Ezili Danto

Ezili Danto
Birthday
August 01
Bio
Ezili Dantò is an award winning playwright, a performance poet, author and human rights attorney. She was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and raised in the USA. She holds a BA from Boston College, a JD from the University of Connecticut School of law. She is a human rights lawyer, cultural and political activist and the founder and president of the Ezili’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN). She runs the Haitian Perspectives on-line journal and the Ezili Dantò Newsletter. Ezili’s HLLN is the recognized leading and most trustworthy international voice in Haiti advocacy, human rights work, Haiti news and Haiti news analysis. HLLN’s work is central to those concerned with the welfare of the people of Haiti, Haiti capacity building, sovereignty, institutionalization of the rule of law, and justice and peace without occupation or militarization. Ezili Dantò is also an educator who specializes in teaching about the light and beauty of Haitian culture; the Symbolic and Archetypal Nature of Haitian Vodun; the illegality and immorality of forcing neoliberal policies on Haiti and the developing world... Since the UN-imported cholera outbreak on October 2010, Ezili' HLLN has insisted that environmental clean-up, clean water and sanitation are the only permanent solution to stop the UN cholera spread. Zili Dlo is a humanitarian project that provides free clean water. For more go to the Ezili Danto/HLLN websites at http://www.ezilidanto.com/ and http://www.ezilidanto.com/zili

NOVEMBER 9, 2010 11:04AM

Haiti: Camp Corail Testimony on failure of disaster relief

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Haiti: Testimony From Camp Corail as Cholera Looms

by Georgianne Nienaber

Investigative journalist, author, Haiti relief worker

Posted: November 9, 2010 08:35 AM | Source: Huffington Post

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Photos and video by G. Nienaber November 6, 2010. Please take and use.
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While Haiti was spared severe wind damage from Hurricane Tomas, flooding killed eight people and threatens to worsen a serious cholera epidemic. 1.3 million people are living in unspeakably crowded and filthy condition eleven months after an earthquake killed as many as 300,000. On Monday, the Haitian Ministry of Population (MSPP) released new figures indicating at least 8,138 cholera patients and 544 deaths in five regions or "departments." Artibonite, Centre, Nord, Nord-Ouest, and Ouest all registered cases. This is serious news, since it means that the contagion has spread from the "epicenter" of the outbreak in Artibonite, to the north and northwestern parts of Haiti. The epidemic is a little more than two weeks old.

Anger is increasing under shredded tarps, which the media insists on identifying as "tents." Residents of Camp Corail-Cesselesse, Haiti's flagship IDP camp, were evacuated prior to Tomas from what the government and aid groups once called "hurricane-proof" tents. The previously white nylon tents are now looking more and more like the dirty shredded tarps found in adjacent Camp Canaan, whose 5,581 residents were not offered the luxury of protection as the storm approached. They may have been better off than the people of Corail, who offered testimony that they were moved to an abandoned hospital and housed no better than some of the farm animals that joined them there.

2010-11-09-canaan.jpg Camp Canaan, the "Forgotten Camp"

 

2010-11-09-corail.jpg

Man repairing his "hurricane proof" tent in Camp Corail


If cholera should enter any one of these camps the outcome will be catastrophic.

We have written volumes about conditions in these two camps, and will continue to do so.

For now, listen to testimony from Camp Corail and ask yourself where the money has gone, why 1.3 million people are living in these conditions, and why upwards of 16,000 "charitable" organizations find themselves unprepared for an outbreak of diarrheal disease. Cholera was unpredictable and we will look at its origins in the coming days, but an epidemic of disease was inevitable.

Here is the story from a man living in Camp Corail, taken on November 6. It is time we started listening to the Haitian people. The truth resides with them and in their testimony. Listen as he asks if media organizations have been paid to lie about life in the camps.

Hopefully, you will be outraged as he describes aid workers arriving in expensive SUVs while he "lives in misery."

"It is only God's will that we are still alive."

This was our third visit to Haiti since the earthquake, and what this man (in video above) says is completely accurate.

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Photos and video by G. Nienaber November 6, 2010. Please take and use.

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The 2008 statistics for Who show 5,143 deaths for 190,130 confirmed cases of cholera, that rounds off to 1 death per 37 cases. Haiti's 8,138 cholera patients and 544 deaths work out to a death every 15 cases. The world must ask the question why is the Haitian strain more than twice as virulent as Who's statistics show it should be. On the home front perhaps I have good news for you Ezili: my aunt and her husband were just up on a visit from South Carolina where they are both very active in the local tea bag movement. I was shocked to learn that they were all to aware that none of the Haitian relief ever actually reached Haiti. They of course are blaming it on Obama which I do not totally agree with but somebody needs to made culpable in this tragedy. Why not start with the president and his wife? As far as that hurricane is concerned, I am a born fisherman. The hurricane season ended weeks ago, just like there is no seismic history for Haiti. That hurricane was meant to hit Haiti and it did not. Heads are rolling at the HAARP facility east of Anchorage. If you watch the National Geographic stations on TV you might notice that they are engaged in a remorseless propaganda campaign and you may want to reconsider what you told Gibbons on the Voice of America. There will be an awakening Ezili. Their efforts to prevent it are reminiscent of a cat trying to claw its way up a slippery boat ramp with a cinder block tied to it dragging it inexorably backwards to its watery end. They wanted to cross the Rubicon now they shall find out what is on the other side.
Blame a very advanced country for the misery that occurred in Haiti, they exploded an atomic bomb on the ocean floor . I do not know whom.

Anyway I am now married, she had me gassed and and she "DID" me to make it official. She goes for what she wants, she seems to be a real BIACHE, if you know what I mean.
I read this yesterday and my heart was so pained I could not speak here. I am sorry I was slow to come back tonight, I have been praying the wind and water will take different paths. Today I went out and sang to God Psalms 60 through 65 to plead for Haiti. I wish I had a better singing voice because I think it may come out ugly sounds but I think God still can hear my heart and maybe the Angels find a way to sing it better for me.

I showed my friends your photo of camp Canaan last night, it's hard to look at these things but no one should turn away. We cannot let our hearts become stone. I wonder how the children will stay alive there, I want them to be warm and fed and safe. I am sorry Ezili, for all the mothers and fathers of all those children too. I am grateful that you don't stop showing us these things and ask God to keep you strong. Love and strength to you.
@Jack thanks for being here. Change comes from us elevating different energies. I see some small shift but mostly folks are afraid to face the evil that's grown up and masked itself as normal, as benevolent. Thanks for always stepping forward, rejecting Officialdom's madness - these fools who don't understand the planet's innate interdependence will kill themselves along with everyone else. Come what may, it's good having you here on this merciless journey.

@'Heure Bleue
I feel you. Courage, love and strength to you. Don't fold, ever. I am saying to you exactly what I say to dying and many times demoralized Haitians... For instance, I tell stories like this: There's a Haitian warrior named Sanite Belè (Belair). When the French captured her during the Haitian revolution to end slavery, her husband, another soldier who was leading his own battalion offered to exchange himself for her freedom. At the appointed exchange place, the French betrayed them, went back on their word of honor, captured him, tortured him and put both, husband and wife, to a firing squad. During the execution, the French general said to the Haitian soldier, because you're a woman, I will blindfold you so you won't have to see your husband getting shot to shreds or when the bullets come for you. Sanite Belair, said "No thank you. I am a Haitian woman. I know how live with dignity. I know how to die for freedom . Keep your blindfold." She then offered her chest to the bullets, saying, in essence, do your worst civilized France. France killed her.

But, because Sanite Belair knew how to live free, today I stand without the blindfold. And so @'Heure Bleue do you who support this work giving voice to the voiceless in Haiti. No one said it would be easy watching the various bullets come. Or, living without the media blindfold. But not turning your head will help the next generation everywhere @'Heure Bleue. They may not know your name or mine, but the energies you're lifting by facing, with eyes wide open, the evil that vies for our basic goodness is stronger than death. Stronger than these bullying profit-over-people predators and all their propagandas and ideological tools. Ginen poze.