Haitian senator fires gun, wounding news photographer and security agent
September 23, 2019 10:47 AM
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates. By
A photojournalist with the Associated Press was among two people wounded Monday in Haiti when a Haitian senator fired his gun in the yard of the Haitian senate, according to local reports.
Journalist Dieu Nalio Chery was covering Monday’s 8 a.m. Senate ratification vote for named Haitian Prime Minister Fritz William Michel and his government along with other journalists when several shots were fired.
Sen. Patrice Dumont told Port-au-Prince radio station Vision2000 that the shots were fired by fellow senator Ralph Fethiere. Dumont said it was not intentional and that the shot wounded a journalist and security agent assigned to the parliament.
The Miami Herald confirmed that the photojournalist is Chery, whose work often graces the paper’s pages.
A video being circulated shows individuals following another senator to his car, calling him “thief,” “thief” when suddenly several shots are heard.
Before the shooting incident Sen. President Carl Murat Cantave had complained on another radio program that the scene had turned chaotic. He accused Haiti National Police from preventing individuals he described as “thugs” from accessing the Senate yard. He says they had been invited by opposition senators intent on preventing the ratification vote.
This was Michel’s second attempt at getting confirmed by the Senate after passing the Lower House. He has been shrouded in corruption allegations including selling goats to the government through a company he controlled while working as chief of staff to the finance minister. He has denied he had a conflict of interest.
Appointed Prime Minister not eligible to hold this position, says civil society group
Fritz William Michel was appointed Prime Minister by a presidential decree on July 22, replacing Jean Michel Lapin. The latter had resigned the same day having realized his inability to pass the ratification stage in Parliament particularly because he was part of the resigning government, and in his government there were several former ministers, whom were considered instigators.
The day after his appointment, Michel was identified in a case related a Twitter feed in which he analyzed the socio-political situation of the country in general and made hateful and derogatory remarks towards Haitian journalists, and women among others.
If the explanation of “fake news” that Michel gave seemed to have calmed the situation at first, today the corruption scandals in which Michel he is embroiled has caught the attention of the press once again, as well as that of the collective Together Against Corruption (ECC).
Gasoline distribution resumes in Port-au-Prince
Some gas stations in Port-au-Prince resumed the distribution of petroleum products on Thursday although nothing has changed in stations where motorists and motorcyclists continue jostling for supplies.
The rush in gas stations may prolong the gasoline crisis according to Secretary of State for Communications, Eddy Jackson Alexis as he kept himself from using the word fuel shortage to describe the situation.
Boulos denounces huge loans from parliamentarians
Entrepreneur and politician Réginald Boulos reveals that many senators, MPs and entrepreneurs have taken large loans at ONA. He urges the director of ONA to publish the list of all personalities who have not made any payments on their loan.
Boulos admitted that his company, Safari Motors had signed an agreement with ONA under the administration of Jocelerme Privert. However, he pointed out that several parliamentarians had obtained loans above the 700 million gourdes of his company. He claims to have paid more than $17 million to ONA under the contract.
Information retrieved from the Haitian Times
Feds ask appeals court to reverse TPS ruling so administration can deport Haitians
September 19, 2019 07:25 PM, Updated September 20, 2019 01:21 PM
Immigration activists and community leaders in Miami on June 14, 2019, called for Florida’s Republican Senators to support a comprehensive bill that would allow immigrants with temporary status to apply for U.S. citizenship. By
The U.S. Department of Justice is asking a federal appeals court to overturn a New York federal judge’s decision earlier this year that blocked the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for tens of thousands of Haitians.
In a 71-page brief filed Thursday on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security, DOJ lawyers argue that U.S. District Judge William F. Kuntz of the Eastern District of New York erred when he issued a nationwide temporary injunction that prevented Homeland Security from taking steps to force Haitian TPS holders to return to Haiti. .
In his April ruling, Kuntz said 50,000 to 60,000 Haitians and their U.S.-born children would suffer “irreparable harm” if TPS ended and they were forced to return to a country that is unsafe. He also said that Elaine Duke, the secretary of Homeland Security at the time, was politically motivated in her decision.
“Clearly political motivations influenced Secretary Duke’s decision to terminate TPS for Haiti,” Kuntz said. “A TPS termination should not be a political decision made to carry out political motivations. Ultimately, the potential political ramifications should not have factored into the decision to terminate Haiti’s TPS.”
Government lawyers said Kuntz was wrong on his assessment of Duke, and any influence or input from the White House in her decision “provide no bases for setting aside that decision,” they argue.
“After obtaining extensive discovery, plaintiffs have identified no evidence indicating that Secretary Duke harbored discriminatory animus against “non-white immigrants,” government lawyers told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. “On the contrary, the record reflects that the Secretary carefully considered the TPS termination decision after consulting with relevant government stakeholders and fully explained her decision to terminate TPS for Haiti.”
Lawyers for the plaintiffs, which include 10 Haitians, a Haitian newspaper and the Miami-based Family Action Network Movement, argued that Duke’s decision to end TPS for Haitians was arbitrary, discriminatory and rooted in President Donald Trump’s “racially discriminatory attitude toward all brown and black people.”
Ira Kurzban, who is among several lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the case, said “based on what the government has submitted, we have a substantial chance or prevailing in the case. I think the evidence and the law supports the Haitians’ plaintiffs and Kuntz’s position that the government violated the administrative procedure act and the Constitution in terminating TPS.”
The New York lawsuit was the first of five TPS-related lawsuits to go to trial. Prior to Kuntz’s injunction, a federal judge in California in October 2018 granted a temporary injunction blocking the administration from deporting Haitian TPS holders and others as their termination deadlines approached.
U.S. District Judge Edward Chen granted the temporary injunction as part of a California lawsuit filed by lawyers on behalf of TPS recipients from Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Sudan who have U.S.-born children.
Since the inception of the TPS program, the U.S. has designated 21 countries and the province of Kosovo for TPS. Since 2016, a dozen countries have lost the designation, which is given as a result of war or natural disaster.
Haitians in the Bahamas seek more protection after Hurricane Dorian aid groups, news cameras leave
Maria SacchettiNASSAU, Bahamas —
She fled Haiti after a violent earthquake destroyed her home for the promise of a better life in the Bahamas.
But Lavita Altima and thousands of others from her country landed in fragile seaside shantytowns on the Abaco Islands. They worked as gardeners, housemaids and cooks in houses, hotels and resorts — until Hurricane Dorian’s ferocious winds and rains swept away their homes.
“I would like for somebody to help me and my baby,” said Altima, 39, as her 2-year-old son, Berkley, played inside a Haitian church in Nassau. “I don’t have any place to go and nobody here.”
Haitians are the largest minority group in this nation of 400,000 people. By some estimates, they make up as much as one-fifth of the population. The country has long relied on their labor — and debated whether and how to grant them citizenship.
Many remain undocumented and vulnerable: Dorian flattened shantytowns such as the Mudd and the Peas on Great Abaco Island, killing dozens and leaving thousands homeless.
In the wake of Dorian, the Bahamian government has suspended deportations of victims from the Abacos and Grand Bahama. Prime Minister Hubert Minnis has declared that all services will be provided to all victims.
“The prime minister himself has stated that there is to be no discrimination against any nationality,” Carl Smith, spokesman for the Bahamian National Emergency Management Agency, said at a briefing Thursday. “There is no discrimination.”
But Haitians and their advocates say they have suffered a history of discrimination here and fear they will be targeted for more abuse once the aid groups and news cameras leave. They and the Haitian government are asking for more protection.
“They don’t like Haitians in this country,” said Julie Oliboice, 28, who was born in Haiti but said she is a naturalized citizen of the Bahamas. “They don’t want to help the Haitians.”
The U.S. State Department has noted “widespread” claims of discrimination, including reports of forced labor, allegations of government extortion and warrantless arrests.
Haitians grew from less than 4 percent of the population in 1970 to nearly 12 percent in 2010, according to the government. Some researchers say the number is probably larger. Thousands are estimated to be here illegally, and thousands more are stateless: They were born here but don’t have citizenship. The Bahamas does not grant birthright citizenship to the children of noncitizens.
Some Haitians said they were turned away this week from the Kendal G.L. Isaacs National Gymnasium, one of the largest shelters, but others received meals and airbeds, the Haitian Embassy confirmed. Soldiers at the shelter said it was full. Officials did not allow reporters in.
Laurie Ferguson, a 46-year-old Bahamian, stood outside the shelter this week in a yellow vest. She had volunteered to help.
“I don’t see any form of discrimination,” she said. “If there was discrimination, I wouldn’t be here.”
Dorval Darlier, charge d’affaires at the embassy, said Haitians were being treated well at the shelters. He was compiling lists of hurricane victims in hopes the Bahamian government would grant them amnesty, allowing allow them to stay in the Bahamas to work and to help rebuild.
“I cannot tell them how to govern their country,” he said. “Of course they need Haitians. They need the Haitian labor. The Haitians participate in the construction of this great country.”
The Bahamian government, still in the midst of disaster relief, has not yet responded to the Haitian request.
The debate in the Bahamas has echoes in the United States and other countries where Haitians have sought refuge from poverty, repression and political turmoil.
Advocates for immigrants have urged the Bahamas not to expel Haitians in the wake of Dorian and the United States not to deport Bahamians.
Paul Justin, pastor at Solid Rock Baptist Church, a sea-green chapel in a Nassau neighborhood much like the ones destroyed on Abaco, took donated clothes to Haitians in shelters and at church members’ houses.
At a little white house in Nassau, he found four cousins, all men, who had been sleeping on a church volunteer’s floor. They said they hoped contractors would hire them to help rebuild Abaco. They said work permits were costly and hard to get before the storm, and Haitians are often paid little.
“Even though we have the same color as them, they treat us very differently,” said Rockens Elie, 25, an undocumented laborer who lived on Abaco.
On Fifth Avenue in Nassau, Justin found a family of eight who lived under a mango tree in the Mudd. They were sleeping on a friend’s living room floor.
Sainvernio D’Haiti, 38, a construction worker who has lived in the Bahamas since 1993, recently fell from a two-story roof and cannot work.
His niece, Theresa, 18, is the only family member born in the Bahamas. She speaks English with a Bahamian accent but is considered Haitian.
Theresa D’Haiti said she cannot afford college here. She said she has applied for citizenship but has not heard back.
Justin, the pastor, tried to comfort them. “I know that you’re traumatized,” he said. “Remember you have life. There is hope.”
At the Solid Rock church hall, Thamika Petit-Jean, a 13-year-old girl born in the Bahamas, looked frustrated and bored. Before the storm, she lived with her Haitian mother and 15-year-old twin sisters in Murphy Town. Now they are homeless, and her mother appears lost.
“She doesn’t know what to do,” the girl said.