoria, South Africa

***
[erzilidanto]Denounce UN slaughter of mostly civilians in Site Soley on Dec. 22, 2006, call your churches, civic organizations, your local, national and international media and speak out! | Massive UN assault on Cite Soleil – URGENT ALERT from Haiti Action Comm-The UN’s Christmas present to Haiti, erzilidanto, 12/25/2006

“The came to terrorize the population, said Rose Matel, (a Site Soley
resident) referring to the police and UN troops. “I don’t think they really
killed the bandits, unless they consider all of us as bandits.” (regarding
UN’s Dec. 22, 2006 brutal military assault on Site Soley residents)- Reuters
**************

Aren’t there gangs in the US? W ill 400 UN foreign soldiers, with helicopters and war tanks come blast a whole neighborhood in Los Angeles in the dead of night on the excuse they are looking for gangs and then carelessly dismiss the assassination of US citizens as mere “collateral damage?” as they are doing with their Dec. 22 massacre of Site Soley’s innocent residents?| Jafrikayiti speak out against the Dec. 22, 2006 UN massacre | Haiti Blue Helmets not Peaceful, erzilidanto, 12/30/2006

Jan 1, 2007- Haitian worldwide celebrate defeating European enslavement and
colonialism: Remembering Haitis founding father, Jean Jacques Dessalines at
the end of the bicentennial year, 1806-2006

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Seismic Shifts: Haiti Freestyling to murder Tarzan, Jane & their Uncle Toms

Mesi Papa Dessalines

http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/papadesalin.html#mesiE

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Three ideals of Dessalines

http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/dessalines.html#3

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Kouwòn pou Defile

http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/dessalines.html#kouwon

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Libète Ou La Mò

http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/dessalines.html#libete

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Dessalines’ Law

http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/dessalines.html#Law

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Dessalines’ Songs *La Dessalinienne
Haiti’s National Anthem

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Haiti: Foreign Investment means Death and Repression: A Historical Perspective

Summary: The UN plays the role of both arsonist and fireman in Haiti’s cholera epidemic. UN announces a rehashed 10-year plan for clean water that is unfunded. Kristof’s white savior bridge characters, filled with conflicts of interests, declare cautious success. They help throttle justice for Haitians, put bandages on plunder, help prolong Black and indigenous world suffering. UN plans for Haiti are not solutions. The UN is the problem.

^{(“Nicholas Kristof’s reason for perpetuating the Tarzan idiocy for his New York Times audience is self-indulgent, harmful, narcissistic and as racist as it’s lazy and cowardly. What’s the point of Kristof’s white saviors – his bridge character- helping the victims of rape, cholera or hunger in the Congo, Darfu or Haiti when it’s US taxpayer monies and US corporate welfare and the agricultural subsidies to US corporatocracy that supported their agent rapists, UN partisan presence or corrupt gov. clientele states to come to power or for them to maintain power and the rapes and disenfranchisement of the African masses? Mr. Kristof ought to teach that US citizens, of every culture, race or national origin, who care about Haiti, Africa should study US foreign policy. Then go try to change the duopoly in Washington before they impose themselves on Haiti or Africa through the NGOtocracy. Some bridges ought to be artifacts in old museums.”- See Ezili Dantò’s comment at NYTimes Columnist Nicholas D. Kristof Answers Questions, Nov. 28, 2012; Brandt Busted as Clintons with Hollywood celebrate sweatshop.)}

UN Capitalizing on its imported cholera to privatize clean water in poverty-stricken Haiti

Judge Arterton, a US District Court judge that sentenced US charity worker Douglas Perlitz for molesting homeless Haiti boys nightly for the 10-years he was in Haiti running an orphanage to “help” put it this way: “If one digs a well to supply water to those who have never had water, and then that person poisons the water, was building that well a good deed?”

With Paul Farmer – who has an ineffective cholera vaccines program in Haiti wasting millions – designated as their “Special Advisor,” on December 11, 2012 at a press conference, the UN announced a “new initiative to help eliminate cholera in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.”

Secretary Ban Ki Moon launched the UN’s grand (10-year water/sanitation) money laundering, no, its fundraising scheme to harm, oops no, to “aid” Haitians. As evidenced in the HLLN letter copied below, this water project is just a re-hashed initiative launched nearly a year ago. ( See, denied  June 22, 2012 [ezilidanto] Request to peruse and comment on proposed 10-year plan by PAHO/UN to eradicate cholera in Haiti to be unveiled June 29 at OAS… erzilidanto, 06/22/2012 ;  and [ezilidanto] 10-year international plan to PRIVATIZE clean water (funding NGOs) in Haiti unveiled June 29 in Washington, erzilidanto, 06/30/2012.)

The $2.2 billion initiative is unfunded. The $215 million from bilateral and multilateral donors the UN claims is available as newly added money are mostly previously pledged earthquake monies, monies pledged seven months before UN cholera ever hit Haiti but not given. See the Al Jazeera video interview on UN repackaging its fictitious, non-existent cholera aid to Haiti. Also, the UN refuses to set up a claims commission under the Status of Force Agreement with Haiti. It still doesn’t accept responsibility for its cholera epidemic, gives no verifiable legal assurances to the Haitian people that their raw sewage are not still being dumped in Haiti’s waterways.

But, capitalizing on its imported cholera plague to Haiti, deflecting liability and responsibility for the death of 8000 Haitians and sickness of 620,000 in two years, the UN appealed for help to raise $2.2 billion in more misery funds to fill their employee/ subcontractor pockets. It seems not to matter that no one’s been held accountable for the misused of the last $6 billions raised in the name of Haiti misery. The UN/US/PAHO/WHO and the NGOtocracy in Haiti continue to play arsonist and fireman.

The new monies to be raised will go into the same hands, the same USAID/UN/NGO subcontractors with no public accountability to the Haitians, bolstering up an international system that has failed in Haiti for over 50-years. (US failed aid and false benevolence in Haiti; The Plantation called Haiti: Feudal Pillage Masking as Aid, and The White Savior Industrial Complex.)

The grand announcement is another theatrical press gambit and waste of monies on these drones’ travel, food and hotel expenses. It’s where the US/UN internationals act as if their meeting equates to “doing something” solid and urgent to address their filth — their imported disease, their (some say) biological and low intensity warfare. This multi-pronged attack is about using the image of the UN as the arbiter of human rights and justice, a claim that cannot actually be born out, but its their image. It’s about using this unearned credibility to raise more funds, not to “save the poor Haitians” but to tighten the stranglehold, elevate the “poor Haiti” narrative, have more future occasions to give themselves more titles, awards, jobs, more luxury hotel stays. (Listen to BAI interview Berstein with Kevin Pina on Haiti, Dec. 14, 2012)

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated the “new initiative will invest in prevention, treatment, and education…The main focus is on the extension of clean drinking water and sanitation systems – but we are also determined to save lives now through the use of an oral cholera vaccine.”

Six month ago when the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) at the UN, not the Secretary-General, were unveiling this very same bogus 10-year UN plan to end UN cholera in Haiti,  HLLN pointed out that world renowned cholera expert, Professor Renaud Piarroux maintains that the cholera  epidemic  in Haiti could be gone in months, that Paul Farmer’s cholera vaccines are ineffective and a waste of money. “If that is so,” we posted “this would cast great suspicion on the  NGOtocracy’s settling in  for this opportunistic 10-year, far future - 2022 - plan, as the PAHO/UN Millennium Development-type proposed declarations and its signers seem to be maintaining.” It’s brazen greed, outrageously dishonest and fraudulent.

The fake humanitarians create the problem, use the Shock Doctrine, Disaster Capitalism to occupy Haiti, disenfranchise the people, de-legitimized elections, then with the complicity of the mainstream media and white saviors both from the Left and Right duopoly, they put a black neocon Haiti suit (Laurent Lamothe) up front for publicity purposes to sell the world their 10-year “solution” to cholera as a legitimate Haiti-led initiative.

Then, when one-year later in December 2012, the UN “unveils” its repackaged request for more funds for itself and its subcontractors in Haiti and calls this “eradicating cholera,” this travesty is capped off for public consumption by having the fraudulent progressives and justice-seekers (the weapons of mass distraction) speaking on behalf of Haitians, declaring “SUCCESS.” Basically preparing to collect more funds, inducing more revenue into their coffers, writing articles, showing this UN warmed over six-months rehashed unveiling of a 10-year plan was a result of their advocacy, letters and petitions that were a SUCCESS!

See, for instance, Mark Weisbrot’s Op-Ed: More Pressure Necessary to Get Desperately Needed Clean Water to Haiti which trumpets the suspect UN cholera plan as at least “a beginning,” a showing of the capacity of the UN to what? judge itself fairly, provide what? money to private NGOs with no public accountability to Haitians?

Oh, this cholera eradication plan from the cholera importers in Haiti is “incremental justice to Haiti,” seriously opine the Leftist intellectuals from the West. No joke.
The aim, of course, of most foreign aid to Black countries is to keep them in perpetual poverty, ill health, chaos by design, dependency, and so disenfranchised and desperate they are compelled to do Western biddings. (Haiti’s Gold Rush – an Ecological Crime in the Making; The Plantation called Haiti: Feudal Pillage Masking as Aid.)

^{A Haitian with symptoms of cholera is transported in a wheelbarrow in the slums of Cite-Soleil in
Port-au-Prince the month after the outbreak began in 2010. Photograph: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
Source: The Guardian, UN seeks $2bn for cholera epidemic ‘introduced by UN peacekeepers’, Nov, 29, 2012; Haiti’s case against the UN for importing cholera epidemic, Oct 2010}

The Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN) repeatedly points out the false benevolence, the basic Haiti rights repealed, the harm, the glorification of disenfranchisement and sweatshops, the conflicts with the white industrial paternalistic, condescending “bridge character” folks in Haiti vis-a-vis Haitian best interests, justice and sovereignty.

No Caucasian typifies the white savior tool of imperialistic Black oppression and trajectory more than Paul Farmer and his cohorts.

Paul Farmer runs Partners in Health which distributes the UN supported oral cholera vaccines. His partner, Jim Yom Kim, now runs the World Bank. Farmer is the UN Special Deputy Envoy to Haiti, a long time board member of Brian Concannon’s Institute of Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) and now he’s also the special appointed advisor for the UN’s 10-year cholera eradication plan that dodges liability for UN bringing in cholera to Haiti, that denies justice to Haiti victims.

Yet, Brian Concannon’s IJDH with Paul Farmer on its board and obvious conflicting interests, claims to legally be representing the Haiti cholera victims, sending a demand last November 2011 that’s oftentimes, for fundraising purposes, billed as a law suit asking the UN to judge itself guilty and apologize to the victims!

This is an inside job. It’s definitely the fox guarding the chicken coop. These “bridge” characters crowd out most Haiti-led relief, use exploited Haiti fronts to legitimize their fundraising junkets, build bridges for white supremacy and cultural hegemony death crossings while watching each others backs from their various spheres and beltway platforms.

Commenting on the UN’s “new” water project for eradicating cholera in Haiti, here’s the Mark Weisbrot destructive distraction and spin:

^{“While we are still a long way from implementation, there are important lessons to be learned from this experience. Perhaps most importantly, it shows that organized political pressure can work.. the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti went to the U.N. to file for damages and reparations. Many other groups and individuals kept the issue in the news and wouldn’t let it go away… Newspaper editorial boards such as those of the New York Times and the Boston Globe called on the U.N. to take responsibility for the disaster that it caused. As a result of grassroots organizing, the majority of Democrats in the U.S House of Representatives signed a letter to the same effect...Bill Clinton, U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti, admitted that the U.N military mission was responsible for the deadly outbreak, but the organization maintains its denial. Tuesday’s announcement by the governments of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, together with the U.N., of a 10-year plan to eradicate cholera from the island shared by the two nations is a step forward, and a result of all the pressure that has been brought to bear over the past two years. Better late than never, but it is still just the beginning…” — Mark Weisbrot, More Pressure Necessary to Get Desperately Needed Clean Water to Haiti}

The rescuers have mostly been hard at work re-imaging the Haiti occupation, giving a civil face to the Duvalierists, opening Haiti up for business in the time of cholera,  fragmenting Haiti’s voices, denying the horrible evil and international crime scene that Haiti is. Denying the masses’ struggle for fair elections since 2004, obfuscating the main issue which is that Haiti is illegally, unjustly occupied by the US and Paul Farmer’s NGOtocracy ; that Western aid is MEANT and STRUCTURED to fail; that the Haiti majority must take back their sovereignty, Haiti’s mineral and oil wealth must stop being denied and pillaged. The US corporatocracy and Ngotocracracy occupation behind UN proxy guns MUST end.  Vicious US imperialism in Haiti, its outright aggressions and uses of the UN peacekeepers to cover this up, its uses of Americans like Bill Clinton at the UN and the Paul Farmer NGOtocracy as its tool of mayhem, of oppressive Haiti decision-making and rule cannot be discounted, ignored or denied.

The U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Susan E. Rice, has put the whole matter in context thus:

“The truth is:  the UN Security Council can’t even issue a press release without America’s blessing.  The UN depends entirely on its member states, not the other way around. When the UN stumbles, it’s usually because its members stumble—because big powers duck tough issues in the Security Council or spoilers grandstand in the General Assembly. As one of my predecessors, the late Richard Holbrooke, was fond of saying, ‘Blaming the UN when things go wrong is like blaming Madison Square Garden when the Knicks play badly.’”

The US is the respondeat superior for the UN crimes in Haiti. The US is calling the shots at the UN on Haiti (along, to a lesser extent, with France and Canada) as the original Haiti regime change initiators. Together, these member states at the UN are jointly and severally liable for the UN harm done to Haiti since February 29, 2004, including legally responsible and sharing liability for the UN bringing in cholera, for slaughtering innocent Haitians in the populous neighborhoods en mass, for the raging impunity of their  re-imaged death-squads and neoDuvalierists civilian fronts and for the rotten child molesting and other crimes perpetrated against defenseless Haiti civilians. There can be no Haiti justice outside of this Haiti context and narrative. Period, no comma.

***

The UN, its Haiti policy-making member states and its other neocolonial partners are attempting to collect $2.2 billion more misery funds on imported foreign misery to Haiti while planning to further privatize clean water to dodge public accountability. Yet, this blatant money laundering scheme is seen by the UN apologists as “some” justice, an authentic good for Haiti and the cholera victims? ([ezilidanto] USAID/Chemonics/UN/PAHO/NGOtocracy in Haiti continues to play arsonist and firemen; The U.N. has requested $2.2 billion to battle a cholera epidemic in Haiti that has killed nearly 8,000 people since 2010.; and Unease over UN bid to eradicate Haiti cholera and Audit: USAID Haiti work ‘not on track’).

The whole colonial disaster capitalism model is so disturbingly, boringly predictable and horrid.

Below is  the HLLN letter to UN/PAHO  back six months ago when the UN had their first or was it their second such public “unveiling” on how to end cholera in Haiti? The UN keeps talking to raise funds for their peacekeeping presence in Haiti, keep cunningly  and repeatedly “unveiling” their privatization plans for Haiti water and no justice for Haiti.  (Back in March 2010, Bill and Hillary Clinton held a similar champagne pledging party at the UN where numbers in the billions were blithely cast about for a first 10-year relief and reconstruction plan to “rebuilt Haiti back better.” This was after the earthquake and seven months before cholera hit Haiti in October 2010. The same funds pledged then that went uncollected are part of the $215million being re-pledged for the UN’s newest 10-year initiative in Haiti. This is US-Euro pillage in Haiti, masking as humanitarian aid.)

The mainstream media and humanitarian progressives willingly swallow the manipulative lies, ignore that foreign aid is about creating jobs for foreigners and selling foreign products and services abroad. Life worsens for Haitians in Haiti when the world’s public are made to foolishly believe these spinning of wheels and high-tech money laundering schemes are about “helping Haitians.” Justice deferred is justice denied.

Just days after the October 2010 UN cholera deaths began, Ezili’s HLLN pointed out, in an interview with broadcaster Yves Point Dujour, that “the accused UN cannot investigate itself…the genocide going on in Haiti is obvious … we’re looking at the evil but we don’t want to compute it.”

It’s not surprising to Haitians that the UN continues to deny liability for their gross and criminal negligence, for bringing death to Haiti.

We know about the Ottawa Initiative. We live the fear of the immigration deportations and unequal immigration policies.  We deal each and every nightmarish day of this US hidden occupation with why there is a UN, Chapter 7 peace-enforcement mission in Haiti for 9 years. A country not at war, without a peace agreement to enforce and with less violence than most countries in the Western Hemisphere. Their imported disease provides the opportunity to  accidentally kill 8000 Haitians, infect over 620,000,  raise and launder more taxpayer and donor country monies, sell more Paul Farmer pharmaceuticals, write more Nicholas Kristof/Tracy Kidder  white savior partisan pieces, experiment on the sick as guinea pigs with never-before-used-in-an-epidemic cholera vaccines,  stay in Haiti for their 10-year plan to capitalize on cholera: playing arsonists and firemen.

As long as troubled bridges conveniently integrate with – flow or crumble into – the waters of injustice, the world will not change.

Ezili Dantò of HLLN
December 14, 2012
(revised)

*****

Washington Justice For Haiti:
In support of Paul Farmer’s pharmaceuticals and the Farmer groups – Brian Concannon/IDJH – asking the UN to judge itself guilty on behalf of Haiti cholera victims, Washington Post opines, justice for the Haiti cholera victims would be collectively awarding $40million to Paul Farmer pharmaceuticals for cholera vaccines
( Haiti: Ezili Dantò on Wash Post Cholera editorial.)

Avatar Haiti in full force with foreigners

US/Euro humanitarian aid masks the feudal pillage and plunder currently going on behind the UN/US military occupation.

The White Savior Industrial Complex

“Nicholas Kristof, columnist for the New York Times says the white savior is a “bridge” character. A bridge to where? White supremacy and cultural hegemony? Some bridges ought to burn down.

Neither Haitians nor Africans want your pity, your World Bank, NGO or IMF false charity. Just give us a fair price for our natural resources. Tell the white saviors to go to Washington or London or Paris, tell their own and the US/Euros and UN Security Council tyrants to stop blocking democratic elections and governance, allow the one-person-one-vote to count so that Haitians. Africans, Palestanians and the masses everywhere may push common good interests, live in dignity to provide for their own sons, daughters, for their own country’s public infrastructure needs.

Nicholas Kristof and the NYT ought to bring attention to US oppression and aggression in Africa that caused the humanitarian needs in the first place. But he continues the “Caucasians-are-the-center-of-the-planet” colonial narrative – puts a bandage on plunder, helps prolongs Black and indigenous world suffering. Kristof’s reason for perpetuating the Tarzan idiocy for his New York Times audience is self-indulgent and as racist as it’s lazy and cowardly.” –Ezili Danto, Nov. 28, 2012

—–Original HLLN Message to UN/Paho/WHO on 10year plan—–
From: zili danto <erzilidanto@yahoo.com>
To: Dicksonc@paho.org
Sent: Fri, Jun 22, 2012 1:39 am
Subject: Request to peruse and comment on proposed 10 year plan by PAHO/UN to
eradicate cholera in Haiti to be unveiled June 29 at OAS

Ezili HLLN Forwarded Mail
*************************

Ms. Catherine Dickson
Advisor, Program and Policy
Office of the Deputy Director
Dicksonc@paho.org

Dear Ms. Dickson

Re: 10 year plan by PAHO/UN to eradicate cholera in Haiti to be unveiled June
29 at OAS office in Washington DC.

This is Ezili Dantò from HLLN. Would you kindly forward to our email at -
erzilidanto@yahoo.com -  a copy of the proposed PAHO/UN declaration as well as
a draft of the 10-year plan to eradicate cholera on the Island of Haiti.

It’s our understanding that there will be ”a June 29th meeting in Washington
to unveil a 10-year plan based on health awareness and water purification to
completely eradicate the cholera epidemic on the Island occupied by Haiti and
Dominican Republic. This plan we are advised is to be unveiled by PAHO and OAS
at the OAS building in Washington DC, on June 29th, 2012, from 12 p.m. to 2:30
p.m.”

As a Haiti-led, Haiti-capacity building community and international organization which has been actively involved in informing our over 3million
constituents and countless Haiti community-leaders and grassroots organizations about UN cholera importation to Haiti from October 2010 to the present, we are most interested in any plans of the UN that would admit liability from negligently bringing cholera to Haiti and arrange a binding settlement for cleaning up its environmental toxins from Haiti waterways. We do hope that this is what your PAHO, June 29th meeting is about, and not a pretext for the usual NGOtocracy’s disaster capitalizing on foreign imported misery to provide more work and income for themselves over a 10-year span with no oversight or accountability to Haiti people or the various Haiti victims.

Certainly Ezili’s HLLN has a vested interests in perusing this plan and participating in its construction. You must know that we indigenous Haitians at Ezili’s HLLN feel excluded from all decision-making processes that the UN/PAHO/WHO has so far undertaken to alleviate the deadly consequences of the
UN MINUSTAH troops bringing the worst cholera epidemic on planet earth to
Haiti. Justice, equity, and a moral compass would instruct a different UN and
necessarily WHO/PAHO manner of dealing with Haiti victims of cholera, both the
physical and psychological consequences its wrought on our defenseless nation
and peoples.

It is our understanding, Ms. Dickson, that the ”goal of this meeting is to gather support from Haiti key-partners and community-leaders around the decision-makers such as the Ministers of Health from both Haiti and Dominican
Republic, the DINEPA and all authorities involved in the battle against the
cholera epidemic.”

From what we’ve read, supposedly invitations to this PAHO/UN/OAS sponsored
meeting is limited to a selected few, a group of less than 75.

We’d like to request, at a minimum that the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
(HLLN), which represents Haiti human rights in general and thousands of the
cholera victims in particular, be given access to this PAHO/UN plan, its
method of accountability and independent non-UN oversight parameters so we may
properly peruse this proposal and share it with our public Ezili Network.
Simple justice and moral conscience dictates such grassroots, Haiti-led
participation in the construction of the UN plan to begin to rectify its
wrong.

Ezili’s HLLN looks forward to receiving your information on how UN/PAHO plans
to remove the UN-toxin and provide sustainable (human, economic,
environmental) water and sanitation infrastructure for Haiti sufferers.

Best regards,
Ezili Dantò
President, Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
June 22, 2012
*

UN launches new initiative to eliminate cholera in Haiti and Dominican Republic, Dec. 11, 2012

Regional Coalition for the elimination of cholera in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, June 29, 2012 and International Partners Back Investment in Water and Sanitation to Eliminate Cholera From the Island of Hispaniola

****************************
More Background Information
****************************

Expose the Lies that fragment Haiti opposition to the tyrants, colonial terror
and the NGOtocracy - Free Haiti  

***

“Stop the media lies and UN spin that the protests in Haiti are “political.” That’s just the UN representatives being their normal partisan and bias selves in Haiti. Nothing new there. The facts support the Haitian accusations that the cholera is imported and not from Haiti. The CDC has confirmed this. There is no doubt that UN Nepalese fecal matter has been improperly disposed and dumped into Haiti’s rivers and waterways. Would you, as parents, not be up in arms if it were your babies, your children, your mother, son, daughter, aunt, friends, family – your loved ones – who where dying from a foreigners’ gross criminal negligence? The UN’s attempts at dehumanizing the Haiti protestors who are parents, mothers, fathers, grieving friends, and dismissing their concerns clearly evidences that they are not a true “peacekeeping” force. Besides which, the island people of Haiti have been asking for an end to the UN occupation for quite some time, and have a long memory of US/Euro abuses at the hands of the “more civilized.” Haitians are the Tainos, the Comanches, the Cherokees and Cholera is small pox in a blanket. The accused UN cannot investigate itself. (See, Haiti’s case against the UN for importing cholera epidemic ).

The only ones interested in the upcoming Nov. 28 elections are not the Haitian people who have been disenfranchised since Bush Regime change 2004, but the US corporate interests bent on consolidating their anti-democratic power and getting Rwanda genocide death numbers in Haiti. Spread the truth about the corporatocracy’s arrogance, ethnic cleansing and privatizations in Haiti led by Obama’s appointed Clinton/Bush Fund and over 16,000 NGOs. Ask President Obama and the US Congress to withdraw from Haiti, stop blocking investment in the PEOPLE, water treatment plants, sewage treatment plants, roads, public sector jobs, health care, education, self-determination and sovereignty.” (See, Avatar Haiti: November 18, 2010 Vertieres Rememberances — What Can YOU Do to Stop the neo-feudalism in Haiti? – http://bit.ly/bGLivk )” — Excepted from a November 21, 2010 Ezili Danto post entitled “Haitians dehumanized as violent “insurgents” : Pedophile Perlitz takes advantage of the dehumanization, tries to postpone his sentencing.”

Poverty Pimps masturbating on Black pain: Monsanto joins the pack

While we are still a long way from implementation, there are important lessons to be learned from this experience.

Perhaps most importantly, it shows that organized political pressure can work.

There have been protests from many thousands of Haitians, and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti went to the U.N. to file for damages and reparations.

Many other groups and individuals kept the issue in the news and wouldn’t let it go away, as much as the U.N. and powerful governments wanted it to disappear.Newspaper editorial boards such as those of the New York Times and the Boston Globe called on the U.N. to take responsibility for the disaster that it caused.As a result of grassroots organizing, the majority of Democrats in the U.S House of Representatives signed a letter to the same effect. Still, the U.N. has continued to deny its responsibility despite conclusive scientific and forensic evidencethat its troops had brought the disease from South Asia, and transmitted it by dumping human waste into a tributary of Haiti’s main water supply.This was gross negligence of the highest order. Haiti is especially vulnerable to this type of a water-borne disease because of its lack of clean water and sanitation. Troops coming from areas where cholera was present should have been adequately screened and tested, and of course there is no excuse for their reckless disregard in polluting the Artibonite river with the deadly bacteria. In March of this year, Bill Clinton, U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti, admitted that the U.N military mission was responsible for the deadly outbreak, but the organization maintains its denial.Tuesday’s announcement by the governments of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, together with the U.N., of a 10-year plan to eradicate cholera from the island shared by the two nations is a step forward, and a result of all the pressure that has been brought to bear over the past two years. Better late than never, but it is still just the beginning.

In the first place the plan is much too slow.

This is an ongoing national health emergency:  About 700 people have been killed by cholera just since the first rains began in April, 167 of them since Hurricane Sandy caused widespread flooding.  But this is a 10-year plan.  We are still looking at several years before serious work begins to provide Haiti with the clean drinking water and sanitation needed to get rid of cholera. According to the most recent data from the World Bank, only 69 percent to “improved drinking water” and just 17 percent have access to “improved sanitation,” defined in the plan as “flush toilets, septic tanks, ventilated improved pit latrines, and composting toilets.”Among the poorest 20 percent, only 1 percent has access to improved water and more than 90 percent “practice open air defecation.” The necessary infrastructure work should begin immediately, not years from now.Haiti is a very small country, smaller than the state of Maryland, with 10 million people.  There is no civil war or violence that would prevent or delay the construction of water and sanitation facilities.  The two-year delay in even announcing a plan has been tremendously costly in human lives; this plan needs to be implemented immediately and much faster than it appears to be scheduled for.Meanwhile, even the funds for treatment of people with cholera are lacking.  One of the most important non-governmental organizations in Haiti, Partners in Health, says that its U.S. funding for cholera treatment runs outin February.In 2012 the U.N. requested just $30 million for cholera treatment, yet only 34 percent of this has been raised. There were 205 cholera treatment units and 61 cholera treatment centers last August; by June, these had fallen to 38 and 17, respectively.And that is perhaps the biggest problem: for all the talk of “building back better” after the earthquake nearly three years ago, very little has been delivered.  Of $5.3 billion pledged by governments to help Haiti, just $2.8 billion (53 percent) has been disbursed.  (For the U.S., it is $250 million of $900 million pledged, or just 28 percent.)So now we have the U.N. once again putting its hand out for money, for a 10-year plan to deal with a national emergency that has not even been nearly adequately dealt with over the last two years, with treatment facilities two years in a row closed just before the rainy season caused a spikein cholera infections.  It is not a promising track record; rather a track record of broken promises.With that in mind, thousands of people around the world have already signed a petition– initiated late last week by film director Oliver Stone – to keep up the pressure to accelerate this project and make sure that it actually happens.It’s the least that the international community can do, after all of the suffering it has inflicted on Haiti in recent yearsas well as centuries:  just clean up some of their own mess.

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy. 

******

Haiti seeks $2bn for cholera epidemic ‘introduced by UN peacekeepers’

Nepalese troops thought to be source of disease that has killed 7,500 – more than violence that brought peacekeepers to Haiti

by Jonathan Watts, The Guardian, Nov, 29, 2012

“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots” -Marcus Garvey

“…Father Jean Juste (“Jyeri”) died because of his wrongful imprisonment, mostly based on RNDDH lies and here it is Jacqueline Charles and the Miami Herald is quoting RNDDH as if they were some legitimate human rights organization.

Former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune spent years wrongfully jailed. Thousands of young Haiti men were warehoused in indefinite detentions, without trial, in Haiti since 2004 because of the lies of the RNDDH, the myth of Haiti’s violent street gangs threatening the nation, also substantiated by Mark Scheider’s International Crisis Group studies or by Transparency International corruption index, along with the Haiti Democracy Project. All along, the violence came from the former coup detat military, the coup d’etat oligarchs who were bringing in arms to Haiti to secure their repugnant rule; to legitimize and bring back the Duvalierist dictators while legally disenfranchising the masses with selections the Internationals call elections…. But today we read, from the Miami Herald…”

Ezili Dantò’s Note on Miami Herald article on the Brandt kidnapping ring

Ezili Dantò of HLLN

Unless you’re brainwashed and subdued, no Haiti justice advocate reads Jacqueline Charles at the Miami Herald except to get a handle on the State Department narrative on a particular Haiti issue. Otherwise, why bother with Miami Herald’s consistent partisan, pro-UN occupation imperialistic missives on Haiti? They are only adapt at issuing US State Department bulletins on Haiti in the format of an article.

One month too late, Jacqueline Charles’ bosses finally allowed some meaty mainstream media coverage of the Clifford Brandt kidnapping ring. (See, High-profile arrest of member of Haiti’s elite in kidnap ring rocks society by Jacqueline Charles, Miami Herald, November 20, 2012 ; HLLN coverage on Oct. 22, 2012 at Haiti: Brandt Busted as Clintons with Hollywood celebrate sweatshop.)

Until this article, and since the US kidnapping of President Aristide in 2004, Miami Herald has not failed to paint kidnappings in Haiti “as a deadly trend spawn out of Haiti’s ghettos, a quick way for thugs to get money off the misery and heartbreak of desperate family members.” The “Haiti thugs” are never the US-supported thieves; corrupt oligarchs living in the hilltop suburbs, the NGO invaders, UN molesters or coup detat murderers that the Miami Herald have legitimized for decades.

In the article, Ms. Charles fails to confess that her Haiti apartheid-promoting paper was the main racist culprit to consistently give all that’s wrong in Haiti an African face, an Aristide face. And all that’s heroic, a do-gooder Caucasian, Eurocentric Uncle Tom or light-skinned bourgeoisie oligarch face. (Ezili’s HLLN Blasts Miami Herald’s Coverage of Jean Juste Memorial – Reports the Counter-Colonial Narrative)

But Ms. Charles does make a pretty whopping confession that is worthy of note. She writes, “…the FBI has become involved in the kidnapping ring.” It’s a typo most likely, but a very entertaining one. In fact, I was so amused today by her article on the Brandt kidnapping for all that it failed to say.

The Miami Herald article fails to mention that Father Gerarld Jean Juste (“Jyeri”) died because of his wrongful imprisonment, mostly based on Pierre Lesperance’s National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH) lies and here it is Jacqueline Charles and the Miami Herald are quoting RNDDH’s report on the Brandt case, as if they were some legitimate human rights organization. (Coup detat RNDDH is a bogus NCHR human rights group funded for anti-democracy work by the US anti-democratic forces.)

The Miami Herald article doesn’t mention the 2005 Stanley Handal arrest for kidnapping, nor the current allegations of his continued involvement as well as the confession by Brandt that reportedly names the son of Macoute Martelly as a member of this high-level mafia network.

Of course, not. Ms. Charles does say, however, that the Miami Herald has, in hand, the 30-page police report that contains Clifford Brandt’s confession. Brandt confessed, she selectively reports, to being the head of the elite kidnapping gang, which also dealt in money laundering and illegal arms trafficking.

The first two paragraphs of Ms. Charles article sets the stage for the spins, says so much to those of us who have slammed Miami Herald for nearly 9-years now for their Neocon, pro-coup detat spins and racist bourgeoisie viewpoints on Haiti.

If there is one polarizing newspaper in America for Haitians that constantly ignores the dispossessed workers, the international exploitation, oppression of Haiti and colonial reasons for the severe inequality in Haiti, it’s Miami Herald and the pro-Neocon Jacqueline Charles articles. Not many other US reporters have demonized Haiti’s democratically elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide, who advocated for more progressive policies towards the poor,
more vitriolically, consistently or with more catastrophic effect than Miami Herald and Ms. Charles’ articles. Of course, that necessarily means, she continues to report on the violent bandits in Site Soley, Gran Ravine and the populous areas making it necessary for a UN/US protectorate, loss of Haiti sovereignty.

Former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune spent years wrongfully jailed. Thousands of young Haiti men were warehoused in indefinite detentions, without trial, in Haiti since 2004 because of the lies and misinformation of RNDDH, the myth of Haiti’s violent street gangs threatening the nation as being Haiti’s BIGGEST problem. All along, MOST of the orchestrated Haiti violence and instability came from some of the pro-coup detat Duvalierist military and the coup d’etat oligarchs who were bringing in arms into Haiti to secure their repugnant rule. (See, Haiti: A time bomb which must be defused immediately; Statement of Facts of former Prime minister Yvon Neptune Pénitencier National to US Ambassador James B. Foley, Port-au-Prince, Haïti, August 23, 2004.)

But today we read, in her first paragraph from the Miami Herald on the Brandt mafia that: “When Haiti National Police moved in to arrest the handsome, well-dressed man on kidnapping charges, it blew the lid off a deep, dark secret: No one is immune to the country’s newest crime wave.”

That’s the first big Miami Herald lie.

Kidnapping in Haiti is not “the country’s newest crime wave.” Haiti is an international crime scene. It began, most recently, in 2004 when the US Special Forces, with the complicity of Canadian and French troops, helped to kidnap the democratically elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide out of Haiti. That’s when the “country’s newest crime wave” began.

This kidnapping by the US, emboldened its wealthy blan peyi elites to meter out the same punishment whenever they wanted to extort something quick in Haiti. Racism, white supremacy, and the tools of humanitarian imperialism protected them. (False Caracol jobs, False aid, charity, housing for Haiti is the pretext for the fake humanitarians to steal Haiti sovereignty,land, and resources; Haiti Riches is the reason for the US occupation behind UN mercenary troops and the fake humanitarians.)

0.5 percent in Haiti, the Haiti oligarchy own 98% of Haiti’s wealth through monopolies orchestrated by Western policymakers and corporations. Racism allowed all the coup detat kidnappings and corporatocracy murders to be blamed on the (African) bandits in Site Soley, Solino, Belair, Matissant, Gran Ravine. And no US newspaper helped this bloody enterprise to disenfranchise and silence the Haiti masses along, more than the Miami Herald. (To hear the voice of the voiceless saying “We are not the Kidnappers“; UN shoot, killing young Jonas in Haiti at student protest . “I saw UN shot at crowd, said Elie, 25″; Haiti rights repealed ; Haiti: Free Miller, Belizaire, Zaza. )

Of course, that necessarily means, the Miami Herald and most of the mainstream corporate media painted the Haiti masses as the most violent peoples in the Western Hemisphere, although that is blatantly untrue.

Why is there a UN, Chapter 7 peace enforcement mission in Haiti for 8 years? A country not at war, without a peace agreement to enforce and with less violence than most countries in the Western Hemisphere?  (See the UN’s own Global Study on Homicide at page 93 ).

The first paragraph starts with a premise, the Brandt arrest blew the lid off previous misconceptions but doesn’t quite follow through and make that statement. It says:

“When Haiti National Police moved in to arrest the handsome, well-dressed man on kidnapping charges, it blew the lid off a deep, dark secret: No one is immune to the country’s newest crime wave.”

Of course no one is immune to criminal behavior. That’s not a deep dark secret! Every human being – white, Black, poor, rich, educated, illiterate – may choose to participate in criminal actions. No? In certain circumstances, those who are poor may have more survival reasons for entering into illegal activities, but every person chooses and are ultimately responsible for their actions.

But the article opines the Brandt arrest shows: No one is immune to the country’s newest crime wave.”

What does that mean, except this arrest is the exception to the rule? No? Or that the deep dark secret is that Haiti is so naturally criminal even the beautiful, well-dressed people get contaminated, uhm tainted against their will into criminal actions? Right at the first paragraph, the Miami Herald sets the tone, talks in coded words to let us know that this behavior of Brandt contradicts the norm – even the rich she implies are not “immune” to being murderers, money-launderers and kidnappers, which obviously, in Haiti, is the province of the huddled black masses? That’s the deep dark prejudice alright. Although only a racist would think, much less write that the well-dressed, light-skinned and Eurocentric handsome are not natural murderers, rapists and kidnappers.

If the actual truth were to be told, perhaps the Miami Herald would have written that the deep dark secret is that the poor have been unfairly criminalized when in fact it’s the rich in Haiti, who are the intellectual authors of the high profiled kidnapping cases. It’s the rich who own car dealerships with GPS functions to track their marks, who own banks with lots of customers making deposits, who have access to high society, to foreign embassies, to travel visas, police uniforms, cars and monies to purchase the brawn of the police or the street gang and can carry out the extortions, drug trafficking, arms trafficking, money laundering, rapes and murders with impunity. And, contrary to the racist norm, Brandt  criminal leaders are suddenly, unexpectedly not immune or exempt from arrest in Haiti. Why is this kidnapping ring suddenly exposed, now that’s the real, deep dark secret. The elephant in the room no Miami Herald State Department Bulletin will tackle.

Instead, this article exposing the murders and kidnappings – that the little guy in Site Soley has consistently had to unjustly pay for, be imprisoned for, die for – were the crimes of their precious oligach-collaborators seems to have been too heartbreaking for the Miami Herald to write. Lol. In the last paragraph, the article quotes a businessman who says:

“You always assumed that kidnapping didn’t have a face,” said a businessman who negotiated his kidnapped son’s release after eight day in the summer of 2008. “Now it has a face.”

So, although at the end, the article acknowledges and gives up a “face” of Haiti’s wave of violence – a rich US citizen, born of a prominent Haiti family, a member of the wealthy business classes. You sort of have to piece together the first paragraph with the last as the first paragraph manages to express the normal editorial racism of the Miami Herald, who expressly editorialize, in sum, that they’ve always assumed kidnapping in Haiti had a poor and ill-dressed ghetto youth face -  the rich were not tainted, were immune to criminality.

The only worthy reason to read the colonial stuff Miami Herald writes about Haiti is if you’re looking for the amusing Freudian slip-ups – the length Jacqueline Charles and her colleagues at the Herald will go to cuddle whatever US-selected puppet that’s imposed on the Haitian people since Gerald Latortue and his Boca Raton regime.

A few paragraphs later in the article, Miami Herald alludes to it when Ms. Jacqueline Charles quotes that other State Department mouthpiece,  Mark Schneider from the International Crisis Group, or Transparency International, who are practically trotted out, every October or so of each year, to tell all and sundry how VIOLENT and CORRUPT Haiti is, just in time for the annual renewal of the UN mandate.

Commenting on the Brandt arrest, that repugnant paid-grunt, with innocent Haiti blood on his hands, says:

“One would hope this represents a major step forward for the HNP in terms of its capacity and its ability to enforce the law,” said Mark Schneider, senior vice president for the International Crisis Group, which has published numerous reports on Haiti’s security challenges since kidnapping became more prevalent starting in 2004 – after the ouster of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Kidnapping in Haiti has traditionally been both a criminal enterprise with political objectives,” Schneider said. “And one hopes the arrests reflect a determination to halt that enterprise.”

Lol. Lol. Lol. Ok. I can’t stop laughing out loud. Sometimes this work is just hilarious.

Alright, so you all know the Martelly/Lamothe government is the darling of the Clintons/Obama administration and that Mrs. Clinton is personally vested as well as her husband in their “success” in Haiti. For, uhmm, MORE romantic, ultra glamorous, high profiled-Hollywood-sweatshop openings and tourism in the time of cholera type initiatives. ( Haiti: They don’t have bread? Give ‘em Carnival ; Haiti is open for business on top of  our decomposed bodies, crushed bones, intense grief and ground water contaminated by UN-diseased feces.)

By far, the most telling faux pas, in Jacqueline Charles/Miami Herald’s coverage of the Brandt kidnapping, is this:

“At the request of the Haitian government, the FBI HAS BECOME INVOLVED in the kidnapping ring.”(emphasis added)

I bet they have!

Or, were the three lettered folks always there, up in the Petionville suburb since the first kidnapping in 2004? And don’t forget, Miami Herald, since you’re confessing, that the US military started it and became “involved in kidnapping” in Haiti first. So give credit where credit is due. (Eyewitness account of the abduction of President and First Lady Aristide of Haiti by the United States Special Forces)

The messages in this piece are important in varied ways and at many levels.

The lies of the La Scierie Massacre and Operation Bagdad (Bajeux -CEDH) created by Pierre Lesperance of the NCHR/RNDDH and reinforced the Haiti Democracy Project folks in the US, gave the UN forces the pretext between 2004 and 2006 for attacking Site Soley, Gran Ravine, Solino, Belair, Martissant, Cap Haitian and for murdering the innocent poor, living in these areas, who wanted a better economic division of Haiti’s wealth and were presumed to have voted for president Aristide. (See, NCHR and the Media Cannibals). The pressure to kill was so ugly and blatant that at one point,even the UN Brazilian commander refused to do the killings biddings of the Haiti oligarchy and US regime changers. He was found to have committed suicide at his hotel under mysterious circumstances.

Respected Haiti human rights icon, Ronald St. Jean, for one, thoroughly debunked the lies of the coup detat NCHR/RNDDH on their La Scierie massacre. But, if you were following Miami Herald at that time, you would not know that RNDDH was totally discredited for its lies and propaganda about massacres committed by pro-Aristide supporters. Would not have seen any reports showing that when RNDDH was asked to prove its allegation that there had been a massacre in La Scierie, a crime for which Yvon Neptune and many others were falsely accused, it reportedly said that all “the bones including the skulls were eaten by dogs!”

But the evidence of their perfidy lives on. Caused enormous sufferings. Jacqueline Charles, Miami Herald, RNDDH, Jean Claude Bajeux‘s organizations, Mark Schneider, all of these folks, effectively remained silent about the facts or were outlets for the coup detat spins that lied about Father Gerald Jean Juste, lied about So Ann, lied about the young men and women in Site Soley. (HLLN Tribute to Father Gerald Jean Juste; HLLN Honors Yvon Neptune, July 29, 2006.)

These lies  and misinformation absolved the coup detat killers, destabilize Haiti for corporate interests under the guise of exposing corruption.

It’s sickening. We fought too much, too many of our heroes like father Jean Juste were put in jail, others denied political asylum because of fake human rights organizations like RNDDH, because of the mainstream lies that President Aristide was a dictator in charge of death squads, because of the countless articles written in the Miami Herald against the democratically elected government from 2000 to 2004 and the International Crisis Group State Department bulletins. To have Jacqueline Charles cite RNDDH and the International Crisis Group as legitimate human rights sources when they’ve been caught in their lies by the jaw-dropping arrest of one of their coup detat collaborators is simply appalling. Disgusting. These opportunist are the ones maintaining the impunity in Haiti.

I conclude by noting that the US/Euro corporatocracy, ruling Haiti with their local elites and trained men-in-black, ought to recall February 29, 2004 and the bi-centennial coup d’état, our call to the Ancestors, whose ways are serpentine, not linear, and take to heart “kidnappings remind us of slavery, and people can’t handle that.”

Pa bliye kolon pa t janm ka vann Lwa Wangòl lan mache Kwa Bossal

Ezili Dantò of HLLN
Li led li la
November 20, 2012
In remembrance of Vertieres, disengagement is not an option,
Grenadye alaso

Written 2005. HLLN denounces the self-described progressives of Haiti, the White Saviors openly collaborate w/UN occupiers and later, with RNDDH

HLLN Honors Yvon Neptune, July 29, 2006

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La Scierie Massacre/Yvon Neptune -the lies of RNDDH

“Yvon Neptune accused of participating in the “La Scierie Massacre,” an
alleged attack by Lavalas supporters in the La Scierie neighborhood of St.
Marc. Subsequent investigations, including by the United Nations, revealed the
massacre to be a struggle between two armed groups, with casualties on both
sides. The Haitian Appeals Court prosecutor found that there was no credible
evidence of Mr. Neptune’s involvement. Lawyers at the Inter-American
Commission of Human Rights said that the statement of charges “contain[ed] no
indication that Mr. Neptune directly perpetuated the crimes alleged against
him nor is there a clearly defined connection between Mr. Neptune and those
who are alleged to have perpetrated the crimes…The mental and factual
elements necessary to establish Mr. Neptune’s responsibility…remain entirely
unclear.”

In May 2006, the Haitian prosecutor recommended dropping the charges against
Neptune, because there was no credible evidence to support them.

After spending two years in prison and never having been tried, he was
released on July 28, 2006.[4][5] The charges against him were not dropped; he
was released on health and humanitarian grounds. Hundreds of other members or supporters of the deposed Aristide administration remained in custody without
trial.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yvon_Neptune ; See also Statement of Facts of former Prime minister Yvon Neptune Pénitencier National to US Ambassador James B. Foley, Port-au-Prince, Haïti, August 23, 2004.)

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High-profile arrest of member of Haiti’s elite in kidnap ring rocks society

http://bit.ly/106b0fd

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — When Haiti National Police moved in to arrest the
handsome, well-dressed man on kidnapping charges, it blew the lid off a deep,
dark secret: No one is immune to the country’s newest crime wave.

Until now, kidnapping was painted as a deadly trend spawn out of Haiti’s
ghettos, a quick way for thugs to get money off the misery and heartbreak of
desperate family members.

But this was different. This was Clifford Brandt, the 40-year-old, well-heeled
son of a prominent businessman who would eventually confess to his role in the
abduction of the adult son and daughter of a business rival.

For the past few weeks, the “Brandt affair” has been on the tongues of
everyone, from the bourgeoisie to the poor masses in and out of Haiti. It has
become the country’s latest flashpoint, igniting anger and drawing a crowd of
thousands Monday in the coastal village of Jacmel in Southeast Haiti after a
man was killed trying to save his 3-year-old nephew snatched by kidnappers in
the middle of the night from his mother’s bed.

This was the second time in weeks the Jacmel population rose up against
kidnappers.

“Haitians can take a lot of things, even an assassination,” said Reginald
Delva, secretary of state for public security. “But kidnappings remind us of
slavery, and people can’t handle that.”

Still, victims or families rarely discuss their kidnapping publicly, for fear
of being targeted again, or even killed. The crime remains shrouded in
secrecy.

Observers say the high-profile Brandt arrest provides a glimmer of hope that
the struggling Haiti National Police force – after undergoing millions of
dollars in training by the international community – finally may be showing
signs of strengthening. Investigators used cellphone records between Brandt
and other accomplices, including former police officers and an employee of the
victims’ father.

“One would hope this represents a major step forward for the HNP in terms of
its capacity and its ability to enforce the law,” said Mark Schneider, senior
vice president for the International Crisis Group, which has published
numerous reports on Haiti’s security challenges since kidnapping became more
prevalent starting in 2004 – after the ouster of former President Jean-
Bertrand Aristide.

“Kidnapping in Haiti has traditionally been both a criminal enterprise with
political objectives,” Schneider said. “And one hopes the arrests reflect a
determination to halt that enterprise.”

But Brandt’s arrest also illustrates the deep class divisions in this
polarized country, where kidnapping has been regarded as a phenomenon of the
dark-skinned poor – not a crime of the light-skinned elite.

“They are always blaming us for kidnapping, but I’ve always known they were
involved all along,” said Junior Pierre, 28, a moto taxi driver, sitting on a
sidewalk in the Cite Soleil slum. “But in Haiti there is no justice and money
is what talks.”

Investigators said Brandt, who ran his family’s Mazda dealership, had been
under surveillance for months before 22-year-old Nicolas and 23-year-old
Coralie Moscoso were pulled over on Oct. 16 by six armed men impersonating
police officers. It wasn’t until the two were being blindfolded did they
realize they were being kidnapped.

The abductors called banker Robert Moscoso asking for $2.5 million for the
return of his children. Seven days later, with Brandt accompanying them,
police rescued the Moscoso siblings, who were found blindfolded and handcuffed
lying on a filthy mattress in the bathroom of a vacant, two-story mansion.
Police said the kidnappers had been renting the home in Pernier, a Petionville
suburb.

One of Brandt’s lawyers said his arrest was a mistake and his confession had
to do with trying to settle a business score with Robert Moscoso, who also
owns a car dealership.

Police and Haitian officials disagree.

“This is a national network that we have dismantled here, and we have a lot of
people who we are searching for,” said Godson Orelus, the newly appointed head
of the Haiti National Police. “We have cells in other provinces of the country
that we are moving to dismantle.”

So far, 15 people have been arrested, including five police officers. One ex-
cop remains at large. Earlier this month, a high-ranking officer under
investigation in connection to the case was gunned down after dropping his
kids off to school. At the request of the Haitian government, the FBI has
become involved in the kidnapping ring.

In a 30-page police report obtained by The Miami Herald, Brandt confessed to
being the head of a gang, which also dealt in money laundering and illegal
arms trafficking.

A search of his residence turned up arms, ammunitions and $15,000 in Money
Gram receipts sent to someone in the United States.

“Asked about the reasons for the money transfer, the suspect … declared that
the group also was involved in illegal trafficking of arms and guns, and they
financed the buying of these materials,” the report said.

The search turned up what police say was a fake National Palace identification
card, listing Brandt as an “Adviser to the President.” It also turned up
police clothing including ballistic helmets, black combat boots and Haitian
National Police uniforms of pants, jerseys and T-shirts reading “DEA.”

The report revealed the involvement of several current and former Haitian
police officers, one of whom had already been fired after being implicated in
a kidnapping and other criminal activities.

According to the report, police found evidence that Brandt also was working on
a list of future victims. At one point, there was a discussion about “gunning
down” Delva, the secretary of public security, because he had announced the
installation of security cameras around Port-au-Prince to thwart kidnappings.

Haitian officials have said Brandt’s arrest shows they are serious about
ridding Haiti of kidnapping, which has destroyed families, deterred investors
and made Haitians abroad scared to visit their own country.

But Pierre Esperance, head of the National Human Rights Defense Network, still
worries about Haiti’s broken justice system.

He’s concerned about local political interference.

Haiti’s police “have done a very good job in this investigation,” Esperance
said. “But officials have to let justice take its course, and not put pressure
on the justice system.”

Last week, his human rights group blasted Haitian government officials for not
acting on the Moscoso siblings’ kidnapping until they were forced to by the
U.S. government.

Haitian officials dismiss his criticism, saying strong police work lead them
to Brandt.

Authorities said they also are re-interviewing other victims about their
abductions in an effort to tie them to Brandt’s ring.

For many victims, the case has reopened old wounds that make it difficult for
them to speak publicly about their ordeal.

“You always assumed that kidnapping didn’t have a face,” said a businessman who negotiated his kidnapped son’s release after eight day in the summer of 2008. “Now it has a face.”

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Forwarded by Ezili’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
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Wangolo, te vas. Vídeoclip oficial de Daniel Zueras

***Haitian Vodun song about Lwa Wangòl – The historical Wangòl was Angola and its King Wangòl, who fell. After his death, the country was taken over by the Portuguese and has never been the same. The story is repeated in Haiti after the powerful (Bizango) African kings and warriors are gone. The Vodun song expresses the interminable longing of a people for the return of its warriors. Laments that Ayiti has never been the same since the indigenous warriors left, but understands Kolon pa t janm ka vann Lwa Wangòl lan mache Kwa Bossal. Wangòlo, w ale. Kilè w a vini wè m ankò. W ale. Kilè w a vini wè m ankò Peyi a chanje. Kilè w a vini wè m ankò W ale. ***

Ezili Dantò’s Note: In remembrance of Vertieres, disengagement is not an option, Grenadye alaso

- WHAT CAN YOU DO? (On another Vertieres Day under occupation)
Scroll down page – Avatar Haiti or Vertieres Sign the Independence Debt petition. Thank you.

***********************

by Ezili Dantò

In remembrance of Vertieres, disengagement is not an option, Grenadye alaso

Last night, I didn’t catch the Little Girl hanging by one arm over the side of a crowded, overloaded Haitian boat. Last night it was in 2007 that I Capsized. Before that, I crossed death and Capsized in 1997 too.

It’s another November 18th under occupation and I guess you already know what I hide. I write this piece, each year, mostly to find the strength to carry this name until the end.

But two decades of documenting, witnessing, giving homage to the fallen and struggling for justice and to prevent the continuous deaths, sufferings and
incomprehensible hardships has taken its toll. The struggle is tough.

I go back to the Cedras/FRAPH killings from 1991 to 1994; the Latortue/Bush
Regime change slaughters from 2004 to 2006 and the fake foreign-imposed
democracy and elections since. What’s real is the constant Haiti suffering,
grief, death, the racism, white supremacy, interminable NGO fake aid and the
foreign invasions.

Many of us are exhausted, tired of our invisibility.  Distraught. So grieved by the disposability of our children in Haiti:

Last night in 2004 our son, Titus Simpson, laid bleeding on the cold ground.

He was unarmed and listening to music when a foreign bullet tore into his brains.

Last night in 2004, Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste was still alive, reporting for HLLN on the Sanel Joseph and other Site Soley youth killings in 2005, 2004. (See article here:  Ezili Dantò Witness Project.)

Sanel Joseph and three unarmed Haitians shot dead by foreign bullets on
Haiti’s Flag Day, May 18, 2005 – See photo.

- Nov. 16, 2012 – UN kills Haiti youth at peaceful student protest.
See Video.

- 2004 – Titus Simpson, 23, was shot by Haitian Special Forces (CIMO)
with complete US Regime change impunity.

Like you, I am traumatized, so debilitated with the injustice and impunity of
those the world still unquestionably celebrate. (Paul Farmer and World Bank
president Jim Yong Kim exposed.)

The consistency of Caucasian evil in Haiti is covered behind fake humanitarian
aid that makes the unsuspecting white masses feel good. It’s disguised by the former Haiti military high-ups, re-tooled by the US/Euros as Haiti “community police.” Brutal warmongering, slaughtering imperialism hides behind the fake humanitarians, their fake charity, fake Caracol jobs, fake justice, fake democracy, fake benevolence.

Racism and Eurocentricism mandates it. All that’s wrong in Haiti is mostly given an African face. All that’s heroic, a do-gooder caucasian face.

The struggle is fatal. But we cannot disengage. We must fight back fearlessly, continuously; must continue to pay the senseless price, the endless price. (Haiti: The Rebel by Michel Sanon.)

Last night Father Gerald Jean Juste died and left the rest to us. Last night Jonas was shot  and died en route to Vertieres for us.

Recorded last night in 2011, I spoke about how the ruling elites reinforce disengagement; push our tolerance to brutality, greed, violence, corruption
and false charity. Listen. (The entire interview is here. See also, US False Benevolence in Haiti – Time to Remember Bandyo, the Mongoose and Malfini)

The Haiti soul cannot go against its nature, let the vampires win, allow their inhumanity to reign.

For, there is another November 18th Vertieres demonstration against the US,
NGO occupation and their selected government in Haiti going on right now. The un-armed will face the foreign-trained and heavily armed and say aloud “we’re not afraid.”

It takes courage to engage in this thankless battle. But fortunately, we have Vertieres – the final battle against the French where Haiti won its independence as our launching and rallying point. January 1st will be another time for demonstrating, and then May 18, then August 14, and then October 17th and then November 18th next year, all over again, generation after generation, until Haiti is free and our self-described saviors are gone. The Haitian struggle is the greatest David vs. Goliath battle being played out on the face of this planet.

ON THIS NOVEMBER 18, 2012…

On this November 18, 2012, in remembrance of Vertieres, the greatest battle ever won, I recall the thousands of un-named youths in Haiti today, labeled bandit by the powers-that-be after they were shot dead either by UN bullets, the embolden Haiti paramilitary or foreign-trained-towards-self-hatred Haiti
police.

Nothing about the recent unveiling of the Brandt kidnapping and murder ring surprises those of us who have fought for the institutionalization of the rule of law, against the corruption of the Internationals giving contracts to the Clifford Brandt coup d’etat ilks while training and reinstating the former
Haitian soldiers-now-turned-police against peaceful demonstrators and dissenters to the US occupation behind UN mercenary guns. Nothing. (Haiti: Brandt Busted as Clintons with Hollywood celebrate sweatshop; Video – Haiti cursed with vampires.)

On this November 18, as we celebrate Haiti’s triumph over the enslaving nations at the Battle of Vertieres, the greatest battle ever won, I recall father Gerard Jean Juste, father Jean Marie Vincent who paid the ultimate price for freedom. I recall the Haiti women abroad like Sonia Pierre who fought back continuously and all the Haiti women without names who endure, struggle, fight 100times harder each day in Haiti with no respite, ever. To all the Ezili Dantò’s out there, chapo ba manman mwen yo, chapo ba. Nou fè yon sèl kò.

LAST NIGHT

Last night, I didn’t catch the Little Girl hanging by one arm over the side of a crowded, overloaded Haitian boat. Last night it was in 2007 that I Capsized. Before that, I crossed death and Capsized in 1997 too.

Last night, I still had the fortitude to write: “the Lavalas and mass cleansing of the poor in Haiti, like ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, will only serve as a rallying point for the people to fight on until  participatory democracy is institutionalized and the lawful and principled will of the Haitian masses is respected.”

Last night, I still had the life force to listen and document the white settler and Euro tribes’ genocide in Haiti; to define the Ottawa Initiative and document it at “Haiti: A time bomb which must be defused immediately“.

Last night, directly from the streets of Haiti, one student protestor’s words helped us to understand.

It was March 2004 and the US Marines were there to show the UN what the US
wanted done when the cover-up of the low intensity US war on Haiti’s poor with
UN credibility began. The unarmed marcher told HLLN: “It’s unbelievable how
the U.S. Marines stood in the background sometimes as the former disbanded
soldiers and FRAPH soldiers, now in the police, slaughtered the marchers. If
they (the U.S. Marines) weren’t there, the people would take down the hated
soldiers and take back their country.”

Last night on Nov. 16, 2012, I could watch this frantic video of Haiti youths
running in the streets, desperately trying to get Jonas to a doctor. Jonas was
shot by a UN bullet during yet another peaceful student protest (Video of
Jonas’ last breathe may be seen here.)

The UN authorities denied responsibility for killing Jonas, as they have with
UN-imported cholera, as they have with the hundreds of UN rapes, as they did
when, during the funeral of Father Jean Juste, UN troops killed a mourner
while shooting at the crowd of mourners.

The US occupiers and their local elites in Haiti do not wish to see
demonstrations against their inhumanity. Do not want to see Haiti protesting
the rise in tourism while UN cholera kills 8000 poor Haitians, infects 600,000
others.

Haitians are the Tainos, the Comanches, the Cherokees and UN cholera
is small pox in a blanket.

On October 22, 2012, the US commemorated their “progress” since 2004 – begun with the kidnapping Haiti’s democratically elected president – with the inauguration of the Clintons’ Caracol sweatshop battleship, just as it will commemorate the effective genocide of the first nation peoples in the US with a thanksgiving in some November days from now. (On November 18, 2012 on Vertieres Day, Vodouist from Ayiti came together in Ottawa Canada with the indigenous peoples to remember the exterminations, opening doors for the return and undoing. Leo Shetush, the great chief of the Algonquin peoples welcomed all Haitians to feel fully home on the homeland of the great Algonquin peoples. See video here and here.)

Haiti farmers are protesting the high cost of living as Obama with the
Clintons “build back better” with sweatshops paying less than 59cents per hour
on fertile land, displacing farming families. The Haiti masses are being
killed and shot at for protesting the continued destruction of Haiti
agriculture with USAID’s Monsanto dependency; shot at for protesting cholera democracy with a US-selected Haiti president who allegedly uses state monies as his family’s own private ATM, while teachers at universities and doctors at state schools are not paid; while school fees, family fuel, food and housing cannot be paid by unemployed parents.

Jonas died en route. And on this Vertieres day, this November 18th day without
Jonas, Titus, Jean Ristil, Father Jean Juste, Father Jean Marie Vincent, we offer this urgent HLLN appeal. This encouragement to not allow the ruling Euro/US tribes to make you into a zombie; to take away your ability to feel the excruciating
pain that rises when you face your own impotency or when facing the
consistency of their senseless evil and insanity is plain too agonizing.

One thing is certain within all this chaos: our very humanity depends on our
intolerance to this brutality, greed, orchestrated violence, corruption and
false charity in Haiti.

FINDING THE STRENGTH

It hurts unbearably Ayisyen. Many of us, like Jonas, like father Jean Juste
may also die en route, but we cannot hide from the pain of that knowledge,
must not be anesthetized.

Glimpses of our mothers’ nightmares since 2004 in Haiti shows how the US sent
in the UN to preside over 20,000 killings of our families from 2004 to 2006,
mostly all in the populous poor areas and with the Canadians, French and US-
trained “Haiti police” at the front shooting unarmed protestors -that is, when
the UN or the advance U.S. Marine team, wasn’t doing the shooting directly.
(Read here and here .)

Almost a decade later, the hungry, soul tired and sick Haiti protestor still
manages to find the strength to stand up when he/she has no more strength at
all left. This defines what it means to be Ayisyen, to fight fearlessly for
the equitable division of Haiti’s wealth, for democracy, for justice. Liberty or death. Kolon pa t janm ka vann Lwa Wangòl lan mache Kwa Bossal.

On this 209th Vertieres day, we honor Desalin, Toya, Defile, Sanit Belè, Boukman, Makandal, the indigenous army and the 200,000 Haitians who took up arms, fought the European armies, gave their lives in combat for our freedom. Kenbe la Ayisyen. Kouraj. Pa lage.

Ezili Dantò
HLLN
November 18, 2012

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Forwarded by Ezili’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
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*FreeHaiti Nov 18. post - Haiti the Rebel
By Michel Sanon  Haiti http://bitly.com/UcXOI

Kolon pa t janm ka vann Lwa Wangòl lan mache Kwa Bossal

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False Caracol jobs, false aid, false charity, false orphanages and housing for Haiti is the pretext for the FAKE humanitarians to steal Haiti sovereignty, land and  resources http://bit.ly/TwFshH

*
Ezili Dantò speaks on US and NGO invasion in Haiti: The oil and gold in #Haiti
here is the proof. Caracol near Haiti oil reserve. (The Maroon voice)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRUBEwKMobU

*
[ezilidanto] Paul Farmer and World Bank president Jim Yong Kim exposed | Ezili
Danto’s Note on ‘Good Growth at the World Bank? Dying for Capitalism’ by Brian
McKenna and Hans Baer   http://bit.ly/RQdQTt

*
“The right to own property does not extend to the coasts, springs, rivers, water courses, mines and quarries. They are part of the State’s public domain.” – Haitian 1987 Constitution, Section H, Article 36-5. (Illusion is reality – Washington swings high with Haiti’s Carnival King of Haiti -  http://bit.ly/PWrNw9)

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Haiti Riches – reason for US occupation behind UN mercenary troops & the fake
humanitarians http://bit.ly/l960t – Please share and circulate

*
WE ARE THE HAITIANS and we say no to Euro/US corporate chattel enslavement in Haiti right now behind UN transnational guns. The amalgamated African’s call against the profit-over-people barbarian settlers and nations, remains what every Ayisyen Ginen recall and breathes for putting “human” back into humanity for planet earth – E, e, Mbomba, e, e! Kanga Bafyòti. Kanga Mundele. Kanga Ndòki. Kanga yo!(See, SEREMONI BWA KAYIMAN – Ceremony Bwa Kayiman by Ezili Dantò  ; Ezili’s Bwa Kayiman Links and Haiti Epistemology.

*

What is the Ottawa Initiative?
Haiti: A time bomb which must be defused immediately

Why is there a UN, Chapter 7 peace enforcement mission in Haiti for 8 years? A
country not at war, without a peace agreement to enforce and with less
violence than most countries in the Western Hemisphere? (See the UN’s own
Global Study on Homicide at page 93  ).

Why is Haiti the only place in the world where the UN has a Chapter 7 peace
enforcement mission without a peace agreement amongst warring parties to
enforce? Why is the third largest UN peacekeeping mission in the world really
in Haiti? (Haiti: A time bomb which must be defused immediately)

Update: December 9, 2012
Moscoso cousin shot dead

Jules Edouard Moscoso (57), a cousin of the two kidnapped victims of the network of Clifford Brandt was shot dead early Sunday morning December 9, 2012 in his home, 40 meters from a United Nations peacekeeping base in Léogane. Jules Edouard Moscoso, owned Dolphin, a private water company and is the cousin of Sogebank CEO, Robert Moscoso, whose two children, Nicolas and Coralie, were freed by Haiti police on October 22, 2012 after being kidnapped for a ransom of $2.5 million. It is largely suspected that this killing is not unrelated and that it’s the corrupt US cold war kleptocracy  – Haitian elite mafia families – settling scores within their brutal ranks.

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Wealthy Clifford Brandt arrested for kidnapping, victims rescued

Clifford Brandt Kidnapping Ring Busted as Clintons with Hollywood Celebrate Haiti Sweatshop

Oct 23, 2012 (See also, Miami Herald main culprit that criminalized the poor in Haiti as kidnappers.)

On Monday, October 22, 2012, Hollywood helped the Clintons inaugurate the US’s flagship sweatshop at Caracol, Haiti. Outside, protesting Haitians who don’t applaud are arrested and silenced.

This is the best of times for unfettered capitalism and privatization reigning supreme in Haiti above all else. There’s sweatshop industrial openings with

Obama Sec. of State, Hillary Clinton and former President Clinton, celebrate sweatshop opening at Caracol, Haiti. At the bottom in their own country, sad, exploited but dressed-up Haitians frame the Avatar Crew’s feet. October 22, 2012. Photo credit: Larry Downing, AP

Hollywood good-times rolling, romantic moments for Billy and Hillary while billions in misery donation dollars are used to give the South Koreans a free factory, housing and to build cruise ship berths and hotel suites that service the privileged few. Over 400,000 quake victims remain homeless. And, in just two years, UN-imported cholera has killed over 8,000 Haitians and infected over 600,000. But it’s against the US “HOPE”Act law and International financial institutions (IFIs) dictates (that allow for subsidies and bailouts to the Korean and other businesses at this industrial park) for the Haitian government to put public funds into servicing its own people’s public needs. “Leave it to the free market and the NGO business, opine the US rulers in Haiti.”

On Monday, October 22, 2012, another dirty business enterprise was being exposed while the Clintons and their wealthy Hollywood celebrityfriends were showcasing the Caracol hoax, sharing a romantic moment -”opening Haiti,” yet again, with the sharp media propaganda tools of providing relevant “jobs and housing” for Haiti.

Clifford Brandt, son of the wealthy Fritz Brandt and a member of one of Haiti’s billionaire families, was arrested at his place of business and put in handcuffs, accused of being the mastermind behind an organized kidnapping ring in Haiti.

According to Haiti officials, Clifford Brandt admitted his involvement in several kidnappings including the October 16, 2012 kidnapping on Bourdon Road of Coralie (23) and Nicolas Moscoso (24), two members of another wealthy Haiti family.  On Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2012 at 3:am, the morning after his arrest, interrogation and confession, Brandt took police to the place where the two young Moscoso adults were being held. Police freed them.

Clifford Brandt is the managing director of Mazda dealership in Delmas Haiti.

“His activity, indicated the Secretary of State for Public Security, Reginald Delva, “was to come to Haiti from his home in Miami, collect the ransom monies from his kidnapping enterprise in Haiti ”

Local Haitians call this foreign-authored organized criminal activity: Ayisyen kidnape, Blan fè pri.

In a Haiti radio public  broadcast, Haiti State Secretary of Public Security, Reginald Delva, interviewed by Gary Pierre Paul for Scoop FM maintains that documents show the kidnapping network Clifford Brandt is involved with demanded U.S. $2.5 million for the release of the two Moscoso victims. This is an on-going investigation explains Mr. Delva. He says authorities found a list of folks Clifford Brandt’s kidnapping ring had “a macabre plan” to kill or kidnap for the coming Christmas season.

^{Oct. 23 2012 Scoop FM interview
of Reginald Delva, State Secretary of Public Security by Gary Pierre Paul}

Sources confirm that this well-connected mafia ring has been in operation for some time wreaking havoc in Haiti.

Many Haiti observers question whether the weak Haiti justice system will be bought out by the Brandt family, as its one of the most prominent families in Haiti where justice is oftentimes for sale. The Brandts’ friends include some of Haiti’s most powerful neocolonial corporate enemies whose  many transnational businesses they give a Haiti subcontractor face to and mostly export all accumulated capital out, impoverishing Haiti, paying little to no taxes or tariffs. (See Haiti: The soul of Africa, not for sale; 05% of Haitians own 98% of Haiti’s wealth – Disaster capitalism; Shock-Doctrine Schooling in Haiti: Neoliberalism Off the Richter Scale; 206 years since Desalin.)

The Untouchables: It will surprise no one in Haiti if this case is suddenly reduced to a rumor despite the photos of Mr. Brandt in handcuffs at the police station and HaitiState Secretary of Public Security, Reginald Delva public statements. Most likely, if the local Haiti authorities who broke this case are not serving a neo-colonial purpose, the ruling imperial hands may have them silenced, marginalized, fired or worse. Those who serve foreign interests, or are well connected enough to these authorities to buy their freedom, do not, like the criminalized Haiti poor, remain in prison.

In 2005, another wealthy Haitian businessman in Haiti was arrested in relation to a slew of kidnappings and crimes.

“According to police sources, the investigation in the disappearance of UNIBANK’s employee allowed police to uncover the existence of a huge and powerful network of crooks, linked with drug money laundering, kidnappings, and many other shady activities. The businessman Stanley Handal and the bank employee Genelus were apparently part of this network.” (An Important Businessman was Arrested in Relation to Kidnapping cases reported in Port-au-Prince.)

Besides the Stanley Handal example (whose case was dismissed), others connected to power and empire who still roam free, with complete impunity in US/UN occupied Haiti include: Accused kidnapper “Jerry Narcius” suspected to work for the UN; DEA-suspected drug trafficker Guy Philippe; the 2004 coup d’etat/US regime change paramilitary enforcers known as the Lame Timanchèt death squad assassins; kidnapper arrested linked to wealthy families working with Lame Timanchèt ; Michael Lucius, a top Haitian police officer indicted for kidnapping; the 15 police officers who were to face the bar of justice for brutal murders ; Louis Jodel Chamblain; and Emmanuel “Toto” Constant, the FRAPH head of the 1991 coup detat/US regime change paramilitary enforcers charge with thousands of murders, rapes and crimes against humanity. Toto Constant was granted a US visa and residency until finally caught and put in prison on mere bank fraud charges there.

For decades, Haiti’s worst violence has been authored, not locally, but mostly imported. (Our nasty little racist war in Haiti; Eyewitness account of the abduction of President and First Lady Aristide of Haiti by the United States Special Forces; Obama’s offered HOPE is sweatshop slavery.)

Kidnapping in Haiti began to find a footing after the UN took over and with the 2004 US kidnapping of president Aristide out of Haiti back to Africa. The powerful, connected and wealthy are the worst purveyors of violence and corruption in Haiti. (Yo se chèf zinglendo yo, epi yo di se Nèg nan Geto, se ti malere k’ap bay pwoblèm: Corruption uninterrupted in Haiti)

The international and national media which are owned by the corporate organizations mostly  benefiting from the status quo, will generally criminalized the poor, disenfranchised and working masses worldwide. This is why Ezili’s HLLN continually ask this most pertinent question:

Why is there a UN, Chapter 7 peace enforcement mission in Haiti for 8 years? A country not at war, without a peace agreement to enforce and with less violence than most countries in the Western Hemisphere?” (See the UN’s own Global Study on Homicide at page 93 and Legacy of Impunity.)

The wealthy sons of Haiti’s Oligarchy, who’ve formed organized killing coup d’etat and criminal gangs known to local Haitians as, the Ninjas, have eluded the law and prison time. With their connections to power and the police, rarely have suspected members of the Ninjas spent time in prison and then not for long. Crime in Haiti is generally blamed on the poor in Site Solèy. (See transcripts at HLLN archives at “We are not Kidnappers” and Original Kreyòl Audio of Interview:We are not Kidnappers – Site Solèy speaks, May 22, 2006, Ezili Dantò Witness Project (English translation & Kreyòl audio.)

The distraction to note is that since this summer and throughout September 2012,  the US-supported Martelly government has face almost daily protest demonstrations from practically all sectors of the society. This Brandt kidnapping case changes the discourse. Moves the focus from the people issues of foreign gold/oil pillage, the internationally sponsored Caracol hoax of jobs and housing for Haitians and basic discontent towards the Martelly/Lamothe government to this alluring Ninja Brandt kidnapping issue.

On the street sources indicate that Clifford Brandt has  bragged to having 275 Haiti police officers on his payroll and was in charge of 15 gangs.

Secretary of Public Safety, Reginald Delva, indicated that senior police officers and former police officers including former police inspector Mr. Edner Comé were actively being sought, suspected of being part this organized kidnapping ring.

^{Clifford Brandt’s lawyer, Calixte Delatour, interviewed by Gary Pierre Paul for Scoop FM}

Clifford Brandt arrested, in custody, charged with kidnapping

Brandt’s  defense lawyer, Delatour Calixte, told Scoop radio that Brandt did lead police to where the two Moscoso victims were being held, but denied his client participated in a kidnapping.

Calixte told Scoop’s Gary Pierre Paul that “removing a person is not the same thing as kidnapping…There’s a difference between kidnapping and a personal feud.” Calixte, in his public radio Scoop interview, defended Brandt saying this was not a kidnapping as his client did not ask for a ransom. Calixte suggested Brandt may have organized their “removal” in a power play to settle a business dispute – that this was a settlement of scores between two wealthy families.

Nicolas and Coralie Moscoso found handcuffed and blindfolded in bathroom at an abandoned house. Kidnapped by faked police in black hood. Rescued by real police in black hood!

Calixte, when pressed, would not elaborate on the “personal feud” or as he said, “un règlement de compte” that caused the “removal” of the Moscoso victims who were found held hostage, handcuffed and blindfolded inside the abandoned residence Clifford Brandt took the police to.

In researching this case, a quick internet name search of the Moscoso kidnapped victims  garnered this FB post from the day of the kidnapping:

“Ayiti Pap Peri
^{Sa grav net “Haiti-kidnapping: Hier soir, vers 8hrs sur la route de bourdon, une patrouille de la #PNH cagoule aurait kidnappée #Nicholas Moscoso et sa soeur #Coralie. Source: Chantal M. Elie, Journaliste”}

Nicolas and Coralie Moscoso found handcuffed and blindfolded were kidnapped by fake police in black hoods and rescued by real police, also wearing black hoods. No wonder the victims kept their heads down and were so terrified to take off their blindfolds when their police rescuers appeared. (See Haiti police rescue video at 3:49).

Alterpresse reports that Brandt is the suspected mastermind of not only a kidnapping ring, but a powerful criminal syndicate practicing forgery, counterfeiting and money laundering.

During police searches conducted at Brandt’s place, police said they found police equipment, flashing lights (des gyrophares) and a set of license plates of vehicles. They were planning “attacks against public authorities…This is a solid team. They are true professionals, which speaks of big organized crime,” said Frantz Lerebours, spokesperson for the Haiti National Police (PNH) force.

More and more, this Clifford Brandt kidnapping case sounds like that other wealthy businessman kidnapping case, all over again. This time, perhaps the victims will be heard and it won’t be business as usual.

One thing is for sure, Robert Moscoso, the father of the Brandt kidnapped victims, would probably have given his entire fortune to get his children back. The business model of making decisions based on cost effectiveness priorities and making a profit at all cost, suddenly did not apply.

Similarly, the profit consideration of foreigners is not worth the loss of life, livelihood, liberty or health of any Haitian. But the US, through the Clintons unregulated capitalists at Caracol, and in general in their reconstruction plans for Haiti, are casually swapping Haiti domestic interests, lives, livelihood, liberty, health, its future and environmental safety for getting the largest possible foreign profit to export out of Haiti. (See, Haiti: Foreign Investment means Death and Repression: A Historical Perspective.)

Until civil society stops equating business interests as the same as governmental interests or the common good, it will be business as usual.

Where’s the Haitian, courageous enough to ride Galipòt – Janjak Desalin‘s fictional horse – and put a stop to the organized international crimes in Haiti? Perhaps it’s the ones, like the policemen, who risked their lives and careers to rescue the Moscoso victims. Chapo ba and kudos to them.

^{Here is a Kreyòl radio broadcast of the Galipòt story and where voiceless Haiti, not the Avatar crew, speak about their lives in Caracol Haiti. Haitians working at Caracol speak to LakouNewYork, say the 200gds (about $4:74 per day or 59cent per hour) is slave wage, “they’re taking my health, this is not ‘jobs for Haiti.”}

Ezili Dantò of HLLN
Oct. 23, 2012
(Check this link again for updates.
Last updated Oct 25, 2012)

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Background Information
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^{In the photo, Haiti Oligarch, Grégory Brandt, President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Franco-haïtienne : “Mes enfants ont étudié à l’étranger mais ont choisi de revenir à Haïti malgré la situation. Et j’en suis très fier” – “My children studied abroad, but they chose to come back to Haiti, despite the situation. It is my greatest source of pride.” Crédits : Paolo Woods / Institute (Source: Les Nantis D’Haiti;Haiti’s 1 Percent: A look at the lives of plenty in the land of the poor.) Serving maids, gardeners and butlers for blan (foreigners). Clinton/Obama and the Haiti Oligarchs “development” for Haiti is Caribbean-style tourism where Haiti’s huddled masses are exotic backdrop, convenient bodies and props for privileged Northern tourists, Paul Farmer’s false NGO benevolence and the Caracol hoax used to fleece Haiti out of its vast oil, coast lands, $20billion in gold and mineral resources.}

****

“Clinton’s oversized role in Haiti only makes sense when we remember that both the left and right see Haiti through deeply racist lenses…Clinton is the co-chair of the Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti. He is the UN Special Envoy for Haiti. And he is the co-director of the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, a foundation involved in number of neoliberal economic initiatives in Haiti. Clinton justifies his involvement by saying he is “responding to the needs of Haitians.” But what needs? Which Haitians? And to what end?” (Bill Clinton Loves Haiti by Jemima Pierre, Black Agenda Report, Oct. 23, 2012)

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^{“…although the oppressed often do revolt, the object of their hostility is misplaced. They vent their fury on a political puppet, someone who masks colonial power, a despised racial or ethnic group or an apostate within their own political class. The useless battles serve as an effective mask for what Gamer calls the “patron-client” networks that are responsible for the continuity of colonial oppression. The squabbles among the oppressed, the political campaigns between candidates who each are servants of colonial power, Gamer writes, absolve the actual centers of power from addressing the conditions that cause the frustrations of the people. Inequities, political disenfranchisement and injustices are never seriously addressed.”( Colonized by Corporations )}

Disaster Capitalism: 0.5 % in Haiti – Haiti’s Oligarchy – own 98% of Haiti wealth through monopolies supported by Western policymakers and corporations

Haiti: Where Has All the Money Gone? – Vijaya Ramachandran and Julie Walz

The Subcontracted Haitians – Haiti overseers

Une Bourgeoisie déracinée!

Haiti servants of colonial power:
The mercenary families

Ezili Dantò: Haïti, une invasion sous couverture humanitaire

Swapping Haiti Lives: False aid, charity, orphanages, false Caracol jobs, housing or Haiti – pretext for the fake humanitarians to steal Haiti sovereignty, land & resources

Avatar unobtainium are Haiti Riches

Unobtanium in Haiti
Oil in Haiti – Economic Reasons for the UN/US occupation

Gold Rush in Haiti – Good for whom?

Video - Ezili Dantò: Haïti, une invasion sous couverture humanitaire

Oil in Haiti and Oil Refinery - an old notion for Fort Liberte as a
transshipment terminal for US supertankers

Video: Oil - Strategic denial of oil in Haiti
A Massive Oil Mine in Haiti

• To: Ezili Network Listserve
• Subject: [ezilidanto] Searching for Desalin’s horse on Caracol holocaust day-Which living Haitian can ride Galipòt? | Haitians working at Caracol speak to LakouNewYork say the 200gds is slave wage, ‘they’re taking my health, this is not jobs for Haiti’ | Obama: The African American Achilles Heel |Third piece of US election theater, the duopoly debates itself with nobody there to provide the irrefutable facts
• Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2012 15:31:38 -0700 (PDT)

Ezili Dantò’s Note: Here is a Kreyòl radio broadcast where voiceless Haiti, not the Avatar crew, speak about their lives in Caracol Haiti.

Haitians working at Caracol speak to LakouNewYork, say the 200gds is slave wage, “they’re taking my health, this is not ‘jobs for Haiti.’”

Manno, the broadcaster, points out that the minimum wage is now 300gds (as of Oct 1, 2012) not 200gds. The Caracol workers say they are only paid 200gds and not on time and it doesn’t cover their expenses whatsoever. One worker explains how she is treated like trash – like a second class citizen within the industrial park. http://lakounewyork.com/emisyon10-22-12.mp3

Also, this audio (in Kreyòl) begins with Koralen’s Galipòt. Searching for Desalin’s horse on Oct 22nd Caracol holocaust day. This Koralen performance piece asks the question “Where is the living Haitian who can ride Galipòt?” “Galipòt,” the author explains is Desalin’s horse who wanders Haiti looking for another warrior who can walk his path. http://lakounewyork.com/emisyon10-22-12.mp3

Yesterday, during the opening of the Caracol park, those Haitians who didn’t readily applaud the Martelly gov, the Clintons, Sean Penn, Richard Branson, Donna Karen Avatar crew, the opening of the Caracol mothership/Avatar Haiti were pushed out of the way, some even immediately arrested. One person who talked on this Oct 22nd broadcast about the repression was immediately arrested by the special police from Fort Liberte.

Listen to:
Lakou New York Broadcast reporting on Oct 22, 2012
Another brutal October day for Haiti is celebrated by the “star-studded” Avatar crew – Sean Penn, Ben Stiller, Donna Karan, Richard Branson & the beyond-the-pale Clintons share a romantic moment. (The Avatar Movie from a Haitian perspective)

But this was the general mainstream media’s reporting Avatar Caracol mothership piloted by Clintons opened #Haiti again w/ sharp media propaganda http://bit.ly/Uyck9G tools= “jobs, housing for Haiti.”

Ezili Dantò of HLLN
Oct 23, 2012

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Forwarded by Ezili’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
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Monday, Oct 22, 2012 marking day of brutal Haiti sorrow is celebrated by the “star-studded” Avatar crew (Sean Penn, Ben Stiller, Donna Karan, Richard Branson, led also by the beyond-the-pale Clinton capitalist vampires, giving cover for the corporate stealing of Haiti’s unobatainium -$20+billion, vast oil reserves in Northern Haiti, its coast lands and dismissing its cultural heritage: Bill and Hillary Share Romantic Moment In Haiti -  (See, Haiti: Foreign Investment means Death and Repression: A Historical Perspective.)

Criminally accused Sae-A Helps Continue the Euro/US “New Day” for Haiti

The Avatar Movie from a Haitian perspective

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Brandt Cousin: Right now only rumors

Source: Defend Haiti, Oct. 24, 2012

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (defend.ht) – “As of today everything is rumors,” Cedric Brandt said about the arrest of his cousin, a businessman named Clifford. Brandt said the family is praying for his cousin and is happy that the Moscoso’s were returned to their parents.

“Some say other people are involved but nothing is confirmed…” Brandt messaged DH noting that it is an investigation that is constantly evolving.

Cedric says Clifford is a cousin, his father is Gregory Brandt who was featured on Foreign Policy magazine Haiti’s 1 Percent. But the

Cedric Brandt
***

young Brandt said the relationship between the family and his cousin Clifford had become estranged.

Clifford has been cooperating with police even taking them to where the two kidnapped victims were being held.

“As a cousin today we are happy that the Moscoso parents were able to get their kids and we are praying now mostly for Clifford’s parents who are suffering a lot,” he concluded in a statement.

Police say the kidnappers requested $2.6 million for the release of Coralie, 23, and Nicolas, 24, Moscoso who were picked up on Bourdon Road. The police call it “enlevman” and defense lawyer Calixte Delatour said there exists a difference between “ènlevman” and kidnapping.

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Haïti-insécurité: Clifford Brandt arrêté pour implication dans un réseau de kidnappeur

Source: hpnhaiti.com

Oct 23, 2012

Clifford Brandt, fils d’uneriche  famille haïtienne a été arrêté par la police nationale dans une affaire de kidnapping où il aurait participé à l’enlèvement de deux enfants en octobre dernier, a appris Haiti Press Network de source policière.

“Oui Clifford Brandt a été arête. Il est actuellement en detention à la Direction de la police judiciaire (DCPJ)”, a indiqué mardi à HPN le porte-parole de la police nationale annonçant l’ouverture d’une enquête.

Selon Frantz Lerebours joint au téléphone, Clifford Brandt n’a pas nié son implication dans l’enlèvement le 16 octobre dernier de Coralie et de Nicolas Moscoso, deux enfants d’un entrepreneur haïtien.

Le kidnapping a été effectué sur la route de Bourdon,  a informé la police.

“Les mobiles de l’enlèvement des enfants Moscoso ne sont pas connus, mais il pourrait être fait dans le but de gagner de l’argent . De toute facon une nenquête criminelle est en cours”, a déclaré Frantz Lerebours peu bavard sur cette affaire.

*****

Oct 23, 2012 08h11 | Par BZ , Source: Bonzouti.com La police nationale d’Haïti a appréhendé dans l’après-midi de ce lundi 22 Octobre Clifford Brandt, fils de l’homme d’affaires Fritz Brandt, accusé de kidnapping.

Cette arrestation a eu lieu à Delmas 02 lors d’une opération musclée entamée depuis dimanche dernier.

Deux enfants des Moscoso kidnappés depuis plusieurs jours ont été retrouvés et libérés par la PNH. Celle-ci affirme avoir retrouvé dans le fief des kidnappeurs une liste de personnalités à kidnapper au cours de la période des fins d’année.

Clifford Brandt aurait reconnu son implication dans plusieurs kidnappings dont celui des enfants Moscoso.

Sur les réseaux sociaux on félicite la PNH pour l’arrestation de ce gros bonnet de la mafia haïtienne, on craint également l’évasion de prison de Clifford Brandt.

Notons que le mafioso Clifford Brandt est le directeur de la Maison Mazda à Delmas. Il exigeait 02.5 millions de dollars américains pour la libération des deux enfants Moscoso.

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Haiti police investigate prominent businessman for alleged role in kidnapping ring

By Associated Press, Updated: Wednesday, October 24, 5:54 PM Source: Washington Post

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Police detectives are investigating the son of one of Haiti’s prominent families for his alleged role at the center of a kidnapping ring, authorities said Wednesday.

Police spokesman Frantz Lerebours said businessman Clifford Brandt was locked up Monday on suspicion of involvement in kidnapping two children of another family in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Lerebours said Brandt took investigators to the place where the children were being held and police freed them.

Detectives also jailed two alleged accomplices suspected of driving a Toyota Land Cruiser to carry out the kidnapping. The two suspects were caught as they tried to cross the border into the neighboring Dominican Republic, Lerebours said.

Brandt runs a car dealership and is the son Fritz Brandt, head of a prominent Haitian family that has extensive holdings in export-import businesses.

Secretary of State for Public Security Reginald Delva told Scoop FM radio that the kidnapper demanded more than $2 million for the release of the two abducted children.

Brandt’s lawyer, Delatour Calixte, told Scoop that Brandt did lead police to where the children were being held, but denied his client participated in a kidnapping. He suggested Brandt may have organized their “removal” in a family dispute.

“Removing a person is not the same thing as kidnapping,” Calixte said. “There’s a difference between kidnapping and a personal problem…. I have to say one thing: Mr. Brandt was never involved in kidnapping.”

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Haiti probes businessman for alleged kidnapping

October 24, 2012 21:41 GMT

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — A Haitian police spokesman says detectives are investigating the son of one of Haiti’s prominent families for his alleged role at the center of a kidnapping ring.

Haitian police spokesman Frantz Lerebours says Clifford Brandt was locked up Monday on suspicion of involvement in the recent kidnapping of the children of another family in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince.

Lerebours says Brandt took investigators to the spot where the two children were being held and police freed them.

Detectives also jailed two alleged accomplices suspected of driving a Toyota Landcruiser to carry out the kidnapping. They were caught as they tried to cross the border into the Dominican Republic.

Brandt’s lawyer says his client is innocent.

Lerebours made the disclosure to The Associated Press on Wednesday.

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The Clintons in Haiti: Can an Industrial Park Save the Country?

Larry Downing / AFP / Getty Images

From left: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is joined by U.S. Senator Pat Leahy, and her husband, former U.S. president Bill Clinton while receiving a briefing about a new power plant during their visit to Caracol, Haiti, on Oct. 22, 2012.

In Haiti, the western hemisphere’s most underdeveloped nation, the north is one of the most neglected regions, snubbed for centuries by a political and economic elite entrenched mainly in the country’s southern capital, Port-au-Prince. But Haiti’s massive 2010 earthquake, which wrecked Port-au-Prince and killed more than 200,000 people, made domestic leaders and international donors alike realize that Haiti has to start developing away from its overpopulated, quake-vulnerable south and tap the potential of northern cities like Cap Haitien.

That strategy, part of a “build Haiti back better” vision, took a crowning if controversial step this week. On Monday, Haitian President Michel Martelly, joined by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a host of political and business luminaries that included her husband (and U.N. special envoy to Haiti) former U.S. President Bill Clinton, inaugurated the Caracol Industrial Park, a $300 million, 600-acre (246-hectare) facility near the country’s north coast, east of the seaport city of Cap Haitien. The Caracol inauguration was the first joint trip to Haiti by the Clintons since they visited the Caribbean nation shortly after they wed in the 1970s. Now they’re hoping Caracol will be the start of a more productive marriage between Haiti and the international donors and investors it so desperately needs just to build back, let alone build back better.

A mock Haitian village was erected for the occasion, as celebrities like British tycoon Richard Branson looked on beneath banners proclaiming “A New Day in Haiti.” Martelly, whom Hillary Clinton gushingly praised as the “chief dreamer and believer,” declared the modern plant and the 130,000 jobs it’s expected to create as proof that despite the usual “sad images of Haiti,” the country “is open for business, and that’s not just a slogan.”

Like Martelly, the U.S., which is leading the international effort to rebuild Haiti, has been eager to present an accomplishment of Caracol’s magnitude amidst what critics have called a slow reconstruction effort. Reassuring evidence of progress is crucial to getting the billions of dollars that international donors have pledged to Haiti—but half of which has yet to be delivered, largely because of the uncertainties on the ground—into the pipeline. “The people of this country have made real progress in a short time,” Hillary Clinton told investors after touring the park, “and we’ve reached a critical moment.”

(MORE: Haiti’s Quake, One Year Later: It’s the Rubble, Stupid!)

The Caracol park had actually been in the works since 2008. But the earthquake gave the project—a joint effort by the Haitian government, the U.S. State Department and the International Development Bank, which committed an initial $55 million for construction—a more urgent impetus. What’s more, it has become a hub for broader development in the north. Cap Haitien’s airport is undergoing an expansion, funded by Venezuela and Cuba, which allowed it to receive its first large international carrier this month. A gleaming, $30 million campus of Roi Henri Christophe University, built by the Dominican Republic, is set to enroll its first students in two weeks. A new port is planned for nearby Fort-Liberte, though it is currently on hold due to environmental and political tensions.

Caracol’s founding private investor, South Korean textile company Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd., which planted $78 million into the park, has already begun production—and the 1,000 Haitians it has so far employed sent their first order, a batch of 76,000 T-shirts for Walmart, last week. “The easiest job to create is [in] textile garment manufacturing,” says George Sassine, general director of SONAPI, Haiti’s national governing body for industrial parks and one of Caracol’s earliest backers. “It’s a very light investment, but it influences a lot of people.” Caracol “is not the panacea for Haiti’s economy,” he adds. But “we want to show this as a showcase of what can be done.” Says Josepha Gauthier, Haiti’s Works and Social Affairs Minister, agrees: “I always believe that Haiti’s development will come through its countryside” and provinces, not Port-au-Prince.

But development rarely comes without disputes, and for many Haitians and foreigners alike, Caracol is also a reminder of the pitfalls to building Haiti back better. For starters, there is concern that while Sae-A has promised to create 20,000 jobs, it has had labor troubles in other developing countries and may not be the world’s most employee-friendly enterprise. Late Monday afternoon, after rain began to fall at Caracol and Hillary Clinton had stepped into her car to leave, many workers filed out of the Sae-A factory after a shift and complained that they make only Haiti’s daily minimum wage of 200 gourdes, just under $5. Sae-A says pay will rise after six months of training.

There are also tensions between industrial developments like Caracol and the just as urgent, if not more critical, need to foster agriculture in Haiti, which imports more than half its food. Gabriel Charles, 45, had employed as many as 30 people at a time to farm corn, sweet potatoes and beans on the fertile land around the town of Caracol. “I had a hectare [2.5 acres] and that hectare took care of my family,” says Charles, who had to give it up for the park but says the compensation he received for it was inadequate. “I agree with the industrial park,” he says. “But you [also] have to take care of the peasants.” Other displaced farmers, still awaiting alternate plots of land that were promised them, are protesting what they call the park’s adverse economic effects, including the recent doubling of the price of beans, due in part to reduced harvests.

Environmental issues loom large as well: experts fear increased industry could harm Haiti’s ecologically important yet fragile northern coastline, including coral reefs. So do concerns that while developing the north is a good thing in the long run, it doesn’t solve the more immediate post-quake suffering in the south—including the nagging tragedy of hundreds of thousands of homeless Haitians still living in squalid tent camps. Critics also point out that the lure of industrial jobs in the 20^th century was a cause of Port-au-Prince’s overcrowding and the proliferation of its notorious slums. They warn Martelly and international donors to avoid the same phenomenon in northern urban areas like Cap Haitien, Haiti’s second largest city.

All of which has helped stoke recent anti-government protests in the north. “We say bravo to the investments,” says Garry Denis, spokesman for the Citizen’s Initiative. But he insists that “so far foreigners and people from Port-au-Prince are the ones who are benefitting.” His group also wants Martelly to address the high cost of living and overdue municipal elections. The unrest comes at a rocky time for Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe, whose government faces corruption allegations (they deny them) and other political crises that have hampered reconstruction. Hillary Clinton hinted at Haiti’s dysfunction in her Caracol comments. “In addition to effective government,” she said, “Haiti needs a strong justice sector, free and fair elections, housing, energy, schools, health care.”

Read more:In Haiti, the western hemisphere’s most underdeveloped nation, the north is one of the most neglected regions, snubbed for centuries by a political and economic elite entrenched mainly in the country’s southern capital, Port-au-Prince. But Haiti’s massive 2010 earthquake, which wrecked Port-au-Prince and killed more than 200,000 people, made domestic leaders and international donors alike realize that Haiti has to start developing away from its overpopulated, quake-vulnerable south and tap the potential of northern cities like Cap Haitien.

That strategy, part of a “build Haiti back better” vision, took a crowning if controversial step this week. On Monday, Haitian President Michel Martelly, joined by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a host of political and business luminaries that included her husband (and U.N. special envoy to Haiti) former U.S. President Bill Clinton, inaugurated the Caracol Industrial Park, a $300 million, 600-acre (246-hectare) facility near the country’s north coast, east of the seaport city of Cap Haitien. The Caracol inauguration was the first joint trip to Haiti by the Clintons since they visited the Caribbean nation shortly after they wed in the 1970s. Now they’re hoping Caracol will be the start of a more productive marriage between Haiti and the international donors and investors it so desperately needs just to build back, let alone build back better.

A mock Haitian village was erected for the occasion, as celebrities like British tycoon Richard Branson looked on beneath banners proclaiming “A New Day in Haiti.” Martelly, whom Hillary Clinton gushingly praised as the “chief dreamer and believer,” declared the modern plant and the 130,000 jobs it’s expected to create as proof that despite the usual “sad images of Haiti,” the country “is open for business, and that’s not just a slogan.”

Like Martelly, the U.S., which is leading the international effort to rebuild Haiti, has been eager to present an accomplishment of Caracol’s magnitude amidst what critics have called a slow reconstruction effort. Reassuring evidence of progress is crucial to getting the billions of dollars that international donors have pledged to Haiti—but half of which has yet to be delivered, largely because of the uncertainties on the ground—into the pipeline. “The people of this country have made real progress in a short time,” Hillary Clinton told investors after touring the park, “and we’ve reached a critical moment.”

(MORE: Haiti’s Quake, One Year Later: It’s the Rubble, Stupid!)

The Caracol park had actually been in the works since 2008. But the earthquake gave the project—a joint effort by the Haitian government, the U.S. State Department and the International Development Bank, which committed an initial $55 million for construction—a more urgent impetus. What’s more, it has become a hub for broader development in the north. Cap Haitien’s airport is undergoing an expansion, funded by Venezuela and Cuba, which allowed it to receive its first large international carrier this month. A gleaming, $30 million campus of Roi Henri Christophe University, built by the Dominican Republic, is set to enroll its first students in two weeks. A new port is planned for nearby Fort-Liberte, though it is currently on hold due to environmental and political tensions.

Caracol’s founding private investor, South Korean textile company Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd., which planted $78 million into the park, has already begun production—and the 1,000 Haitians it has so far employed sent their first order, a batch of 76,000 T-shirts for Walmart, last week. “The easiest job to create is [in] textile garment manufacturing,” says George Sassine, general director of SONAPI, Haiti’s national governing body for industrial parks and one of Caracol’s earliest backers. “It’s a very light investment, but it influences a lot of people.” Caracol “is not the panacea for Haiti’s economy,” he adds. But “we want to show this as a showcase of what can be done.” Says Josepha Gauthier, Haiti’s Works and Social Affairs Minister, agrees: “I always believe that Haiti’s development will come through its countryside” and provinces, not Port-au-Prince.

But development rarely comes without disputes, and for many Haitians and foreigners alike, Caracol is also a reminder of the pitfalls to building Haiti back better. For starters, there is concern that while Sae-A has promised to create 20,000 jobs, it has had labor troubles in other developing countries and may not be the world’s most employee-friendly enterprise. Late Monday afternoon, after rain began to fall at Caracol and Hillary Clinton had stepped into her car to leave, many workers filed out of the Sae-A factory after a shift and complained that they make only Haiti’s daily minimum wage of 200 gourdes, just under $5. Sae-A says pay will rise after six months of training.

There are also tensions between industrial developments like Caracol and the just as urgent, if not more critical, need to foster agriculture in Haiti, which imports more than half its food. Gabriel Charles, 45, had employed as many as 30 people at a time to farm corn, sweet potatoes and beans on the fertile land around the town of Caracol. “I had a hectare [2.5 acres] and that hectare took care of my family,” says Charles, who had to give it up for the park but says the compensation he received for it was inadequate. “I agree with the industrial park,” he says. “But you [also] have to take care of the peasants.” Other displaced farmers, still awaiting alternate plots of land that were promised them, are protesting what they call the park’s adverse economic effects, including the recent doubling of the price of beans, due in part to reduced harvests.

Environmental issues loom large as well: experts fear increased industry could harm Haiti’s ecologically important yet fragile northern coastline, including coral reefs. So do concerns that while developing the north is a good thing in the long run, it doesn’t solve the more immediate post-quake suffering in the south—including the nagging tragedy of hundreds of thousands of homeless Haitians still living in squalid tent camps. Critics also point out that the lure of industrial jobs in the 20^th century was a cause of Port-au-Prince’s overcrowding and the proliferation of its notorious slums. They warn Martelly and international donors to avoid the same phenomenon in northern urban areas like Cap Haitien, Haiti’s second largest city.

All of which has helped stoke recent anti-government protests in the north. “We say bravo to the investments,” says Garry Denis, spokesman for the Citizen’s Initiative. But he insists that “so far foreigners and people from Port-au-Prince are the ones who are benefitting.” His group also wants Martelly to address the high cost of living and overdue municipal elections. The unrest comes at a rocky time for Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe, whose government faces corruption allegations (they deny them) and other political crises that have hampered reconstruction. Hillary Clinton hinted at Haiti’s dysfunction in her Caracol comments. “In addition to effective government,” she said, “Haiti needs a strong justice sector, free and fair elections, housing, energy, schools, health care.”

*****

Americans arrest top Cedras bodyguard

by Phil Davidson

The Independent, October 4, 1994

HE LIKED to be called the ‘Shooting Star,’ used his red sports car as target practice and led the menacing black-hooded group known as the ‘Ninjas’ who guarded Haiti’s de facto military ruler, General Raoul Cedras.

In the biggest coup so far for the US occupation force here, American troops on Sunday night detained Romeo Halloum, officially known as General Cedras’s chief of security, but widely believed to control the so- called ‘attaches’ or para- military thugs who have long ruled the streets. The shadowy Mr Halloum, aged around 38, is an American citizen and he claims to have served in Vietnam.

The Americans also detained his three brothers, and a fifth man who formed the ‘Ninjas’ in one of a series of raids aimed at netting armed opponents of the exiled President, Jean- Bertrand Aristide.

The five, thought to have been moved to US Navy vessels off-shore, are all of Syrian or Lebanese origin, part of a core of Arab families who control a large chunk of big business in Haiti, thought to include arms and drugs smuggling.

Mr Halloum was believed to have had control of Port- au-Prince airport, allowing him to smuggle in goods and break the UN embargo.

General Hugh Shelton, commander of US forces on the island, yesterday described Mr Halloum and the other detainees – thought to be Ramses Halloum, Jerry and Patrick Mourra and Alex Fonbrun – as ‘thugs’. He said that one of them had been involved in an incident last week, in which a grenade was thrown at Aristide supporters, killing seven people and wounding 60.

Commenting on the fact that Mr Halloum, and perhaps one or two of the others, is an American citizen, General Shelton said: ‘They will be handed over to the legitimate government of Haiti (that of President Aristide when he returns) but our justice will get the first shot at them.’

Mr Halloum is the son of a well-known Haitian-American of Lebanese origin, who was a captain in the US army. He was raised in Miami and surfaced publicly about a year ago as General Cedras’s chief of security and bodyguard.

As the US stepped up talk of an invasion a few months ago, the so-called Ninjas began appearing with General Cedras in public, dressed in black uniforms and black hoods. Reporters who knew him recognised Mr Halloum’s hazel-green eyes. He was fond of threatening journalists.

When a United Nations convoy was stopped by 30 attaches at a roadblock two months ago and robbed it of its walkie talkies and other equipment, UN staffers recognised Mr Halloum as the leader.

******

How Haiti’s Future Depends on American Markets

Tate Watkins, Source:  The Atlantic May  8, 2013A major industrial park has been touted as a solution to the troubled country’s economic woes. Does it really deserve the hype?

Haiti industrial park opening Caracol
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pose with workers at the grand opening ceremony of the new Caracol Industrial Park in Caracol, Haiti, on October 22, 2012. (Larry Downing/Reuters)

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pose with workers at the grand opening ceremony of the new Caracol Industrial Park in Caracol, Haiti, on October 22, 2012. (Larry Downing/Reuters)

CARACOL, HAITI–Along the highway that parallels Haiti’s north coast, not far from the bay where Christopher Columbus’s Santa Maria is believed to have shipwrecked on Christmas Day in 1492, giant billboards with smiling faces dot the landscape of alternating crop fields and scrub acacia. The billboards carry the country’s new mantra: “Haiti is open for business.”

The cliché gains at least a little credence in this case from a $300 million industrial park, backed by the U.S. government and other donors. The single biggest investment in Haiti since the devastating earthquake of January 2010, the park symbolizes the debate about foreign-led economic development in very poor nations. Its backers say it will bring tens of thousands of jobs to a country in desperate need of them, while critics see it as merely another way for foreign firms to exploit cheap labor.

The reality is that the park could be both a quick way to create jobs and a means to boost the nation toward industrialization–and many locals, at least, say it gives them hope. But its success depends on manufacturers there making the transition fairly fast from cheap clothes to higher-value products–or else on the U.S. continuing to give preferential trade terms to Haitian goods.

***

The industrial park sits just south of the small coastal town of Caracol and employs 1,600 people today, in an area where there are three main alternatives: farming, fishing, and leaving.

The Haitian government estimates unemployment at 40.6%, but the official figure pales next to the reality that around three-quarters of Haitians struggle to scratch out a living each day in the informal sector. “We had learned that supporting long-term prosperity in Haiti meant more than providing aid,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at the October inauguration of the park, where visitors included her husband, ex-president Bill Clinton, and celebrity actors Ben Stiller and Sean Penn. “It required investments in infrastructure and the economy that would help the Haitian people achieve their own dreams.”

Haiti is not the easiest place to run a business. It lacks reliable electricity, good roads and ports, and solid institutions. But it managed to attract Korean textile manufacturer Sae-A Trading Co., among the largest in the world, as the anchor tenant of Caracol Industrial Park.

The U.S. government put up $124 million for an on-site power plant and other infrastructure. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) promised $100 million to build the park. The government of Haiti gave Sae-A a 15-year tax holiday. Sae-A itself pledged $78 million to cover equipment and operations, with a reportedinitial investment of $39 million.

Sae-A public affairs officer Karen Seo says the “decision to invest in Haiti became clear” with the international aid package. But there was one other sweetener, which officials say was the linchpin of the whole deal: U.S. legislation that, with a few conditions, gives apparel imports from Haiti duty-free status.

***

Backers claim that Caracol Park could eventually create 60,000 jobs, albeit mostly low-paying work assembling garments. The minimum daily wage for textile workers in Haiti is 200 Haitian gourdes, about $5. (In 2011, the UN reported that 75% of Haitians live on less than $2 per day.)

Experts caution that in the global textile industry, margins in low-value production can hardly pay Haiti’s $5 per day minimum wage.

The project has been controversial. Building it meant displacing about 350 families from the fertile stretch of state-owned land that an American consulting firm identified as a suitable spot. The area contains an important watershed, which makes it prime farming land, and some worry that the park’s water usage and disposal could upset the local ecology. Most residents either fish or grow crops such as black beans or plantains. Mangroves grow in the bay, home to one of Haiti’s few intact coral reefs. Both guard against shoreline erosion and provide wildlife habitat; a 2009 study estimated the direct economic value of the mangroves and reef at $110 million. Local officials say they weren’t consulted about the park’s potential location.

Last month’s collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh has put the conditions of workers who make clothes for the rich world in the spotlight. In Haiti, U.S. trade preferences require the creation of a program called Better Work, run by the International Labor Organization, to bring labor laws up to international standards and inspect factories. Many factories don’t yet meet the standards (pdf, p. 15), particularly on health and safety and minimum wages, but the Caracol facility is too new to have been included in the latest Better Work report.

Others worry about the social consequences. Amy Wilentz, one of the best known American writers on Haiti, called the park “a new kind of plantation” and compared low-wage factory work to slavery. Others have decried the idea of using low-paying factory jobs as a step in the country’s development. Some say that Haiti has already tried this strategy, and failed, or that the investment would be better spent in agriculture.

***

It’s certainly true that Haiti’s apparel sector has boomed before. A 2010 Congressional Research Service report estimates that it employed up to 100,000 people between the 1960s and the end of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986. A military coup in 1991 led to a trade embargo that hamstrung the industry, at the same time that competition was growing from regional neighbors like Honduras and emerging markets in Asia.

Hans Garoute, a Haitian social entrepreneur, remembers that period. At the time, he says, U.S. manufacturers in Haiti that had initially produced only low-value goods like t-shirts and underwear were starting to make products that command higher prices and wages. But in the political chaos of the late ’80s, he watched many of those companies move production to Asia. “Today,” he says, “we’re back to t-shirt.”

Apparel manufacturers have slowly rebuilt since the end of the trade embargo, with the help of a U.S. law passed in 2006 that allowed Haitian apparel to enter America duty-free. The law, known as HOPE (the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act) was amended and expanded in 2008, and after the 2010 the earthquake, expanded once again through HELP (the Haiti Economic Lift Program). Employment in Haiti’s textile sector has rebounded to about 30,000.

In 2009, knit and woven apparel accounted for 92% of Haiti’s exports to the United States. Haiti needs growth like that to counterbalance its large trade deficit–$3 billion in 2011 according to the World Bank, or 41% of GDP. Haiti exports crops such as mangoes, cacao, and coffee, but agricultural products comprise only about 6% of all exports. The country imports 80% of the rice it consumes, mostly from the United States. Decades of deforestation and soil erosion, the lack of a modern farming sector, and government subsidies doled out to American farmers make it difficult for Haitian farmers to compete globally.

“Working in a factory is not a gift,” says Garoute, “but believe me, sitting in Trou-du-Nord and do nothing, and you are 24 years old, that is worse.” In 1992, Garoute founded INDEPCO, a non-profit network of tailors across Haiti who sew school uniforms and other garments for the domestic market. It also does training sessions, like one it held last year in the northern town of Trou-du-Nord for a group destined to work at the Caracol park.

But in the global textile industry, margins in low-value production can hardly pay Haiti’s $5 per day minimum wage, Garoute says. “They have China making t-shirt,” he says. “They have India making t-shirt. You have Pakistan making t-shirt. And don’t forget, those countries make the raw material as well.” He says that Haiti’s textile industry will only grow into higher-value-added production with proper investment in the workforce.

***

At the industrial park, female workers wearing chartreuse aprons and headscarves stream out of the blue factory buildings on their lunch break. Frandline Joseph sits outside. She sews for Sae-A and says she doesn’t like the work: “I don’t have time to sit.”

But she also says that she had no job before her current one, and life has improved since finding employment. “Now I work for 200 gourdes,” she says, and can pay her daughter’s school fees in a country with a virtually non-existent public education system. “Before the park, I worked for nothing.”

Her story is similar to other published accounts, and that of Rosedaline Jean, a 22-year-old who’s worked for Sae-A for five months. “Before, I lived only by the grace of God,” says Jean. “Although I don’t have a husband or children, my life wasn’t easy because I wasn’t working. When I got here, a lot changed in my life.

“This isn’t the ideal job,” she continues, “but it’s better than nothing. I don’t intend to make a career in this job. I plan to start a business, and I’m already saving for it. But it’s difficult, because my salary is practically nothing.”

Haiti’s northern coast faces the United States, and so it is from this part of the country that people leave on makeshift boats, bound, they hope, for a better life. “The park can be good if it can give you a job,” Edouard Riche, a maintenance worker there, said, as we watched a couple of fishing boats skimming the surface of the water. “If you have work in Haiti,” he said, “you don’t need to take a boat abroad to look for work.”

***

Sae-A shipped 76,000 t-shirts to Wal-Mart in October of last year, the first products from the factory. It now employs 1,400 people and says that number will double by the end of 2013. It hopes to create 20,000 jobs in total over the coming years. The park’s only other tenant is Peintures Caraïbes, a Haitian company that makes paint for Sherwin-Williams and employs about 200 people. Last month, U.S. garment company Safi Apparel signed a contract to become the park’s third occupant.

Georges Sassine, a Haitian textile manufacturer and and the former head of SONAPI, the Haitian industrial parks agency, says the industrial park’s cheap-manufacturing strategy is “just a time-buying procedure.” But he is adamant that the Caracol development is viable only thanks to the duty-free access to America. The extension granted by U.S. lawmakers after the earthquake continues that tariff exemption until 2020. Whether Haiti can develop a higher-value-added textile sector by then–or whether U.S. lawmakers extend the legislation again–remains to be seen.