AP Interview: Haitian president pledges to outlast troubles
CHRISTOPHER GILLETTE, Associated Press - President Jovenel Moise speaks during an interview in his office in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2019.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Haiti's president says he will serve out his term despite rising violence, poor economic performance and months of protests over unresolved allegations of corruption in his predecessor's administration.
President Jovenel Moise pledged in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday to respect the findings of a commission investigating the corruption allegations.
"It takes a lot of courage to stay in power, but I am pledging to you to have the courage to continue moving forward," Moise said, saying he would resist pressure to resign.
Moise was named in two reports resulting from a corruption investigation by judicial authorities into the spending of funds from Petrocaribe, a Venezuelan government program that provided subsidized oil to Caribbean nations. Protesters have repeatedly taken to the streets in recent months in demonstrations prompted by the findings of widespread fraud in government contracts awarded to contractors to build roads, buildings and administer social programs.
Moise was described as receiving potentially improper payments as a private contractor to build a road in northern Haiti before he became president.
The audits revealed millions of dollars of aid money siphoned off by contractors for shoddy and substandard work, like an overpass built over busy Delmas avenue that cost more than $30 million, but should have cost around $2 million.
Once revealed, the extent of the corruption sparked widespread protests and street violence, and calls for Moise to step down.
Moise has refused to resign, though he promised to criminally charge anyone found by the audit board to have stolen funds from the government.
"Of course we must know the truth and the truth about this investigation must be released. That is very important. The investigation must reveal the truth so that justice can be served and the guilty jailed. Those who misspent the government's money, they should be arrested and locked up," Moise said Wednesday.
The protests, economic downturn and increasing insecurity and gang-related crime have made Moise's political future uncertain despite his determination to stay in power.
Moise said he was not concerned about more allegations of his involvement in potentially improper contracting, saying: "The judicial audit does not involve the executive branch. This is a concern of the judicial branch."
The president insisted that Haiti must move beyond the crisis and let the judicial process play out.
"We must go beyond talking about the survival of the government, because political stability in Haiti is the most important thing for us," he said. "If the opposition wants power they must participate in democratic elections and win the vote of the people."
HAITIAN NATIONAL POLICE
He caught one of Haiti’s most wanted criminals. Now the nation’s top cop is out of a job
A month after arresting one of Haiti’s most wanted gang leaders and exposing a troubling connection between gang leaders and a member of the nation’s parliament, the head of the country’s beleaguered police force is out of a job.
Haiti National Police Director Michel-Ange Gédéon was told on Monday by Haiti President Jovenel Moïse that he would not be staying on, and that his replacement would be announced as early as Tuesday morning.
The president did not say who the next chief would be. But those familiar with the decision said the choices come down to two individuals: Normil Rameau, Gédéon’s one-time No. 2 and former head of Haiti’s Central Directorate of the Judicial Police; and Noel Charles Nazaire, the head of the country’s prison system. Rameau, who is currently assigned to the Haitian embassy in Washington, was told last week by the presidential palace to report to Port-au-Prince.
“Under my tenure, bandits always had to be worried regardless of their political affiliation,” Gédéon, 46, said Monday, summarizing his three years as Haiti’s top cop.
In Haiti, he said, bandits are everywhere — in the city, in the countryside, the slums and the villas — and Haitians must continue to “fight mercilessly against bandits and traffickers of all kinds.”
Gédéon was appointed to the job in 2016 by interim Haiti President Jocelerme Privert and ratified by the Haitian Senate, but his mandate expired last week. Moïse, who has authority under the constitution to appoint the police chief, could have named him to a second term. Some observers in the international community, which funds most of the police force, wanted him to keep Gédéon on the job.
But despite months of lobbying by foreign diplomats in Port-au-Prince for continuity in the 15,937-member police force, Moïse decided to let Gédéon go and appoint his own chief.
The switch in command comes as Haiti continues to undergo a worsening political and economic crisis with no functioning government and Moïse continues to face calls for his resignation from political opponents and anti-corruption grassroots activists. It also comes as the United Nations prepares to permanently end its peacekeeping operation in October after 15 years.
Rebuilding the Haiti National Police and training police officers have been key priorities for the U.N.., which in its most recent report from the secretary-general to the U.N. Security Council warned that “without stronger support from the government and the international community, Haiti’s police force risks losing the gains” in professionalization it has achieved.
Some of those gains, Gédéon said, came under his tenure. He credits his administration with not only making the police more professional, but less political. Among some of the measures carried out under his leadership: adding more women to the force; providing more training opportunities for officers at the Inter-American Defense College in Washington and similar institutions in Chile; and promoting officers to middle management positions.
Another significant achievement, he said, was tackling corruption in the force. Under his leadership, the institution recovered 834 weapons from no-longer-active officers and recuperated thousands of dollars in money that was still being paid to fired or deceased cops.
But that’s not all, said Pierre Esperance, a leading human rights advocate in Haiti, who initially was unsure about Gédéon, the former police chief of west region — which includes Port-au-Prince. Gédéon had been dismissed by former Haitian President Michel Martelly and spent two years on the sidelines before being tapped by Privert.
“Our experience with Gédéon has been nothing but positive. Under him, the police had courage,” Esperance said, referring to two police investigations, one on the November 2018 massacre in the La Saline neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, in which two presidential appointees were implicated, and the other on gang leader Arnel Joseph, which exposed his relationship with Sen. Garcia Delva.
The first police chief to rise through the ranks and not the army, Gédéon is widely respected among officers who view him as an inspiration in a country where former police chiefs usually came out of the military.
Still, he and Moïse have a contentious relationship at best. Supporters of the president often wanted Gédéon to be repressive against protesters, and didn’t like his push back on their attempts to politicize the police. With few resources, he regularly led a force that was ill-equipped to intervene in gang-affected areas, or even regular policing.
“He’s a professional. He always listened to his officers. However, he was working with bare bones. People sometimes commend the job the police are doing but they have no idea under what conditions they do it with,” Esperance said. “Gédéon spent three exceptional years as the head of the police where the executive fought him for no reason. [Gédéon] was loyal to the authorities.”
If there is another trait that Gédéon should be commended for, Esperance said, it’s the fact he “doesn’t do repression against the protesters.”
Still, Gédéon has come under fire as Haiti has witnessed a resurgence in gang activities and insecurity in the past three years. Last July, when protesters shut the country down for three days, many questioned whether Gédéon and the police were up to the task.
“The [HNP] is often singled out for every spurt of acts of banditry because our society is facing a lack of training and information,” Gédéon said Monday. “The police cannot fight disorder alone and can only take social control; other actors and social groups must be involved. Security is a collective job.”
Gédéon leaves the job after his cops made two of the most highly celebrated arrests in recent memory: drug trafficker and rebel leader Guy Philippe, and Joseph, the wanted gang leader.
Philippe, a newly elected Haitian senator at the time of his capture by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and Haitian police, was arrested in January 2017, months after Gédéon officially took over. Joseph’s arrest came last month after a manhunt that lasted more than two years.
Joseph’s arrest briefly sparked a campaign among some in the population for a renewal of Gédéon’s term by Moïse.
Frustrated by his inability to control the police, Moïse told an audience in Miami at a public meeting he planned to ask his prime minister to invite him to a gathering of the police council so that he could give directives on security measures. Later his administration told Gédéon that he had to run all administrative changes by the prime minister first.
Parliament member Jerry Tardieu, who introduced a law in 2016 to modernize Haiti’s police force, said if Gédéon and Moïse enjoyed a better relationship the police could have accomplished more.
“If I were the president, I would have rallied him to my side and given him all of the resources he needed,” Tardieu said. “I think his three years were diminished by the fact that the president never trusted him and did not allow him much margin to maneuver. He could have done more, but had to pay a price because of this ongoing suspicion on the part the president.”
Gédéon conceded that the “up-and-down” relationship had “counterproductive consequences for both the security governance and political governance.”
He added that while he has always stressed that the Haiti National Police needs to “remain apolitical and a public service institution,” few people are tolerant of individuals who adhere to this philosophy.
“In a society as polarized and confrontational as Haiti, the desire to have control over the country’s public force, be it the army or the police, has always tried almost every government.”
American Airlines, Spirit reduce service to Haiti just as tourism appears to make comeback
AUGUST 13, 2019 12:13 PM, UPDATED AUGUST 13, 2019
Year: 2010. Passengers were waiting to depart with bittersweet feelings of returning to a home they may not recognize, and for some, going back to families no longer intact. AA has not been flying to Haiti since the January 12 quake. BY
Travelers bound for Port-au-Prince from Miami will soon face fewer options.
Starting on Aug. 20, American Airlines is once again reducing its direct flights from Miami to Port-au-Prince, cutting the number of daily flights from two to one.
The change is due to American Airlines’ cancellations of about 115 daily flights because of the ongoing grounding of the Boeing 737 Max jets, said American Airlines spokeswoman Martha Pantin.
The reduced Haiti flight schedule is supposed to last until Nov. 2.
Though not the only airline to fly to Haiti — Air France, Delta, JetBlue and Spirit all fly out of the U.S. — American has long been the dominant player in Haiti travel. It has its own second floor departure lounge at the Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince and occupies six check-in reservation counters compared to JetBlue’s four.
Spirit Airlines, which flew its last flight from Fort Lauderdale to Cap-Haitien, the country’s second largest city, on June 18, said unrest and operational issues were behind its decision to suspend service. “We have not determined a restart date,” spokesman Derek Dombrowski said.
Haiti’s tourism market has been taking a huge hit since last July. First, mass protests and rioting over a proposed fuel hike led to temporary cancellations of international flights. Then in February, more anti-government protests and a nine-day shutdown of the country led the U.S., Canada and France to all raise their travel warnings. The decision prompted the booking company Expedia to temporarily remove all Haiti flights and hotels from its site.
The reduction in air travel options comes just as Haiti’s tourism market appears to be on the mend. In June, the U.S. State Department reduced its travel warning from Level 4 to 3. And last month, the diaspora, the country’s biggest market, began returning along with its musicians, who launched summer tours with packed street and bikini beach parties, and sold-out concerts.
“The more the Haitian community promotes Haiti or travel to Haiti, the more the airlines are reducing flights, canceling flights or overcharging on tickets to Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitien airports,” said Wanda Tima, founder of the L’union Suite and the Haitian American, the largest Haitian American social media platforms. “So how are we supposed to boost tourism or vacation home if we keep losing flights and being forced to pay for pricier tickets.”
The only U.S. carrier with daily flights to Port-au-Prince, American competes only with Air France out of Miami. But where AIr France offers only one daily flight out of Miami International Airport to Port-au-Prince, American currently provides two options: 6:01 a.m. and 10:51 a.m.
“The early flight is very popular,” said Joubert Pascal, a former airline employee who works protocol at MIA on behalf of the Haiti consulate in Miami. “Business people can come for the weekend and leave on Monday early enough to get to work.”
Under the reduced schedule, Pantin said the daily flight will depart Miami International Airport at 2:39 p.m. and arrive at Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince at 4:46 p.m. The Miami-bound flight will depart at 5:46 p.m. and arrive at 8 p.m.
Pascal, like others, also raises concerns about the new time change given Haiti’s security issues and the fact that many of the Haiti-bound passengers do not live in Port-au-Prince and have to travel by public bus or car to their final destination. “I’ve spoken to the manager here in Miami about that. They told me the decision was made out of Dallas,” where American is based, Pascal said.
The new time change means some travelers may need to spend the night in Port-au-Prince, or forgo travel on American altogether where ticket prices are already high. Booking eight days ahead, a round-trip ticket for someone looking to travel on Aug. 20 with a return a week later would pay $1,484.
“Where’s the logic here?” said Georges Sassine, head of the Association of Haiti Industries and a frequent traveler from Port-au-Prince to Washington with a stopover in Miami. “All the flights from Haiti are already the highest passenger per mile ticket that we pay.”
“Why is that?” he said, before turning to Haiti’s ongoing political turmoil and lack of a functional government to answer his own question. “There is no one in the government to put their foot down and to say to American either they change course, or we get somebody else.”
This is the second time in a year that American has announced a reduction in its service to Haiti. Last August, American announced that it would no longer fly direct to Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince out of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport or New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.
The decision reduced the number of American Airlines flights to Haiti each day from six to four — with all four, including a daily flight to Cap-Haitien, departing from MIA. The cuts were part of a series of reductions, including the end of service into Scotland’s Glasgow Airport and Mexico’s Puebla International Airport, the U.S. carrier said at the time.
Richard Buteau, owner of the Karibe Hotel in Petionville, Haiti, said the travel warning is affecting the country's tourism industry and is unfair to the Haitian people.
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Pantin said the latest reduction is part of a number of changes that have come into play at the beginning of August and throughout the fall. For example, there will be changes to Dominican-bound flights, with American reducing its five daily flights to Santo Domingo to four on Oct. 20. Other destinations in the country will also lose a flight each starting on Aug. 19.
The airline is also operating a reduced schedule to Cap-Haitien. Starting Sept. 4, American will operate four flights a week: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Then starting on Nov. 21, it will increase to five weekly with no flights on Wednesdays and Fridays, and will return back to daily service on Dec. 18, Pantin said.
“Changes are made after careful evaluation,” said Pantin, adding that American has been servicing Haiti for more than 45 years and “our goal is to minimize the impact to the smallest number of customers.”
Haiti travelers, however, don’t see it that way. The decision, they say, means that only those with deep pockets or part of American Airlines’ loyalty points program will be able to afford the steep prices that will ensue as a result of too little supply and high demand.
Guy Francois, Haiti’s former minister for Haitians living abroad, said American appears to be handing over the market to JetBlue, which has added flights out of Fort Lauderdale in addition to maintaining direct service from New York and Orlando.
Francois said last month he was forced to fly into Santo Domingo in the neighboring Dominican Republic from Miami aboard American because the airline was charging $1,000 for a one-way fare to Port-au-Prince compared to $199 to Santo Domingo. The Dominican Republic and Haiti both share the same island of Hispaniola.
This week, Francois said, he was faced with a similar dilemma after one-way fares aboard American were between $1,200 and $1,600 because the two daily flights to Port-au-Prince were full.
“They knew demand would be up during the summer and they didn’t add a flight,” he said, noting that two extra flights were added on the Santo Domingo-Miami route.
As for the recent decision, he said, he’s baffled and said it’s not without consequences.
“I don’t see why they are reducing it to one flight,” Francois said “A lot of American Airlines customers have started to fly JetBlue now. They are going to allow JetBlue to take over the market.”
Coast Guard intercepts 146 Haitians at sea. But 90 more made it to the Turks and Caicos
AUGUST 14, 2019 02:14 PM, UPDATED AUGUST 16, 2019
- Haitian migrants intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard on the deck of the Cutter William Trump. BY
One Haitian freighter arrived in the Turks and Caicos on Saturday, ferrying at least 26 men and 11 women. Then on Sunday, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted another freighter at sea, this time with 146 people on board, including several children.
And on Monday, a third boat made landfall in the Turks and Caicos with 53 migrants aboard.
The unusual surge of 236 migrants coming from Haiti in recent days created enough alarm that the Turks and Caicos minister of immigration is threatening to shut down legal migration from Haiti to his British Overseas Territory.
“Enough is enough,” Immigration Minister Vaden Delroy Williams said Wednesday, noting that it may be time to consider “stopping the first-time work permits for Haitian nationals if this continues.”
“While I understand what’s going on in Haiti and what the Haitian people are experiencing there, we must protect the Turks and Caicos Islands for future generations.”
The territory, located 137 miles from Haiti’s north coast and 372 miles from Miami, has become a popular stepping stone for desperate Haitians trying to flee their nation’s economic and political turmoil. It is also one of the few islands in the Caribbean that offers legal migration from Haiti through a work-permit process.
Williams called on Haitian nationals living in the Turks and Caicos to discourage their families and friends from seeking entry by illegal vessels.
“This process will not work for you,” he said, directing his comments at Haitians illegally migrating. “If this continues, you will never be able to work or live peacefully or to become legal. We will find you, deport you and place you on the Stop List, so you will never be able to enter the TCI ever again. We will no longer allow individuals who break the law to come into these islands to become legal residents.”
On Wednesday, Williams said there are 119 individuals being housed in the islands’ detention center in Providenciales, the country’s main tourist hub. The center has a maximum capacity of 165 people. At least 90 of the individuals — all Haitians — arrived over the weekend after Turks and Caicos immigration and police officers discovered two wooden Haitian sloops, approximately 30 feet long each.
The first vessel arrived Saturday morning, and landed within the Malcolm Beach area of Providenciales. After a search of the area, officials found 37 Haitians, including 11 females.
Two days later on Monday, another vessel transporting 53 Haitians, including 12 females and a child, was intercepted by the Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Marine Branch.
But that’s not all.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Coast Guard confirmed that it, too, had picked up Haitian migrants at sea: 146 of them traveling in a 40-foot sail freighter.
The Coast Guard said its William Trump cutter intercepted the boat with 120 men, 22 women and four children aboard on Sunday, about 69 miles north of Ile de la Tortue on Haiti’s northwest coast. The Trump (named after a World War II veteran and no relation to President Donald Trump) loaded the migrants onto the Coast Guard Cutter Resolute, which then took them back to Haiti on Tuesday.
That’s at least 236 Haitians who have attempted to flee their politically volatile nation in three days.
A Haitian-American activist who has helped more than 3,000 migrants since May talks about the tragic stories behind their treacherous journey.
“A strong message has to be sent to the Haitian immigrants who are coming here and to those who are helping them to come here and stay here,” said Williams.
He said he plans to meet with immigration enforcement officials and police so they can figure out how to find Haitians who illegally entered the island chain and were not apprehended.
“We simply cannot allow them to come here illegally, live here illegally and work here illegally. We have to find them and deal with them,” he said in a statement.
While the U.S. Coast Guard has returned its boatload of migrants, those apprehended in the Turks and Caicos remain in custody and will be repatriated back to Haiti.