Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 1 décembre 2021

 Mexico to offer Haitian migrants alternative to asylum

Haitian migrants arriving in Mexico may soon be eligible to stay and work in the country without applying for asylum.

Andrés Ramírez, head of Mexico’s refugee commission (COMAR), announced recently that Haitians will be eligible for a new form of migratory relief, which could take the form of temporary humanitarian visitor cards that would allow them to work and access public services.

Thousands of Haitians remain stuck in southern Mexico, often in precarious conditions.

Ramírez said Mexico is opposed to deporting migrants back to unsafe conditions in Haiti, but the new plan could prevent a "collapse" of the country's overburdened asylum system.

As of Nov. 16, Ramirez says more than 116,500 people have sought asylum in Mexico — far outpacing previous annual record of about 70,400 asylum seekers in 2019. This year, Haitians make up 44% of asylum applicants.

(Fronteras Desk)

'We need to work': Hundreds of migrants form new U.S.-bound caravan in Mexico

Jose Luiz Gonzalez . November 27, 2021

TAPACHULA, Mexico, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Hundreds of Central American and Haitian migrants formed a new caravan on Friday in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, near the Guatemala border, and began walking north toward the United States.

The migrants said they wanted to leave Chiapas as they had not been given humanitarian visas promised by Mexico or transferred to other parts of the country where they would have better living conditions.

About 1,000 migrants, many carrying children, early on Friday began walking from Tapachula, a city bordering Guatemala, to Mapastepec, about 100 km away (62.1 miles), where they plan to join another group of migrants, caravan organizers said.

A day earlier, Mexico's National Migration Institute (INM) began transferring hundreds of migrants to other parts of the country after they had spent months waiting in Tapachula for a response to requests for refuge or humanitarian visas.

The migrants were also offered documents for a temporary legal stay in Mexico that would allow them to look for jobs, defusing threats to start walking toward the U.S. border.

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Members of the Mexico's National Guard ride in a truck as migrants, mostly Haitians, walk in a caravan heading to the U.S. border, near Tapachula, Mexico November 26, 2021. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez

However, many migrants in Tapachula were not transferred elsewhere or did not receive humanitarian visas, and they joined those heading toward the United States.

"We need to work to support our family and that is why we decided to do this, to leave in the caravan," said one Haitian migrant, accompanied by his wife and family members, who declined to be identified.

Luis Garcia, one of the caravan organizers, said about 1,500 people are expected to head north from Mapastepec on Tuesday. In the past, migrants have refused to accept government aid because of the fear of being deported.

Earlier on Friday, the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) said it discovered that last year at least three Haitian asylum seekers in Mexico were deported to their country.

The Mexican National Migration Institute did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment about the cases.

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Reporting by José Luis González Additional reporting by Lizbeth Diaz Writing by Drazen Jorgic Editing by Leslie Adler

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Contending With the Pandemic, Wealthy Nations Wage Global Battle for Migrants

Covid kept many people in place. Now several developed countries, facing aging labor forces and worker shortages, are racing to recruit, train and integrate foreigners.

Nov. 23, 2021

Vjosa Isai and Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.

New York Times

A teacher showing immigrant trainees how to weld at Bildungskreis Handwerk, a regional training hub in Dortmund, Germany.Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times

As the global economy heats up and tries to put the pandemic aside, a battle for the young and able has begun. With fast-track visas and promises of permanent residency, many of the wealthy nations driving the recovery are sending a message to skilled immigrants all over the world: Help wanted. Now.

In Germany, where officials recently warned that the country needs 400,000 new immigrants a year to fill jobs in fields ranging from academia to air-conditioning, a new Immigration Act offers accelerated work visas and six months to visit and find a job.

Canada plans to give residency to 1.2 million new immigrants by 2023. Israel recently finalized a deal to bring health care workers from Nepal. And in Australia, where mines, hospitals and pubs are all short-handed after nearly two years with a closed border, the government intends to roughly double the number of immigrants it allows into the country over the next year.

The global drive to attract foreigners with skills, especially those that fall somewhere between physical labor and a physics Ph.D., aims to smooth out a bumpy emergence from the pandemic.

Migrant farmworkers in Ontario, Canada, last year. Canada is one of many of the world’s wealthier nations seeking to increase their work force with foreign migrants.Brett Gundlock for The New York Times

Covid’s disruptions have pushed many people to retire, resign or just not return to work. But its effects run deeper. By keeping so many people in place, the pandemic has made humanity’s demographic imbalance more obvious — rapidly aging rich nations produce too few new workers, while countries with a surplus of young people often lack work for all.

New approaches to that mismatch could influence the worldwide debate over immigration. European governments remain divided on how to handle new waves of asylum seekers. In the United States, immigration policy remains mostly stuck in place, with a focus on the Mexican border, where migrant detentions have reached a record high. Still, many developed nations are building more generous, efficient and sophisticated programs to bring in foreigners and help them become a permanent part of their societies.

“Covid is an accelerator of change,” said Jean-Christophe Dumont, the head of international migration research for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or O.E.C.D. “Countries have had to realize the importance of migration and immigrants.”

The pandemic has led to several major changes in global mobility. It slowed down labor migration. It created more competition for “digital nomads” as more than 30 nations, including Barbados, Croatia and the United Arab Emirates, created programs to attract mobile technology workers. And it led to a general easing of the rules on work for foreigners who had already moved.

Asylum-seekers preparing to cross from Mexico into Texas this year. In the United States, immigration policy remains mostly stuck in place, with a focus on the southern border, where migrant detentions have reached a record high.Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

Many countries, including Belgium, Finland and Greece, granted work rights to foreigners who had arrived on student or other visas. Some countries, such as New Zealand, also extended temporary work visas indefinitely, while Germany, with its new Immigration Act, accelerated the recognition process for foreign professional qualifications. In Japan, a swiftly graying country that has traditionally resisted immigration, the government allowed temporary workers to change employers and maintain their status.

These moves — listed in a new O.E.C.D report on the global migration outlook — amounted to early warnings of labor market desperation. Humanitarian concerns seemed to combine with administrative uncertainty: How would immigration rules be enforced during a once-in-a-century epidemic? How would companies and employees survive?

“Across the O.E.C.D., you saw countries treat the immigrant population in the same way as the rest of the population,” Mr. Dumont said. 

When it came time to reopen, fewer people appeared to care about whether immigration levels were reduced, as a poll in Britain showed earlier this year. Then came the labor shortages. Butchers, drivers, mechanics, nurses and restaurant staff — all over the developed world, there did not seem to be enough workers.

In Britain, the shortage of skilled and semi-skilled workers has affected pig farmers, who may start culling their stocks.Andrew Testa for The New York Times

In Britain, where Brexit has crimped access to immigrants from Europe, a survey of 5,700 companies in June found that 70 percent had struggled to hire new employees. In Australia, mining companies have scaled back earnings projections because of a lack of workers, and there are about 100,000 job openings in hospitality alone. On busy nights, dishwashers at one upscale restaurant in Sydney are earning $65 an hour.

In the United States, where baby boomers left the job market at a record rate last year, calls for reorienting immigration policy toward the economy are getting louder. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has urged policymakers to overhaul the immigration system to allow more work visas and green cards.

President Biden is trying first to unclog what’s already there. The administration’s $2.2 trillion social policy bill, if it passes a divided Senate, would free up hundreds of thousands of green cards dating back to 1992, making them available for immigrants currently caught up in a bureaucratic backlog.

In Australia, cafes have asked the government for a special visa for baristas.Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The New York Times

Many other countries are galloping further ahead. Israel, for example, has expanded its bilateral agreements for health workers. Inbal Mashash, director of the Israeli government’s program for managing foreign labor, noted that there were currently 56,000 immigrants, mostly from Asia, working in the country’s nursing care sector. And that may not be enough.

“The state keeps asking itself where it wants to take this,” she said. “Do we want 100,000 foreign workers, in the nursing care sector alone, by 2035?”

In advanced economies, the immigration measures being deployed include lowering barriers to entry for qualified immigrants, digitizing visas to reduce paperwork, increasing salary requirements to reduce exploitation and wage suppression, and promising a route to permanent status for workers most in demand.

Portugal’s digital nomads can stay as long as they want. Canada, which experienced its fifth consecutive year of declining births in 2020, has eased language requirements for residency and opened up 20,000 slots for health workers who want to become full residents. New Zealand recently announced that it would grant permanent visas, in a one-time offer, to as many as 165,000 temporary visa holders.

Medical staff members treating coronavirus patients in Zefat, Israel, in February. Israel has expanded its bilateral agreements for immigrants in the health care sector.Atef Safadi/EPA, via Shutterstock

One of the sharpest shifts may be in Japan, where a demographic time bomb has left diapers for adults outselling diapers for babies. After offering pathways to residency for aged-care, agriculture and construction workers two years ago, a Japanese official said last week that the government was also looking to let other workers on five-year visas stay indefinitely and bring their families.

“It’s a war for young talent,” said Parag Khanna, the author of a new book called “Move,” who has advised governments on immigration policy. “There is a much clearer ladder and a codification of the tiers of residency as countries get serious about the need to have balanced demographics and meet labor shortages.”

For the countries where immigrants often come from, the broader openness to skilled migration poses the risk of a brain drain, but also offers a release valve for the young and frustrated.

Countries like Germany are eager to welcome them: Its vaunted vocational system, with strict certifications and at-work training, is increasingly short-handed.

One of the sharpest immigration shifts may be in Japan, as the aging population is forcing the government to change its policy to allow foreign workers to stay.Charly Triballeau/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“During the coronavirus crisis, the system has really collapsed,” said Holger Bonin, research director for the IZA Institute of Labor Economics in Bonn. “We’ve seen the lowest number of apprenticeship contracts since German unification.”

Young Germans increasingly prefer to attend universities, and the country’s labor force is shrinking. According to a newly released study by the German Economic Institute, Germany will lose five million workers in the next 15 years — a full 3.2 million by 2030.

Immigrants have become a stopgap. Around 1.8 million people with a refugee background lived in Germany as of three years ago. And over time, the country has tried to improve how it integrates both asylum seekers and foreigners with work visas.

On a recent morning at Bildungskreis Handwerk, a regional training hub in Dortmund, near the Dutch border, around 100 trainees shuffled down the linoleum-floored corridors of a five-story building in a quiet residential area. In classrooms and work spaces, they learned to be professional hairdressers, electricians, carpenters, welders, painters, plant mechanics, cutting machine operators and custodial engineers.

The costs for 24- to 28-month programs are covered by the local government employment office, which also pays for apartment and living expenses. To get in, candidates must first take an integration course and a language course — also paid for by the German government.

Serghei Liseniuc, right, who came to Germany from Moldova in 2015, has started training as a plant mechanic at Bildungskreis Handwerk in Dortmund, which will soon bring him stable work and higher wages.Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times

“At this point, it doesn’t matter which of our departments graduates our trainees — trained workers are desperately sought in almost any domain,” said Martin Rostowski, the deputy director of the center.

Serghei Liseniuc, 40, who came to Germany from Moldova in 2015, has started training as a plant mechanic, which will soon bring him stable work and higher wages. “We are a bit like doctors,” he said. “Doctors help people, and we help buildings.”

But despite the gains for some workers and some locations, economists and demographers argue that labor market gaps will linger and widen, as the pandemic reveals how much more needs to be done to manage a global imbalance not just in population but also in development.

One question perhaps runs like a cold-water current just beneath the new warm welcome: What if there are not enough qualified workers who want to move?

“We’re hearing the same thing from everywhere,” said Mr. Dumont, the O.E.C.D researcher. “If you want to attract new workers, you need to offer them attractive conditions.”

Trainees learning how to build walls at Bildungskreis Handwerk. To deal with a labor shortage, Germany is trying to improve how it integrates both asylum seekers and foreigners with work visas.Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times

Vjosa Isai and Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.

Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times

Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 17 novembre 2021

 Moise murder suspect to be sent to Colombia

Jamaica is again moving to enforce the court-ordered deportation of ex-Colombian army officer Mario Antonio Palacios Palacios, a key suspect in the July assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise, to his homeland.

This development comes despite a request by Haiti, through diplomatic channels, to have Palacios turned over to authorities there, according to a document seen by The Sunday Gleaner.

Palacios remained in local police custody up to yesterday, almost one month after he was fined $8,000 or five days in prison by a Parish Court judge who also ordered his deportation for illegally entering the island.

Plans for what was expected to be a routine deportation were, however, scuttled after the high-profile target in one of the hemisphere’s most notorious modern murders became the subject of a Red Notice issued by the International Criminal Police Organisation (Interpol), sources told The Gleaner at the time.

But Jamaica’s Deputy Police Commissioner Fitz Bailey confirmed on Thursday that the “administrative process” surrounding Palacios’ deportation is now in train.

That process includes obtaining travel and other official documents for the ex-Colombian army officer, Bailey explained.

“That process is going on,” he said.

Days after the October 15 court order for Palacios’ deportation, Haiti’s Foreign Ministry dispatched a letter to Jamaica’s Foreign Minister Kamina Johnson Smith requesting that the Colombian be handed over to Haitian authorities, according to documents seen by The Sunday Gleaner.

In the aftermath of Moise’s July 7 assassination, Haitian police arrested 20 persons, including 18 Colombians and two Haitian Americans. They were suspected of being among the 28 commandos who stormed the late president’s private residence in the hills overlooking the Port-au-Prince capital, killing him and wounding his wife, Martine. 

Three suspects were reportedly killed, while five, including Palacios, were on the run.

Palacios was arrested at a guest house in central Jamaica in October, the police have confirmed.

It is believed that he entered the country through one of the island’s more than 140 informal ports of entry.

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Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti Welcomes Brian Concannon as Returning Executive Director

Boston, MA (November 10, 2021)—On Monday, the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) welcomed Brian Concannon Esq., IJDH’s founder, as its returning Executive Director. Concannon succeeds Franciscka Lucien, who previously informed the Board of her decision to step down from leadership of IJDH as of November 5. 

Concannon originally served IJDH as Executive Director for fifteen years before stepping down in November 2019. He is a lawyer and activist who has dedicated his career to advancing human rights in Haiti. He lived in Haiti from 1995 to 2004, where he co-managed the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI), a public interest law firm and IJDH’s sister organization, and served as a UN Human Rights Officer. He left Haiti in 2004 after the US-sponsored coup d’etat overthrew Haiti’s democracy and demonstrated that no progress in Haiti was sustainable unless the US and other powerful countries were compelled to respect the country’s sovereignty and democracy. From 2019 to 2021, Brian served as the Executive Director of Project Blueprint, where he led the effort to promote a progressive, human rights-based US foreign policy by bringing the perspectives of people impacted by US actions abroad into policy discussions. 

“I appreciate all of Franciscka’s hard and skilful work as Executive Director. I look forward to rejoining the entire IJDH community—colleagues at the Institute and at BAI, collaborators throughout the world, and IJDH’s wonderful financial supporters—to continue this work fighting the root causes of instability and injustice in Haiti.”

About IJDH: The Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) is a US-based human rights non-profit organization. Established in 2004, it is a partnership of human rights advocates in Haiti and the US, dedicated to tackling the root causes of injustice that impact basic human rights in Haiti. In partnership with its Haiti-based sister organization, the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI), IJDH advocates, litigates, builds constituencies, and nurtures networks to create systemic pathways to justice for marginalized communities in Haiti. For more information about IJDH, please visit www.ijdh.org.

Contact:
Catherine Chang, Operations Coordinator
Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti 
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Miami Herald: U.S. Warns Americans to Leave Haiti as Security Crisis Deepens, Hostages Remain Captive

The Miami Herald.com

Jacqueline Charles

Haitians say the current crisis is the worst to hit the country since the 1990s, when the international community and Clinton administration maintained economic sanctions after a Sept. 29, 1991, military coup toppled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The Biden administration is urging U.S. citizens in Haiti “to strongly consider returning to the United States” amid a gang-aggravated fuel shortage and a deteriorating security climate in which 17 Christian missionaries, including 16 Americans, have been held hostage for more than three weeks.

The message in a Friday security alert from the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince came as Haiti’s commercial banks and other businesses announced reduced hours starting this week, grocery store owners warned of coming food shortages and the United Nations encouraged employees to stock up on emergency supplies of water, food and other essential items.

Americans in the country are being encouraged to depart while commercial flights are still available, noting that while the security situation has been unpredictable for months, the environment has deteriorated rapidly in recent days.

“It sounds like an abdication of any kind of responsibility,” Robert Maguire, a longtime Haiti expert who once prepared U.S. diplomats being sent to Port-au-Prince, said of the responses of the U.S. and the U.N. to the unfolding crisis, which is expected to get worse this week if authorities don’t manage to supply fuel. “I think this administration would prefer for Haiti to go away. But it’s not going to go away. It seems that there is no real unanimity of what to do in this administration.”

Rice University names school Provost Reginald DesRoches as next president

HOUSTON — Rice University’s board of trustees has selected Reginald DesRoches, who is now serving as school provost, to be the university’s next president.

DesRoches, born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, is the first immigrant, first Black man and first engineer to lead the private research university. An internationally recognized structural engineer and earthquake resilience expert, DesRoches will succeed President David Leebron, who previously announced his plan to step down next summer after the academic year ends.

“I am deeply honored to be named the next president of Rice University,” DesRoches said in a written statement. “The past 4½ years at Rice have been among the most rewarding in my professional career and I look forward to building on the tradition of excellence established by President Leebron and those who served before him.”

At Rice, 7% of students are Black or African American.

DesRoches arrived at Rice in 2017 as dean of engineering at the George R. Brown School of Engineering. During DesRoches’ time as dean, the department underwent significant growth in research programs, including new efforts in the areas of neuroengineering and synthetic biology. He also led the establishment of the school’s first-of-its-kind collaborative research center in India with the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur.

Before joining Rice, DesRoches was chair of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech. His work there stemmed from his studies at the University of California, Berkeley. As an undergraduate student, DesRoches witnessed the damage wrought by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. That experience led him to focus on earthquake resiliency as he pursued his master’s and doctoral degrees at Berkeley.

Fuel crisis

American Airlines cuts flights to Haiti

Port-au-Prince, November 12, 2021. The current situation in Haiti is not without consequences for the functioning of national and international institutions.

American Airlines announced the reduction of its flights to Haiti. This decision will be effective from Monday, November 15, 2021, according to the company’s spokesperson, Laura Masvidal, during an interview with the Miami Herald.

Starting on that date, there will be only one flight per day to Haiti, from Miami to Port-au-Prince, Masvidal told the newspaper.

Who are the U.S. drug informants caught up in the Haiti assassination?

At least two DEA informants are under arrest or are implicated in the assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moise. What is known about their alleged participation in the plot and does the DEA bear any responsibility?

Univision

On May 1, 2000, a wealthy Haitian businessman Rodolphe Jaar was stopped by United States Customs agents while he was driving in South Florida.

Agents searched his rental car and seized a large amount of U.S. currency. But the agents did not arrest or charge Jaar with any crime, despite the fact that he was under investigation for alleged money laundering, according to court documents.

Jaar, the owner of an import and export business in Haiti, would go on to be one of Haiti’s most prolific drug traffickers, helping smuggle at least seven tons of Colombian cocaine into the country, destined mostly for the United States between 1998 and 2012, according to court records. He went by the alias ‘Whiskey’ according to his 2013 indictment.

To save his skin, he became a U.S. government informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration or DEA, though he eventually landed in jail in 2013, pleading guilty to stealing 50 kilos of the cocaine he was supposed to be helping agents seize, worth around $1 million.

After his release from jail in 2016, Jaar returned to Haiti where his name has surfaced as one of the suspects in the plot to assassinate Haitian president, Jovenel Moise, gunned down in his bedroom on July 7.

A month earlier, Jaar allegedly attended a bizarre meeting in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, where a plan was discussed, with supposed U.S. government backing, to detain 34 Haitian businessmen and government officials involved in drug trafficking and money laundering, using Federal Bureau of Investigation and Drug Enforcement Administration agents.

U.S. officials deny any such plan existed and Haitian police say the nine participants were actually involved in the plot to kill the president. Most are in detention, except for Jaar who is a fugitive and two other Haitians, a justice ministry official who was fired this year for corruption and a former senator.

“There is absolutely no truth to the allegations that the Department of State, FBI, DEA or any other U.S. Government entity was involved in this plot,” a State Department spokesperson told Univision late Friday.

It remains unclear what Jaar’s role was in the meeting, what was actually discussed and whether it had anything to do with assassination of Moise. It is also unknown if Jaar was still working as a DEA informant after he returned to Haiti. The DEA declined to comment about his status in response to several requests from Univision.

“If he was informing the U.S. government of the plot to kill the Haitian president we have a solemn obligation even with criminals to inform the target of that plot. The President of Haiti would have been notified. We could not have let something like that pass,” said Mike Vigil, former chief of DEA for the Caribbean.

The DEA has previously acknowledged that one of the other participants now in detention was working as a “confidential source.” The DEA did not name the person but said that following the assassination the informant reached out to his contacts at the DEA and later surrendered to local authorities, along with one other.

The DEA has also strongly denied any involvement in the assassination during which some assassins yelled "DEA" during the attack on the president's residence. “These individuals were not acting on behalf of DEA,” it said.

Experts from the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) are now working with Haitian authorities to try and solve the murder which has baffled Haitians and outside observers for almost a month, threatening to further destabilize the impoverished Caribbean nation of 11 million.

The meeting attended by Jaar could hold vital clues and has important links with other elements in the plot. It’s timing coincided with the arrival in Haiti of a group of former Colombian soldiers who are also in detention suspected of participating in the killing.

Two of the participants in the meeting, both Haitian-Americans, James Solages and Joseph Vincent, have alleged confessed to working with the Colombians, supposedly as translators. It is widely believed that one of them, Vincent, is the unidentified DEA informant. Few details have emerged about Vincent's life in the United States. The Miami Herald reported that Vincent, 55, became a DEA informant after being arrested more than 20 years ago for filing false information on a U.S. passport application.

A lot more is known about Jaar, the 49-year-old black sheep of an otherwise reputable family at the top of the country’s business elite. Palestinian emigres from Bethlehem, the Jaar family own the Coca-Cola bottling license in Haiti as well as a brewery in Canada and investments in electricity. But they are largely estranged from Rodolphe who has a reputation as a big spender who mysteriously disappeared from Haiti for long periods.

His participation in the June 8 meeting was described in a letter delivered to prosecutors by a lawyer for one of the detained men, Reynaldo Corvington, the owner of a security company who hosted the gathering.

According to the letter by Corvington’s attorney, Samuel Madistin, the 6pm meeting was requested by Joseph Felix Badio, a former Justice Ministry official who was fired in May from an anti-corruption unit for “serious breaches” of ethical rules.

Madistin told Univision in a phone interview that Badio worked as a consultant for Corvington’s firm, Corvington Courier & Security Service, which has held several U.S. government contracts in the 1990s, including providing guards for the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince.

Badio and Corvington have known eachother for 20 years when Badio worked for an anti-drug unit in the Justice Ministry and Corvington’s firm had a security contract for a government warehouse were seized drugs were held.

Badio had called Corvington earlier in the day to say that “an FBI officer and a DEA official wished to meet with him and asked him if he could receive them at his home,” according to Madistin’s letter.

Badio showed up with a former senator John Joel Joseph as well as a Colombian man who spoke only Spanish. Jaar arrived a few minutes later, but the 49-year-old businessman never spoke during the meeting. “I don’t know why he was there,” said Madistin.

The meeting wound up after about one hour. Corvington was unimpressed by Badio’s presentation of the supposed anti-money laundering and drug trafficking operation, according to Madistin.

“It was all fake. It wasn’t FBI or DEA at all at the meeting. It was the ones implicated in the plot, and the Colombian, who were there,” said Madistin.

Madistin said he expected his client would soon be released as “he had nothing to do with the assassination. Nothing at all.”

What happened over the next four weeks is a mystery. On the night of July 7 armed men entered the president’s residence, with almost no resistance from Moise’s 40-men security team.

According his wife, First Lady Martine Moise, none of the assassins spoke Creole or French, she has said. The men spoke only Spanish and communicated with someone on the phone as they searched the room. They appeared to find what they wanted on a shelf where her husband kept his files, she told The New York Times.

“They were looking for something in the room, and they found it,” she said. She said she did not know what it was.

There remain more questions than answers, both for Haitian authorities and the United States.

“Who has the US, and the DEA specifically, been working with in Haiti? To what end?” asked Jake Johnson, a Haiti expert at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.

“Have those relationships compromised the agency’s ability to do its job and actually undermined security and stability in Haiti?” he asked. “More directly, given previous investigations and arrests, what evidence of high-level government and private sector corruption or criminality does the US possess? And could that be, in any way, related to the assassination of the president?" he added.

Jaar “was a very high-profile (U.S. government) informant,” said Vigil.

It’s likely that Jaar’s role as a DEA informant ended in 2016 after he left jail, as by then he had been exposed in court, and the media, as having, as one judge put it “a checkered history”, of double dealing with traffickers and the DEA.

“He has too much garbage, too much baggage by then,” said Albert Levin, a Miami attorney who represented a Haitian police commander, Claude Thelemaque, who helped provide security for Jaar’s drug shipments.

A fluent English speaker with a degree in business administration, Jaar, was considered by DEA to be a valuable “snitch” as he helped authorities disrupt the longstanding cocaine connection between Colombia, Venezuela and Haiti. Jaar would pay off local cops to protect the cocaine loads flown in on planes that landed at night on dirt strips protected by local police who guided the pilots by radio, according to court records.

Thelemaque was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in jail in 2016 for his role in a 425-kilo shipment of cocaine coordinated by Jaar, who stole 50 kilos from the shipment behind the DEA’s back.

“In this case you have a situation where a man was presumably cooperating and at the same time double dealing; in essence working both sides of the fence,” said Levin.

Jaar was facing life in prison but because he was a DEA informant he received a prison sentence of less than four years. Jaar’s lawyer, Richard Dansoh, did not answer several requests for comment.

At his sentencing in 2014, Jaar asked the judge for forgiveness. “Your Honor, I have accepted full responsibility from the beginning, and I have cooperated with the government,” he said.

“I admit I made a big mistake, in my cooperation. I can assure you that I will never make this mistake again,” he added.

Thelemaque is still is jail and is not due to be released until May 22, 2023, according to federal prison records.

Jaar’s lawyer at the time, Richard Dansoh, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Two years later, at Thelemaque’s trial, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Judge Williams expressed her own disquiet. “Jaar got a huge break here, and it has to be acknowledged,” she told the court.

“Mr. Jaar was the leader of the band and Mr. Jaar was the one who had all the pieces on the chess board,” the judge told the court at Thelemaque's sentening.

His double dealing “so fatally impaired” his credibility that prosecutors decided not to have him testify against Thelemaque at trial, Williams noted, according to the 2016 trial transcript.

Jaar also helped convict a Haitian policeman and his codefendant Olgaire Francois, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison for his role in the same kilo shipment.

“I was shocked to learn that Mr Jaar was given rewards notwithstanding the fact that it had been discovered that he had been a double agent and had actually stolen part of the cocaine that he was working with the DEA to have seized,” Francois’ lawyer, Curt Obront, told Univision.

“You can only make so many deals with the devil,” said David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor in Miami who handled several Haitian drug cases.

“After a while you have stop making those deals and use another way to go after the big fish,” he added.

Correction: A previous version of this story erroneosly quoted Claude Thelemaque's lawyer, Albert Levin, as saying that his client was recruited by Rodolphe Jaar. It was the prosecutors who said Thelemaque was recuited by Jaar. Levin says his client was innocent and never participated in the drug shipment.

Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 3 novembre 2021

 A Call for a National Dialogue with everything on the Table

By

 Rezo Nodwes

 -

In 1990’s, the international community imposed a solution; today, we are right back to where we were back then with an existentialist consequence. Einstein stated: “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Albert Einstein, (attributed) US (German-born) physicist (1879 – 1955)

After a long observation of the current Haitian crisis, a sincere, an honest, and a synchronized Dialogue may be an option to resolve it without any bloodshed.

I call for a National Dialogue not only between the Opposition and the Government but among all various groups of the Haitian Society.

All the following entities need to send a representative member: The Opposition, the Government, the civil society, the peasant movement, the University, the Media, the Human Right, the labor Movement, the Patron, the Justice Department, the Student movement, the Catholic Church, the Protestant Church, the Voodoo and a member of the Diaspora.

15 entities sitting together live on how this crisis can be resolved with everything on the Table.

You do have Haitian Nationals who have a vested interest in seeing stability and economic prosperity in the land of Toussaint Louverture without any hidden agenda who can help you resolved this crisis. We believe everyone without exception shall have a voice and on how this crisis can be resolved.

With a National Dialogue among the Haitian people regardless of where they live is a good way to help resolved this eternal crisis.

Peace

Joe

Joseph Alfred
Massachusetts

Haiti gang leader threatens to kill kidnapped US missionaries

Wilson Joseph, linked to the 400 Mawozo gang, posts video vowing to ‘put a bullet in the heads’ of 17 captives if demands not met

The leader of the Haitian gang that police say is holding 17 members of a kidnapped missionary grouphas threatened to kill them if his demands are not met.

In a video posted on social media on Thursday, Wilson Joseph, the supposed leader of the 400 Mawozo gang, said: “I swear by thunder that if I don’t get what I’m asking for, I will put a bullet in the heads of these Americans.”

Joseph also threatened the prime minister, Ariel Henry, and the chief of Haiti’s national police, Léon Charles, as he spoke in front of coffins that apparently held several members of his gang who were recently killed.

“You guys make me cry. I cry water. But I’m going to make you guys cry blood,” he said.

Earlier this week, authorities said that the gang was demanding $1m per person, although it was not immediately clear that included the five children in the group, among them an eight-month-old baby. Sixteen Americans and one Canadian were abducted, along with their Haitian driver.

Earlier on Thursday, the Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries, said that the families of those who’d been kidnapped are from Amish, Mennonite and other conservative Anabaptist communities in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Ontario, Canada.

Weston Showalter, a spokesman for the religious group, read a letter from the hostages’ families, in which they said, “God has given our loved ones the unique opportunity to live out our Lord’s command to love your enemies.”

The group invited people to join them in prayer for the kidnappers as well as those kidnapped and expressed gratitude for help from “people that are knowledgeable and experienced in dealing with” such situations.

“Pray for these families,” Showalter said. “They are in a difficult spot.”

The same day that the missionaries were kidnapped, a gang also abducted a Haiti university professor, according to a statement that Haiti’s ombudsman-like Office of Citizen Protection issued on Tuesday. It also noted that a Haitian pastor abducted earlier this month has not been released despite a ransom being paid.

“The criminals ... operate with complete impunity, attacking all members of society,” the organization said.

Meanwhile, hundreds of demonstrators blocked roads and burned tires in Haiti’s capital to decry a severe fuel shortage and a spike in insecurity and to demand that the prime minister step down.

The scattered protest took place across the Delmas neighborhood of Port-au-Prince.

In addition to kidnappings, the gangs also are blamed for blocking gas distribution terminals and hijacking supply trucks, which officials say has led to a shortage of fuel.

Many gas stations now remain closed for days at a time, and the lack of fuel is so dire that the chief executive of Digicel Haiti announced on Tuesday that 150 of its 1,500 branches countrywide were out of diesel.

“Nothing works!” complained Davidson Meiuce, who joined Thursday’s protest. “We are suffering a lot.”

Some protesters held up signs including one that read, “Down with the high cost of living.”

Demonstrators clashed with police in some areas, with officers firing teargas that mixed with the heavy black smoke rising from burning tires that served as barricades.

Alexandre Simon, a 34-year-old English and French teacher, said he and others were protesting because Haitians were facing such dire situations.

“There are a lot of people who cannot eat,” he said. “There is no work … There are a lot of things we don’t have.”

Gang suspected in kidnapping of missionaries is among the country’s most dangerous.

Published Oct. 17, 2021

Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in August. Gangs have plagued the city over the past two decades, but they have grown into a force that is now seemingly uncontrollable.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

The gang that the police say kidnapped 17 missionaries and their family members in Haiti on Saturday is among the country’s most dangerous and one of the first to engage in mass kidnappings.

The gang, known as 400 Mawozo, controls the area where the missionaries were abducted in the suburbs of Port-au-Prince, the capital. The group has sown terror there for several months, engaging in armed combat with rival gangs and kidnapping businessmen and police officers.

The gang has taken kidnapping in Haiti to a new level, snatching people en masse as they ride buses or walk the streets in groups whose numbers might once have kept them safe.

The gang was blamed for kidnapping five priests and two nuns earlier this year. It is also believed to have killed Anderson Belony, a famous sculptor, on Tuesday, according to local news reports. Mr. Belony had worked to improve his impoverished community.

Croix-des-Bouquets, one of the suburbs now under control by the gang, has become a near ghost town, with many residents fleeing the daily violence.

The once-bustling area now lacks the poor street vendors who used to line the sidewalks, some of whom were kidnapped by the gang for what little they had in their pockets or told to sell what few possessions they had at home, including radios or refrigerators, to pay off the ransom. By some estimates, gangs now control about half the capital.

Gangs have plagued Port-au-Prince over the past two decades, but were often used for political purposes — such as voter suppression — by powerful politicians. They have grown into a force that is now seemingly uncontrollable, thriving in the economic malaise and desperation that deepens every year, with independent gangs mushrooming across the capital.

While older, more established gangs trafficked in kidnapping or carrying out the will of their political patrons, newer gangs like 400 Mawozo are raping women and recruiting children, forcing the youth in their neighborhood to beat up those they captured, training a newer, more violent generation of members. Churches, once untouchable, are now a frequent target, with priests kidnapped even mid-sermon.

Locals are fed up with the violence, which prevents them from making a living and keeps their children from attending school. Some started a petition in recent days to protest the region’s rising gang violence, pointing to the 400 Mawozo gang and calling on the police to take action.

The transportation industry has also called a general strike on Monday and Tuesday in Port-au-Prince to protest the gangs and insecurity. The action may turn into a more general strike as word has spread across sectors for workers to stay home to call attention to the insecurity and the fuel shortages in the capital.

Three Recent Crises Gripping Haiti

The abduction of U.S. missionaries. Seventeen people associated with an American Christian aid group were kidnapped on Oct. 16 as they visited an orphanage in Haiti. The brazenness of the abductions, believed to have been carried out by a gang called 400 Mawozo, has shocked officials. The kidnappers have demanded $17 million to release the hostages.

The aftermath of a deadly earthquake. On Aug. 14, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, killing more than 2,100 people and leaving thousands injured. A severe storm — Grace, then a tropical depression — drenched the nation with heavy rain days later, delaying the recovery. Many survivors said they expected no help from officials.

The assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. A group of assailants stormed Mr. Moïse’s residence on July 7, killing him and wounding his wife in what officials called a well-planned operation. The plot left a political void that has deepened the nation’s turmoil as the investigation continues. Elections that were planned for this year are likely to be delayed until 2022.

“The violence suffered by the families has reached a new level in the horror,” the text of the petition reads. “Heavily armed bandits are no longer satisfied with current abuses, racketeering, threats and kidnappings for ransom. At the present time, criminals break into village homes at night, attack families and rape women.”

In April, the 400 Mawozo gang abducted 10 people in Croix-des-Bouquets, including seven Catholic clergy members, five of them Haitian and two French. The entire group was eventually released in late April. The kidnappers had demanded a $1 million ransom, but it remains unclear if it had been paid.

Michel Briand, a French priest living in Haiti who was part of the group, said the gang had forced their cars to divert from their course before kidnapping them. “If we hadn’t obeyed them — that’s what they told us afterward — they would have shot us,” he said.

According to the latest report from the Center for Analysis and Research for Human Rights, based in Port-au-Prince, from January to September there were 628 people kidnapped, including 29 foreigners. Haitian gangs have stayed away from kidnapping American citizens in the past, fearing retribution from the United States government, making 400 Mawozo’s actions all the more brazen.

Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 28 octobre 2021

As Haiti reels from crises, U.S. policy decisions are called into question

Los Angeles Time

Joe Mozingo

Dessalines Day is a point of pride in Haiti, a time to commemorate the revolutionary hero who defeated Napoleon’s troops, abolished slavery and in 1804 established the first free Black republic.

But this year the Oct. 17 holiday played out like political theater of all the woes afflicting the nation.

The acting prime minister was headed to speak at the monument marking the spot where Jean-Jacques Dessalines was assassinated just outside the capital, Port-au-Prince, but his convoy was turned back by gunfire.

In the absence of a government delegation, a police-officer-turned-gang-leader seized control of the ceremonies. Flanked by masked men with assault rifles, Jimmy Cherizier, who goes by the name "Barbecue," strode to the monument in the white suit and collar of palace officialdom and roused the crowd.

“Today the time has come where they have the ports and the tax offices,” he shouted. “They are all millionaires. We are sleeping with pigs. This is how the system is.”

Like dozens of gang bosses in Haiti, Cherizier is a product of the country's fractious politics, and as has been the case for more than a century, those politics are deeply entwined with U.S. policy.

Since U.S. Marines first occupied Haiti in 1915, Washington has put its thumb on the balance of power, supporting the brutal Duvalier dictatorships dating to the 1950s and more recently propping up center-right presidents with little popular support.

The latest round of violent upheaval in Haiti is inextricably linked to Jovenel Moise, who won the presidency in 2016 in flawed elections and then proceeded to strip away institutions, rule by decree and — even after constitutional experts said his term had expired — remain in power until he was assassinated in July.

Along the way, he enjoyed the support of both the Trump and Biden administrations.

Gangs that were connected to Moise have continued to operate with impunity, often using government vehicles; robbery, rape and kidnapping for ransom have reached epidemic levels.

Who was the murdered sculptor, Anderson Bélony?

Jean Anderson Bellony, born March 13, 1970, grew up in the village of Noailles in Croix-des-Bouquets.

At the age of fifteen, Michel Brutus introduced him to sculpture. He has notably participated in several group exhibitions at the Georges Liautaud Community Museum and at the French Institute of Haiti.

In August 2014, one of his sculptures was presented at MUPANAH on the occasion of the "Rencontres" exhibition. Bellony inherited a voodoo sanctuary which was restored by the AfricAméricA Foundation, as part of the Prince Claus Foundation's Cultural Emergency Response Program (CER) in 2009.

Bellony is more assembly practical than cut iron. He collects the utensils of everyday life, bowls, basins, chamber pots, cutlery, which he associates with elements of cut iron or of natural origin such as bones, wood. What characterizes his work is the use of abandoned enamelled objects which he resuscitates with great humor.

Barbara Prézeau Stephenson
AICA SC

Extract from the exhibition catalog "Nway Kanpe! "

Haiti gang leader threatens to kill American missionary hostages

Officials have said 400 Mawozo gang is demanding $1m per hostage in ransom to release 17 members of missionary group.

 [Odelyn Joseph/AP]

The leader of the Haitian gang suspected of kidnapping 17 members of a missionary group from the United States has threatened to kill the hostages if his demands are not met.

Wilson Joseph, leader of the 400 Mawozo gang, issued the ultimatum in a video posted on social media on Thursday.

“I swear by thunder that if I don’t get what I’m asking for, I will put a bullet in the heads of these Americans,” Joseph said in the video.

Earlier this week, Haitian officials said the gang is demanding $1m in ransom per person to free the hostages.

Speaking in front of the coffins of gang members apparently killed by the police, Joseph threatened Haiti’s Prime Minister Ariel Henry and the chief of National Police Leon Charles in the video,

“You guys make me cry. I cry water. But I’m going to make you guys cry blood,” he said.

Al Jazeera correspondent Manuel Rapalo said protests in the capital Port-au-Prince against the deteriorating security situation in Haiti continued for the fifth day on Thursday.

Haitian workers went on a general strike on October 18 to protest worsening insecurity and gang violence after the abduction of the Christian missionaries.

“The concern now, especially after this video was published, is that tensions are going to continue to escalate; there’s fear that violence could worsen on the streets,” Rapalo said.

The hostages were abducted after leaving an orphanage outside Port-au-Prince on October 16. Sixteen of the abductees are Americans and one is Canadian. Five of them are children, including an eight-month-old infant.

Christian Aid Ministries, the Ohio-based missionary group whose members were kidnapped, called for a day of fasting and prayers for the hostages on Thursday, urging people to pray for the abductees as well as the kidnappers.

“Pray for the kidnappers, that they would experience the love of Jesus and turn to him, and we see that as their ultimate need,” said Weston Showalter, a spokesperson for the group.

“We also ask for prayer for government leaders and authorities as they relate to the case and work toward the release of the hostages.”

Reporting from Millersburg, Ohio, Al Jazeera’s John Hendren, said the kidnappings have been “stressful” for people associated with the missionary group.

“The people we’ve talked to have all expressed deep concern for those missionaries, particularly after the threat that was given by the leader of that kidnapping group,” Hendren said.

One of the poorest countries in the world, Haiti has been suffering from periodic natural disasters, gang violence and a longstanding political crisis made worse by the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July.

The country has seen a surge in kidnappings during the past weeks. Center for Analysis and Research in Human Rights (CARDH), a Haitian NGO, said on Wednesday that at least 119 people were kidnapped by criminal gangs in Haiti during the first half of October, following 117 cases in September.

“Citizens do not trust the Haitian national police and this poses a problem because we cannot have an efficient police force if the population does not collaborate,” Gedeon Jean, CARDH director, told AFP earlier this week.

The US government has promised to work with Haitian authorities to free the American hostages.

“We have in the administration been relentlessly focused on this, including sending a team to Haiti from the State Department; working very closely with the FBI, which is the lead in these kinds of matters; in constant communication with the Haitian National Police, the church that the missionaries belong to, as well as to the Haitian Government,”  Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday.

“And we will do everything that we can to help resolve the situation.”

Opinion: We can no longer ignore Haiti’s descent into chaos

Editorial Board

October 18, 2021 at 4:17 p.m. EDT

The Washington Post

Haiti’s spiraling mayhem, florid lawlessness and humanitarian meltdown were predictable following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July. In a country already crippled by governmental dysfunction, the vacuum of political legitimacy and authority after that murder left a breeding ground for anarchy.

The mess was largely ignored by the Biden administration, which has been preoccupied with other crises, until the kidnapping Saturday of 17 missionaries — a Canadian and 16 Americans, including five children — near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. Now the maelstrom in the hemisphere’s poorest nation is no longer ignorable.

Kidnapping is so prevalent that predatory gangs which routinely seize individuals and groups for ransom are now said to control half of Port-au-Prince. One of the more notorious of them, 400 Mawozo, is responsible for the missionaries’ kidnapping; earlier this year it grabbed five priests and two nuns and demanded $1 million for their release. They were eventually freed.

Haiti’s outmatched police are bystanders to the spreading pandemonium, and the government, which includes no elected officials, is window dressing. The fate of the missionaries is anyone’s guess, but no one should assume that their seizure is an aberration, or that Haiti’s dissolution will not generate further agonies for its own citizens and those of other nations. Those agonies will include desperate migrants at the United States’ border, such as the thousands who camped under a bridge in South Texas last month, seeking a foothold in this country.

There are no easy answers to fixing Haiti, nor even to what “fixing” it might mean. Some advocates insist that the key to rescuing Haiti lies in its civil society, the country’s vibrant network of nongovernmental social, educational, health and other organizations that provide what passes for a social safety net and a counterbalance to chaos. The truth is that those multifarious groups, for all their important work, are as splintered as the rest of Haitian society and just as powerless to arrest the country’s disintegration.

Those who called for international intervention following Mr. Moïse’s killing, including this page, have been criticized for overlooking the checkered history of such attempts in the past, including the U.S. Marine Corps’s 19-year occupation of Haiti a century ago, and the United Nations-authorized insertion of U.S. troops by the Clinton administration in the mid-1990s. In this century, a U.N. stabilization force was deployed in Haiti for 13 years, until 2017.

Those interventions were problematic. In the most recent instance, U.N. soldiers sent to Haiti from Nepal were the conduit for what became one of the world’s most severe cholera epidemics, and other U.N. troops fathered hundreds or more babies born to penniless local women and girls, amid credible allegations of rape and sexual exploitation.

Yet for all its unintended consequences, outside intervention could also establish a modicum of stability and order that would represent a major humanitarian improvement on the status quo, and with it, the prospect of lives saved and livelihoods enabled. In the cost-benefit analysis that would attend any fresh intervention, policymakers must be alert to the risks, but also to the enormous peril of continuing to do nothing.

AID TO HAITI SENT BY SEA TO BYPASS RISING GANG VIOLENCE

The Guardian

WFP carried out 18 voyages this month from Port-au-Prince to Miragoane, bypassing violent neighborhoods

The World Food Programme (WFP) is now using seafaring barges to ship supplies to earthquake victims in southern Haiti, after escalating gang violence made overland journeys unsafe for aid convoys.

Since the 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck the country’s southern peninsula in August, thousands of survivors have been sporadically cut off from Port-au-Prince, the capital, by roadblocks set up by warring gangs, leading relief workers to employ novel workarounds, including shifting aid to barges and helicopter airlifts.

“A recent upsurge in gang violence, including kidnappings, is impacting relief operations,” said Fernando Hiraldo, the acting UN humanitarian coordinator in Haiti on Thursday. “Violence, looting, road blockades and the persistent presence of armed gangs all pose obstacles to humanitarian access, a situation which is further complicated by very serious fuel shortages and the reduced supply of goods.”

The WFP – the world’s largest humanitarian organization – has carried out 18 voyages this month from Port-au-Prince to Miragoane, a coastal commune 62 miles away, bypassing violent neighborhoods on the outskirts of the capital.