Sunday, September 14, 2008

Haiti's 200th celebration, its meanming its effect


Dear friends
It pleases me to share with you one of the best articles of John Maxell about Haiti according to my point of view, particularly the effect of the 200th celebration of Haiti's Independence in the world. I can tell you, it is one of the most important articles that I had never read before about Haiti's 200th celebration.
Please read it carefully, I wish you an Happy day under the protection of our Almighty God.
Read it on: http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/johnmaxwell.html#prometheus

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Haïti: Exposition sur les conséquences du coup d'état de 2004




Le photographe Montréalais Darren Ell présente sa nouvelle exposition intitulée Haïti: Rembobiner. M. Ell a créé l'expo en réponse à la politique canadienne, française et américaine en Haïti. L'expo comporte des photos, des extraits de vidéo et des textes ramassés lors de ses voyages en Haïti entre 2006 et 2008. Elle expose le rôle des puissances étrangères dans la déstabilisation et le renversement du gouvernement populaire de Jean-Bertrand Aristide en février 2004. Elle examine aussi les séquelles du renversement du gouvernement élu, un événement avec lequel les Haïtiens vivent encore aujourd'hui. M. Ell remet en question la supposée bienveillance de la présence militaire et policière des Nations-unies qui est la puissance prédominante en Haïti depuis 2004.

Les photographies et les projections de l'expo situent l'intervention étrangère dans l'histoire coloniale d'Haïti. Des photos ont été prises lors des opérations onusiennes et des manifestations contre la vie chère. Elles évoquent les tableaux des peintres français œuvrant au plus fort de la puissance impériale française, et elles rappellent le travail du peintre activiste américain Léon Golub.

La première projection combine un paysage tranquille et abandonné de Cité Soleil avec la voix du Canado-Haïtien Jean St-Vil, qui récite le témoignage de Frantz Gabriel, seul témoin de l'enlèvement de Jean-Bertrand Aristide le 29 février 2004. Gabriel fut responsable de la sécurité d'Aristide et a été lui-même enlevé. La deuxième projection montre des douzaines de noms, accompagnés de données légales, de prisonniers politiques emprisonnés pendant le coup d'état.

Haïti : Rembobiner est la troisième exposition de M. Ell en 4 ans. Twice Removed (2004) traitait de l'occupation israélienne en Palestine et Between States (2006) soulignait le sort des réfugiés au Canada. L'exposition commence le jeudi 18 septembre dans la galerie MFA à l'université Concordia à Montréal. La galerie est située au 1395 boul. René Lévesque Ouest. Elle est ouverte du lundi au samedi de 9h à 21h. Le vernissage aura lieu le vendredi 19 septembre à 19h.

Darren Ell
Haiti: Rembobiner
18 au 30 septembre, 2008
Vernissage : le 19 septembre, 19h
Galerie MFA: 1395 René Lévesque Ouest, Montréal

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Gonaives four years after Hurricane Jeanne: What can the victims hope?

Time to make money or to help people?


By Wadner Pierre-haitianalysis.com


Early in September of 2004, the people of Gonaives, the “city of Independence”, located 152 kilometers north of the capital, Port-au-Prince, woke to the destruction brought by Hurricane Jeanne. Four years after Jeanne killed 3000 people, Gonaives is in agony again.

Hurricane Gustav has devastated southern Haiti: Southeast (Jacmel) department, South department (Les Cayes), Grand’Anse (Jeremie) and Nippes (Miragoane) department. Authorities do not yet have reliable numbers but early reports estimate at least 190 people dead – a death toll that will certainly rise.

Officials say 61 people were killed by Hurricane Hanna, which also just struck Haiti. Twenty one of those dead were found in Gonaives alone.

Hurricane Jeanne ravaged Haiti in 2004 only eight months after the coup that ousted Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Gerard Latortue, head of the UN installed dictatorship and a native of Govaives, received money from all over the world to help Gonaives rebuild. Unfortunately, the victims received very little benefit from the money. Gonaives lies below sea level but levees were never built; many roads have still not been repaired. The meager results obtained with international aid money have produced a widespread belief in Gonaives that Latortue's cronies and corrupt NGOs simply pocketed the money.

In 2004 a young survivor of Hurricane Jeanne talked to a reporter and sarcastically thanked Jeanne for destroying her life by killing off her parents and countless relatives. Today many survive on the rooftops of their homes, and say that the flooding from Hannah is even worse than it was with Jeanne, which left 250,000 Gonaives resident homeless.

On Tuesday morning, the mayor of Gonaives, Mr. Stephen Moise (known by “Topa”) talked on the phone to an AP reporter. He described the situation as “extremely urgent” and appealed for help. The police chief of Gonaives, Ernst Dorfeuille described seeing dead bodies being carried away but the flood waters. After reading this report, I called my mother Andrena Pierre who lives in Govaives. She took the call on a cellphone from a neighbor's rooftop and warned that another storm was on its way.

A woman from Florida, a stranger, sent me an email after reading an alert posted on www.wadnerpierre.blogspot.com. She was worried about her boyfriend who was visiting his parents in Gonaives. She wrote

”I am writing to find out what is going to happen in Gonaives? I am so concerned for the people there. I am not Haitian but I know a lot of Haitian people and the man I am going to marry is in Gonaives....Last time I talked to him was Tuesday morning, they were on the top of the house he said he was feeling sick and his mom is not well too. I know they have nothing now, so I am so scared for them and everyone else too. I haven't been able to contact him at all in the last 24hours. I have been praying, I need information, Has anyone been able to get into Gonaives yet? How many are dead? What is happening today?”

She wrote back to me later

“I talked to my boyfriend in Haiti he is ok he said everyone is being moved and he said that so far he knows 55 people that have died and he said the water is coming down, but he doesn't have passport and ID to come home. I am glad that people are getting help now and I pray your family and others are ok too”.

I made contact with my mother's neighbor, a women of fifty, later that day:

“Everybody is being moved to the mountain,” she said “We are now in the mountain. You cannot arrive in Gonaives without a helicopter. Our situation is very complicated, It is a desperate -no hope for us in Gonaives.”

She then explained what made her feel worse than anything:

“...they won’t help us. They will take the aid money for their own businesses as they did in 2004....our situation can be better that it is now. It is worst than Jeanne.”

I was able to contact Evel Fanfan, a human rights worker in the Haitian capital.

“People in Port-au-Prince, particularly in Grande Ravine south of the capital are in a desperate situation. More than a hundred children in the Lycee of Martissant are without power, food and potable water for them to drink..” said Fanfan.

Asked what he thought of the official death tolls, he responded

“It is more than that - hundreds at least.” He pointed out that so many people have been cut off from the authorities - in the mountains, in the countryside – and that so many have basically gone into hiding. He did not accept that the government is in any position to give a credible estimate.

President Rene Preval, a native of the Artibonite department in which Gonaives is located, has appealed the international community for help. The uproar over his latest nomination for Prime Minister has ended. The Haitian Senate has just approved Michele Duvivier Pierre-Louis as Prime Minister.

Aid money will arrive. The question is who will benefit from it. The people of Goaives are understandably pessimistic after their experience with Hurricane Jeanne.

Monday, September 8, 2008

Gonaives and the rest of Haiti need your help now

People everywhere in the globe, listen the voice of people in Gonaives and in the rest of Haiti. It is hard and it's really hard a sit can be for people. As a Haitian and a Gonaivian man I am very concern, I ask you my brothers and sisters in the world to help my relatives there in the way you can. Haiti is not the most hit by the hurricanes, but we are the most victimized people, cause our political leaders most of them don't care about people live. They care about themselves and they families. Those who want to improve live; they often plot against them and keep the country in perpetual instability politic, that is the way they make money. The loss of sight is more humane than the one presented by the authorities. How they can pretend determine the number of death and disappeared people while they do not have any infrastructures to reach them. After four years, which road has been rebuilt in Gonaives? Therefore, they are happy to steal the money and the aids that people deserve. Once gain, they do not put the real problem of Haiti on the table, particularly Gonaives, where the level of the ocean is higher than the land. Nobody cannot forget what happened in New Orleans in 2005, even this city was protected by levees and after the levees broke, you could see how ravaged was New Orleans by floodwater. Then Gonaives before and after Jeanne the just passed Hanna was not and is not protected by levees. And the worst is, no plan to prevent or to protect the city from another natural disaster as this of Jeanne and Hanna.

Now talking about those who called themselves Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) who received the most important amount of money to rebuild Gonaives city after unforgettable hurricane Jeanne 2004 eight months after most of them in collaboration with the bourgeoisie class in Haiti worked as the representatives of their own governments to kill democracy in Haiti by overthrowing the democratially-elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Political disaster, natural disaster, the funny thing is by these kinds of disasters they made or make their profits because they are not honest enough to say enough for those people, they are enough suffered, time to them relieve. Why not, they don't called themselves Mr. Mrs. disasters which is fit them.

Coming back to school this afternoon, I read a letter posted online on the web site of Partners in Health (PIH) by a famous American doctor who has been working close of people in Haiti, precisely those who live in the country side, those they often call "moun andeyò or peyizan in Creole" (people living out of city or peasants) just to marginalize them. 25 years ago, Dr. Paul Farmer, the co-founder "Zami Lasante (ZL) in Creole"(Partners In Health (PIH) in English) has been spending time with to get to know the reality of Haitian people live everyday. He gets it, and becomes one of the foreign witnesses and spokesmen in the world of them by writing books, articles and presenting speeches. I invite to read this letter on http://www.pih.org/inforesources/news/PEF_hurricane_letter.html, and you'll get it because "Dr. Polo as well-known among the Haitian peasants" says Dr. Paul visited Gonaives after the devastated tropical storm Hanna, he will tell you what he saw there. Time to act; it is also time to share to each other little that you have. Remember wherever you are now there is country needs your help, there are people live in Island who are waiting for you extraordinary supports, little it could be.

God bless Haiti, particularly Gonaives, my city.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Alert, save people life in Gonaives

Dear friends everywhere

What is happening now in Gonaives it is worst than hurricane Jeanne in 2004, Hanna is hitting Gonaives now. I talked to my mother who lives there, she said i quoted "my son it is hard for your mother and people in Gonaives, we do not know what to do. Nothing, nothing, it is raining, wind".
The situation that she explained is the same for almost people in Gonaives are living this morning. I am talking to some friends of mine on messenger, they are telling the south of Haiti "Les Cayes", cap-Haitia noth of Haiti have the same problem, houses broken by water, people disappeared, and soforth.

God bless Haiti and save people life in Gonaives, my city, Cap-Haitian, Les Cayes and the entire of our Planet .