I'm Ansel Herz, a freelance multimedia reporter currently based in Seattle.
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Haut-Turgeau, Haiti: The Camp That Vanished and the Priest Who Forced Them Out + audio

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. Read More…

Secure Shelters Scarce in Port-Au-Prince as Rainy Season Looms + audio

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. Read More…

In Grand Goave, Relief Efforts Frustrate Haitian Neighborhood Leaders + audio

Published today by Inter-Press Service. Listen to the audio at Free Speech Radio News here.

GRAND GOAVE, Jan 28, 2010 (IPS) – Two gray 23-million-dollar hovercrafts sitting in the middle of a sandy tropical beach look like they are from another world. A pair of 15-foot-wide propeller fans sticks out from the back of each behemoth.

Along the narrow dirt road to this seaside town’s centre, families live under blankets stretched over sticks.

A tent city occupies the town’s main square, surrounded by crumbling buildings. Joseph Jean-Pierre Salam, the mayor of Grand Goave, about 15 kilometres west of Port-au-Prince, estimated that some 70 percent of the city’s important structures fell during the 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti on Jan. 12.

“They have made many promises, but we don’t see the action yet,” Salam said, referring to the international community. “We have a lot of people suffering. There is an expectation that help will come.”

Little food and water has been distributed by the dozens U.S. troops milling about the beach since the earthquake, according to local leaders. Read More…

Audio: Plane full of medicine turned away while health workers strain to treat patients in Port-Au-Prince

cannapevert

Here’s my story for yesterday’s Free Speech Radio News newscast. Some horrific sights at both Cannape-Vert Hospital and the Doctors Without Borders Clinic in Cite Soleil.

MP3. Video probably coming later. It’s really an inefficient medium, from what I see here. Journalists go out, shoot footage, then come back mid-day to begin an hours-long editing process, when they could be out reporting. By tradition they go to the trouble of hiding cuts in interviews with b-roll, instead of doing simple, honest jump-cuts to which the YouTube generation is totally accustomed. There’s no innovation…

Update: Big thanks to the Quixotess in Seattle for transcribing! Global media collaboration FTW. Text below the jump. Read More…

FSRN feature: UN renews Haiti peacekeeping mission

minustah

I just got back from a six-day trip to northern Haiti. Been without Internet access, so I’m posting this story here a week late! It aired last Thursday on Free Speech Radio News.

MP3 here. Rough transcript below. Read More…

Interview: UN Deputy Envoy to Haiti Dr. Paul Farmer

farmerI spoke to Dr. Farmer at the Inter-American Development Bank’s Haiti investor conference at Hotel Caribe last Thursday evening following speeches by UN Special Envoy to Haiti Bill Clinton and Haitian President Rene Preval. As the crowd of investors, journalists, and officials moved to a neighboring ballroom to hear Clinton’s next speech, we stayed in the room to interview Farmer, who co-founded Partners in Health and authored “The Uses of Haiti.” I asked him about democracy in Haiti, the struggle over the minimum wage here, accountability to Haitians, and criticisms of Clinton-led efforts to attract investment to Haiti. Farmer was later driven away from the hotel in a $200,000 armored vehicle, according to a one blog. Background noise largely fades away after start of interview.

MP3. Pictures of Farmer, Clinton, Preval, and Prime Minister Michelle Pierre-Louis, and other photos of Haiti taken over the past 11 days at my Flickr photostream.

UPDATE: Rough transcript below. Read More…

Podcast: Another Fort Hood Afghanistan War Resister Sentenced and Jailed

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Travis Bishop is led away from Fort Hood in shackles. Image from video shot by Bishop’s lawyer.

This started out as a story for Free Speech Radio News but didn’t make it into today’s newscast. I’ve heard of the Flash player not working for a few folks. Listen to the MP3 if that’s the case for you. Cross-posted to Houston Indymedia, now featured on Indymedia.us.

A Fort Hood soldier faced a military trial today for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan, one week after another member of his unit was sentenced to 30 days in jail for refusing to go to war. Sergeant Travis Bishop was convicted on all charges and sentenced to one year in prison, loss of pay, and reduction in rank. Read More…