By Milo Milfort
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan 21 2014 (IPS)

Four years after the a 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti, there are still about 300 internally displaced person (IDP) camps mostly scattered around the capital region. Correspondents Jane Regan and Milo Milfort visited Gaston Margron camp on the southern edge of Port-au-Prince, home to an estimated 800 families living in tents. This slideshow accompanies the story Four Years After Haiti’s Earthquake, Still Waiting for a Roof.

Mimose Gérard, 57, washes clothes and collects plastic bottles from the trash in order to survive. She is still living in a tent camp four years after Haiti's earthquake. Credit: Milo Milfort/IPS

By Jane Regan and Milo Milfort
Carrefour, HAITI, Jan 20 2014 (IPS)

Mimose Gérard sits in her tent at Gaston Margron camp, surrounded by large bags filled with plastic bottles. She earns just pennies for each, but that’s better than nothing.

“I’ve lived in the camp since Jan. 13, 2010, when I was set up with a tent. It’s been a painful existence,” she tells IPS. “I’m just a regular person on this piece of land. I have nowhere to go.”"It’s repugnant to see how authorities treat people because of the simple fact that they are poor." -- Sanon Renel

Collecting bottles to recycle is the livelihood of at least a dozen people in this camp that about 800 families call home, located in Carrefour, on the southern edge of Port-au-Prince. Four years after the earthquake, there are still about 300 internally displaced person (IDP) camps mostly scattered around the capital region, and in a large new slum on desertic slopes outside the city.

Gérard is 57 years old, and has 11 children. She also does laundry to earn a few more pennies. Her hands are rough and chapped.

“The conditions are inhumane, but we have nowhere to go. Those whose families helped them have gotten out. But I don’t have anything like that, so I am staying,” she says.

Gérard added that residents are also forced to consume untreated water – in a country gripped by a cholera epidemic.

“We have no toilet. This is where people drop off their bag of fecal matter,” she says, pointing to a weedy area where residents open or dispose of the little plastic bags used as “portable toilets” in the night, when it can be dangerous to leave one’s tent.

On top of thieves, camp residents have to deal with the police and armed men working for landowners.

“The police try to force us to leave the camp,” Gérard claimed. Officers appear and shoot in the air, trying to scare residents. “The owner himself has come three times.”

According to the U.N., residents in about one-third of the 300 or so remaining camps are at risk of eviction.

On Jan. 11, the eve of the fourth anniversary of the earthquake, an inferno raced through the 100 or so tents and shacks on a camp in Delmas, not far from downtown Port-au-Prince. Four people – a 38-year-old woman and three small children – were burned to death and dozens injured.

Aside from transporting some victims to the public hospital and handing out mattresses, municipal and federal authorities have not made any statements, nor have they launched an investigation into the origin of the blaze, which many suspect was arson. The land is owned by a Haitian printing company.

“Four people died in the fire, including three young children, whilst around thirty others were hospitalized with burns. All of the makeshift shelters of the 108 families who lived in the camp were completely destroyed by the flames, along with their personal belongings,” Amnesty International noted in a statement released on Jan. 17.

Sanon Renel, leader of the Front for Reflection and Action on the Housing (FRAKKA) coalition, said the murderous fire and the lack of official response do not augur well.

“It seems like the private sector is stepping up its evictions,” he told IPS. “They realise that the government practically supports their actions, so they can do whatever they want.”

“It’s repugnant to see how authorities treat people because of the simple fact that they are poor,” he continued. “They don’t consider them as human beings. I think they see them as animals.”

Four years vs. 35 seconds

Thirty-five seconds. That’s all it took the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that hit Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010 to wipe out almost a quarter of a million people, collapse almost half a million buildings – leaving 1.5 million people homeless – and trigger widespread destruction. The estimated cost of damages to the housing sector alone almost hit 2.5 billion dollars.

Four years later, some 200,000 people are still stuck in camps, like Gérard. Only 7,515 new permanent houses have been built while 27,000 have been repaired, and about 55,000 families have received one-time payments of about 500 dollars to leave the camps.

But a year later, those families “face another housing crisis as their housing subsidy runs out,” a recent study from the Washington-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti found.

A U.S. government plan to build 15,000 new houses has reduced its goals by over 80 percent, according to the Centre for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR). Now the plan is to build only 2,500. Although USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, has built over 900 houses in Haiti, it has decided to withdraw continuance.

Overall, of the 6.43 billion dollars disbursed by bilateral and multilateral donors to Haiti from 2010 to 2012, just nine percent went through the Haitian government while the rest went to foreign contractors.

“It’s a really profitable business for U.S. contractors to make money off of this disaster,” CEPR’s Dan Beeton told IPS. “This was an opportunity to turn a disaster into something that could benefit Haitians as they rebuild their own country, but they were just bypassed.”

“I’ll pick up pots in the street and get 20 to 25 gourdes [46 to 57 cents],” she says. “Every morning when we wake up, we pick up bags of feces and go throw them in a hole. The stench prevents us from cooking.”

Like Gérard, Ilien deplores the lack of potable water.

“When the camp was first built we had drinking water, but not anymore,” she says. “The water we drink isn’t good.”

Nor surprisingly, Ilien and other camp residents are afraid of being infected with any one of Haiti’s water-borne diseases, particularly cholera. Studies by numerous authorities, incuding the U.S. Centres for Disease Control (CDC), say the bacteria was brought to Haiti by Nepali peacekeepers who are part of the 9,500‑strong U.N. Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).

Introduced to the country in October 2010, to date it has infected almost 700,000 people, killing almost 8,500 of them. The CDC says that approximately two people per day still die from cholera. While U.N. agencies consider it an epidemic and a humanitarian crisis, so far the body has refused demands for compensation.

“Cholera and housing are being ignored, but they do go together,” Beeton says. “There’s no clean water, so the disease will spread. Cholera eradication is also lack of political will.”

The U.N. has 18 organisations – including MINUSTAH – currently operating in Haiti. They collaborate with approximately 43 large non-governmental organsations or NGOs, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the government, and hundreds of smaller agencies.

Reduced funding, however, has caused humanitarian assistance to dwindle, although MINUSTAH’s approved budget has remained high – almost 577 million dollars for July 2013 to June 2014.

“MINUSTAH is a waste of money, in my opinion, because there is no armed conflict in Haiti, and the money could instead be spent on ending the cholera epidemic that MINUSTAH troops started,” Beeton said.

UN-Habitat notes that Haiti already had an immense deficit in adequate housing dating back before the earthquake, with many living in slum areas.

“We are clearly out of the emergency stage and we will allow Haiti to take care of itself, but that cannot go forward unless there are means,” a spokesperson for the agency told IPS.

With additional reporting by Lorraine Farquharson at the United Nations.

Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier at his Feb. 28, 2013 hearing. The sweltering courtroom was packed with over a dozen victims of the regime and with local and foreign journalists, lawyers and representatives of human rights groups. Credit: Milo Milfort/IPS

By Jane Regan and Milo Milfort
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Mar 1 2013 (IPS)

For the first time ever, on Thursday Haiti’s former dictator faced his accusers, answering questions about corruption and human rights abuses during his brutal 15-year regime (1971-1986).

The court of appeals hearing was part of a process that will determine if Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier is to be indicted on rights abuses.

“We think that this is a wonderful day for justice in Haiti,” rights attorney Nicole Phillips of the Washington-based Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), told IPS. “For the first time… and despite the efforts of his attorneys, Jean-Claude Duvalier came to court.”

The ex-dictator showed up on Feb. 28 only after first disregarding three previous orders.

The sweltering courtroom was packed with over a dozen victims of the regime and with local and foreign journalists, lawyers and representatives of human rights groups.

After his lawyers failed to convince judges to hold a closed session, for four hours the sickly looking 61-year-old, dripping with perspiration, answered judges’ questions and accusations, whispering his evasive and oft-flippant denials to the clerk who read them aloud.

A group of aging supporters of the 29-year (1957-1986) regime of “Baby Doc” and his father François “Papa Doc” Duvalier applauded the former despot’s more irreverent answers.

When Judge Jean-Joseph Lebrun asked Duvalier about murders and executions during his rule, the ex-dictator responded: “All countries have murder.”

“Were there political prisoners in Fort Dimanche?” the judge asked about the prison known as “Haiti’s Auschwitz,” where an estimated 3,000 prisoners were executed or died of hunger and disease.

“Fort Dimanche was full of all kinds of delinquents,” Duvalier replied.

At one point Duvalier even claimed, “In every domain, I have a good record” and even tried to turn the tables.

“Everything was going well when I was here. When I came back [in 2011], I found a broken and corrupt country. I should ask you, what have you done with my country?” he asked.

Human Rights Watch estimates that between 20,000 and 30,000 people were killed during the reigns of “Baby Doc” and his father. Rights groups also documented torture, rapes, forced exiles and forced disappearances during both regimes.

Among those seated in the space reserved for victims was Robert “Boby” Duval, a former Fort Dimanche prisoner.

When asked by judges, Duvalier claimed Duval had been arrested for “subversive activities” and “weapons possession,” saying the then-young businessman had been “well-treated” in prison.

“A member of his family brought him food three times a day,” Duvalier maintained.

“I didn’t have any weapons,” a visibly angry Duval later told IPS. “He told a lot of lies about me.”

“He sent me to Fort Dimanche, forcing me to drop to 90 pounds,” continued the now burly ex-soccer player, who spent 17 months in prison in 1975 and 1976, eight of them in Fort Dimanche. “They gave us 300 calories a day… They jammed 40 people into a four-by-four meter cell. Two or three people died every day.”

The judges also asked Duvalier about the accusations of corruption and embezzlement. Experts estimate “Baby Doc” stole at least 300 million dollars.

Asked if he still had money in foreign accounts, Duvalier replied “no,” even though at least four million dollars is in a frozen Swiss account.

While life in much of the country proceeded much as usual on Thursday, outside the makeshift courthouse, several dozen aging Duvalier supporters dressed in red and black – the colors of the former regime – chanted “Long live Duvalier!” and “Duvalier, this is your country, do whatever you want!”

On the radios, and online, Haitians and Haiti-watchers stayed abreast of the proceedings through Tweets, photos and videos sent out by journalists, lawyers and human rights advocates.

Haitian journalist Rachèle Magloire sent out quotations every minute or so, at one point tweeting out that Duvalier said, “I am the son of a great nationalist. If it weren’t for me, the country would have fallen into civil war.” Another journalist tweeted from the room: “Duvalier supporters clamouring” while a correspondent abroad noted: “Extraordinary day in #Haiti.”

The hearing ended at about 3:30 pm and is to be continued on Mar. 7, when victims like Duval and others are expected to testify.

Thursday’s session is part of an appeal by regime victims who filed a complaint against the former dictator in 2011 for crimes against humanity. In January 2012, a judge rejected the charges, citing Haiti’s 10-year statute of limitations on murder as one reason. The ruling was condemned by local and international rights groups, and by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The Bureau of International Lawyers (Bureau des Avocats Internationaux – BAI), one of the groups representing the victims, noted that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch all say the abuses under Duvalier’s rule constitute crimes against humanity.

“These crimes cannot be barred by any statute of limitations pursuant to international law that is binding on Haiti. As a matter of law, the Court of Appeals must grant the victims’ appeal and allow Duvalier to stand trial for his both his political violence and fraud crimes,” BAI attorney Mario Joseph said in a statement on Thursday following the hearing. “Given the events today, we are hopeful this court will issue a fair decision.”

From left to right, Veronique Roy, often referred to as Duvalier's "long-time companion", Jean-Claude Duvalier, and General Prosper Avril, a former dictator and ex-member of François Duvalier's Presidential Guard. Credit: AlterPresse/Stephen Ralph Henri

By Jane Regan and Milo Milfort
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 26 2013 (IPS)

Angry and frustrated, but also cautiously hopeful, victims, human rights advocates and the Haitian population are waiting for Thursday, Feb. 28, the day former dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier has been ordered to appear at a hearing to determine whether or not he will face charges for human rights abuses committed during his brutal 15-year regime (1971-1986).

The order was issued on Feb. 21 when, once again, the 61-year-old ex-dictator refused to show up at court. The sweltering room was packed with representatives of foreign and local human rights groups, journalists and with some of the 30 victims who are suing Duvalier on the rights violations.

After listening to arguments from Duvalier’s lawyer, the three judges issued an order saying it was “imperative” that Duvalier come to a Feb. 28 hearing, with police escort if necessary.The pencil of history has no eraser, and people are watching, taking notes. We will never stop demanding justice.

Victims, including Robert “Boby” Duval, imprisoned by the regime for 17 months in 1976 and 1977 and who was in the courtroom, were cautiously hopeful about the ruling.

“It’s a big deal,” Duval later told IPS. “If the Haitian legal system can judge a criminal like Duvalier, that means people can start to have a little bit of confidence in it.”

But the 59-year-old Duval – who nearly died in Fort Dimanche, which is sometimes called “Haiti’s Auschwitz”, and who later co-founded a human rights group called League of Political Prisoners, Friends and Families of the Disappeared – warned that the order is only one small step.

Thursday’s session will only determine if the government will open an investigation and begin to hear victims’ complaints, he said.

Since Duvalier’s sudden return to Haiti in 2011 after 25 years in exile, “it’s almost like the government has been protecting him, and that’s a problem, because they are under international obligation to judge him,” Duval said.

Duvalier was first indicted for crimes against humanity in 2008 and then again in 2011. But last year, the court suddenly ruled that he would only be tried for embezzlement, saying that the alleged abuses had taken place too long ago.

Human rights groups, victims and even journalists denounced the decision, noting that under international law, there is no statute of limitations on crimes against humanity. This week’s hearing is seen as perhaps the last chance for Haitian victims and Haitian society.

“The State has an obligation to ensure that there is no impunity for serious violations of human rights committed in the past,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in a statement on Feb. 21. She noted that Duvalier is accused of overseeing “torture, extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances and rape”.

“Such systematic violations of rights must not remain unaddressed,” Pillay continued. “All those Haitians who suffered such abuses have a right to see justice is done.”

Human rights activist Marie Yolène Gilles, director of programmes for the National Human Rights Defense Network in Port-au-Prince, has been fighting for justice in Haiti for over two decades.

A journalist at a radio station destroyed during the Sep. 30, 1991 coup d’état carried out in large part by former members of the ancien régime and against democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, she has been forced into hiding several times over the years. She is not entirely optimistic about the current government’s commitment.

“The people in power always say they are working for democracy, for a ‘state of law,’ but if that’s true they need to send clear signals,” Gilles told IPS.

Mixed signals

Since Duvalier’s sudden and suspicious return to Haiti in 2011 (he arrived with no passort), signals from President Michel Martelly – an admitted former “Tonton Macoute” during Jean-Claude’s reign – have been anything but clear.

Martelly paid the aging ex-despot a very public visit and called for reconciliation. More recently, the government issued Duvalier a diplomatic passport, claiming that as a former “president”, he was entitled to it.

Last year, despite a judge’s order that he stay in the capital, Duvalier attended an event commemorating the second anniversary of the 2010 earthquake in Gonaives, about 100 kilometres up the coast. He sat in the front row next to the ex-dictator and accused human rights violator General Prosper Avril, and even shook hands with President Bill Clinton and the presidential couple.

He is also often seen out and about at swank restaurants with friends and political allies, some of whom hold government posts.

Many in Haiti also criticise the U.S. government for not taking a stronger stand. In contrast to the U.N. and human rights groups, Washington has been largely silent, or has implied that judging the ex-dictator was not a priority.

Noting that Duvalier had a record of “repression”, in a 2011 interview with CBS, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it was up to “the government and people” to decide on his fate, stressing: “[W]e’re focused on trying to maintain stability, prevent chaos and violence in this very unpredictable period with his return.”

“The so-called ‘friends of Haiti’ countries have been too tolerant,” Duval told IPS. “That doesn’t happen in other countries. This is a lack of respect for the Haitian people. So many people died during the Duvalier regime.”

Except for a brief period, the U.S. government supported the 29-year Duvalier dictatorship (Jean-Claude’s father, François, controlled Haiti from 1957 until his death in 1971) with military and development aid, as well as with direct budget support.

Jean-Claude Duvalier’s government also received millions of dollars in assistance (grants and loans) from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Inter-American Development Bank.

“The pencil of history has no eraser”

The Feb. 28 hearing is part of an appeal brought by a group of 30 victims that is being closely watched by local and international rights groups, many of whom had representatives in the courtroom last week, among them Béatrice Vaugrante of Amnesty International.

“Jean-Claude Duvalier cannot be beyond the reach of justice,” Vaugrante said in a statement issued after last week’s order. “The authorities in Haiti have the duty to do all they can to ensure he faces the courts for the systematic abuses that took place during his time in office. If he continues to avoid the hearing, he must be arrested.”

Rights activist Gilles agrees.

“Duvalier must be judged. That would show people that you have to pay for what you do. He needs to face up to all of the accusations and society must know why all those crimes happened, why so many died, why they tortured people at Fort Dimanche,” Gilles told IPS, quoting a Haitian proverb: “‘The pencil of history has no eraser’ and people are watching, taking notes. We will never stop demanding justice.”

Middle sign reads: "Community Radios Won't Be Shut Down!" Photo: M. Milfort/HGW

By Milo Milfort and Jane Regan
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Dec 10 2012 (Haiti Grassroots Watch)

A community radio station silenced by Haitian authorities is open again thanks to the mobilisation of other stations as well as organisations and associations both inside and outside of Haiti.

On Nov. 9, the state telecommunications agency – the Conseil National de Télécommunication or CONATEL – shut down Radio Voice of Claudy Museau (Vwa Klodi Mizo – RVKM), a radio station in the southern city of Les Cayes founded in 1996 by the Unified Popular Movement of Les Cayes (Mouvement Unité Populaire des Cayes – MUPAC).

RVKM is named after the high school teacher and democratic militant Claudy Museau who was killed during the bloody coup d’état against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1994).

CONATEL authorities ordered police to seal off the station the day after President Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly visited Les Cayes, and came as Martelly is coming under increasing criticism across the country, with rights groups, students, professors and others organising strikes and roadblocks almost every week.

RVKM is known in the city and the region for its educational, cultural and political programmes and for providing space for programming and guests critical of the current government.

“Our governments always show they would like to control the community radios,” says Professor Ary Régis of the State University’s Faculty of Human Sciences.

The shutdown was strongly denounced by local and international organisations, and in a demonstration on Nov. 28. Dozens of members of community radio stations from across the country, joined by students and representatives of various organisations, filled the streets in front of the CONATEL and Ministry of Communication buildings.

Marchers carried posters with slogans like, “Community radios are the result of struggles by democratic and popular sectors! You can’t just shut them down!” and “Long live freedom of the press – NO to censorship!”

Haiti’s 1977 telecommunications law dates from the brutal days of the François Duvalier (“Papa Doc”) dictatorship and does not recognise community radios, even though there are some 40 across the country. A new law – prepared with help from the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters – has been ready since 2007, but so far parliamentarians have not considered it.

“CONATEL used a legal pretext to close VKM,” shouted Sony Estéus of a small institution that works with the stations, the Society for the Broadcasting of Social Communication (in Creole: Sosyete Animasyon Kominikasyon Sosyal – SAKS), into a megaphone during the Nov. 28 demonstration.

As marchers amassed in front of the Ministry of Communications, Minister Ady Jean Gardy invited representatives to an ad hoc meeting. That consultation, other negotiations and mounting pressure resulted in the re-opening of the radio on Dec. 1, and the decision that all community radios would be allowed to operate “until the publication of a law… thanks to an authorisation that will be published by CONATEL,” according to RVKM news director Jean Claudy Aristil.

“We are very pleased with the decision,” Aristil added. “This is an important step for freedom of the press in Haiti.”

Haiti’s community movement began in secret, during the 1991-1994 coup d’état regime. Pirate radio stations in the capital and a few timid beginnings in the countryside led to a flourishing movement in 1995.

With the help of equipment and training from SAKS and other groups, peasant, youth, labour and other organisations in Haiti’s democratic and popular movement founded stations across Haiti. Some have not survived due to financial challenges and to offensives from local politicians and foreign funders seeking to co-opt the stations.

But many – bearing names like “Radio Star of the Peasant,” “Radio Zèb Tenite” (named after a tenacious grass that survives droughts) and “Radio Working Together – are still on the air. In a country where most people get their news and information from the radio, and where a large percentage of the population lives in the countryside, community radios play many important roles.

“Haiti is dominated by economic and social problems, and by ‘communicational marginalisation,’” according to Professor Régis. “Community radios can help the country develop because they allow people to discuss problems, participate in debates and increase transparency.”

*RVKM is one of dozens of community radios across the country who partner with Haiti Grassroots Watch.

Some of the demonstrators running through the streets of Haiti's capital on Sep. 30, 2012. Credit: Lionel Fortuné/IPS

By Milo Milfort and Lafontaine Orvild
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Oct 1 2012 (IPS)

Several thousand marchers demonstrated against Haitian President Michel Martelly on Sunday, the anniversary of a bloody coup d’état that toppled president Jean-Bertrand Aristide 21 years ago.

With posters and slogans denouncing the rising cost of living, the government’s authoritarianism and corruption, and also calling for Martelly to step down, demonstrators made their way to the ruins of the National Palace, crushed in the devastating earthquake of Jan. 12, 2010.

“One way or the other, he’s got to go!” was one of the many slogans shouted by demonstrators, whose ranks included hundreds of supporters of Aristide’s Lavalas Family party, as well as people from parties and groups who once marched in the streets against the popular former priest and president.

Aristide was ousted in 2004 with support of these same political groups, and also in a coup d’état in 1991 that resulted in a brutal three-year military regime. Both efforts had overt and covert support from Washington.

On Sunday, the former sworn enemies were marching together in a demonstration that brought to a close several weeks of protests around the country. Some of the marchers carried red cards – indicating a fatal “penalty” in football – while others carried posters.

The Martelly government has also faced increasing criticism for its failure to re-house earthquake victims as well as for rising prices due in part to the falling value of the Haitian gourde. Consumer prices rose almost one percent in August alone, bringing inflation over the past 12 months to over six percent, according to the government Haitian Institute of Statistics and Data Processing.

In an effort to calm the population, in September the government formed a “price stabilisation committee” and announced it would import 300,000 sacks of rice from Japan. Rice farmers and economists have denounced the measure as populist and harmful to local agriculture.

“The government decision to subsidise rice ‘dumping’ is a direct consequence of the protests of people who have seen their cost of living rise,” rice farmer and peasant leader Nesly Voltaire told IPS in an interview in the country’s “breadbasket”, the Artibonite Valley. “The money the government is investing in importing rice could have been used instead to finance small farmers.”

Speaking with the online news agency AlterPresse on Sunday, Schiller Louisdor of the Lavalas Family said the deterioration in people’s living conditions was the direct result of both “coups d’état” and added: “We want to tell the president that we won’t accept this situation of misery.”

Over the past two weeks, students, teachers, workers, mothers and fathers who can’t muster school fees for their children, and the unemployed have taken to the streets in a half-dozen cities across the nation to protest rising food prices, unpaid teachers’ salaries, poor conditions at the state university in Gonaïves and insecurity and crime that plague many cities.

Les Cayes and Cap-Haïtien have also both seen strikes. While some of the demonstrations only gathered a few hundred, others – notably in Cap-Haïtien in Haiti’s north – have brought out thousands.

“This movement is going to spread! Other cities are going to demonstrate!” declared Senator Moïse Jean Charles of the North department in radio interviews last week. Jean Charles is one of the regime’s most outspoken critics.

Other politicians have also been adding their voice to the chorus. On the radio last week, former presidential candidate and constitutional scholar Mirlande Manigat said the public “should pay attention to the demonstrations”.

“We need to watch all of this closely. Every city has its own problems,” added the head of the Rassemblement des Démocrates Nationaux Progessistes (RNDP – Assembly of Progressive National Democrats). “These developments show that now the people are no longer just talking; they are acting.”

The Organisation Peuple en Lutte (OPL – Organzation People in Struggle) party issued a “communiqué” on Sep. 22 deploring “the lamentable situation in the country and the depressing possibilities for the future as a result of the government’s antidemocratic attitude and the autocratic decisions of authorities which are leading the whole society down dangerous paths of illegitimacy and chronic political instability.”

The “illegitimacy” and “autocratic decisions” to which the opposition party referred are related to the executive’s ramming through constitutional amendments last June. Scores of analysts and scholars – including Manigat – have called them “unconstitutional”.

More recently, the executive has attempted to force the creation of an electoral council without properly following proper procedure. So far, the legislative branch has failed to choose their representatives. Elections originally slated for November have been indefinitely delayed, leaving every single city hall, and one-third of the Senate, without elected officials.

Last week, the minister of justice suddenly fired the Commissaire de Gouvernement (top government prosecutor) Jean Renel Sénatus for insubordination and for “disrespect”. The next 48 hours saw a virtual revolving door of two more nominations and then resignations for the same post, until it was finally filled on Saturday.

Quoted in the Haitian daily Le Nouvelliste on September 28, Sénatus agreed he had been insubordinate.

“In less than three months, the minister (of justice) asked me to execute 17 illegal orders. In these cases, yes, he can say that I didn’t execute orders and that I was disrespectful,” the former prosecutor said, adding that the minister had also asked him to arrest 36 people for a “plot against the security of the state and association with criminals”. Sénatus said he also refused to carry out those orders.

Due to the implementation of draconian neoliberal policies in Haiti over the past two decades – which include the lowest tariffs on food imports in the Caribbean – and recent governments’ inability or lack of will to adequately intervene in the agricultural sector, Haitian rice production has failed to keep pace with population growth and consumer demand. Foreign rice routinely sells at 40 to 50 percent less than Haitian rice.

During a recent visit to Haiti, U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic deplored the government’s lack of progress in achieving even minimal benchmarks.

“For too long many Haitians have been claiming their economic and social rights in vain, and have not even been reached by basic services. The new development efforts must be based on human rights and ensure that benefits are enjoyed by all, in particular the poorest,” Simonovic said, according to a UN News Centre release on Sep. 17.

Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly on Sep. 26, Martelly called for rich nations to keep their promises to help Haiti recover from the earthquake. Thirty-two months after the catastrophe which killed at least 200,000 people and caused billions of dollars worth of damage, only about only about one-half of the 12 billion dollars pledged for relief and recovery by bilateral and multilateral donors has been disbursed, the U.N. Special Envoy’s office reporter last month.

Some 360,000 people still live in squalid tent camps. More than two-thirds of Haitians live on less than two dollars a day, according to the World Bank.