Ezili Danto's Open Salon Blog

Jan. 1, 2012: Another Independence Day Under Occupation

Tue, 3 Jan 2012 14:01:12 -0500

Haiti: Jan 1, 2012 Another Independence Day Under Occupation

Janjak Desalin (Jean Jacques Dessalines, Haiti Founding Father) Go to: Haiti: Jan 1, 2012 Another Independence Day Under Occupation

Support Haiti's Zili Dlo: Free clean water for everyone

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 16:10:07 -0400

Clean Water is life and Health for Haiti : Support Zili Dlo - Free clean water for everyone, write to: erzilidanto@yahoo.com

Ezili Danto's Photostream

Right now we are doing on-site distributions, as you will see from the Zili Dlo photo report , but wish to get more clean water to more people in Haiti. Donation of water trucks are needed. Please consider helping our fundraising team or making a water truck or other donation. Thank you. The Ezili Dantò (HLLN) Network is a Haiti-led, Haiti-capacity building effort and Zili Dlo is run in Haiti by two of our grassroots women-led organizations: Sopudep and Fanm Vodou Pou Haiti. Please help support Zili Dlo: Clean water for everyone. Consider also booking an Ezili Dantò presentation or Haiti forum to support Zili Dlo and the Ezili Dantò writings. ---Ezili Dantò of HLLN

This photo report is our thank you to the Ezili Network for continued support and records our recent journey to launch the new filtering system for Zili Dlo: Clean water for everyone in haiti

Support clean water for Haiti | Photo report: Support Zili Dlo

Clean Water is Life Health and Solution to Cholera

Ezili Dantò's HLLN Water Treatment Launching/Solidarity with UN cholera victims

"Zili Dlo is not privatized, not for sale whatsoever. Access to uncontaminated portable drinking water is a human right, a life necessity that must be placed above all commercial and political considerations." - Ezili Dantò of HLLN.

Cholera vaccines are not the answer. Clean water and sanitation is

Zili Dlo Water Treatment Launching/Solidarity with Haiti earthquake and UN cholera victims:

_{Sister Sandy Muhammad, Rea Dol, Euvonie Georges Auguste, Ezili Dantò
First clean water at location - August 10, 2011

Photo credit: Dominique Esser, HLLN}

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Zili Dlo se lasante e lavi pou Ayiti - Zili Dlo is life and health for Haiti. Cholera vaccines are not the answer. Clean water and sanitation is.

More Zili Dlo photos at Ezili Dantò Photostream

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Make a donation to support Ezili HLLN’s writings and clean water project

Book an Ezili Dantò presentation or Haiti forum to support Zili Dlo and Ezili Dantò writings.

Ezili in Miami

Ezili Dantò performs pieces from her one-woman Vodun Jazzoetry show, Red, Black & Moonlight.

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Ezili on RT

Ezili Carnegie Hall

Ezili Bwa Kayiman

Ezili Dantò performs Bwa Kayiman, the Vodun gathering on Aug. 14, 1791 that started the successful Haitian revolution, abolished slavery, colonialism and created the nation of Haiti. Written by Ezili Dantò and performed here with Troupe Makandal and master Haitian drummer, Frisner Augustin. (See, Bio of Ezili Danto, 1791 ; Divine Mother: Ezili, Aset, Isis ; Black Woman: Mother of All the Races and Haiti Epistomology. )

Haiti: Vodun Jazzoetry-Ezili Dantò's Red, Black & Moonlight (Video Reel)

The RBM series are written and performed by Ezili Dantò

Documenting 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. It's a musical memoir full of coming of age stories of a woman raised African-American-Haitian in the US, who returns to her parents' homeland and cannot undo the U-turn. The work testifies to the tragic plight of the Black nation of Haitians surviving within a hostile American Mediterranean.

Texts of the RBM performances pieces may be found on our website. Email for more info and for bookings in video is updated to erzilidanto@yahoo.con Dance and drumming workshops are offered only with performance bookings. School clippings, one and two.

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More Zili Dlo photos at Ezili Dantò Photostream

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Avatar Haiti: Interviews with Ezili Dantò on Disaster Capitalism and the US/UN/NGO occupation in Haiti

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CrossTalk on Haiti: Failed aid

CrossTalk on Haiti: failed aid – interview with

Ezili Dantò, Nick Rossier, Stanley Lucas

Source: Haiti Year of Agony -Ezili HLLN Bourquet of Tears & Light

Despite the army of NGOs and a strong commitment of the international community, Haiti is still broken and its prospects are dim. Is something fundamentally wrong with the aid programs? And can Haitians break out of it? Ezili Dantò, Stanley Lucas and Nicolas Rossier share their first-hand experience on CrossTalk. Broadcast date: January 12, 2011.

"0.5 % in Haiti - Haiti's Oligarchy - own 98% of Haiti's wealth through monopolies orchestrated and supported by Western policymakers and corporations." - Ezili Dantò of HLLN

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Since the 2004 Bush regime change in Haiti, US large footprint in "poor?" Haiti keeps increasing. US Embassy in Haiti is the fifth largest US Embassy compound in the world, after Iraq, Afghanistan, China
and Germany.

THE EVOLUTION OF DISASTER CAPITALISM (English, about 2 hours, uploaded about 7 hours ago by fansmiles, broadcast date: 2010-11-10) (Source - politube.org)

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Book an Ezili Dantò presentation or Haiti forum to support Zili Dlo and Ezili Dantò writings.

More Zili Dlo photos at Ezili Dantò Photostream

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Haiti: The US and UN brought us Disease and Humiliation

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 13:10:29 -0400

Haitians have a saying: "washing your hands and wiping it dirt"

Source: The Haitian Blogger, Oct. 23, 2011

Anti-UN Protests in Haiti:

"They've Brought Us Disease and Humiliation"

This is what the U.S. and it's proxies have been doing in Haiti. In fomenting crisis after crisis in Haiti, they must stupidly think that this will "protect their interests." How droll! With instability comes thousands of Haitians aiming for their shores! Same goes for the Dominican Republic, which harbored, armed and nurtured the "rebels" who were the "muscle" for the U.S. sponsored coup of Haiti's first democratically elected government.

For the U.S., it must be tiring to keep Haiti's mass of "useless eaters"** at bay by keeping their Coast Guard on the alert 24/7. This must be why they need this MINUSTAH proxy occupation to do their dirty work. Keep Haiti unstable and control the country?

**Useless eaters: a term applied to the infamous Kissinger Report in which he proposed methods to reduce the populations of underdeveloped countries... or genocide by any other name.

Haiti has endured over 200 years of abuse at the hands of the United States.

There has never been any intention by the U.S. to uphold democracy or engender stability in Haiti.

A particularly poignant reminder of U.S. intentions in Haiti was the 20 years of a direct, brutal and racists occupation. During the Invasion of Haiti in 1915: The U.S. Marines went straight to the Haitian National Bank and removed its gold reserves to New York City. The U.S. military ruthlessly crushed resistance, murdering leaders, burning villages to the ground and killing 15-30,000 Haitians. Did you know that the resistance was so strong that the U.S. military had to use aerial bombardment to rout the Cacos and their leader Charlemagne Peralte?

Documents of Charlemagne Peralte - read here.

The U.S. Congressional record documents the theft of the gold and the real reason for the 1915 occupation -- read here: The seizure of Haiti by the United States; a report on the military occupation of the Republic of Haiti and the history of the treaty forced upon her ..

The occupation was the means toward changing the Haitian Constitution, primarily to allow multinationals to own property in Haiti and exploit Haiti's resources for foreign benefit and not the interests of the Haitian people.

The $500,000 in gold would be worth 42,000,000+ in today's gold market. The theft fulfilled two purposes, first it made Haiti a U.S. ward; second, Haiti was no longer able to have a gold standard to back its paper currency.

The U.S. must return Haiti's gold! It must pay restitution for all the injustice, inhumanity -- crimes against humanity it has committed in Haiti!

Also, the occupation trained and from that point on held control over the renegade Haitian military (responsible for many coups, massacres, rapes and other atrocities in Haiti).

When Aristide dismantled of the dreaded Haitian military, it must have rankled the US State Department and Bill Clinton, since it's current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the puppet they've "selected" as Haitian president, the right-wing Duvalerist, Martelly, is determined to re-institute the military over the objections of most of the Haitian people.

Michel Martelly is sure to get support in his quest for a "pink militia" from the guy newly minted to serve at Washington's leisure. The new Prime Minister of Haiti Garry Conille is Bill Clinton's former Chief-of-Staff in Haiti. No matter that Conille, as well as Martelly do not meet the Constitutional residency requirements to hold elective office in Haiti.

"It is a common misconception, both in Haiti and abroad, that the country’s president holds executive power. In fact, his main power is to nominate the man or woman who does: the Prime Minister.... Garry Conille, 45, is the son of a Serge Conille, who was a government minister under the Duvalier dictatorship." Find out more about: Garry Conille's neo-liberal pedigree here.

All Haitian's will start respecting the U.S. and it's proxy the UN MINUSTAH military force when they begin to put a value on Haitian life.

Background:

How the U.S. impoverished Haiti

http://www.nathanielturner.com/howusimpoverishedhaiti.htm

Haiti - a history of intervention, occupation and resistance

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/95531

Farmer relieves himself on Haiti’s dying cholera victims

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:10:49 -0400

* “A study on cholera risk factors conducted in Haiti found that not treating the drinking water was the main risk component… “Elimination of the threat of epidemic cholera is still possible for Haiti, and the key ingredient for that will be clean, chlorinated water and latrines.” (–Scott F. Dowell, MD, MPH, during presentation to infectious diseases (ID) experts at the 49th Annual Meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America Sunday in Boston. )

Paul – the god – Farmer relieves himself on Haiti’s dying cholera victims

It’s been one year since the UN imported cholera to Haiti. Nearly 500,000 Haitians have been infected and over 6, 500 have been killed. But UN representative, Paul Farmer, is obviously the “impartial one” the Associated Press is going to as “expert” to speak on the situation. ( AP Interview: Expert says Haiti has worst cholera, By TRENTON DANIEL, Associated Press October 18, 2011. )

Of course said UN representative is telling all and sundry that Haiti is dirty and that’s why the outbreak is so ‘freaking’ severe. Not that lives would have been saved if clean water and sanitation, which the UN says is a human right, had been a funded relief priority perhaps as soon as the outbreak began, or maybe even seven years ago when the UN “peacekeepers” came to “help” Haitians? Or, maybe sometime before when President Aristide tried to bring desperately needed water and sanitation to Haiti but first the Clinton Administration and then the George W. Bush Administration forced the already approved Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) loans to Haiti to be blocked.

Saying, in effect, if US rulers don’t approve of who Haitians vote in as President and his public health initiatives that would service the general public welfare, then monies from the Haiti government ought to only be used to pay down old Western Duvalierist debts, not Haiti public welfare health projects and infrastructure. More than most, Paul Farmer is well versed in these Haiti truths, well-versed. ( C.I.A Operation in Haiti Before the Earthquake .)

We won’t learn any of this from the AP’s interview of Paul Farmer, the total sellout. We only learn that “the spread of the disease” is due to what Paul Farmer, uhmm, “describes as Haiti’s status as the “most water insecure” country in the world, which, the article states "means people have insufficient access to clean water." Trenton Daniels then is all set to selectively opine, in his article, that “Cholera then spread through Haiti’s biggest river because a Haitian contractor failed to ensure proper sanitation at the U.N. base.”

There’s no mention in the article about the permanent solution to cholera, only an emphasis on taking pills – eradicating cholera with pharmaceuticals.

Oh yes, Haitians could defend Haiti from the embedded AP and Paul Farmer’s condescension, insulting paternalism, selective blindness and stinking hypocrisy if only this was a rational world, interested in truth and justice.

If the Associated Press had come to a Haitian like me, I would have spoken on behalf of the 500,000 infected and 6,500 dead and said Haiti suffers from the foreign cholera outrage because the UN came to Haiti. Before this, Haitians indeed had insufficient access to clean water but no cholera fatalities. The Nepalese soldiers dumped their raw, untreated feces, directly from their toilets into Haiti’s waterways, contaminating Haiti with the most virulent form of the germ.

The truth, though, is incidental. Ever since Columbus. No one in power wants to know that Haiti suffers from the worst cholera outbreak in the world because the UN came to Haiti, as military US imperial proxy to institutionalize Martelly-type cholera democracy, disenfranchising 10 million Blacks and delegitimizing authentic elections. Au contraire, what’s lifted as truth, though the lifters are mostly in total denial, is the “insane imperial narrative and custom of honoring rapists, murderers, torturers, degenerate pedophile maniacs, pillagers, plunderers, enslavers and poverty pimps.”

The negative attractor field that animates the Paul Farmers of this world is up to those who see it to transform. There is always the higher energetic field above lies, subterfuge, colonial paternalism and these self-serving masking of slaughter and containment-in-poverty in Haiti by the depraved and tyrannical powers-that-be. But humanity seems possessed by the imitation of goodness these lousy devils project. Worst, the white man and his black collaborators, totally unconscious of their own wretchedness despite the facts of history, spend lots of time rationalizing their own falsehoods. Their mind, in its identity with the mythical goodness of themselves, cannot, by definition comprehend reality.

Westerners are told and trained in schools that their “schooled minds” shall be a great instrument of planetary progress. But yet that instrument refuses to act upon the reality that Haiti doesn’t need an export-led economy, wage earners as opposed to entrepreneurs, sweatshops in the information technology age, the NGO invasion, foreign investment(?), Hillary Clinton’s Monsanto hybrid seeds, Bill Clinton Foundation’s cholera insurance, the UN military acting as military proxy for the world’s one superpower to prevent dissent and deny the masses economic justice.

The minds at these schools are not trained to see the limitation of Western rationale, since few professors at Officialdom schools would get teaching positions if they taught their students about the limitations of the mind, how to elevate consciousness and see their own ego blindness and incapacity. Schooled minds are mostly taught about Western civilizations’ mythical benevolence and superiority.

Thus, we have the world and soul terrors they’ve created for over 519 years of genocide and constant Euro/US warmongering upon humankind. (I hear New Orleans’s school privatization guru, Paul Vallas, along with the UN’s Bill Clinton are about to bring that entire Pèpè curriculum to Haiti along with Farmer’s lucrative but useless cholera vaccines and Martelly’s taxation-without-representation education reforms.)

The often-quoted prophets of old say to not fight or fear evil. This Black woman is sometimes confounded as to how to recognize evil and transform it without confronting, fighting to exterminate it. Thankfully, Janjak Desalin is my history teacher. I bow this October 2011, on the 205th anniversary of your assassination, Desalin, to the energy field you emanate. The only successfully energy field, codified in the Bwa Kayiman call, that met these vampires outrage for outrage and the only one the collective Western psyche cannot forgive or stop trying to reverse. (Bill Clinton has more power in Haiti than Haiti’s president: The Holocaust Continues .)

Are we Haitians simply not supposed to notice the stark reality that it’s not the white population, the tourists nor the UN folks who are suffering a mass loss of life due to the imported cholera germ to Haiti? But the poorest Black woman’s children, that is, the masses in Haiti?

In the October 18, AP Interview , after Paul –the god – Farmer relieves himself on Haiti’s dying cholera victims, Trenton Daniels of the AP continues in the same vein, to say, that the negligence of the UN contractor (Haitian, of course) caused the contamination of the Meye River. Just for kicks, I figure I’ll take the time and point out the Nepalese soldiers crap was leaking STRAIGHT from their toilets into the Meye River. (See the UN Final Report, May 5, 2011.)

And while I am at it, for those dying of Farmer’s UN cholera in Port au Prince right now, why not also point out that the Nepalese contingent, never quarantined or punished, continued this year to poison Haiti’s waterways as seen in these pictures and video:

Mediahacker: MINUSTAH still continuing to foul up Haiti: Haitians Upset With UN Base Runoff into Foul-Smelling Pool .

Pictures by Gaetantguevara: Waste water from the UN battalion is dumped right by the beach in Port Salut, Haiti.

Obviously, the UN will pull Paul Farmer out to tell the world to discount Haitian eyewitnesses and the evidence of continued UN germ poisoning going on in Haiti right now. It’s the raison d’etre for his powerful UN position as the UN is proxy for the US imperialism and godly narrative, Paul Farmer and his cohorts ultimately give their life force to uphold. And the old Dixie planter and enslavers’ negative energetic field possessing their minds keep these vultures and vampires in power, prestige and projecting humanity into this unmitigated profit-over-people-and-the-environment nightmare.

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

Vaccines are not Haiti’s top health priority. Clean water and sanitation is.

In the article Farmer, says to “eradicate cholera we’re going to have to vaccinate huge numbers of people. It’s going to require a massive campaign like polio.” If cholera vaccines eradicated cholera, there would not be 100,000 to 300,000 cholera cases documented annually in Bangladesh each year. Someone please send Farmer there. When did Haiti or any single place in the world have over 500,000 polio cases, similar to Haiti’s 500,000 cholera cases that were wiped out by vaccines? Was it not just last year the CDC and other such health experts, including the World Health Organization, were saying cholera vaccines are not effective and not the solution for Haiti?

Instead of advocating for something that would help make Haitians sovereign and healthy, the real answer to cholera like institutionalizing sanitation and clean water infrastructure for all, Paul Farmer proposes to distract Haiti with HIS MISSION to go raise funds for 100,000 controversial cholera vaccines at $1.85 per dose, or $3.70 per person when there are 10million Haitians in Haiti. Will these Haitians be drinking down the oral vaccines with cholera infected water, or will Farmer also import bottled water just for the momentous occasion of swallowing the two required vaccine doses, which provides 70 per cent effectiveness, last for about two years?

The last cholera wave started in 1961, 50-years ago and the Nepalese strain that’s in Haiti is the most virulent strain and part of that wave. Thus, this disease will remain in Haiti unless actions are taken immediately to stop it from being endemic. So far the UN has made no attempts at mitigating its damages. Cholera will lift up in Haiti EVERYTIME there is rain, the rainy season or no sun in Haiti, which is predictable and quantifiable. Why isn’t what Haitians want, that is, justice for the cholera victims, acknowledgement the UN brought it to Haiti, the permanent solution to stopping cholera, environmental clean up, a settlement fund for all cholera medical care and no more foreigners dumping foreign germs and contaminable diseases into Haiti, not being argued? What? Paul Farmer gets to decide what justice and Haiti health care is? And this, the temporary, ineffective cholera vaccines is Farmer’s decided prioritizing edict for Haitians?

As usual the poverty pimps are about keeping themselves in the Haiti picture, about DEPENDENCY, constant NGO profit/involvement in Haiti, poverty pimping, and disaster capitalism. They offer no sustainable solution. Farmer is not accountable to the Haitian people but to his partners and health industry in Haiti and the UN. This move he’s made in the name of Haiti cholera victims is not about institutionalizing domestic Haiti PUBLIC health care run by Haitians, financing clean water and sanitation projects.

In fact, Haiti’s last government refused cholera vaccines for good reason. But now that the Duvalierist puppet Martelly is in office, Farmer and Clinton can RULE Haiti through their UN pulpit, getting their useless cholera vaccines and cholera insurance as Haiti “relief.” Farmer, as usual, violates principle for expediency, loses power and credibility, honor and valor. (Paul Farmer, a total sell-out: Uses Haiti to sell Ineffective Cholera Vaccines ; Support a clean water program for Haiti - Photo report: Support Zili Dlo.)

At HLLN we’ve inherited the problem with foreigners “saving” us since 1806. We know what it is about – whether it's the coup d’etat instigator (ie. Fire starters who create chaos to divide and conquer and always have a need to stay in Haiti FOREVER) or the Paul Farmers of this world (the self-styled fire extinguishers who empathize with the burnt victims and try to put out the fires while building themselves to stay in Haiti FOREVER.). We say to both, out, out, out. Get out of Haiti. Take the nasty UN and the NGO invasion with you.

Ezili Dantò of HLLN
October, 2011
Support a clean water program for Haiti - Photo report: Support Zili Dlo

“If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. ” — Frederick Douglass, (1857)

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The "rational" does not include all that is "the possible." --Ezili Dantò

AP Interview: Expert says Haiti has worst cholera

By TRENTON DANIEL,
Associated Press, October 18, 2011, Source: San Francisco Chronicle

http://bit.ly/nip5s1

(10-18) 17:49 PDT PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) –

Haiti has the highest rate of cholera in the world, according to one of the Caribbean nation’s most prominent health experts.

Dr. Paul Farmer told The Associated Press that cholera has sickened more than 450,000 people in a nation of 10 million, or nearly 5 percent of the population, and killed more than 6,000.

Farmer says cholera is also on the verge of becoming the leading cause of death by infectious disease in Haiti.

“It’s freakin’ incredible,” Farmer, one of the founders of the medical group Partners in Health and U.N. deputy special envoy to Haiti, said by telephone. “In 365 days, you go from no cases to the largest number in the world.”

That’s significantly more than the 100,000 to 300,000 cases documented annually in Bangladesh, Farmer said.

He also said that cholera is likely to become endemic in Haiti, meaning it will become “native” to the country.

“It’s going to be with us for a long time,” he said.

Farmer attributes the spread of the disease to what he describes as Haiti’s status as the “most water insecure” country in the world, which means people have insufficient access to clean water.

There were no documented cholera cases in Haiti prior to the start of the outbreak a year ago this month.

Evidence suggests that the disease inadvertently arrived in Haiti by U.N. peacekeeping troops from Nepal. Cholera then spread through Haiti’s biggest river because a Haitian contractor failed to ensure proper sanitation at the U.N. base.

Despite the spread of cholera, Farmer said it was possible to wipe out the disease by improving Haiti’s water system and sanitation. The use of education and oral vaccines is also important, he added.

“To eradicate cholera we’re going to have to vaccinate huge numbers of people,” Farmer said. “It’s going to require a massive campaign like polio.”

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Forwarded by Ezili’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
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Bill Clinton has more power in Haiti than Haiti’s president: The Holocaust Continues -http://bit.ly/oEmeIQ
“The holocaust in Ayiti continues. The insane imperial narrative and custom of honoring rapists, murderers, torturers, degenerate pedophile maniacs, pillagers, plunderers, enslavers and poverty pimps, starting with Christopher Columbus, who set forth the most prolonged genocides and horrific terrors in recorded human history, continues today. Officialdom honors the UN and UN envoys to Haiti as “humanitarians” or “God” bringing security, stability, peace, law, Christian ethos and “Western civilization.” Too many have jobs, egos, power and prestige invested in the profit-over-people system to see that the current saviors of Haiti extend mostly the same narcissistic, cultural blindness and denials as the initial “missionaries/humanitarians” brought to Haiti in 1492.

Until the lies that bolsters the current US takeover of Haiti is as recognized as Columbus himself ought to be recognize as a cannibal, terrorist and barbarian, Haiti will continue to be an evidence that must be annihilated. A nation the “discoverers” occupying Ayiti (Haiti) today must try to eradicate, or as they euphemistically put it, “save.”

…[T]he Haitian people want the UN occupation to be over, therefore the people can’t ask the United Nations to leave without also requesting Bill Clinton, the UN Special Envoy and his UN Deputy Envoy (Paul ‘the god’ Farmer) to also get out of Haiti, take their NGO/UN tutelage, sham elections and their World Bank/IMF death plans with them.”–Ezili Dantò of HLLN, Oct. 10 2011

Haiti: UN/MINUSTAH’s Gang Rapes

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 21:10:51 -0400

MINUSTAH’s Gang Rapes

By Michaëlle Desrosiers and Franck Seguy
A l’Encontre

Translated from the French by Dady Chery for Haiti Chery, October 12, 2011 | Source: Haiti Chery

MINUSTAH almost exclusively attacks those who are most despised, humbled, and impoverished. Thus, it assures itself a sickening legitimacy with the Haitian grandonarco-bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie from which it recruits most of its local civilian personnel. MINUSTAH can strut, rape, hang, contaminate, and lie to its heart’s content in complete calm, since its interests are one and the same as those of Haiti’s “respectable citizens.”

A beach in Port-Salut, Haiti

Port-Salut, small coastal town in southern Haiti, known for lovely beaches and radiant landscapes deserving of postcards.

Town of Port-Salut, Haiti

Since one week, a new element has been added to her reputation: it is the place where at least four Uruguayan soldiers of the misnamed UN Mission for Stabilization in Haiti (MINUSTAH) hid out and gang-raped an 18-year old Haitian boy.

If the act was perpetrated on Thursday July 28th, 2011, it was not until the end of August that it began to occupy the headlines. Part of the reason for this was because a video of the crime was broadcast on the internet. The soldiers themselves filmed this video and used it later as a movie, projecting it as a way to boast of their prowess. Worse, they did so in front of local teenagers, all friends of the victim. And it is precisely one of these teenagers who captured with his mobile phone some of the video footage that was released online by Haiti Press Network (HPN).

The video appeared on the web for only a few hours. It is unclear if its removal was a diplomatic move by the Uruguayan government or by the UN itself. You Tube justified this withdrawal by noting its policy of not promoting hatred, since many comments (over 4000) were strongly condenming the UN’s barbarity.

Famous son of Port-Salut, Haiti, and champion of the poor, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide

It took the deployment of MINUSTAH soldiers to ruin Port-Salut’s reputation as a haven of peace. In 1995, for example, the city had only 40 police officers. Although the size of the national police has grown, by 2004 Port-Salut had seven police officers. It was almost impossible to record an incident there more serious than the theft of a goat or a few sacs of potatoes.

Yet, paradoxically, since 2004, with the new occupation of the country by MINUSTAH, it became necessary to deploy a military contingent to (de)stabilize Port-Salut. Since nature abhors a vacuum and, as we well know, idleness is the mother of all vices, the military had to exercise what little brains it had to find some reason to justify its presence.

Gradually, they introduced child prostitution and the “cambiar” – a practice of the exchange of food for services like the purchase of hallucinogenic and / or illegal products such as tobacco, alcohol, marijuana… All this appeared in a report published by the National Network for Human rights (Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains, RNDDH) on Monday, September 4, 2011[1].

The boy’s rape should be viewed in this context. Indeed, to earn their daily living, many teenage sons and daughters of poor peasants like this boy forge close relationships with UN soldiers deployed across the country. The boy in Port Salut had befriended a soldier called Poncho from the Uruguayan contingent. This soldier apparently did not partake in the act. He was not even able to help the boy. The rapists had locked the room in which they did their criminal act to prevent the boy’s screams from reaching the ears of his “friend” Poncho.

The opulence in which the UN soldiers installed in Haiti live is shocking, to say the least. They settle into the best hotels in the cities; they strut on the beach on the weekdays as on the weekends, even more so in Port-Salut where the beaches are especially beautiful. In addition, they buy the young ones, prostitute them and… rape them.

Not only do these soldiers enjoy an absolute impunity that has no place for respect of the law or any show of manners – but also their status as UN soldiers places them above the Haitian courts.

Protest against MINUSTAH in Port-Salut, Haiti

An even greater insult to the poor local police and other Haitian officials is the high salary of these soldiers. To compare: a soldier in Uruguay normally gets a monthly salary equivalent to US $ 400. In MINUSTAH, he gets $ 6,000. Though it is true that the Uruguayan government deducts a good part of this salary, MINUSTAH’s Uruguayan soldiers still have enough money and authority to believe they can permit themselves everything in Haiti.

In general, they save enough to buy a nice apartment and… take it easy when they return to their country. One might wonder whether the Uruguayan government’s prompt complaint against its own troops in Haiti was not principally meant to preserve within MINUSTAH an economically viable Uruguayan presence for the benefit of Uruguay. This dedication to the Uruguayan government was also involved in the attempts to promote the idea that the rape perpetrated against the boy was an exceptional incident of which only four Uruguayan soldiers were guilty and not the modus operandi of the occupying forces. This is why it is always worthwhile to refresh one’s memory.

This is not MINUSTAH’s first gang rape

First it should be noted that this is not MINUSTAH’s first gang rape. Indeed, less than one year after MINUSTAH’s arrival in Haiti, specifically February 18, 2005, three Pakistani soldiers from the mission raped a young girl.

Although this was a criminal act that certainly raised the ire of many, especially women’s organizations, this was apparently more acceptable than the gang rape of a male. So far this case has gone unpunished and was filed away.

Today, in gang raping a young boy, MINUSTAH tackled head-on a morality that is Christian, macho, dominant, and very strong in Haiti. The Christians were quick to scream about the abomination, and the lawyers and other opinion makers about the undoing of the boy’s dignity and identity. In other words, he ceased to be a man on being raped by four armed men – which means in the macho culture that he ceased to exist.

It is noteworthy that the boy came from the lower classes of Haiti’s peasantry. His education level illuminates this reality very well. At 18, Johnny is still in junior high school (5eme). He could not attend school during the 2010-2011 academic year, for lack of money. He is his mother’s fourth son, and his brothers, to speak more correctly, half-brothers, are not from the same father. The different surnames in the RNDDH report attest to this important fact.

To produce several sons by different fathers is the result of two closely linked phenomena encountered in Haiti’s lower classes: paternal abandonment and its corollary, serial monogamy. The mother of an abandoned child hooks up with another man so as to survive along with her child. A new child born from this connection is again abandoned by the father. She starts again with a third man in the same way, finding enough to survive with her “fatherless children.” In the process, she produces several children by different fathers, with different surnames, of course, if they are “lucky” enough to be legally acknowledged by their fathers.

MINUSTAH has systematically aimed its abuses at the poor. Its rapes, murders, and assaults are directed against those in run-down areas like Cite Soleil [2], helpless young women and men.

In this regard, RNDDH reports the well-known case of the hanging of 16-year old minor Gerald Jean-Gilles on a Nepalese military base in the north of country, at Carenage, Cap-Haitien (second largest city). MINUSTAH did everything to pass off this crime as a suicide. Except that suicide is a relatively foreign concept in Haiti. Like the boy in Port Salut, Gerald Jean-Gilles was engaging in “cambiar” with UN soldiers, that is to say he rendered small services to them in exchange for food.

Thus, like a true occupation force, MINUSTAH uses rape as a weapon of war. It humiliates, exploits, and demeans those who are most peaceful, those who come into contact with it so as to survive, or simply because they are poor; those whose complexion is very dark because their skin has been burned by Haiti’s scorching sun; those who have the misfortune to live in Cite Soleil and other “no-go zones.”

In exclusively attacking those who are poorest, MINUSTAH, as an occupation force, introduces a different relationship compared to its predecessors in the practice of military invasions on Haitian soil. Indeed, under the official U.S. occupation of Haiti (1915-1934), innovative on Haitian soil, the entire racist U.S. arsenal was unleashed against mulattoes, rich blacks and poor blacks alike. This forced those who initially supported the invasion to ally themselves to the anti-occupation struggle. Although in its most “peaceful” form this consisted of written propaganda, it goes without saying that this contribution strengthened the struggle and gave renewed vigor to the Cacos revolutionaries, previously treated as vagrants by the invaders as well as by the ruling class of mostly mulattoes.

So MINUSTAH has been more vigilant, one might say, in almost exclusively attacking those who are most despised, humbled, and impoverished. Thus, it assures itself a sickening legitimacy with the Haitian grandonarco-bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie from which it recruits most of its local civilian personnel. MINUSTAH can strut, rape, hang, contaminate, and lie to its heart’s content in complete calm, since its interests are one and the same as those of Haiti’s “respectable citizens.”

Speaking of lying, the gang rape of this young man was not the last of MINUSTAH’s actions denounced by the people of Port-Salut. Indeed, during the same month of August, a local organization denounced in a press release the “poor behavior” of the Uruguayan contingent. In response, MINUSTAH investigated itself. This investigation, of course, resulted in the total and categorical denial of the facts and concluded that these were “allegations of misconduct without any foundation.”

Among the complaints against the soldiers:

“Child prostitution, voyeurism, environmental pollution, use of marijuana in the presence of minors, behavior that is demeaning, derogatory, insulting, disrespectful, and unfair to the citizens of Port-Salut” [4].

An interesting thing is that a few days before the gang-rape video of the 18-year-old boy was broadcast on the Internet, the UN force had supposedly concluded this alleged investigation and was on the verge of accusing the organization CREDOP of defamation. However, the rape and its diffusion on the Internet showed not only that the soldiers violated and humiliated the young man but that they took a very filthy pleasure in it. The astonishing fact in all this is that in his demand for apologies after the video and its aftermath, Chilean MINUSTAH chief Mariano Fernandes neglected to apologize for the false report of the investigation released a month earlier.

If once again MINUSTAH occupies the headlines in the Haitian news, at a time when everyone is more concerned about formation of a new government or the reopening of classes, it is not even because “A new study demonstrated its involvement in the criminal transmission of cholera” [5] – an epidemic, which to this day, has already killed over 5,000 Haitians. It is also not because of a new discharge of fecal matter in the country’s rivers [6], as it has been wont to do since October 2010.

Those of good faith who have so far not been moved must eventually understand that MINUSTAH is not a very angelic mission. On the contrary! One could even say that it is profoundly “evil”! Its misdeeds are as grotesque and scandalous as its impunity and the admissions more or less covered-up by the international community [7].

MINUSTAH is sexist and racist. It is openly at war against the masses. Its active participation in the supression of protests throughout the country, and especially those concerning the struggle for a minimum-wage increase are a vibrant testimony.

In this respect, the same RNDDH report indicates:

“On May 12, 2011, Gena Widerson, a 14-year old student (7eme) at the Classic College of Verrettes, Artibonite Department, was injured by two projectiles fired by MINUSTAH soldiers. This incident occurred when students of the Lycée Jacques Stephen Alexis organized a protest against the removal of one teacher. ”

In fact, the repression against any hint of class or popular struggle is systematic on the part of the UN mission.

To silence, humiliate, rape, and prostitute: this is MINUSTAH’s creed.

Below is an excerpt of some cases of rape, robbery, beatings, murder and illegal and arbitrary arrests perpetrated by MINUSTAH and recounted in the report of RNDDH:

1. On February 18, 2005, three MINUSTAH Pakistani soldiers in Gonaives raped a young girl;

2. On March 20, 2005, Tele Contact radio journalist Robenson Laraque was fatally wounded by bullets fired by MINUSTAH soldiers who had replaced the military from the old police station in Petit-Goave;

3. On 26 November 2005, at Carrefour Trois Mains, on Airport Road, a young woman was forced to fellate a Jordanian soldier before being raped and sodomized by him;

4. On December 20, 2006, Stephane Durogene, student (3eme) at the Center for Economic Education and Classic (CFCE) was injured in his left eye by projectiles fired by MINUSTAH soldiers as he passed close to the police station in Delmas 62;

5. On November 3, 2007, 111 Sri Lankan officials were implicated in cases of abuse and exploitation of minors;

6. On May 29, 2008, police officer Jacques Luckner, assigned to the Cite Soleil police station, was molested by MINUSTAH soldiers;

7. On August 6, 2008, MINUSTAH soldiers beat two policemen Donson Bien-Aimee and Ronald Denis, both assigned to the Cite Soleil police station. These acts were perpetrated against the victims despite the fact that they had clearly identified themselves;

8. On August 18, 2010, Gerald Jean Gilles, an orphan and minor of 16 years old, was found hanging from an almond tree on the Nepalese base of MINUSTAH in Carenage, Cape Haitian. This boy frequented the based and rendered small services to MINUSTAH agents;

9. In mid-October 2010, the Nepalese MINUSTAH soldiers in Mirebalais were involved in the emergence and spread of cholera in Haiti due to release of their human wastes into the rivers Boukan Kanni and Jenbe, causing considerable loss of life;

10. On May 12, 2011, Gena Widerson, a 14-year old student (7eme) at the College Classic Verrettes, Artibonite Department, was injured by two projectiles fired by MINUSTAH soldiers. This incident occurred when students of the Lycée Jacques Stephen Alexis organized a protest against the removal of one teacher.

These facts are not exhaustive. However, in all the above cases, RNDDH brings into focus the responsibility of MINUSTAH and consequently, that of the UN, because it is unacceptable that soldiers belonging to the UN force were operating outside of any rule of accountability and engaging in nefarious activities of all kinds while under cover of immunity conferred by the UN.

References

[1] Following the uproar caused by this case, RNDDH traveled to Port-Salut to conduct an investigation. This report was published by several Haitian media. The version cited in this article is published online by haiticonnexion.

[2] The largest Haitian slum where, during summer 2005, MINUSTAH entered and killed dozens of people including pregnant women and children.

[3] The grandonarco-bourgoiesie refers to economic and political practices of the bourgeois-gran dons of Haiti. This concept of grand dons-bourgeois or bourgeois-grand dons (grandonboujwa in Haitian Creole) was coined by Jean Anil Louis-Juste specifically to describe Haitian capitalism. In Haiti, it is difficult to identify a single bourgeois who is not also a landowner (Grandon in Creole). However, these lands are not included in capitalist production, but are worked by peasants and rural workers who pay rent to the Grandon. As for the bourgeois, they are found especially in the business of import-export. So they are not just grandon or just bourgeois. Hence the designation grandons bourgeois. We talk about grandonarco-bourgeoisie to draw attention to the fact that the bourgeois Haitian grandons basically function like a family where very few people control most of the economy and national wealth.

[4] Haiti: Port-Salut denounces abuses by MINUSTAH Uruguayan soldiers, published by www.hpnhaiti.com on 11/08/2011.

[5] Haiti-Cholera: study confirms Nepalese origin, published by www.hpnhaiti.com on 24/08/2011.

[6] Haiti: discharge of faecal matter, MINUSTAH recurrence, published by www.hpnhaiti.com on Wednesday, August 10, 2011.

[7] We borrow this concept from the sorely missed late Jean Anil John Louis Juste, shot dead by bullets on 12 January 2010 some three hours before the earthquake. The use of the concept to describe the so-called international community set in motion to destroy the communist ideal represented by the Communist International, already at the Congress of Bretton Woods, derives its relevance in the memory of the struggle of teacher and activist Louis-Juste for the emancipation of Haiti, not only from UN troops but also from capitalistic and neocolonialist relationships of dependence. It is not trivial to recall that in 2009 he was actively sought out by the occupation forces for allying himself to the struggle to raise the minimum wage of Haitian workers to 200 gourdes, or US $ 5 per day.

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Posted from the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN)

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