mardi 18 octobre 2016

Our debt to Haiti

Sir Hilary Beckles

All of us in Jamaica, more than any other people, owe the greatest political and civic debt to Haiti. For this reason I join with the president of our Senate, Tom Tavares-Finson, QC, in urging citizens here and within the region to support the United Nations’ effort in funding to the best of our capacity the post-Matthew rehabilitation.

I give but one example — as spectacular as it is relevant. This year is the 200th anniversary of the grand, epic landing of ‘sail-away’ Jamaicans in Haiti — the first black Jamaicans to be declared free and citizens of Haiti by the personal intervention of a president.

This memorable episode in Jamaica’s history has gone unnoticed, but should be celebrated and used as an educational and political event as we pay tribute and repay our debt to ‘Mother Haiti’.

This is what happened exactly 200 years ago: Jamaica is bursting at the seams with 300,000 enslaved Africans. Haiti is the only true land of the free and the brave, having defeated in battle the enslavers of France, Britain, and Spain before becoming in 1804 the first free state in the western world.

President Jean-Jacques Dessalines, enshrined within the 1805 national constitution, the most humane and politically powerful provision: Any enslaved person of African descent who arrives on the shores of Haiti is automatically freed and a citizen of Haiti.

For the 300,000 enslaved Jamaicans this legal offer was like dangling Trelawny yam before Usain Bolt. They made a ‘run for it’ and tested the resolve of the Haitian Government.

The 170 miles between the two countries became known as the “Freedom Passage” as Jamaican boat people fled to freedom. I present here the details of one such Jamaican freedom voyage. In November 1816, a Jamaican slave owner, James M’Kewan of Port Royal, docked his cargo boat having arrived from Spanish Town harbour.



On board his boat, Deep Nine, were 15 enslaved Jamaican men. As M’Kewan stepped ashore to complete the paperwork, his 15 enslaved Jamaicans took control of the boat and sailed away to freedom in Haiti. They arrived at Trou-bon-bon and became Haitian citizens under law.

M’Kewan pursued them and found his empty boat nicely docked at the pier. He petitioned local officials for the return of his ‘property’. He was told to take his boat and leave the place. He returned with Deep Nine to Jamaica and over the Christmas period prepared a case for reparation to the Jamaican Government for the financial loss of the 15 enslaved men.

In the new year, M’Kewan returned to Haiti and lobbied the Haitian Government for the return of his human property. President Alexandre Petion did not grant him an audience, but informed him that the individuals in question were free and citizens of the republic.His letter to M’Kewan stated:

Port-au-Prince

30th January, 1817

14th year of Independence

Mr James M’Kewan Port-au-Prince

Sir,

I have received your letter of 28th inst claiming the English schooner Deep Nine, together with the individuals who brought her from Jamaica to Trou-bon-bon, as your property.I have just given direction for restoring to you the vessel, and everything pertaining to her, but as to the men, they are recognised to be Haitians by the 44th article of the constitution of the republic from the moment they set foot in its territory, and it is out of my power to restore them to you agreeable to your demand.

Each country has its laws, as you must know, Sir, and fortunately for the cause of humanity, Haiti is not the only one where slavery is abolished.The allusion you make in your letter cannot be attended with any serious consequence, because nobody here has been guilty of suborning subjects belonging to other powers; but such persons as arrive in this territory must be protected, since the laws require it.If there be, among the men you claim, any who have committed crimes against the rights of men, they will, on your furnishing me with proof of their crimes, be delivered over to the proper tribunals established for the purpose of taking cognisance of them by the local laws of the country, of which they are now citizens.

I have the honour of saluting you, Sir, with consideration.

A Petion [sic] Port-au-Prince

30th January, 1817

M’Kewan failed to reclaim his ‘human property’.On returning to Jamaica he pressed the Government with his reparations case. The Assembly debated the matter on the December 16, 1817 and voted reparation of £1000 to M’Kewan.

The 15 Jamaicans were just the tip of the free-berg. Hundreds found freedom and citizenship in Haiti. Trou-bonbon is therefore a memorial to Jamaican freedom, and should be recognised as such in this bicentenary moment.

Maybe Culture Minister Olivia “Babsy” Grange should negotiate for the establishment of a suitable monument as the Government prepares an appropriate strategy to facilitate the rehabilitation process.
Such a monument would be a lasting reminder of the human bonds between Jamaicans and Haitians that cannot be shaken by any act of nature. [Source: Journals of the Assembly of Jamaica, November 20, 28,December 9, 1817, Jamaica National Archives, Spanish Town]

Professor Sir Hilary Beckles is an economic historian and vice-chancellor of The University of the West Indies.

 Jamaica Observer
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mercredi 12 octobre 2016

Faut-il aider Haiti ou pas?


HOTO AFP


LOÏC TASSÉ
Mardi, 11 octobre 2016 05:00MISE à JOUR Mardi, 11 octobre 2016 10:51

L’ouragan Matthew a fait près de 60 000 sans-abri en Haïti. Les récoltes sont détruites. Un million de personnes ont besoin d’aide humanitaire. Comme d’habitude, le gouvernement haïtien demande de l’aide internationale.
Mais les élites politiques et économiques haïtiennes sont à ce point corrompues et inefficaces que l’on peut légitimement se demander si cette aide ne va pas d’abord servir à les enrichir. Le plus curieux est d’entendre les sempiternelles excuses de ces élites qui blâment les pays occidentaux, et surtout les États-Unis, pour tous les malheurs du pays. Plusieurs grandes organisations internationales ont une part de responsabilité dans l’état catastrophique d’Haïti. Mais la responsabilité première revient aux Haïtiens eux-mêmes.

1. Quel est l’état économique du pays?
L’économie est dans un état catastrophique. Environ 41 % de la population est en chômage. L’inflation est à 13 %. Le taux de croissance, en baisse, atteint 1,7 %. La balance commerciale est déficitaire. En fait, 80 % de la population haïtienne vit sous le seuil de la pauvreté. Avec un revenu annuel moyen de 1800 dollars américains par personne, les Haïtiens se classent parmi les gens les plus pauvres de la planète.

2. Qui est corrompu?
L’indice de corruption en Haïti est un des plus élevés au monde. Selon Transparency International, la corruption en Haïti est telle que cet État se classe au 158e rang mondial sur 167 pays. D’ailleurs, l’indice de Gini, qui mesure la répartition de la richesse dans les sociétés, atteint la marque de 60,8/100. Haïti est ainsi le troisième pays le plus inégalitaire au monde après l’Afrique du Sud et la Namibie.

3. Quel est l’état politique du pays?
La corruption imprègne la classe politique. Les élections présidentielles de 2015 ont été annulées pour cause de corruption. De nouvelles élections devaient avoir lieu en octobre. Le gouvernement haïtien a annoncé leur report en prétextant le passage de l’ouragan Matthew. Les élections présidentielles ont eu lieu en même temps que les élections législatives. Il est bien difficile de croire que ces élections n’étaient pas elles aussi trop corrompues pour être valides. Pourtant, elles n’ont pas été déclarées invalides. Le problème est que bien des candidats aux élections investissent une partie de leur argent personnel pour se faire élire. Ils veulent profiter des charges publiques pour faire fortune.

4. Quelle solution pour Haïti?
En vérité, il faudrait une vraie révolution en Haïti. L’aide ne fait que retarder la saine colère du peuple. Mais cette aide ne va pas s’arrêter. Parce qu’il est impossible de ne pas s’émouvoir devant la misère humaine. Parce que des pays comme les États-Unis et le Canada préfèrent conserver une certaine influence auprès du gouvernement haïtien plutôt que de risquer une dérive d’Haïti vers d’autres pays qui, eux, accepteraient de donner de l’aide.


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De la douloureuse importance de Matthew

De la douloureuse importance de Matthew


229 il y a 1 jours  Publié le 11 octobre 2016
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Après le 12 janvier 2010, Haïti ne pouvait contenir l’affluence de l’aide internationale. Le pays devenait l’orbite autour duquel gravitaient les dons, les grandes cogitations sur le développement, l’humanitaire…Dans son communiqué de presse No. 10/299 de juillet 2010, le conseil d’administration du Fonds monétaire international (FMI) approuve l’annulation de la dette d’Haïti envers le fonds qui se chiffre à 268 millions de dollars. La communauté internationale promettait une enveloppe de 9,9 milliards de dollars, dont 5,3 milliards devant être décaissés au cours des 18 mois partant du mois de mars 2010. Le pays bénéficiait donc d’un package et de promesses qui requéraient un levier, une puissance morale susceptible de garantir et d’assurer une gestion efficace et efficiente de cette aide qui débordait. D’où la Commission intérimaire pour la reconstruction d’Haïti (CIRH). Dans la logique de la gestion de l’aide, telle qu’énoncée dans la présentation de la commission, la CIRH avait aussi pour tâche d’assurer que la mise en application des priorités, plans et projets soit fidèle au Plan national d’action pour le relèvement d’Haïti, et qu’il suive la séquence convenable à une reconstruction pour créer une Haïti meilleure. Aujourd’hui, personne, du moins la grande majorité, n’est au courant du devenir de cette fameuse commission dont on peine encore à voir les résultats et le bilan concret. De surcroît, aucune évaluation du travail de la CIRH n’a été effectuée. Son existence et sa mission sont aujourd’hui scellées dans les chambres fortes des oubliettes. Et aujourd’hui encore, l’État revendique la coordination de l’aide qui s’annonce après Matthew. L’incapacité de l’État haïtien de pourvoir du strict minimum, de l’eau potable, le grand Sud même après 72 heures révèle qu’après 62 ans, en référence à l’ouragan Hazel en 1954, nous n’avons pas travaillé sur notre capacité de réponse ou mieux encore notre capacité de parer aux catastrophes naturelles. Je martèle, 72 heures après, aucune logistique maritime ou aérienne n’existait pour apporter le strict minimum au grand Sud du pays! considérant l’effondrement du pont « La Digue » à Petit-Goâve. Les autorités locales, prises à la trappe de la concentration économique et politique qui entrave toute mise à profit des municipalités, ne pouvaient que héler le secours de la république de Port-au-Prince, elle-même embourbée dans la préparation du scrutin du 9 octobre et constituant pour son compte un État défaillant. Dans l’incapacité de réaction des collectivités, nos Sudistes étaient seuls face à leur destin, contraints de résister-tant que se peut- aux caprices de la nature, sortie de ses gonds pour mettre à nu nos déséquilibres spatiaux et environnementaux. Qu’avions-nous donc appris du 12 janvier ? Quelle étape a donc été franchie en matière de gestion de risques et de désastres après 1954 et, plus près de nous, après 2010 ? Quid du Fonds de gestion et de développement des collectivités territoriales (FGDCT) créé par la loi du 28 mai 1996 et publié dans Le Moniteur le 2 septembre de la même année ? Matthew ne se veut pas une de ces occasions pour les vautours de faire leur beurre avec pour prétexte le mal de la République. Loin de là! Matthew nous met face à nos défis réels qui impliquent une vision claire de notre devenir en tant que peuple. C’est l’esquisse d’un tableau sombre de l’inexistence des options de base, la révélation des promesses non tenues de notre démocratie qui a favorisé l’avènement au pouvoir de dirigeants, pour la plupart, inaptes à définir et à implémenter des stratégies de développement. Des dirigeants qui, dans les faits, refusent de comprendre et d’accepter que le pouvoir est une relation évolutive et qui, pour cause, ont annihilé la dynamique relationnelle: État collectivité territoriale. Matthew nous rappelle durement qu’il n’y a jamais eu un projet de société viable, un pacte de gouvernabilité mettant en tandem acteurs politiques et économiques de la société visant des cibles claires sur des dimensions temporelles objectivement définies et capables de générer des résultats au carrefour du social, de l’économique et du politique. Le 12 janvier 2010 est l’opportunité, oui, l’opportunité ratée de la reconstruction. Une opportunité en ce sens que la disposition mentale du peuple haïtien se joignait à cette volonté de reconstruire. On le voulait. Aussi cruel qu’ait été son passage dans le grand Sud, tant en dégâts matériels qu’en perte en vies humaines, Matthew se veut un rappel. Un rappel du fait que nous ayons fait de la première République nègre un État incapable de s’assumer. Un rappel de la nécessité de suspendre les débats creux tenant du superficiel, du sensationnel et du populisme, un rappel de surseoir sur notre attitude déconcertante à stagner dans la gestion de l’urgence, un rappel que nous sommes en 2016 et que, conséquemment, nos modes de construction anarchiques sont dépassés, un rappel de la nécessité de politiques publiques de territorialisation passant par la mise à profit des municipalités en fonction d’une vision prospective. La douloureuse importance de Matthew tient du fait qu’il est une invitation. Une invitation à nous regarder en face pour accepter que nous n’avons pas évolué. Une invitation aux impotents à tirer la révérence. Une invitation à l’adoption d’une nouvelle forme de contrat social. Un contrat social qui sera guidé par un pacte de gouvernabilité. Ce pacte de gouvernabilité qu’il n’y a jamais eu depuis 1806

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Seeing ‘Nothing to Live For’ as Haiti Seeks a Body Count After Hurricane Matthew


Seeing ‘Nothing to Live For’ as Haiti Seeks a Body Count After Hurricane Matthew

By AZAM AHMED




Days after Hurricane Matthew struck Haiti, a mother sought shelter Saturday in Les Cayes.Orlando Barria/European Pressphoto Agency

PORT-SALUT, Haiti — The loss in this coastal town is all but entire. Dead animals float in tidal pools. Cinder-block heaps mark where homes once stood. Trees, stripped of leaves, branches and tops, impale the earth like ragged posts.
But the loss here runs deeper. The local hospital has registered 13 deaths sinceHurricane Matthew flung 145-mile-per-hour winds and a wall of water at Port-Salut, but many more have died without so much as an official word.
Emilien Clerveaux died trying to save his daughter, his head split open by flying debris. Elouse Maître’s aunt and four cousins were swept out to sea when the water claimed her beachfront shack. Destine Rosevald’s two children, 6 and 4, died in his arms as he tried to rush them to safety.
“When I think about them, I cry,” Mr. Rosevald said as he stood in a neighbor’s yard on Saturday, water filling his eyes. “She was just in elementary school. My son, he was going to start kindergarten this year.”
As access and information to cut-off areas of Haiti increase after the hurricane, the news only gets worse. The death toll has climbed to nearly 900 people, while an outbreak of cholera in three southern towns has killed 13 people and infected 62 others, health officials said.
For now, though, there is no way to know the precise toll of the storm. There are still 500,000 people stranded in the south alone, officials said, because of extensive damage to an already feeble infrastructure. More than 170 people have been reported dead in Les Anglais, which for now is accessible only by helicopter.
Just as the impoverished island nation, bereft of resources and capacity, struggled to prepare for the storm, the recovery has been hampered by the same shortcomings. And communications have been scattered. Although news outlets are reporting nearly 900 dead, the government has for two days insisted on a figure less than half of that.


A hurricane-ravaged home Friday in Port-Salut, Haiti. Hundreds of thousands of people are still stranded in the south of the nation. Andres Martinez Casares/Reuters

That gap is partly the result of how the deaths are reported. The government is counting only those it can verify, a formal process that cannot be completed until access to areas cut off by the storm is restored. But in towns like Port-Salut, many have already buried their dead or stopped searching for loved ones carried away in the storm surge.
“Honestly, we don’t even know how many died,” said Sanite Moïse, seated with a group of women washing clothes in a shallow flood pool. Small children bathed in the murky water.
Mrs. Moïse said her 77-year-old father had died a few days earlier, drowned in the floods that engulfed his home near the beach. When she went to look for him, there was nothing left — just an embankment and washed-up debris. The house, she said, was gone.
“God gives and God takes,” she said with a shrug. “Mankind, for all the evil he does, could never do something like this.”
The devastation in Port-Salut was hard to overestimate. Hardly a home was left untouched, and many were reduced to splinters and rocks. Fields fallowed by salt water baked in the afternoon heat, while palm trees the width of telephone poles were snapped in half.
Periodically, the stench of death wafted through the tropical air, filling nostrils with a choking, rotten smell.
The areas of Port-Salut farther west are the worst hit, with entire stretches of the waterfront washed away. Residents spoke about homes that used to line the picturesque beaches along with restaurants and shops.
Standing by the side of the road, Mr. Rosevald barely registered the activity around him. As men brushed debris from the road and collected wood to reconstruct homes, he leaned against a rusted Mack truck, looking lost.
He could not bear to be near his home, he said.
When the storm hit, Mr. Rosevald tried to remain with his children and mother. But by late Monday, as the wind and rain belted his home, finally tearing off his roof, he decided to flee.
He rushed to the front door but heard a crash in the living room and went running back. He found his 4-year-old son, Kendy, and his mother buried in the wreckage.
He pulled them out and clutched his unconscious son at his waist, determined to get them out of the house. He lifted his daughter, Naomie, onto his shoulders and ran outside, his mother close behind.
Almost immediately, a stick whirred through the air and struck the little girl in the ribs. Frightened by the force of the impact, he looked down at her but kept moving until they reached a neighbor’s house.
By the next morning, both children were dead.
His daughter, he said, was a playful and talkative girl in second grade. She loved math and jumping rope with friends. His son, he said, was a chatterbox and was excited to start kindergarten this year.
Mr. Rosevald paused and apologized for not recalling everything clearly. “They tell me my daughter died a few hours later, at 6 a.m.,” he said. The force of the blow caused extensive internal bleeding, he said.
“My son, they said, was dead the entire time I was carrying him,” he stuttered. The boy was dead the instant the wall fell on him.



NATURAL DISASTERS By NEETI UPADHYE 00:55
Haiti Ravaged by Hurricane Matthew

Haiti Ravaged by Hurricane Matthew

Hurricane Matthew was the worst natural disaster to strike the Caribbean nation of Haiti since the earthquake of 2010.
 By NEETI UPADHYE on October 7, 2016. Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters. Watch in Times Video »

On Saturday, residents cleaned up wooden debris that littered the town, working with machetes and axes and stacking trees and branches felled in the storm. Fisherman repaired their nets on the beach.
The water was postcard Caribbean.
At the local hospital, the injured turned up by the dozens. An old man was carried from the bed of a truck into the waiting room, unconscious, as nurses and doctors trained in Cuba attended to him.
A young girl issued bloodcurdling screams as nurses cleaned cuts running up her leg. A young man beside her gingerly touched deep gashes on the back of his neck.
“I knew this place before,” Orthela Genima, a doctor who has worked in the hospital for several years, said of the town. “Now I can’t even recognize it.”
Among those who had lost loved ones, many struggled to recognize even themselves.
“It’s like we are slowly dying,” said Micheline Clerveaux, 18, whose father, Emilien, died Tuesday afternoon. “We have nothing to live for.”
The family was gathered near where its house had been, an area reduced to a mound of stones and an odd assortment of furniture, a dismantled speaker and a wooden box spring. Mr. Clerveaux was buried in the family grave beside the home, a concrete slab sitting above ground, painted a dull blue.
He had been searching for Micheline when the storm raged on Tuesday morning. The family had fled the home moments earlier, seeking refuge in an open field to the west.
The parents split up, and Micheline and her sister, Francise, went with their father. The other four children went with their mother, Marie Rose Jacob.
But when they met in the field and lay flat on the ground to avoid the flying objects, Micheline was missing. A strong gust had knocked her off course, placing her closer to a neighbor’s house.
“He told me he was going to look for her,” Mrs. Jacob said.
After an hour, the children and their mother left the field and, by good fortune, found shelter in the same home where Micheline was taking cover. But Mr. Clerveaux was not there.
They waited until the worst of the storm had passed and went searching for him. Hours passed. Eventually, a few hundred yards away, they found him leaning against a tree, talking to himself.
They hoisted him and looked for injuries. There was a huge wound on the back of his head. At home, lying in bed, he told his wife that he was going to die.
A few hours later, he did.
Mr. Clerveaux was a subsistence farmer, growing corn, potatoes and beans to feed his family. Those crops are now gone, unlikely to grow again in the salt water marsh that his land has been turned into. The family’s livestock — a cow and three sheep — are also lost.
Neighbors pitched in to bury Mr. Clerveaux, and they are housing and feeding his wife and children. They say they will continue for however long it takes the family to rebuild.
“If we survive, they will survive,” said Jean-Robert Nazaire, 56, the neighbor with whom the family took shelter during the storm. “If we have only one loaf of bread to eat, we will share it with them.”

A version of this article appears in print on October 9, 2016, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Nothing to Live For’ as Haiti Seeks Body Count. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
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