Good old-fashioned community radio stations are stepping up to the plate with in-depth Haiti coverage as mainstream attention continues to fade and falter.

Long-term journalists based here with the Miami Herald and Associated Press did almost the exact same story about Haiti’s World Cup Fever last month, after AFP did another. They have not covered physical harm against displaced Haitians (of which there are still around 2 million) by landowners, gangs, and neglect by organizations supposed to be distributing food, water, and shelter.

Besides the soccer articles, their output over the past month reads much like a list of press releases from various authorities on their plans for the country – Bill Clinton, the US Senate, the Haitian government, and international institutions. This news, generated in air-conditioned offices and upscale hotels, seems rather inconsequential to the everyday reality here in Port-au-Prince. Perhaps the assumption is that the average quake victim is poor and miserable as always and it’s not worth trying to explain why any more. (Reaching, the Miami Herald today published an astonishing piece claiming that Haiti’s tiny middle class is suffering as much or more as the vast poor majority.)

I didn’t author much work individually last month, but I’m keeping busy (trying with others to stop camp evictions as they happen, at times) and working towards some worthwhile longer-form stories. Glad to participate in several radio interviews and stories last month concerned mainly with the conditions facing the Haitian poor. Listen below. (more…)

Image by scottmontreal

I spent a few days at Port-au-Prince’s only public hospital this past week. A heartening and heart-wrenching experience. My report for yesterday’s Free Speech Radio News broadcast:

MP3. Also, I want to share why I love working for an organization like FSRN (besides their great editors). (more…)

A quick update: I left Haiti last week for Seattle. I’m in Washington DC now speaking to a few policymakers/staff about the dysfunction of the relief effort. I’ll be in NYC later this week, then Austin, then back to Port-Au-Prince in May.

I spoke at a few venues in Seattle, but I want to pass on this live radio chat from yesterday morning on 90.3FM KUOW’s Weekday program. Host Steve Scher interviewed me, NPR sometime-Haiti correspondent Martin Kaste, and longtime Haiti relief worker Jack Andrew. There was some back and forth at times, and knowledgeable talk about how Haiti got to where it was before the quake. I learned some things! Listen below, or at KUOW’s page. Skip ahead to around the 12 minute mark past the pledge drive.

MP3 here. Let me know in the comments if there are messages you want me to pass on to folks here in DC…

Update: I also spoke (a little more openly about the political problems in Haiti) to 91.3FM KBCS’s One World Report last week, scroll down and find the clip here.

Read the story, published today by Inter-Press Service, below or listen to the radio version at Free Speech Radio News.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Mar 30, 2010 (IPS) – On an empty road in Cite Militaire, an industrial zone across from the slums of Cite Soleil, a group of women are gathered around a single white sack of U.S. rice. The rice was handed out Monday morning at a food distribution by the Christian relief group World Vision.

According to witnesses, during the distribution U.N. peacekeeping troops sprayed tear gas on the crowd. (Jan. UN photo above)

“Haitians know that’s the way they act with us. They treat us like animals,” said Lourette Elris, as she divided the rice amongst the women. “They gave us the food, we were on our way home, then the troops threw tear gas at us. We finished receiving the food, we weren’t disorderly. ”

Some 9,000 U.N. peacekeepers, known by the acronym MINUSTAH, have occupied Haiti since 2004, including 7,000 soldiers of which the majority are Brazilian. The mission has been dogged by accusations of human rights violations.

“It’s time to begin thinking about changing the nature of MINUSTAH’s mission,” Brazilian Defence Minister Nelson Jobim told the Brazilian newspaper O Estado after the January earthquake struck Haiti.

“MINUSTAH’s mandate is to maintain the peace, that is, security, but the U.N. needs to realise that its mission is no longer solely to strengthen security but also to build the infrastructure,” he said.

So far, there’s no evidence of a shift in policy. (more…)

I got a call yesterday afternoon from a newspaper. They asked me to track down a Haitian family and interview them – the only information they had was the general area where they live and some of their names. “I think this will be a test of your detective abilities! Also, don’t take any risks,” the editor wrote to me.

Of course, it wasn’t too difficult to find them. Everyone knows everyone. I called Weed, a motorcycle taxi driver I met after the earthquake who has since become a trusted friend (he’s teaching me how to drive a moto). He picked me up and we headed out, camera slung over my shoulder.

Over some broken, pothole-filled roads out of Delmas, until we hit Grand Rue and weaved through traffic. I remembered how eerie Grand Rue was, the morning after the earthquake, smelling faintly of bodies, quiet and empty of cars and people. Life goes on.

Weed pulled over into a dim alley. Hopped off the moto and asked two men sitting against wall if they knew the family. I mispronounced the surname at first, then got it right. “Oh yeah we know them. He’ll take you there.”

We were led through a maze of narrow alleys – past old men playing checkers, naked children bathing, women washing clothes. Expressions that sometimes seem like glares softened into little smiles each time I said hello. A baby girl sleeping face down on the grimy concrete, a smudge of feces on her butt. I fought off the impulse to snap a photo.

The family is desperately poor, living under a thin tarp that leaks in the rain in an alley. 19 people all together in one tiny space. When we finished the interviews thirty minutes later, the same guy led us back out, taking a different route. “Pi rapide konsa” – it’s faster this way.

Arrived back at the guest house. Amber Munger, a human rights worker, saw me walk in. “You should know something,” she said. (more…)

Published today by Inter-Press Service. Update: Radio story aired on Free Speech Radio News on Thursday. Pictures below.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Mar 9, 2010 (IPS) – Perched near the top of a steep hill, the fractured pink walls of Villa Manrese overlook the rest of the capital city. Both ends of the three-story compound have collapsed, spilling into mounds of rubble. The first floor was pulverised into a layer of dust. There are still bodies inside.

But in the adjacent garden behind the Catholic retreat, also known as Centre Saint-Viateur, life sprang anew after the Jan. 12 earthquake struck Haiti.

Some 250 families, comprising 1,500 people from the surrounding area of Haut-Turgeau, crowded together in the small field. Father Paul André Garraud, a Haitian priest based in the villa, helped procure tents, food, and medicine from relief agencies.

“We were doing well because they organised us. We weren’t hungry,” said Lubin Pierre-Louis, 52, leaning on a cane in the middle of the empty field. Three boys play soccer with a dirty plastic bottle on the wet ground behind him.

The camp vanished overnight on Mar. 2.

“It’s wrong. They told us to leave in the middle of the night,” Pierre-Louis said. “Just staying here now is a resistance. If they ask me to leave, I’ll be forced out.”

Residents who formed the informal committee running the tent camp swept through at 11 p.m., according to witnesses, telling everyone they had to leave immediately.

Families were told that bulldozers would come onto the field early in the morning to demolish Villa Manrese. No demolition crew arrived and the villa is still standing.

“They told us the bulldozer was coming to intimidate us,” said Johnny Cherezard, a 23-year-old student. “The government said nobody has a right to push people out unless they have a place to go. We had people who were sick and injured.”

“The Father gave the signal to the committee to force people out,” he said. By 3 a.m., most people had left the camp. (more…)

Published yesterday by Inter-Press Service. Update: The story also aired on today’s Free Speech Radio News broadcast.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 23, 2010 (IPS) – A cacophony of murmurs and cries echoed through the neighbourhoods of Haiti’s capital city Monday night as a violent aftershock shook people awake. Ten minutes later, another tremor rocked the ground, this time more smoothly back and forth.

The 4.7 magnitude tremors were a momentary distraction from pressing concerns over Haiti’s oncoming season of heavy rains, said to begin in March and last three months.

Shelter is now the top priority for relief groups, ahead of food and water distribution. They are rushing to supply thick plastic tarps, rather than tents, to over 500,000 internally displaced people in Port-Au-Prince – many still living under bedsheets tied over sticks in crowded settlements.

At a shelter distribution by CARE International at a camp in a Petionville public square, the tarps were received with a mixture of confusion and disappointment.

“It’s not clear for us. We can’t set them up because they don’t send anyone to give an explanation,” said Joseph Jean-Ones, whose family lives in the camp, as he tried to fit one metal pole on top of another. (more…)