Sat Mar 23, 2024 11:33 pm by globalturbo
‘We need help’: Haiti earthquake survivors lack food, shelter
Officials say the 7.2-magnitude quake destroyed or damaged thousands of homes, leaving about 30,000 families homeless.
Note: After the last earthquake a huge corrupt international aid effort stole the donations or used them for more exploitation. If you want to help please check you’re donating via local trusted agencies!
Families sit under blankets to shield themselves from the rain after Tropical Storm Grace swept over Les Cayes, Haiti, early on Tuesday [Joseph Odelyn/AP Photo]
17 Aug 2021
Heavy rain from Tropical Storm Grace is forcing Haiti’s government to temporarily pause rescue efforts in the aftermath of a deadly weekend earthquake, which has left thousands of people homeless and in need of assistance across the country’s hard-hit southwest.
Haiti was already in a dire emergency after being struck by Hurricane Elsa, gang warfare and a general uprising against dictator Moise who held onto power with US approval until his timely death
The pause on Tuesday came after a 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck on Saturday morning, killing at least 1,941 people and injuring more than 9,900 others, according to the most recent figures from Haiti’s civil protection agency.
Keep readingPowerful quake kills hundreds in HaitiWith storm approaching Haiti, earthquake rescue efforts intensify International community must assist but not interfere in Haiti
The Caribbean country, already struggling to cope with COVID-19, widespread gang violence and political instability worsened in the aftermath of President Jovenel Moise’s killing last month, now faces the difficult task of rebuilding, caring for the injured, and providing emergency shelter and supplies for tens of thousands of displaced families.
By Tuesday morning, only a light rain was falling over Les Cayes, the southern coastal city that bore the brunt of the tremor.
More than 100 people scrambled to repair makeshift coverings made of wooden poles and tarps that were destroyed by the storm overnight in a makeshift encampment. Mathieu Jameson, deputy head of a committee formed by the tent city residents, said hundreds of people there were in urgent need of food, shelter and medical care.
“We don’t have a doctor. We don’t have food. Every morning more people are arriving. We have no bathroom, no place to sleep. We need food, we need more umbrellas,” said Jameson, adding the tent city was still waiting for government aid.
Officials said the earthquake destroyed more than 7,000 homes and damaged nearly 5,000 others, leaving some 30,000 families homeless. Hospitals, schools, offices and churches also were demolished or badly damaged.
16 August… The Venezuelan Government was among the first to open a humanitarian bridge to Port-au-Prince by sending a first plane with 30 tons of aid to Haiti after the 7.2 earthquake that occurred last Saturday that has left 1,297 dead and more than 2,800 injured. This despite Venezuela itself suffering starvation and hardship due to the US enforced blockade, embargo, covert war, coup attempts and seizure of resources.
“We are in an exceptional situation,” Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry told reporters on Monday as the tropical storm approached.
“As of this Monday, we will act with greater speed. Aid management will be accelerated. We will increase our energy tenfold to reach, in terms of assistance, the most victims as possible,” Henry also tweeted.
“This heavy rainfall could lead to flash and urban flooding, and possible mudslides,” the NHC said.
“The already difficult situation has worsened,” the country’s civil protection agency tweeted. It said search and rescue crews had removed 16 people alive from the rubble on Tuesday morning, but that nine more dead bodies had been recovered.
Al Jazeera’s John Holman, reporting from the capital Port-au-Prince, said on Tuesday that the impact of the storm could have been worse than it appears to have been.
“But we still have … a lot of people sleeping out in the open, either because they’re worried about what might happen in terms of aftershocks or because their houses were damaged or destroyed,” he said.
In the district of Marceline, near the city of Camp Perrin in Haiti’s southwest corner, resident Bertha Jean Louis on Tuesday stood in front of her now-destroyed sheet metal dwelling. Nothing remained except a heap of concrete, broken furniture and tattered linens.
This is not the first humanitarian crisis to hit this part of Haiti, however, as Hurricane Matthew caused catastrophic damage in October 2016, levelling an estimated 200,000 homes and killing hundreds.
“We need help finding a house. That’s all. Then we can make do, we’re used to it. We’ll work the land and that will sustain us,” Jean Louis told the AFP news agency.
Her 35-year-old brother died in the collapse of their shared home, her husband has been hospitalised with injuries to both legs, and Jean Louis is now tending to her 75-year-old mother alone while four months pregnant.
“Since Saturday, I’ve been wearing the same dress. I can’t risk going under the rubble to save anything. I just wash my underwear, and when it’s dry, I wash my dress, that’s how I do it because I have nothing saved,” she said.
“I’m totally discouraged, but I know that the Good Lord will send us aid from another country, like what happened after Matthew. That’s why I still have hope.”
“We have around 34 children hospitalised now, but we still need more help from pediatricians. SOS,” Marie Cherry, a doctor at the Les Cayes general hospital, told the Reuters news agency via text message.
Doctors worked in makeshift tents outside of hospitals to save the lives of hundreds of injured, including young children and the elderly.
The United Nations’ child rights agency (UNICEF) said on Tuesday that about 1.2 million people, including 540,000 children, have been affected by the earthquake. It also said the storm is disrupting access to water, shelter and other services in the hard-hit South, Nippes and Grand’Anse departments.
“Countless Haitian families who have lost everything due to the earthquake are now living literally with their feet in the water due to the flooding,” Bruno Maes, the UNICEF representative in Haiti. said in a statement.
“Right now, about half a million Haitian children have limited or no access to shelter, safe water, healthcare and nutrition.” Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies
***********
Once Again, Haiti Seems to Be Dying
adapted from an article by Fernando Ayala with thanks via Human Wrongs Watch By Fernando Ayala
30June 2021 — The story goes that on his first voyage to what would become America, Christopher Columbus disembarked on October 12, 1492, on a beach he named San Salvador, today Wattlin, in the Bahamas archipelago.
By December 1 he chose to live in a wonderful setting on an island he called Hispaniola. He took possession of it without asking the locals. Colonization began by building a fort called “La Navidad”, on the north coast of what is today Haiti.
There he celebrated, on December 24 of that very year, the first Christmas Eve in this continent unknown to Europeans, which would deliver unlimited riches to the crown of Spain and infinite pain to its inhabitants. In the name of his lord king, Columbus initiated from here the occupation, exploitation, disease, extermination and colonization of Latin America.
However, it was also this very island, already divided and partially converted into Haiti, which became the first place to abolish slavery in 1803 and the second independent republic of the continent in 1804, after the United States. It was also the first republic in the world formed by Afro-descendants.
Previously, in the 17thcentury, this rich colony had been offered as a gift by Spain to France. It specialized in the production of sugar and therefore imported thousands of thousands of slaves who were hunted and transported from various parts of Africa, with different cultures, beliefs and languages; mixed and exploited on the island that was by then called Saint-Domingue.
” Haiti’s instability is due to historical racist repression, a long campaign for ”reparations” for freedom from slavery, and capitalist exploitation.With the military repression, revolutionary uprising and breakdown of civil society after Moise was let stay in office, security is not now guaranteed for anyone”
Chalermangne Peralte, assassinated by US Marines during the first U.S. occupation and then nailed to a door (Source: The Crucifixion of Emmanuel Drèd Wilmè during second US occupation of Haiti, April, 2005)
The colonialist iron fist allowed for the birth of great fortunes, slave ships and buoyant commerce. Until 1791; the insurrection of slaves who took up arms and fought for 13 years finally they defeated the French. Thus was born the first independent country in what is now Latin America.
The French Revolution with its ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity had deeply influenced the struggle to abolish slavery. In 1804, the republic was proclaimed and its main hero Jean Jacques Dessalines, a former slave who became a general, after a few months in power started calling himself emperor of the Haitians with the name of Jacques I, in perfect Napoleonic style.
He consolidated his power with refined cruelty and thousands of victims until he was assassinated by his close collaborators.
Since then, the country’s history has been one of suffering, poverty, hunger and bloodshed. The 20th century began for Haitians with the invasion and occupation of the U.S. Marines who took control of the country, as did their sugar industry, and Citibank with Haiti’s Central Bank, responsible for the issuance of the local currency.
In 1957, the government in Washington DC imposed François Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, while dictator Leonidas Trujillo ruled in the neighboring Dominican Republic, the Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua, since 1937, and Fulgencio Batista in Cuba since 1952. ”The USA had begun one of its greatest and continuing crimes against humanity”.…..
The state of Haiti today occupies the western part of the island with 27,750 km2 and has an estimated population of over 11 million people, in addition to about two million abroad, mainly in the Dominican Republic, the US, and countries such as Spain and Chile, among others. Subsistence agriculture and remittances are the main resources for the majority of the population.
The neighboring Dominican Republic, located in the central and eastern part of the island, is almost twice the size, with 48,442 square kilometers and a population of only 10.5 million inhabitants. While the former is the poorest country in Latin America, with a per capita income, in 2019, of only US $1,273 per year, the latter reached US$ 8,583, with tourism being one of its main revenues.
The uncontrolled emigration of Haitians to the neighboring country has led to the fact that, following the example of former President Trump, on the border of the United States with Mexico, the Dominican government has begun, in 2019, the erection of a brick wall four meters high topped with wires, blades and motion sensors in the main places of illegal transit.
It is 376 kilometers long and will hardly ever be completed.
The official explanation is that it is there to help combat illegal immigration, trafficking of arms, drugs, livestock and stolen vehicles. In view of the general closing of borders to immigration, Haitians today are trying to reach Suriname and from there cross to the French overseas province of French Guiana.
In short, the only thing that matters for many Haitians today is to emigrate, no matter to which country. https://www.youtube.com/embed/FEGut4MVFwo?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent
”16 Jan 2021. Port au Prince..Haitian trade unions, such as the National Union of Haitian Workers, the United Movement of Haitian Workers (MUTH), the Lawyers’ Collective for the Defense of Human Rights and the Anti-Corruption Union Brigade (BSAC), called a general strike on February 1 and 2, to demand that the president respect Constitution and leave the National Palace. Since early morning, barricades were been erected in different parts of the country”.
Currently, Latin America as a region is not present in what is happening in Haiti, (”the OAS is controlled by Washington”)where the government of President Jovenel Moïse, who took office in 2017, is severely questioned for his plans of wanting to call a plebiscite to reform the constitution in force since 1987, the longest in its history, and for the dismantling of the precarious institutionality, along with the endemic corruption.
”Since July 2018, Haitian revolutionaries have been tirelessly organizing and mobilizing against Moïse’s corrupt and neoliberal regime, which plunged the country into a deep social, political and economic crisis”.
His election never had legitimacy, since it was questioned for fraud, and due to the low electoral participation, that did not reach 20%, although this is part of the political reality of the country. The president dismissed three members of the supreme court, the parliament has not been functioning for a year, and the call for a plebiscite is for the democratic forces a sign of the authoritarianism he wishes to implement, and which would move the country even further away from democracy.
US support for continuation of Moise’s disastrous rule condemned Haiti to chaos, rampant gang warfare, total collapse of health and services and War of Repression
Although Haiti’s instability is historical, today security is not guaranteed for anyone, and people are locking themselves in their homes. Armed gangs grouped in the so-called G-9 control an important part of the capital, committing robberies and kidnappings on a daily basis, along with drug and arms trafficking.
According to United Nations sources, there are more than 200 kidnappings per month: foreigners, priests, children or businessmen. Ransom figures can range from 4,000 to one million dollars. Electricity continues to be a luxury good, accessible only to those who have their own equipment.
The rest of the population has access to electricity only two hours a day. Garbage is not collected, but burned in the streets, and in the event of a fire there is no fire department in any city in the country.
Urgent Solidarity with Haiti Needed — The Most Revolutionary Act
The dilemma of many people is whether to die of hunger or of Covid, in a country where there is no sanitary infrastructure, nor reliable statistics to know the real state of the situation. Nor is there a single opinion from the major countries as to whether the president should end his term of office, since for the opposition his term of office ended last February.
Moïse maintains that since the vote was repeated, he will only finish next year, a position supported by the United States, while the opposition calls for the appointment of an interim Prime Minister until new elections are held.
The United Nations is keeping a low profile except for its humanitarian agencies along with a small political affairs committee mandated by the Secretary General to follow developments.
Another group is formed by Brazil, the United States, Canada, Germany, Spain, the European Union and the OAS.
The absence of other Latin American countries is conspicuous and especially Brazil, under President Jair Bolsonaro, is as if it were not there.
see also..Haiti: A Million People demand Freedom and Justice
The 2010 earthquake, measuring 7 on the Richter scale, and the successive aftershocks, left more than 200,000 victims and incalculable damage.
More recently, an undetermined number of policemen, at least five, were killed and several others were injured. There is no credibility in the information, and people live in a true “state of nature” in the absence of the State.
see also: How the Clintons Destroyed and Impoverished Haiti
The news is more like rumors that circulate by word of mouth without being able to verify their veracity.
The years of the MINUSTAH or United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, which lasted from 2004 to 2017, provided security to an important part of the population, after the violence unleashed in the main cities until the departure of former President Bertrand Aristide to exile.
More than 7,000 troops from 24 countries from all continents participated, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and others, trying to meet the objectives of ”disarming groups, curbing arms and drug trafficking, promoting stability, strengthening institutions and allowing the development of free and democratic elections”.
Although there were accusations against some soldiers for abuse of women, this does not alter the invaluable service rendered to that country. The mission also contributed to legitimizing the actions of the United Nations and the Latin American countries that actively participated.
At the same time, there was a political structure in the region, mainly formed by regional organizations such as CELAC and UNASUR, which were engaged in the seeking of political consensus.
It is true that 13 years is an excessive time for a United Nations peacekeeping mission, but we do not know how many deaths the presence of military forces in that country prevented. Since the departure of the troops, the situation has deteriorated, and Haiti is now on the brink of a new disaster.
Governments, when evaluating a new mission, immediately think of the financial costs and debates begin in the internal politics of Latin American countries, especially about sending or maintaining troops abroad.
see also Haiti”s wonderful Cardinal in Church of the Assassins
The question is what the states of the region should do in the face of (US caused+) crises such as those in Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, without regional political bodies, without instances of dialogue between heads of state and without effective cooperation, as is currently the case…….. continues.. see original
*******************
MORE HERE: https://thefreeonline.wordpress.com/2021/08/18/we-need-help-haiti-earthquake-survivors-lack-food-shelter/
Thanks to: https://thefreeonline.wordpress.com
Officials say the 7.2-magnitude quake destroyed or damaged thousands of homes, leaving about 30,000 families homeless.
Note: After the last earthquake a huge corrupt international aid effort stole the donations or used them for more exploitation. If you want to help please check you’re donating via local trusted agencies!
Families sit under blankets to shield themselves from the rain after Tropical Storm Grace swept over Les Cayes, Haiti, early on Tuesday [Joseph Odelyn/AP Photo]17 Aug 2021
Heavy rain from Tropical Storm Grace is forcing Haiti’s government to temporarily pause rescue efforts in the aftermath of a deadly weekend earthquake, which has left thousands of people homeless and in need of assistance across the country’s hard-hit southwest.
Haiti was already in a dire emergency after being struck by Hurricane Elsa, gang warfare and a general uprising against dictator Moise who held onto power with US approval until his timely deathThe pause on Tuesday came after a 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck on Saturday morning, killing at least 1,941 people and injuring more than 9,900 others, according to the most recent figures from Haiti’s civil protection agency.
Keep readingPowerful quake kills hundreds in HaitiWith storm approaching Haiti, earthquake rescue efforts intensify International community must assist but not interfere in Haiti
The Caribbean country, already struggling to cope with COVID-19, widespread gang violence and political instability worsened in the aftermath of President Jovenel Moise’s killing last month, now faces the difficult task of rebuilding, caring for the injured, and providing emergency shelter and supplies for tens of thousands of displaced families.
By Tuesday morning, only a light rain was falling over Les Cayes, the southern coastal city that bore the brunt of the tremor.
More than 100 people scrambled to repair makeshift coverings made of wooden poles and tarps that were destroyed by the storm overnight in a makeshift encampment. Mathieu Jameson, deputy head of a committee formed by the tent city residents, said hundreds of people there were in urgent need of food, shelter and medical care.
“We don’t have a doctor. We don’t have food. Every morning more people are arriving. We have no bathroom, no place to sleep. We need food, we need more umbrellas,” said Jameson, adding the tent city was still waiting for government aid.
Officials said the earthquake destroyed more than 7,000 homes and damaged nearly 5,000 others, leaving some 30,000 families homeless. Hospitals, schools, offices and churches also were demolished or badly damaged.
16 August… The Venezuelan Government was among the first to open a humanitarian bridge to Port-au-Prince by sending a first plane with 30 tons of aid to Haiti after the 7.2 earthquake that occurred last Saturday that has left 1,297 dead and more than 2,800 injured. This despite Venezuela itself suffering starvation and hardship due to the US enforced blockade, embargo, covert war, coup attempts and seizure of resources.
“We are in an exceptional situation,” Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry told reporters on Monday as the tropical storm approached.
“As of this Monday, we will act with greater speed. Aid management will be accelerated. We will increase our energy tenfold to reach, in terms of assistance, the most victims as possible,” Henry also tweeted.
‘We need help’
The Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in an 11am (15:00 GMT) update on Tuesday that tropical storm conditions were expected and could bring an additional two to four inches (five to 10cm) of rain to southern Haiti and a maximum of 15 inches (38cm) in some areas.“This heavy rainfall could lead to flash and urban flooding, and possible mudslides,” the NHC said.
“The already difficult situation has worsened,” the country’s civil protection agency tweeted. It said search and rescue crews had removed 16 people alive from the rubble on Tuesday morning, but that nine more dead bodies had been recovered.
Al Jazeera’s John Holman, reporting from the capital Port-au-Prince, said on Tuesday that the impact of the storm could have been worse than it appears to have been.
“But we still have … a lot of people sleeping out in the open, either because they’re worried about what might happen in terms of aftershocks or because their houses were damaged or destroyed,” he said.
In the district of Marceline, near the city of Camp Perrin in Haiti’s southwest corner, resident Bertha Jean Louis on Tuesday stood in front of her now-destroyed sheet metal dwelling. Nothing remained except a heap of concrete, broken furniture and tattered linens.
This is not the first humanitarian crisis to hit this part of Haiti, however, as Hurricane Matthew caused catastrophic damage in October 2016, levelling an estimated 200,000 homes and killing hundreds.
“We need help finding a house. That’s all. Then we can make do, we’re used to it. We’ll work the land and that will sustain us,” Jean Louis told the AFP news agency.
Her 35-year-old brother died in the collapse of their shared home, her husband has been hospitalised with injuries to both legs, and Jean Louis is now tending to her 75-year-old mother alone while four months pregnant.
“Since Saturday, I’ve been wearing the same dress. I can’t risk going under the rubble to save anything. I just wash my underwear, and when it’s dry, I wash my dress, that’s how I do it because I have nothing saved,” she said.
“I’m totally discouraged, but I know that the Good Lord will send us aid from another country, like what happened after Matthew. That’s why I still have hope.”
Hospitals overwhelmed
Meanwhile, several major hospitals were severely damaged, hampering humanitarian efforts, as were the focal points of many shattered communities, such as churches and schools.“We have around 34 children hospitalised now, but we still need more help from pediatricians. SOS,” Marie Cherry, a doctor at the Les Cayes general hospital, told the Reuters news agency via text message.
Doctors worked in makeshift tents outside of hospitals to save the lives of hundreds of injured, including young children and the elderly.
The United Nations’ child rights agency (UNICEF) said on Tuesday that about 1.2 million people, including 540,000 children, have been affected by the earthquake. It also said the storm is disrupting access to water, shelter and other services in the hard-hit South, Nippes and Grand’Anse departments.
“Countless Haitian families who have lost everything due to the earthquake are now living literally with their feet in the water due to the flooding,” Bruno Maes, the UNICEF representative in Haiti. said in a statement.
“Right now, about half a million Haitian children have limited or no access to shelter, safe water, healthcare and nutrition.” Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies
***********
Once Again, Haiti Seems to Be Dying
adapted from an article by Fernando Ayala with thanks via Human Wrongs Watch By Fernando Ayala
30June 2021 — The story goes that on his first voyage to what would become America, Christopher Columbus disembarked on October 12, 1492, on a beach he named San Salvador, today Wattlin, in the Bahamas archipelago.
By December 1 he chose to live in a wonderful setting on an island he called Hispaniola. He took possession of it without asking the locals. Colonization began by building a fort called “La Navidad”, on the north coast of what is today Haiti.
There he celebrated, on December 24 of that very year, the first Christmas Eve in this continent unknown to Europeans, which would deliver unlimited riches to the crown of Spain and infinite pain to its inhabitants. In the name of his lord king, Columbus initiated from here the occupation, exploitation, disease, extermination and colonization of Latin America.
However, it was also this very island, already divided and partially converted into Haiti, which became the first place to abolish slavery in 1803 and the second independent republic of the continent in 1804, after the United States. It was also the first republic in the world formed by Afro-descendants.
Previously, in the 17thcentury, this rich colony had been offered as a gift by Spain to France. It specialized in the production of sugar and therefore imported thousands of thousands of slaves who were hunted and transported from various parts of Africa, with different cultures, beliefs and languages; mixed and exploited on the island that was by then called Saint-Domingue.
” Haiti’s instability is due to historical racist repression, a long campaign for ”reparations” for freedom from slavery, and capitalist exploitation.With the military repression, revolutionary uprising and breakdown of civil society after Moise was let stay in office, security is not now guaranteed for anyone”
Chalermangne Peralte, assassinated by US Marines during the first U.S. occupation and then nailed to a door (Source: The Crucifixion of Emmanuel Drèd Wilmè during second US occupation of Haiti, April, 2005)
The colonialist iron fist allowed for the birth of great fortunes, slave ships and buoyant commerce. Until 1791; the insurrection of slaves who took up arms and fought for 13 years finally they defeated the French. Thus was born the first independent country in what is now Latin America.
The French Revolution with its ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity had deeply influenced the struggle to abolish slavery. In 1804, the republic was proclaimed and its main hero Jean Jacques Dessalines, a former slave who became a general, after a few months in power started calling himself emperor of the Haitians with the name of Jacques I, in perfect Napoleonic style.
He consolidated his power with refined cruelty and thousands of victims until he was assassinated by his close collaborators.
Since then, the country’s history has been one of suffering, poverty, hunger and bloodshed. The 20th century began for Haitians with the invasion and occupation of the U.S. Marines who took control of the country, as did their sugar industry, and Citibank with Haiti’s Central Bank, responsible for the issuance of the local currency.
In 1957, the government in Washington DC imposed François Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, while dictator Leonidas Trujillo ruled in the neighboring Dominican Republic, the Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua, since 1937, and Fulgencio Batista in Cuba since 1952. ”The USA had begun one of its greatest and continuing crimes against humanity”.…..
The state of Haiti today occupies the western part of the island with 27,750 km2 and has an estimated population of over 11 million people, in addition to about two million abroad, mainly in the Dominican Republic, the US, and countries such as Spain and Chile, among others. Subsistence agriculture and remittances are the main resources for the majority of the population.
The neighboring Dominican Republic, located in the central and eastern part of the island, is almost twice the size, with 48,442 square kilometers and a population of only 10.5 million inhabitants. While the former is the poorest country in Latin America, with a per capita income, in 2019, of only US $1,273 per year, the latter reached US$ 8,583, with tourism being one of its main revenues.
The uncontrolled emigration of Haitians to the neighboring country has led to the fact that, following the example of former President Trump, on the border of the United States with Mexico, the Dominican government has begun, in 2019, the erection of a brick wall four meters high topped with wires, blades and motion sensors in the main places of illegal transit.
It is 376 kilometers long and will hardly ever be completed.
The official explanation is that it is there to help combat illegal immigration, trafficking of arms, drugs, livestock and stolen vehicles. In view of the general closing of borders to immigration, Haitians today are trying to reach Suriname and from there cross to the French overseas province of French Guiana.
In short, the only thing that matters for many Haitians today is to emigrate, no matter to which country. https://www.youtube.com/embed/FEGut4MVFwo?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent
”16 Jan 2021. Port au Prince..Haitian trade unions, such as the National Union of Haitian Workers, the United Movement of Haitian Workers (MUTH), the Lawyers’ Collective for the Defense of Human Rights and the Anti-Corruption Union Brigade (BSAC), called a general strike on February 1 and 2, to demand that the president respect Constitution and leave the National Palace. Since early morning, barricades were been erected in different parts of the country”.
Currently, Latin America as a region is not present in what is happening in Haiti, (”the OAS is controlled by Washington”)where the government of President Jovenel Moïse, who took office in 2017, is severely questioned for his plans of wanting to call a plebiscite to reform the constitution in force since 1987, the longest in its history, and for the dismantling of the precarious institutionality, along with the endemic corruption.
”Since July 2018, Haitian revolutionaries have been tirelessly organizing and mobilizing against Moïse’s corrupt and neoliberal regime, which plunged the country into a deep social, political and economic crisis”.
His election never had legitimacy, since it was questioned for fraud, and due to the low electoral participation, that did not reach 20%, although this is part of the political reality of the country. The president dismissed three members of the supreme court, the parliament has not been functioning for a year, and the call for a plebiscite is for the democratic forces a sign of the authoritarianism he wishes to implement, and which would move the country even further away from democracy.
US support for continuation of Moise’s disastrous rule condemned Haiti to chaos, rampant gang warfare, total collapse of health and services and War of Repression
Although Haiti’s instability is historical, today security is not guaranteed for anyone, and people are locking themselves in their homes. Armed gangs grouped in the so-called G-9 control an important part of the capital, committing robberies and kidnappings on a daily basis, along with drug and arms trafficking.
According to United Nations sources, there are more than 200 kidnappings per month: foreigners, priests, children or businessmen. Ransom figures can range from 4,000 to one million dollars. Electricity continues to be a luxury good, accessible only to those who have their own equipment.
The rest of the population has access to electricity only two hours a day. Garbage is not collected, but burned in the streets, and in the event of a fire there is no fire department in any city in the country.
Urgent Solidarity with Haiti Needed — The Most Revolutionary Act
The dilemma of many people is whether to die of hunger or of Covid, in a country where there is no sanitary infrastructure, nor reliable statistics to know the real state of the situation. Nor is there a single opinion from the major countries as to whether the president should end his term of office, since for the opposition his term of office ended last February.
Moïse maintains that since the vote was repeated, he will only finish next year, a position supported by the United States, while the opposition calls for the appointment of an interim Prime Minister until new elections are held.
The United Nations is keeping a low profile except for its humanitarian agencies along with a small political affairs committee mandated by the Secretary General to follow developments.
Another group is formed by Brazil, the United States, Canada, Germany, Spain, the European Union and the OAS.
The absence of other Latin American countries is conspicuous and especially Brazil, under President Jair Bolsonaro, is as if it were not there.
see also..Haiti: A Million People demand Freedom and Justice
The 2010 earthquake, measuring 7 on the Richter scale, and the successive aftershocks, left more than 200,000 victims and incalculable damage.
More recently, an undetermined number of policemen, at least five, were killed and several others were injured. There is no credibility in the information, and people live in a true “state of nature” in the absence of the State.
see also: How the Clintons Destroyed and Impoverished Haiti
The news is more like rumors that circulate by word of mouth without being able to verify their veracity.
The years of the MINUSTAH or United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, which lasted from 2004 to 2017, provided security to an important part of the population, after the violence unleashed in the main cities until the departure of former President Bertrand Aristide to exile.
More than 7,000 troops from 24 countries from all continents participated, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and others, trying to meet the objectives of ”disarming groups, curbing arms and drug trafficking, promoting stability, strengthening institutions and allowing the development of free and democratic elections”.
Although there were accusations against some soldiers for abuse of women, this does not alter the invaluable service rendered to that country. The mission also contributed to legitimizing the actions of the United Nations and the Latin American countries that actively participated.
At the same time, there was a political structure in the region, mainly formed by regional organizations such as CELAC and UNASUR, which were engaged in the seeking of political consensus.
It is true that 13 years is an excessive time for a United Nations peacekeeping mission, but we do not know how many deaths the presence of military forces in that country prevented. Since the departure of the troops, the situation has deteriorated, and Haiti is now on the brink of a new disaster.
Governments, when evaluating a new mission, immediately think of the financial costs and debates begin in the internal politics of Latin American countries, especially about sending or maintaining troops abroad.
see also Haiti”s wonderful Cardinal in Church of the Assassins
The question is what the states of the region should do in the face of (US caused+) crises such as those in Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, without regional political bodies, without instances of dialogue between heads of state and without effective cooperation, as is currently the case…….. continues.. see original
*******************
MORE HERE: https://thefreeonline.wordpress.com/2021/08/18/we-need-help-haiti-earthquake-survivors-lack-food-shelter/
Thanks to: https://thefreeonline.wordpress.com
