Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 9 juillet 2020

AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHTS AGAIN TO HAITI

When American Airlines resumes service to Haiti on Tuesday, nearly four months after the borders were shut due to the coronavirus, there will be only one daily flight into Port-au-Prince’s Toussaint Louverture International Airport, and the country’s second largest city will not be on the schedule.

The first major commercial airline to land in Cap-Haïtien in 2014 after more than a decade due to a damaged runway, the Miami-based carrier told the Miami Herald that it is canceling service to the city. 

“Canceling the flight to Cap-Haïtien was very painful but a necessary decision given the current economic circumstances as a result of the pandemic,” said Martha Pantin, a spokeswoman with American. “We have had to make difficult decisions that affect many destinations around the world that we serve.”

Passenger on FLL-bound Spirit flight leaves before takeoff after refusing to wear mask

NEW YORK (WSVN) — A tense exchange unfolded prior to takeoff on board a Spirit flight bound for South Florida after a passenger reportedly refused to wear a face mask.

According to the airline, police were called onto the flight at LaGuardia Airport in New York City that was heading to Fort Lauderdale, Friday.

A Spirit spokesperson said the passenger took off his mask and refused to put it back on.

Video posted to social media captured the passenger and an officer arguing.

The airline said he eventually left the plane on his own.

A Spirit spokesperson said they will continue to enforce the use of face coverings on board all flights.

Wages of migrants sent home could drop $142bn in 2020: World Bank

The drop in money that migrant workers send home would mostly be due to a fall in their wages and employment overseas.

Al Jazeera

22 Apr 2020

Global remittances are set to tumble by $142bn in 2020, the sharpest fall in recent history, the World Bank estimates, as the coronavirus crisis chokes off a cash lifeline for hard-pressed households in poorer countries.

The World Bank on Wednesday said that a drop of almost 20 percent in the money migrant workers send home would mostly be due to a fall in their wages and employment overseas.

"Remittances are a vital source of income for developing countries. The ongoing economic recession caused by COVID-19 is taking a severe toll on the ability to send money home and makes it all the more vital that we shorten the time to recovery for advanced economies," said World Bank Group President David Malpass.

In recent years, remittances have become an integral part of the funding for governments in emerging economies, exceeding official aid by a factor of three since the mid-1990s and last year overtaking foreign direct investment flows as the main source of foreign exchange for low- and middle-income countries.

An estimated one billion migrants - about 270 million who work outside their home countries and 760 million internal migrants - each help feed, clothe and shelter up to three people "back home", Dilip Ratha, lead author of the World Bank's new report on the impact of COVID-19 on remittances, told Reuters in an interview.

"You're looking at one-third of humanity."

Yet such workers tend to be more vulnerable during crises.

With a rocketing jobless rate in the United States and with the economies of Russia and the Gulf region reeling from lower oil prices, the flow of such money from the world's largest sources has been hit hard.

The remittance drop so far this year is the largest since the World Bank began recording the data in 1980, said Ratha.

Such flows have increased since a dip in 2016, mainly due to low oil prices, and remittances reached $714bn in 2019. But they look set to shrink to $572bn this year, the World Bank said.

For low- and middle-income nations, which account for the bulk of flows, remittances would fall 19.7 percent to $445bn in 2020 from a record $554bn in 2019.

"The economic crisis induced by the pandemic is going to sharply reduce the income of migrants and their ability to send money back home," Ratha said.

Emerging markets face biggest hit

As well as hurting households that rely on the money, waning flows from abroad also deal a blow to emerging markets where state budgets are already strained from having to spend more on healthcare and stimulus to mitigate reduced economic activity. Many have also seen record outflows of foreign capital since the crisis began.

Hardest hit will be countries such as Tajikistan and Nepal, where remittances account for around 30 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), said Ratha. Other countries that rely on payments include the Philippines, South Sudan, Tonga, and Haiti.

As a bloc, Europe and Central Asia will see the biggest fall in remittances at around 28 percent due to the combined effect of the pandemic and the oil price slump, the World Bank estimated.

Remittances to Central Asia, in particular, would take an added hit from a dip in the exchange rate of Russia's rouble against the dollar, Ratha said.

The World Bank, which along with the International Monetary Fund is providing funds to poorer nations during the crisis, has expressed concern about the temporary closure of some money transfer businesses due to shutdowns in some economies. It urged authorities to recognise them as essential service providers so they can stay open.

One positive is remittances are expected to recover in 2021, swelling more than five percent to $602m, with a slightly faster pickup in flows to developing countries.

"The underlying causes of migration are not going to disappear and may be exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis," said Michal Rutkowski, the World Bank's global director for social protection and jobs. "These are income differentials between different countries and demographic changes."

Jovenel Moise has granted executive clemency to 415 prisoners including hard core criminals

By Jacqueline Charles 

July 01, 2020

Haitian President Jovenel Moïse has granted executive clemency to 415 prisoners, including at least 15 hardened criminals whom human rights advocates say should not be walking free.

The list of beneficiaries include a convicted felon sentenced to five years for an armed attack in the northern town of Grande-Rivière-du-Nord, a prisoner serving 12 years for rape, and a father awaiting trial on accusations that he hacked his young son to death with a machete in 2018 in the Central Haiti town of Mirebalais and threw the boy’s remains in a latrine.

“If someone hasn’t yet been convicted, they cannot be pardoned,” said Renan Hédouville, the government’s chief ombudsman who runs the Office for the Protection of Citizens. “There is a flagrant irregularity going on in regard to the criminal code in Haiti.”

The presidential pardons were issued by executive order on June 19 and published in the country’s official gazette, Le Moniteur. They came to light this week and caught Hédouville, human rights organizations and the international community by surprise, especially since they were being tied to an ongoing push to release prisoners from Haiti’s overcrowded prisons in the wake of the rapidly spreading COVID-19 pandemic.

Not only were they not consulted on the list, but human rights groups and representatives of the international community said the troubling pardons have nothing to do with their push to release a select group of prisoners — those on prolonged pretrial detention who are elderly, have underlying health problems or accused of committing minor offenses — to slow the spread of the virus in Haiti’s jails.

Several months ago, the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti, known by its French acronym BINUH, along with the U.S. began advising the government on establishing a committee on detention composed of government and justice officials, Hédouville’s office and human rights advocates.

Guidelines were eventually approved by the minister of justice and public security. Based on six eligibility criteria, certain detainees were tapped for release following a special hearing on their case.

In a report to the U.N. Security Council last month, the Haiti office said of those identified, only 750 detainees had been released from the Haitian prison system. The number, the report noted, fell far short of an estimated 5,000 releases that are necessary to allow prisons and detention centers in Haiti to better manage the impact of the coronavirus and avert a humanitarian disaster.

NEW PENAL CODE

A new penal code, issued via presidential decree by Moïse this week, allows convicted felons who have been pardoned to have their civil rights restored, which means they can run for office, said former Port-au-Prince chief prosecutor and senator Jean Renel Senatus.

The election of individuals with criminal backgrounds in Haiti’s last elections, thanks to a loophole in the 2015 electoral law, was a troubling development that was often cited as contributing to the country’s deteriorating human rights environment and increased criminality.

“There are prisoners who are sick and up until now waiting to benefit from early release on humanitarian grounds and they can’t,” Hédouville said. “What has happened here has nothing to down with COVID. It is something that is illegal, irregular.... These people when they walk out of prison can become a danger for the police who arrested them or the judges who sentenced them.”

This of course is not the first time a prisoner release has created scandal. Earlier this year a drug trafficker was released from prison under the guise of the COVID-19 humanitarian parole. When former President Michel Martelly was in office, one pardoned criminal shot someone inside a church days later.

“Someone didn’t play their role, didn’t do their job... because in principle it’s the ministry of justice that gives the list to the president to sign the decree,” Hédouville said. “What’s worse is that we... were not consulted at all; not even once.

“I’ve never met with the justice minister or had one meeting with him since he was sworn in on March 5,” he added. “The human rights organizations that are in the prisons every day, they weren’t consulted so... everything was done without any transparency and they took advantage of the occasion to add names to the list.”

In a press note, Justice Minister Lucmane Délile acknowledged there were “errors” and said it was possible the system was deceived. He also passed the blame on to the prison system and tied the release to the pandemic.

He said his ministry learned “through the press that criminals were released as part of the presidential pardon granted for the purpose of decongesting prisons in the face of the spread of COVID-19.”

Late Wednesday, Eddy Jackson Alexis, a government spokesman, took to Twitter to say that Prime Minister Joseph Jouthe asked the ministry of justice “to temporarily suspend the release of the people affected by the presidential pardon.” The announcement, Alexis said, was made during a cabinet meeting.

Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 16 juillet 2020

Joe Biden Names Haitian-American Karen Andre As His Florida Senior Advisor and Senior Advisor to National Faith Outreach

Dozens of Florida hospitals out of available ICU beds, state data shows

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Monday announced the members of his senior leadership team in Florida, Haitian-American attorney Karen Andre is among the selected few to serve as Senior Advisor and Senior Advisor to National Faith Outreach to the campaign.

President Donald Trump’s campaign has emphasized the importance of the state as a must-win to retain the White House, but recent polls have consistently shown Biden in the lead in the swing state.

Karen Andre is a highly sought after and respected political consultant who has advised and directed strategy for elected officials, campaigns, and candidates at the federal, state, and local levels. Most recently, she served as Political Director of Organizing Together 2020 in Florida where she helped build a state-wide partnership coalition.

Previously, she served as Senior Advisor for Gillum for Governor during his triumphant primary win as Democratic nominee for governor of Florida in 2018. In 2014, she was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as White House Liaison to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Karen is president of People First Strategies utilizing her extensive experience in establishing and maintaining strategic partnerships in the private, philanthropic, and public sectors. She is also an attorney, author, and professional speaker.

In addition to Andre, Biden named Jackie Lee, veteran Orlando-based consultant who has been working for the campaign since October 2019, as his state director. Brandon Thompson will work as the Biden campaigns coordinated director and Florida Democratic Party executive director Juan Peñalosa was named a Biden senior adviser.

“We are thrilled to bring together some of the most talented and experienced minds in Florida Democratic politics to oversee a Florida operation that will reflect the state’s diversity and prioritize the issues Floridians care about,” Biden’s national states director Jenn Ridder said in a statement. “We look forward to competing aggressively in the Sunshine State, and Jackie, Juan, Brandon, and Karen will lead the team that will turn Florida blue and help send Joe Biden to the White House.”

More than four dozen hospitals in Florida reported that their intensive care units (ICUs) have reached full capacity on Tuesday as COVID-19 cases surge in the state and throughout the country.

Hospital ICUs were full at 54 hospitals across 25 of Florida's 67 counties, according to data published on Tuesday morning by the state's Agency for Health Care Administration. More than 300 hospitals were included in the report, but not all had adult ICUs.

Thirty hospitals reported that their ICUs were more than 90% full. Statewide, only 17% of the total 6,010 adult ICU beds were available on Tuesday, down from 20% three days ago, according to the agency's website.

REMEMBER SAVANNAH !

While the nation celebrates Independence Day, let’s remember to celebrate the Haitian soldiers who assisted the United States in their fight for freedom.

On October 9, 1779, a force of more than 500 Haitian soldiers joined American colonists and French troops in an unsuccessful push to drive the British from Savannah in coastal Georgia.

The men were organized into a regiment called Chasseurs-Volontaires de Saint-Domingue. These soldiers were des gens de couleurs libres (free men of color) who voluntarily joined the French colonial forces. Though not well known in the U.S., Haiti's role in the American Revolution is a point of national pride for Haitians. After returning home from the war, Haitian veterans soon led their own rebellion that won Haiti's independence from France in 1804.

On October 8, 2007, a memorial statue was unveiled in Savannah dedicated to the Chasseurs-Volontaires de Saint-Domingue during the Battle of Savannah. The memorial pays tribute to the significant role these soldiers had during the Revolutionary War and recognizes the support they gave to the founding of the United States.

Source : Black Past / Haitian American Historical Society .

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Haitian Voodoo Priest arrested by FBI for buying Trump's hair.

July 7, 2020|HAITI, US POLITICS

Haitian Voodoo priest from New Orleans was arrested this morning by the FBI after paying an impressive $25,000 for a few strands of President Trump’s hair in order to inflict physical harm on him and control him through a voodoo doll.

31-year Old Moses Philossaint, an important religious leader of the Louisiana Voodoo community, was arrested in possession of eight grams of what is believed to be Donald Trump’s hair.

The provenance of the lock of hair is yet to be clarified, and it has been sent to an FBI lab for DNA analysis, but investigators claim they have strong evidence suggesting it’s authentic.

According to FBI spokesman Bobby Miller, the accused paid $25,000 on Craigslist for the hair, which he intended to use to create a type of magical effigy.

“He openly professed to worshippers that he intended to use magic to influence American policy and force the American president to do as he wishes. The method used may be unusual, but the intent makes it a federal crime.”

Mr. Miller insisted that the FBI doesn’t believe in magic or voodoo, but acted to condemn the accused’s criminal intent and qualm rumors before they started.

“We know these dolls are probably powerless. But there are enough rumors already about the President being controlled by the Russians, Freemasons or even Reptilians. We don’t want new ones about him being a voodoo puppet.”  THE GUARDIAN 

Little Haiti Brooklyn leaders share progress, plans, amid affordability challenges

The Haitian Times

By Sam Bojarski

For Aliette Beldor, who owned the former Alouette Beauty Salon on Nostrand Avenue, the creation of the Little Haiti Cultural and Business District brought recognition to Haitian community members like her. 

But while she supports the initiative for this reason, the cost of doing business in the neighborhood continues to increase. 

“All the business owners in this neighborhood suffer because of the rent,” she said. 

It’s been just over two years since New York City council passed a resolution designating a portion of central Brooklyn in Flatbush as Little Haiti. Multiple Haitian-American elected officials and community leaders have supported the initiative, designed to promote a sense of belonging, facilitate economic development and tourism, as well as to preserve and celebrate the numerous Haitian institutions in the area. But plans for Little Haiti have been slow to get off the ground, partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Economic trends also continue to threaten the affordability of the neighborhood, for some Haitian residents and business owners. 

District 42 Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte and then-Councilmember Jumaane Williams were key early supporters who led the effort to designate Little Haiti in 2018. Farah Louis, who now represents Council District 45, currently supports Little Haiti BK. 

The Little Haiti district extends roughly from Parkside Avenue to Avenue H, and from East 16th Street to Brooklyn Avenue.

Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 30 juillet 2020

 Without Haiti, the United States Would, in Fact, Be a Shithole

And some other things about the country that Donald Trump doesn’t know and doesn’t care to know.

By Amy Wilentz

January 12, 2018

It feels strange to me after so many years of thinking and writing about Haiti, to say nothing of simply being there, to have to rise to the country’s defense against a fool. But that fool is the president of the United States, so let’s start with first things first.

It goes without saying that Donald Trump knows nothing about history. But those who do have heard of the Louisiana Purchase, the incredible deal President Jefferson struck with France to buy the giant piece of land, 828,000 square miles of river and breadbasket, that stretches from what is now the Canadian border down to New Orleans and the delta. Without this territory, the United States would never have become a continental power nor, subsequently, a great global power. Jefferson got it at a bargain-basement price: $250 million, in current dollars, doubling the size of the country for less than 3 cents per acre.

You may ask what this has to do with Haiti (although any president with a competent staff would have this information at his fingertips). Here’s the answer, White House staff: Napoleon wanted to sell this fabulously valuable piece of New World real estate because for more than a decade he had failed to put down the startling slave revolution in the French colony of Haiti, losing two-thirds of French forces there in the process.

The First Consul (that’s Napoleon, Mr. President) could see the writing on the wall. France was pushed to the limit of its military and financial means by the Haitian uprising, and the future emperor (NB: also Napoleon) had lost his taste for further involvement in the Americas. He sold us Louisiana. Then on January 1, 1804, Haiti declared its independence from France, and by extension, from white men like Donald Trump.

So it is the courage and tenacity of the rebellious slaves of Haiti that created the United States as we know it. Score one for the shithole.

Haitian history is full of many other amazing facts, not least that it can claim to have spawned the Americas’ first successful freedom fighters, the Cacos, who waged a sporadic but unstoppable guerilla war against the US Marine Occupation that began in 1915. Along with popular opinion in the US, they finally forced the Americans out in 1934.

Nonetheless, the Marines had done their damage. While improving Haiti’s infrastructure, the occupation opened the country up for “foreign investment,” which meant, essentially, the severe exploitation (including chain gangs) of Haitian labor, the appropriation of lands by US groups, the manipulation (which continues) of Haitian elections, the takeover of the lucrative Haitian sugar industry and of Haitian banks, and a national move away from self-sufficient subsistence agriculture into a cash economy that continues to be responsible for repeated food shortages and economic decline. How to become a shithole: the Americans will help.

Current Issue

I could go on in this vein, but I won’t. I’m pointing a finger at the United States because I’m responding to the US president. France, after Napoleon, also had a hand in Haiti’s decline. Emmanuel Macron, however, has yet to call the country un trou de merde­—and I doubt he ever will.

Finally, I want to write personally about Haiti, the experience of Haiti as a place to visit, to see, be in, live in.

Haiti is what Ronald Reagan was dreaming of when he suggested that shrinking the state would allow the business sector to move in and replace government functions in a market economy. Haiti has a vestigial state. There is no national health care, no social security, no pensions, very little taxation, very few labor regulations, a tiny national coffer. This is the direction in which Reagan pushed us and which Trump and his people continue to move us. There is very little organized sanitation, unemployment is the norm, housing is less than substandard, and electricity is delivered in a capricious and severely limited fashion. Poverty means that people have to live day by day, earning a goud here and a goud there. It means that individual and family plans for the future are nearly impossible to make. Many of the ablest Haitians have immigrated to the United States and Canada, though Trump apparently does not appreciate their many contributions to our economy as doctors, engineers, attorneys, academics, dentists, accountants, etc.

Haitians feel the lack of a state every day and night, but they still rise indomitably to the task of living full lives. It’s rare to see a Haitian hanging around, at least in Port-au-Prince. Everyone is constantly on the move, trying to find work and make a buck. There is poetry being written and music being played. At night, students go out and sit under the light of street lamps to study for tests. Haitians are huge into basketball and ecstatic when one of their players makes it to the NBA, as several have. Haitian literature over the centuries is full of masterpieces. Dany Laferrière, a novelist of Haitian descent, was recently admitted to the elite Académie Française. Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers, was Haitian, as was the naturalist John James Audubon.

In the camps set up by Haitians after the earthquake that struck exactly eight years ago today, I sat around with teenage boys eager to play tapes for me of the music they’d recorded. During a tropical storm, I had a camp dinner of sardines and tomatoes cooked outside a tent over a charcoal fire. I’ve watched cockfights in small stadiums, and Vodou ceremonies in the earthquake rubble. I’ve seen the dazzling paintings by Haitian masters on the walls of museums (now crumbled) and churches (also now crumbled). I’ve seen a young boy who lost both his hands and both his forearms in the earthquake learn to use prostheses and also learn to accept the care of his extended family in the countryside. I’ve seen countless examples of Haitian solidarity and community, and of course of the human hunger to learn and grow and better one’s fortunes.

The island itself is physically beautiful, with pure white beaches and majestic mountains, and a capital city and provincial metropolis that are both captivating, each in its own way. Trump might not think so, because in every way, Haiti does not resemble his universe of Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago. The country is almost entirely lacking in gilt and gold-plate.

But it still shines.

PRESS

Yamiche Alcindor is Haitian-American, and is fluent in Haitian Creole.[7] She is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists. The White House Correspondents’ Association today named PBS NewsHour White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor (@yamichepbs) the recipient of the prestigious Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence in White House Coverage. The award recognizes a correspondent who personifies the journalistic excellence and personal qualities of Aldo Beckman, late Washington bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune and former president of the White House Correspondents’ Association. The WHCA journalism awards are to be presented on August 29, 2020, at the association’s annual dinner at the Washington Hilton.

In times of crisis

Times of crisis — armed conflict, natural disasters, pandemics — can be times of great peril for human rights.

Not only can government intervention and the suspension of regular policies and practices create new injustices, but they can also often make the crisis itself disproportionately worse for some. And some governments use crises as an opportunity to overreach in their actions, using the crisis as justification for human rights violations.

If we don’t act

Right now, governments around the world are implementing vital public health measures that, in some situations, place restrictions on human rights.

However, in some countries, leaders are using COVID-19 as a pretext for repression and increased surveillance. Others are using the crisis to suppress the rights of refugees, and stir up feelings of xenophobia and the mistrust of foreigners amongst their citizens.

We are witnessing dangerous trends to undermine human rights at a time when we need them more than ever.

The truth is that everything we need to do to get through the COVID-19 pandemic — providing life-saving treatment, curtailing its spread, addressing the economic repercussions, ensuring that the needs of marginalized communities are met, and looking ahead to long-term transformative change — is about human rights.

If we don’t demand that human rights continue to be protected during this time, we risk deepening ongoing violations and rolling back the long-standing protections we already have in place.

Our turning point

By its very nature, the right to health is dependent on and influenced by many other rights, such as rights of refugees to seek safe harbour, the right to free and accurate information, and the right to personal security, among others.

We must demand that human rights protections be rigorously defended — and extended — to maintain our safety and allow our communities to thrive in times of crisis.

And, critically, we must ensure human rights protections are respected for everyone, particularly marginalized communities — because we are only as safe as the least safe among us.

Take action today!

Today, Amnesty International is calling on people across the country to take action for human rights around the world in this time of crisis, ensuring all governments take meaningful steps to protect human rights and curtail human rights violations.

By signing our action, you’re sending a message to leaders in Canada and around the world that our collective response during the COVID-19 pandemic must uphold human rights globally — and make sure it’s at the heart of all decision-making processes in times of crisis.

We must protect human rights — because human rights protect us.

US-Government: Is Check No TWO Around ? 

 A new round of stimulus checks could come as soon as next month under CARES II, the second stimulus check package being worked on by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, according to Mnuchin. 

“Our proposal is the exact same provision as last time,” the treasury secretary told reporters on Thursday, according to Fortune. 

FOOTBALL

16-year-old Alex Colin Kpakpé , born to Haitian and Ivorian parents, has just signed his first contract with the prestigious club of the English capital, Chelsea FC. According to Juno7, the versatile defender is one of 14 young athletes to benefit from a contract from their training club.

Chelsea Football Club is an English professional football club based in Fulham, #London. Founded in 1905, the club competes in the Premier League, the top division of English football.

Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 29 avril 2024

 
U.S. Restarts Deportation Flights to Haiti

The Biden administration had paused deportations of Haitian migrants in recent months as their home country was wracked by violence.

April 18, 2024

Immigration officials sent dozens of Haitians back to their home country on Thursday, according to three government officials, in the first deportation flight conducted by the United States government in months to the country, which has been gripped by widespread violence.

Deportation flights are generally viewed as a way to deter migrants from crossing the southern border without authorization. The United States has been concerned about migration from Haiti after a gang takeover of its capital, Port-au-Prince, this year led to the planned resignation of the prime minister, Ariel Henry.

The deportation flight, the first since January, comes as the Biden administration continues to turn toward tougher measures at the southern border as a way to bring down the number of migrants entering the country without authorization. President Biden has faced intense scrutiny from Republicans about the border, and immigration has become a key issue in the election campaign.

In recent months, however, migrants are crossing the border at lower rates than before.

Still, the deportation flight on Thursday caught many immigrant advocacy groups by surprise. The U.S. government itself advises Americans not to visit Haiti, citing “kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and poor health care infrastructure,” and has previously told family members of American officials in Haiti to leave.

“This is not only morally wrong and in violation of U.S. and international law, it is simply bad foreign policy,” said Guerline Jozef, the head of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, an advocacy group in San Diego.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that it had “conducted a repatriation flight of around 50 Haitian nationals to Haiti.”

Associated Press

The United States Welcomes Establishment of Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council

U.S. Department of State

Statement by Matthew Miller, Spokesperson

April 12, 2024

The United States welcomes today’s establishment of a Transitional Presidential Council (TPC) in Haiti. The result of months of discussion among diverse Haitian stakeholders, this Council helps pave the way for free and fair elections and the expedited deployment of a Multinational Security Support mission. We applaud Haitians for their commitment to move forward in a spirit of reconciliation and national dialogue. We remain committed to working with CARICOM and international partners to support the TPC’s mission to work for and improve the lives of all Haitians.

The security situation in Haiti remains untenable due to the violence caused by gangs that claim to represent the Haitian people but thrive on violence and misery. Gangs have shut down key infrastructure and economic sites that are lifelines for fuel, humanitarian aid, and other vital supplies, and continue to strip Haitians of their rights to food, education, and healthcare. The United States is surging support for the Haitian security forces to bolster their capabilities as they fight to defend their country.

We commend Haitian leaders for making tough compromises to move toward democratic governance via free and fair elections. Much work lies ahead, and the United States remains committed to supporting the people of Haiti.

National Center of Haitian Apostolate

FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER – YEAR B - April 21, 2024 

Acts 4, 8-12; Psalm 118; 1 John 3, 1-2; John 10, 11-18. 

Msgr. Pierre André Pierre

The fourth Sunday of Easter is traditionally called “Good Shepherd Sunday.” The entire Church dedicates this day to prayers for vocations. It is The World Day of Prayer for Vocations to the priesthood. In this time of joy for the resurrection, the Church reminds us that we all have a model in Christ. Jesus describes himself as the good shepherd who knows his sheep by name, gives his life for them, and holds fast to them so that they do not perish. They are like a treasure to Him. His authority over them comes from the Father. That of a shepherd is a mission of service to lead us, the sheep, to the owner of the flock: our Father God.

In the first reading, Peter, chosen shepherd by Christ to strengthen his brothers, filled with the Holy Spirit, testifies and speaks of Jesus, the good shepherd, who gives his life for his sheep. “Christ, whom you killed, rose again.” The stone they rejected has become the cornerstone of the building of faith. God’s plan moves forward. There is no salvation outside of Jesus Christ. There is no other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved."

The reference to shepherds, lambs, and sheep may sound strange nowadays. But in biblical times, they were very familiar. Sheep provided meat, milk, cheese, and wool. They were also used in the liturgy of the Temple. However, these precious animals cannot find their way to food and water and are helpless when attacked by predatory animals such as wolves. Therefore, sheep are known as animals that desperately need good shepherds in order to survive.

This is also our case when it comes to spiritual nourishment, words of wisdom, strength of character, and virtues. When it comes to God's grace, we desperately need Shepherds. Jesus is the Head Shepherd who guides us and nourishes us. He gave his life for us and granted eternal life to those who follow him. 

The second reading invites us to contemplate the image of our relationship with God in Christ. We have to live that relationship with confidence since those of us who are baptized are forever beloved children of God. Christ gave us an example in his life. If we are all brothers and sisters, we must be shepherds of each other, helping each other to live our faith authentically.

The Lord calls also shepherds to care for his people. The Church needs priests who act in the name of Jesus and with his same power; to guide the sheep along the path of eternal life through preaching, pastoral care, and the Sacraments, mainly the Eucharist and the forgiveness of sin: “Do this in memory of me.” The Sunday of the Good Shepherd reminds us that we must pray continually so that many young people may receive the call to the Priestly ministry and exercise it with humility, prayer, and zeal.

Jeffrey Sommers and Patrick Bellegarde-Smith | Haiti’s disorder is the result of elite malfeasance and US meddling

Social disorder. Prisons emptied of violent criminals by gangs looking to rebuild their ranks. Schools, hospitals, and pharmacies targeted for looting and frequently burned. Corpses left rotting in the streets for fear of succumbing to the same...

jamaica-gleaner.com

Amitabh Sharma

Opinion Editor

Editor - Arts and Education

The Gleaner Co. (Media) Ltd.

 Social disorder. Prisons emptied of violent criminals by gangs looking to rebuild their ranks. Schools, hospitals, and pharmacies targeted for looting and frequently burned. Corpses left rotting in the streets for fear of succumbing to the same fate by attempts to remove them. The capital’s port was captured and ransacked, with famine threatening. Meanwhile, on Haiti’s northern coast, cruise ships still disgorge foreign tourists to the protected (with no shortage of irony) “Columbus Cove Beach.”

There’s no sugarcoating it — the collapse of order in Haiti and the activities by gangs in recent months to capitalize on the situation is bad.

Just as with the Middle East, we hear the refrain that Haiti “has always been like this.” Except it hasn’t. Haiti’s history has been both storied and challenged. Reasonably educated persons often juxtapose Haiti to the comparatively thriving Dominican Republic (DR), the neighboring country with which Haiti shares an island. The comparison hints at a defect of the former relative to its better-off neighbor. Yet a long view of Haiti reveals its current poverty relative to the neighboring DR has been anything but constant — it only emerged in the past four decades.

No doubt a wide gap has opened up between the economic performance of Haiti and the DR. The latter’s per-capita GDP last year was roughly 700 percent larger than Haiti’s. But going back to 1960, the year where quality data on GDP for the two countries became available, Haiti’s per-capita GDP was (inflation-adjusted) $1,716, 25 percent more than the DR’s, then at $1,374.

Indeed, Haiti’s per-capita GDP in 1960 was even a hefty 67 percent larger than today’s rich South Korea, and far from the poorest country in the Americas. This was no one-off performance. The trend, which predated 1960, differed little up to 1980; the DR was then posting per-capita numbers 29 percent greater than Haiti’s, which still placed them in the same ballpark.

Rather than Haiti “always” being this way, it was 1981 that marked the start of its rapid decline. The DR maintained and even slightly accelerated its steady economic growth that had until then been at rough parity with neighboring Haiti. By contrast, Haiti’s precipitously dropped.

Why? One reason was the 1970s oil shock, which increased the price of black gold by tenfold that decade. Needing to recycle cash from windfall sales of oil deposited with them, banks extended loans to all comers. Haiti’s dictator, Jean-Claude (“Baby Doc”) Duvalier, gorged himself on loans, while investing too little of this cash to develop Haiti’s economy.

Meanwhile, the United States ended its inflation in 1980 with Federal Reserve chair Paul Volcker’s monetary shock. This cured America’s inflation problem, but massively drove up the repayment costs of those 1970s loans around the world that had to be paid back in the now-inflated dollar.

Duvalier then made a series of lazy and disastrous bets for Haiti’s economy. He went hat in hand collecting foreign aid as cheap foreign credit evaporated, but this tranche of cash did little for Haiti’s economy. Next, he slashed taxes on export earnings and invited foreign companies to employ Haiti’s cheap labor for assembly factories. The model earned plaudits from the United States — but it did not provide much benefit to Haiti, as nearly all inputs came from abroad, tax receipts from the foreign investment were negligible, and wages were kept at subsistence levels.

Then, fearing a new swine flu, in 1986 the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in 1986 instructed Duvalier to slaughter Haiti’s chief source of protein: pigs. A small, hearty variety, Haiti’s pigs were perfectly suited to low-input peasant production. USAID tried replacing them with a large US variety requiring housing conditions many peasants might envy; these new pigs died. Absent their traditional source of protein, desperate Haitian peasants turned to felling trees to sell for charcoal, thus producing the now tragically familiar images of Haiti’s deforestation.

Political upheaval followed as Haitians worked to end their twenty-eight-year-old dictatorship. The United States sought to guide this process, forcibly at points, demanding a veto power over policy in Haiti.

In 1995, US president Bill Clinton instructed Haiti to drop its tariff on US rice (subsidized and chiefly grown in Arkansas) from 50 percent to 3 percent. Haiti’s rice production subsequently collapsed. Two decades later, Clinton apologized to Haiti for advancing this disastrous policy.

This coup de grâce to Haitian agriculture led peasants in the hundreds of thousands to decamp from the countryside to Port-au-Prince. Impoverished and desperate, peasants built housing from cinder blocks in the capital. When Haiti’s big 2010 earthquake hit, these cinder-block dwellings were destroyed. Official estimates put deaths at over two hundred thousand and injuries at three hundred thousand, with another 1.3 million displaced and widespread disease following the collapse of infrastructure, from which Haiti has yet to recover.

The above is to say that it indeed has not “always been this way” in Haiti, which once economically rivaled the now-successful DR. Yet it would be too easy to blame all Haiti’s misfortunes the past half century solely on the United States — Haitian elites have made their share of errors. 

On March 25, James B. Foley, the US ambassador to Haiti from 2003 to 2007, published an op-ed in the Washington Post asserting “Haiti’s dysfunction is a permanent condition” and calling for yet another military intervention. If there has been any “permanent condition” in Haiti, it has been foreign interventions, and not the despair currently being experienced in the country.

The Caribbean nations, particularly those that are members of the Commonwealth, are fiercely independent in their foreign policies vis-à-vis the United States, as many of their politicians are major intellectual figures. Their stance on Haiti comes from a position of concern; they acknowledge a shared history of resistance to imperialism. Yet today, one still cannot discount the observation made in February 1907 by Dantès Bellegarde, arguably Haiti’s best-known diplomat and one of its most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century: “The US is too close and God is too far.”

https://jacobin.com/2024/04/haiti-disorder-poverty-us-intervention?fbclid=IwAR31T2169D3-p2YPMPEe5kl-bSVBZzASX39EgfXhANPub842p3DdWbPDdkQ_aem_AbFZO3pEdITIrIH2i3ksYkQZ35ngNPiVIL47u8lYVxEUmLU72pKSElSoyxkxJSIrkG6Lt8XfBexNcA5DSWSxjdXw