My grandmother sent me a short but sweet e-mail this morning, asking if I’m doing okay here in Haiti, where I work as a freelance journalist. She said the country has popped up in the news again because Wyclef Jean, a Haitian-born musician, is running for president.

“He has no political affiliations, only celebrities, so people are wondering about him,” she wrote to me.

She’s been duped by shallow media coverage portraying Jean as a fresh face on Haiti’s political scene. Jean likened himself to Barack Obama, a new hope for the earthquake-hit country, in front of a throng of enthusiastic supporters here on Thursday.

Look closely at his record. Jean more closely resembles Sarah Palin -incoherent, incompetent and in it for himself.

The pre-disaster financial improprieties of Jean’s charitable organization, Yele Haiti, have been well documented. To take one example, Jean claims he founded it in 2005 with a personal donation from his multi-million dollar fortune. Records show he didn’t contribute a cent.

But Jean nearly redeemed himself when he lent his star power to spectacularly successful charitable fundraising efforts in the January earthquake’s immediate aftermath.

If only he hadn’t dropped the ball. Like many other charities, Yele Haiti hasn’t spent much of the donations it received for urgent humanitarian relief – just 16% of some $9 million.

Now, when asked about his political platform, Jean repeats vague platitudes about the need to create jobs, support Haitian agriculture and attract foreign investment – nearly identical rhetoric to that of the currently ruling Preval administration.

One difference is that Jean isn’t capable of explaining his plans in French, the language of Haiti’s government, because he doesn’t speak it. His brother describes Jean’s Creole as “rusty.” It’s spoken with a thick American accent.

Jean doesn’t speak the languages fluently because he hasn’t lived in Haiti recently. He’s hoping authorities will waive the Haitian constitution’s requirement that candidates live in-country for the five years preceding the ballot.

That’s not an indication of a deep respect for constitutional law. Nor was his praise in interviews of armed rebels who rampaged through the Haitian countryside in 2004. The rebels were part of a campaign by the elite and foreign governments to oust then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Aristide tried to raise the minimum wage and win reparations from France, the island’s former colonial power.

At the time, this is what Jean said of the men: “I don’t consider those people rebels. It’s people standing up for their rights. It’s not like these people just appeared out of nowhere and said, ‘Let’s cause some trouble.’ I think it’s just built up frustration, anger, hunger, depression.”

Was that naivete or something much worse?

Raymond Joseph, a close member of Jean’s family, became an ambassador in the de facto government that murdered and jailed scores of Aristide supporters after the ’04 coup d’etat. Needless to say, Jean didn’t speak out against that violence.

But he does sing about uplifting the poor on the track, “If I Were President.” So what about breaking the stranglehold that a few of Haiti’s most obscenely wealthy families have on the government and economy?

“We have to build an open system that doesn’t stop them from making money, that will work for them, if only because what they’re making could double, triple,” Jean told Esquire Magazine in a recent interview.

Those families have been making a killing on the backs of the Haitian poor for decades, paying them dirt-cheap wages to work in sweatshops while stifling the country’s emergent middle class.

Make no mistake, Jean’s politics are those of the Haiti’s miserable status quo.

It’s also hard to interpret the way Jean speaks about himself in third-person as anything other than the sign of a dangerously outsized ego. When questioned on CNN about $2.1 million in overdue American taxes – which the star insists have been paid up – Jean responded, “There is no situation of Wyclef Jean that we will ignore.”

But he has managed to largely ignore the deadly post-earthquake humanitarian crisis that continues to this day. “For those of us in Haiti, he has been a non-presence,” actor Sean Penn told CNN following Jean’s announcement.

Penn has personally managed a huge camp of displaced families for the past eight months. In his suspicions about Jean, he speaks for a lot of us who have been here consistently since the quake. The singer has been conspicuously absent from the actual work of helping victims, despite a leadership vacuum at the center of failed relief efforts.

Many of the Haiti’s 1.5 million displaced people, with nowhere else to go, are being threatened with violence by landowners. According to researchers, sexual assaults against women and girls in the camps are widespread. Forecasters are predicting a “hyperactive” hurricane season. Most who lost their homes live beneath withered tarps and tents, battered by the rain and wind.

Jean didn’t mention any of these pressing issues in his CNN interview confirming his bid for Haiti’s presidency. The questions – and the answers – were all about his eagerness to help his homeland by ascending to its highest office. But what’s needed is competence, vision and unbreakable loyalty to the Haitian poor. Wyclef Jean, who flew back home to New Jersey in a private jet this week, falls far short from embodying those qualities.

I speak only for myself in the op-ed, obviously. Don’t miss @emilytroutman‘s compilation of Haitians on the streets of Port-au-Prince sharing their views about Jean and the upcoming election.

Notice how many people express support for Aristide, who remains exiled in South Africa. I didn’t get a chance to mention in the piece that Fanmi Lavalas, Aristide’s party, seems set to be banned once more the ballot. Today was the final deadline for presidential candidates to register. So far, besides Jean, it’s a lot of mostly familiar faces.

Veye Yo, a grassroots organization led by the late Father Gerard Jean-Juste, was outside the gate today protesting Lavalas’ exclusion from the ballot. I collaborated with Haiti’s own Wadner Pierre on this IPS article about Lavalas’ exclusion, the international community’s hypocrisy in supporting the elections, and sit-ins outside the US Embassy.

Actor Sean Penn, who is helping manage a camp of displaced earthquake victims in Haiti, is making pointed criticisms of journalists for dropping the ball on coverage of Haiti. He’s wrong. I’ve been on the ground in Port-au-Prince working as an independent journalist for the past ten months. I’m an earthquake survivor who’s seen the big-time reporters come and go. They’re doing such a stellar job and I want to help out, so I’ve written this handy guide for when they come back on the one-year anniversary of the January quake! (Cross-published on the Huffington Post, inspired by this piece in Granta.)

For starters, always use the phrase ‘the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.’ Your audience must be reminded again of Haiti’s exceptional poverty. It’s doubtful that other articles have mentioned this fact.

You are struck by the ‘resilience’ of the Haitian people. They will survive no matter how poor they are. They are stoic, they rarely complain, and so they are admirable. The best poor person is one who suffers quietly. A two-sentence quote about their misery fitting neatly into your story is all that’s needed.

On your last visit you became enchanted with Haiti. You are in love with its colorful culture and feel compelled to return. You care so much about these hard-working people. You are here to help them. You are their voice. They cannot speak for themselves.

Don’t listen if the Haitians speak loudly or become unruly. You might be in danger, get out of there. Protests are not to be taken seriously. The participants were probably all paid to be there. All Haitian politicians are corrupt or incompetent. Find a foreign authority on Haiti to talk in stern terms about how they must shape up or cede power to incorruptible outsiders.

The US Embassy and United Nations always issue warnings that demonstrations are security threats. It is all social unrest. If protesters are beaten, gassed, or shot at by UN peacekeepers, they probably deserved it for getting out of control. Do not investigate their constant claims of being abused.

It was so violent right after the January 2010 earthquake. ‘Looters’ fought over goods ‘stolen’ from collapsed stores. Escaped prisoners were causing mayhem. It wasn’t necessary to be clear about how many people were actually hurt or died in fighting. The point is that it was scary.

Now many of those looters are ‘squatters’ in ‘squalid’ camps. Their tent cities are ‘teeming’ with people, like anthills. You saw your colleagues use these words over and over in their reports, so you should too. You do not have time to check a thesaurus before deadline.

Point out that Port-au-Prince is overcrowded. Do not mention large empty plots of green land around the city. Of course, it is not possible to explain that occupying US Marines forcibly initiated Haiti’s shift from distributed, rural growth to centralized governance in the capital city. It will not fit within your word count. Besides, it is ancient history.

If you must mention Haiti’s history, refer vaguely to Haiti’s long line of power-hungry, corrupt rulers. The ‘iron-fisted’ Duvaliers, for example. Don’t mention 35 years of US support for that dictatorship. The slave revolt on which Haiti was founded was ‘bloody’ and ‘brutal.’ These words do not apply to modern American offensives in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Today, Cite Soleil is the most dangerous slum in the world. There is no need to back up this claim with evidence. It is ‘sprawling.’ Again, there’s no time for the thesaurus. Talk about ruthless gangs, bullet holes, pigs and trash. Filth everywhere. Desperate people are eating cookies made of dirt and mud! That always grabs the reader’s attention.

Stick close to your hired security or embed yourself with UN troops. You can’t walk out on your own to profile generous, regular folk living in tight-knit neighborhoods. They are helpless victims, grabbing whatever aid they can. You haven’t seen them calmly dividing food amongst themselves, even though it’s common practice.

Better to report on groups that periodically enter from outside to deliver food to starving kids (take photos!). Don’t talk to the youth of Cite Soleil about how proud they are of where they come from. Probably gang members. Almost everyone here supports ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But their views aren’t relevant. There is no need to bring politics into your story.

You can’t forget to do another story about restaveks. Child slaves. It’s so shocking. There is little new information about restaveks, so just recycle old statistics. Present it as a uniquely Haitian phenomenon. Enslaved Haitian farmworkers in southern Florida, for example, aren’t nearly as interesting.

When you come back here in six months, there will still be a lot of desperate poor people who have received little to no help. There are many big, inefficient foreign NGOs in Haiti. Clearly something is wrong. Breathless outrage is the appropriate tone.

But do not try to get to the bottom of the issue. Be sure to mention that aid workers are doing the best they can. Their positive intentions matter more than the results. Don’t name names of individuals or groups who are performing poorly. Reports about food stocks sitting idly in individual warehouses are good. Investigations into why NGOs are failing to effect progress in Haiti are boring and too difficult. Do not explore Haitian-led alternatives to foreign development schemes. There are none. Basically, don’t do any reporting that could change the system.

On the other hand, everyone here loves Bill Clinton and Wyclef Jean. There are no dissenting views on this point. Never mind that neither lives here. Never mind that Clinton admitted to destroying Haiti’s domestic rice economy in the ’90s. Never mind that Jean’s organization has repeatedly mismanaged relief funds. That’s all in the past. They represent Haiti’s best hope for the future. Their voices matter, which means the media must pay close attention to them, which means their voices matter, which means the media must …

Finally, when you visit Haiti again: Stay in the same expensive hotels. Don’t live close to the people. Produce lots of stories and make money. Pull up in your rented SUV to a camp of people who lost their homes, still living under the wind and rain. Step out into the mud with your waterproof boots. Fresh notepad in hand. That ragged-looking woman is yelling at you that she needs help, not another foreigner taking her photo. Her 3-year-old boy is standing there, clinging to her leg. Her arms are raised, mouth agape, and you can’t understand her because you don’t speak Haitian Creole.

Remove the lens cap and snap away. And when you’ve captured enough of Haiti’s drama, fly away back home.

At the end of May the IOM created a new website called “Camp Management Operations (CMO) in Haiti” to share data from small teams that have fanned out across Port-au-Prince trying to resolve problems in camps as they arise. The site’s disclaimer notes, “All the reports within this blog are open for viewing and comment by the public.” Journalists like myself and other aid workers appreciated this step towards transparency.

But the site has been deliberately hidden from search engines. This is a setting that authors turn on by checking a box from within the WordPress backend, blocking sites like Google from including it in its search results and rendering it almost invisible on the Internet to anyone who hasn’t already received the link to the website’s address.

Someone does not want this website to be easily accessible by the public. The blog’s posts are not open to comments and navigating the archives is unnecessarily difficult. There’s a mismatch between the site’s stated objectives and its actual function, it seems. (The site is in English and French, not kreyol, of course.)

June 22 saw the release of another weekly CMO report on the site. There are separate teams for each commune in Port-au-Prince and they each contribute sections to the report. Under the Delmas section (one of the largest, densest areas in the city), a prominent link appears:

See the presentation on Palais de l’art eviction case

The link goes to a 9-slide presentation. Readers of this site may remember Palais de L’Art from my last report for Inter-Press Service about camp-dwellers on private property being threatened by landowners. I witnessed the IOM’s involvment in that case over the course of several visits to the camp during May and June.

What’s shown in this presentation misrepresents what I and other aid workers saw happen first-hand. Let’s take it slide by slide.

No. The landowner began threatening the community with eviction back in March, long before the IOM’s CMO team began visiting the camp.

This is the most offensive slide here. The woman in the center is named Mildred Temistocle, the official “community mobilizer” of IOM’s CMO Delmas team. Most camp residents, pictured around her, were never treated as participants in the resolution process with the landowner. They watched the IOM come and go each day as tension escalated, including physical attacks by the landowner on individuals, and complained the IOM was doing nothing (“OIM pap fe anyen!” was and still is a common refrain).

During a typical negotiation session, Mildred spoke English with the landowner so that her boss sitting beside her could understand, while the camp’s leadership committee (four people) sat across from them in silence for long stretches – inside the landowner’s building. I had to prompt her multiple times to translate for them. She doubted the camp’s claims that 500 people reside there, when the IOM’s own assessment confirmed this. There was no community mobilization of any kind (“it’s an embarrassment to the term,” one aid worker commented). More below.

This one is good for a laugh. IOM arranged with Oxfam to visit the camp on a Saturday morning and “clean the camp.” Indeed, they tidied it up and added some rock to help people build canals around their shelters to deal with the rain.

But the BEFORE and AFTER photos present this as a significant contribution to the health of the camp. There was never any noticeable lasting difference. There is still scattered trash (compared to many other camps, the Palais de L’Art families keep their area quite clean) and people continue to deal with water seeping in beneath their shelters from heavy rains. The camp remains as it has been since the earthquake.

The only accurate slide here, listing the groups participating in the negotiation process. (Update: A source intimately involved in the Palais de L’Art camp management process informs me that this slide is inaccurate. It omits multiple organizations that were intermittently involved in negotiations with the landowner, including UN police.)

Huge omission here that I cannot imagine being accidental. This agreement was contingent on the expulsion from the camp of one individual on the say-so of the landowner. Reynold Jean was a camp committee member at Palais de L’Art (his nearby house, like everyone else’s, collapsed in the quake) who led the opposition to the landowner’s threats. He’s quoted in my last report:

“If we had another place to go, we wouldn’t stay here suffering like this,” said Reynold Louis-Jean, who heads the camp organising committee. “We have elders, handicapped people, people who lost limbs. Now we have to carry them for them to get in and out.”

“He’s trying to force us out now. We can’t accept this,” he said as families carried buckets of water over the wall. The Red Cross stopped delivering water to the camp.

When the landowner’s wife entered the camp and tried to cut open the camp’s water bladder, Reynold denounced it. When the landowner hit a young man with sticks, he denounced it. When the landowner locked the gate shut and blocked people from climbing over a wall into the camp with razor wire, he denounced it. And when the landowner bashed in Reynold’s makeshift shelter one night, his infant girl lying inside, he angrily condemned him and tried to file a report with the police. A photo that evening of the structure’s bent support pole is here. The landowner admitted to all of this.

The landowner eventually backed down from his demand that the entire camp be removed from his property, but insisted that Reynold be moved out of the camp if he was going to sign any agreement. The humanitarian needs of the camp’s community became pitted against the right of one individual against further displacement. Rather than “mobilize” the camp community against this demand, AMI and IOM gave in quickly, giving Reynold some hygeine kits and ushering him down the block to another camp.

Nice looking photo with a glossy tint, eh? The camp looks rather more squalid when you’re on the ground. This photo must have been taken from atop the Palais de L’art nightclub, the landowner’s adjacent building.

I don’t know what this slide is supposed to mean, but it seems rather useless…

…because while Camp Palais de L’art did withstand threats of eviction by the landowner, with the help of IOM, none of the ‘next steps’ outlined above have been taken. I visited the camp this past weekend. Their spirits were temporarily buoyed with the threat of eviction gone. But now it’s the same old, same old. They said the last time IOM visited was a few weeks ago. They expected to receive new tarps to replace their months-old plastic sheets that are worn and tearing. They expected the installation of latrines. So far, nothing.

The scarcity of detail in this presentation leads me to think it was used in an inter-group meeting to explain (someone stood up, pointing to the bullet points and expanding on them) the Palais de L’art case to other aid workers. But for the record, what’s shown in the slides is misleading and I doubt that whoever presented gave a full accounting of what happened.

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.

June 28 on Flashpoints Radio in the Bay Area

We’ll bring Haiti back into the spotlight with an update on the ground with independent journalist Ansel Herz about growing desperation in the survivor camps, where an estimated 2 million Haitians are trying to survive as rains increase and hurricane season serves as another threat; we’ll also speak with Robert Roth and Laura Flynn about grassroots efforts to rebuild Haiti; Finally, we’ll hear from Leilani Clark, an Arizona activist who spoke to us last week from the US Social Forum about her protest of Senate Bill 1070, including her recent arrest and court appearance as well as the discovery of over 110 unidentified rotting bodies along the Arizona-Mexico border.

Listen here (Direct MP3).

June 19 on WBAI’s Haiti the Struggle Continues in New York City

Today, with million internally displaced, limited arable land, and few jobs in the countryside, devastation in its capital, and international peace-keepers and non governmental organizations assuming duties that would-as some say still should be-the provenance of Haiti’s government, we will talk about tent cities, reconstruction that honors the people and protects the earth, promised elections and more with guests Yanique Joseph, Executive director of Green Cities-Green Villages, and Ansel Herz of Free Speech Radio News.

Listen here (MP3).

June 14-23: Reports on Free Speech Radio News and American Public Media’s ‘The Story’

A radio version of my last written story about camps threatened by landowners aired on FSRN.

I helped produce interview segments with a homeless Haitian street vendor and family in Leogane for The Story, which airs on dozens of stations nationwide.

June 4 on CKUT’s Off the Hour in Montreal

Probing interview with host Chris on demonstrations against Monsanto and Preval, MINUSTAH, and what the political landscape looks like going forward.

Listen here (MP3).

I also spoke with host Wilbur Larch on WUSB 90.1 FM in Stony Brook, New York on June 12, but can’t find it online anywhere. We discussed questions surrounding the American Red Cross’ millions of dollars raised and their hardly visible presence here in Haiti, among other subjects.

(Switched up this site’s design a bit, let me know if you see any bugs.)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jun 9, 2010 (IPS) – Thousands of victims of the January earthquake in Haiti are at risk of being displaced for a second time as private landowners throughout the nation’s capital city grow impatient with makeshift tent camps on their properties.

At a camp in the dirt parking lot of central Port-au- Prince’s Palais de L’Art events centre, fear and frustration are mounting as weeks have stretched into months with no word from authorities on when sustainable housing will be available.

The centre’s owner locked a metal gate shut Monday, forcing at least 150 camp-dwellers to climb over a partially- collapsed five-foot-high wall to access their shelters and belongings.

“If we had another place to go, we wouldn’t stay here suffering like this,” said Reynold Louis-Jean, who heads the camp organising committee. “We have elders, handicapped people, people who lost limbs. Now we have to carry them for them to get in and out.”

“He’s trying to force us out now. We can’t accept this,” he said as families carried buckets of water over the wall. The Red Cross stopped delivering water to the camp.

Joseph Saint-Fort, the owner of the club, is vowing to repair the collapsed wall, cutting off access to the camp entirely. A stack of concrete blocks sits in his yard at the ready.

In letters and meetings for over two months, the Haitian government and officials from non-governmental organisations told Saint-Fort to wait until land can be found to relocate the camp.

His patience has run out. He warned for weeks that if nobody paid him for the use of the land or moved out, he would shut the gate.

“No one has proposed anything to me. They’re going to have to force me to just let those people stay in the compound like this,” Saint-Fort said. “I have contracts with a lot of people from before the earthquake. It’s not that I’m greedy for money, it’s just this is the place I was using to make a living!”

The gate to the camp, locked in two places

The Haitian government and U.N. agreed in April to a temporary moratorium on forced evictions of camps. They say no landowner should push people from land unless there is an alternative space that meets minimum humanitarian standards.

“We made the decision together. But applying it was another story,” Interior Minister Paul Antoine Ben-Aimie told IPS in an interview. “We haven’t communicated anything to the population so far.”

It is not clear if a moratorium is still in effect. It doesn’t seem to matter because nothing is enforced.

“We’re very much in a gray zone in terms of what’s actually being enforced and what isn’t,” said Ben Majekodunmi, deputy chief for the human rights section of Haiti’s U.N. peacekeeping force, known as MINUSTAH.

He said peacekeepers cannot enforce a moratorium on evictions and that local Haitian authorities appear unaware of the measure.

“This is a massive problem that cannot be addressed on a case-by-case basis. We have to have a policy,” Majekodunmi told IPS.

An April letter from the Haitian government to Saint-Fort, the owner of Palais de L’Art, said land would be made available in northern Port-au-Prince to move the camp. He says the Ministry of Interior has not contacted him since then.

On the campus of a private Methodist school in Petionville, 200 families are camped around the basketball court. Women who work as street vendors say the gated entrance to the camp is often closed when they need to leave early in the morning.

The relief organisation World Vision distributed tents but “faced problems” installing latrines and supplying water to the camp, according to one aid worker.

“World Vision is creating disorder by providing them with help,” Pastor Thelesier Elysee told IPS over the phone.

“We have too many people occupying the space, they’re creating insecurity. We need them to be moved out,” he said before abruptly hanging up. Other pastors who run the school refused to comment.

Haiti’s capital is often called “teeming” and “overcrowded.” But Tabarre, the north section of the city, is dotted with grassy plots of vacant land. There is an airy feel to the flat landscape, with stretches of open space alongside busy roads. Further north, there are acres of empty terrain.

In bustling downtown Port-au-Prince, the government and U.N. are forging ahead with plans to relocate thousands from camps around the crumbling national palace to Fort National, one of the hardest-hit urban zones of the city.

The Canadian Red Cross was “about to begin building transitional shelters on a less than watertight legal basis and had to stop the project at the last minute” in Fort National, according to an internal document.

Transitional shelters are tiny homes that offer more stability and protection from extreme weather than tarps and tents.

Experts are predicting a highly active hurricane season, which officially began last week.

At Palais de L’Art, the displaced families already have to contend with heavy afternoon rains on top of the pressure to leave from the landowner. Months-old tarps and tents are leaking and standing water seeps in from below.

Michel Odinor, standing shirtless in a typical afternoon downpour, told IPS, “It’s miserable. We need them to give us another place, but there’s nowhere else we can go.”

Update: I’ll add that I’ve been following this question of land and forced evictions since March, when I wrote what I believe to be the first foreign media report about an eviction that took place. In April I wrote about threats of eviction against residents of another huge camp on the grounds of an elite private school.

The demonstration took place on Friday (struggled to find a decent Internet connection to get the video online until today). A friend of mine got sick and we had to leave Hinche (in Haiti’s Central Plateau) for Port-au-Prince just before they were to burn the seeds in symbolic protest.

Mark Hare, an agronomist from Ohio who’s worked with Mouveman Peyizan Papay for years, explained how Haitian farmers will be roped into a dependence on hybrid Monsanto seeds. Monsanto released an indignant statement responding to the protest the day it took place, insisting the donated seeds won’t hurt Haitian farmers in any way. Further reading here and here.

I didn’t get into it much in the video, but most of the marchers I spoke with also slammed Haitian President Rene Preval for “doing nothing” in response to the earthquake and accepting the seed donation. Wearing straw hats stamped with “Down with Preval” and “Down with Monsanto,” the peasants (young kids, old women, wiry farmers alike) marched from the MPP’s headquarters in Papay for nearly three hours past mango trees and fields to the larger town of Hinche. As they began rallying in the town’s public plaza, I had to go.

I’ll continue following this issue closely, but in the meantime, check out Al Jazeera English’s report looking at the controversy over the seeds.

1. Haiti has fallen off the radar.

   When I was in the States last month I asked my friends if they saw Haiti in the news very much. The answer was no every time.

   Before the earthquake, I had some difficulty convincing editors – in the alternative media, mind you – that stories about mass protests on the streets of Port-au-Prince were newsworthy, relevant to their audiences. For now, that resistance is gone. Haiti still has a much higher profile now than it did last year.

   But how long will that interest and visibility last? Will it take another natural disaster (a “hyperactive” hurricane season starts in a few days) to keep Haiti in the headlines? The hundreds of journalists who descended on Haiti in January to capture images of people crawling out of the rubble, then mostly went home the following month – will they repeat the ritual once more? Does anyone else find that repulsive? How can they live with themselves? At what point do these media lose whatever credibility with the public they have left?

2. The reason I’m here is to help keep Haiti on the radar. But at times I feel invisible.

   To their credit, the The Associated Press, National Public Radio, the New York Times, and CNN still have correspondents or stringers on the ground here – maybe a few others. Just CNN covered Monday’s demonstrations while they were happening, managing only a short article saying little more than, “CNN crews heard gunshots and saw tear gas seen in the downtown area.”

   The UN published a terse apology the following day for its peacekeeping troops’ intrusion on university grounds. The official statement was reported by CNN, AP, and numerous other outlets.

   Hours later Inter-Press Service published my story based on eye-witness accounts, going into detail on the university incident and heavy use of tear gas and rubber bullets around displaced families. After their initial denials, UN officials confirmed the accuracy of much of my story on Thursday. No other media picked up the information or followed up with their own stories.

   That goes for other alternative media too. John Nichols, an editor for The Nation magazine and a fierce critic of the corporate media, is like many others unaware of my existence. Pointing to the decline in international news, he lamented in a recent speech how the Associated Press Haiti correspondent was the only American journalist based in-country at the time of the earthquake. Totally valid argument, but it’s based on a falsehood that’s been repeated on radio and in print. Pooja Bhatia is a journalist who’s been here for several years. There’s me. Maybe even a few others I don’t know about.

   To the readers of this blog, if you don’t mind, consider sharing your interest or involvement in Haiti in the comment section. Connect with each other. If Haiti is missing from your local news or favorite media outlet, contact the editors and request it. Tell them there’s a freelance multimedia journalist who’s interested in working with them, who can do interviews or file reports. I don’t like being invisible.

3. There are so many important stories here going unreported by the foreign press.

   I just want to make that clear. There are reports in the Haitian press every week of protests in cities throughout the rest of Haiti. There are stories around privatization, (un)accountability of NGOs, police and prisons, positive stories of community organizing and culture – in fact, almost every conceivable subject – that are ripe for documentation and dissemination. I have several stories in progress that I’m trying to finish, plus hours of video footage to edit and share.

   I’m glad the New York Times exposed the prison massacre in Les Cayes, but they’ve missed a lot of stories over the past six years and that continues. The paper’s story yesterday focuses on dissatisfaction with the government but doesn’t even discuss the ongoing opposition protests. It does mention anti-Preval graffiti several times. Fail.

   If you’re a (citizen) journalist, have the skills or want to learn, and you don’t want to follow the herd, you should be here.

4. Twitter is an indispensable part of my toolset.

   On March 4, a user-submitted report about an IDP camp that was dismantled in a single night was posted to the crisis-mapping website Ushahidi. It was tweeted by @BaybeDoll. @RAMHaiti re-tweeted it. I follow him, along with a few dozen others. I saw the Ushahidi report and left a comment asking the author to contact me. Within days I found the camp and published what I believe was the first report since the earthquake of a forcible eviction of displaced persons from private land. This is now a huge issue all over Port-au-Prince and I’ll be reporting on it more soon.

   I communicated with the Inter-Agency Shelter Cluster over Twitter this week and helped them coordinate the delivery of tents to a destitute camp of at least 60 families in Pernier.

   And it was Twitter that alerted me to Monday’s chaos in the downtown area. @DokteCoffee, an American doctor at the General Hospital, tweeted that she was hearing booms and seeing gas and that reached me through word-of-mouth via one of her followers.

   My Kreyol comprehension is still not good enough to follow Haitian radio well. Twitter is the next best way, if not a better one, to track breaking and other news in near real-time. It’s a decent social network too. I follow some of my friends from the States and favorite musicians. There’s been a lot of understandable concern over Facebook’s privacy policies lately (really, y’all just noticed this?). Unlike Facebook, Twitter is not a closed environment populated with tons of advertisements. If you’re not twittering, consider starting now. Stick with it and you might find it really useful.

5. There’s an overwhelming amount of data flowing from the authorities and NGOs in Haiti. People engaged on this issue should share skills, resources, and make sure nothing important slips unnoticed into the netherzones of cyberspace. Let’s open/crowd-source this up.

   When I meet Haitian government, UN, and NGO staff in the field, they tend to be absurdly tight-lipped about their work. They say they don’t want to make a politically incorrect remark, get in trouble with their bosses, or step on someone else’s turf. On Friday one aid worker told me I couldn’t mention his organization (one of the largest here) by name in my reporting, even though it’s public knowledge among everyone in the camp that the group is involved in the resettlement process. No dice, I told him.

   On the other hand, there’s a wealth of meeting notes, reports, assessments, and other documents constantly being posted to Oneresponse.info, ReliefWeb and Google Groups where anyone can view them. In almost every document there are nuggets of information that make me say, “Whoa, really?” I highlight those passages, save the documents to my hard drive, and make a mental note. But I can’t follow up on them all.

   So here’s the cool part. I’ve collected a bunch of these documents online using a website called crocodoc. When you view the document you can skip to the sections I’ve highlighted using the sidebar. Not only that, but you can add your own comments and annotations – without even registering for an account.

   

   That’s a screenshot of the May 24 JOTC security report (thanks to Alister Macintyre for referring me to it), a passage where it confirms MINUSTAH troops took the laptops and bags of university students on Monday. I’ll be following up with the students soon to see if they got their stuff back. The report also mentions that MINUSTAH peacekeepers conducted over 1,000 security operations in the prior 24 hours and only 5 humanitarian missions. Interesting, right? Another document reveals that the Canadian Red Cross pulled out of building transitional shelters for people at the last moment because its legal basis for construction on those lands was “less than watertight.”

   View the list of documents here. I plan to continue uploading and annotating documents as I find them and I’d encourage others to do the same – let me know so I can update the index. Sunshine is the best disinfectant!

   Update: Also, here’s a list of all the Haiti blogs and websites to which I’m subscribed, along with links to their RSS feeds. This post was re-published on Haiti Rewired.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, May 25, 2010 (IPS) – United Nations peacekeeping troops responded to a rock-throwing demonstration by university students Monday evening with a barrage of tear gas and rubber bullets in the area around Haiti’s National Palace, sending masses of displaced Haitians running out of tent camps into the streets, according to witnesses.

“That child was gravely injured in the face! It was miserable, they were throwing gas everywhere,” said Junior Joel, a young man hanging with friends at night outside the palace – still partially collapsed from the January earthquake.

Three volunteer doctors from the NGO Partners in Health who were working in the emergency room of the General Hospital said they treated at least six individuals with wounds from rubber bullets.

“They were bleeding,” Sarah McMillan, a doctor from New Hampshire, told IPS. “There was a little girl with a big laceration on her face. It needed about 10 stitches. She’ll probably have a scar.”

The girl was discharged from the hospital and could not be found in the tent camp as of publication time.

Thousands of families are crowded into the public squares in the Champs du Mars zone around the palace, after the earthquake killed at least 200,000 people and drove nearly two million from destroyed neighbourhoods.

A coalition of political organisations called Tet Kole, Haitian Creole for “Heads Together”, has staged protests in the area for the past month, demanding the resignation of President René Préval over his handling of the post-earthquake crisis.

The walls of the Faculty of Ethnology school are dotted with graffiti denouncing Préval and the United Nations. Students said they gave Brazilian peacekeeping troops stationed in jeeps outside the campus the middle finger sign late Monday afternoon.

When the troops tried to enter the campus, angrily calling students thieves and vagabonds, the students showered them with rocks. As the soldiers fled, they fired three bullet rounds in the air and one of them struck the front-facing wall of the school, students said.

When the troops returned in bigger vehicles, Frantz Mathieu Junior said he ran to hide in a bathroom, but the soldiers kicked the thin wooden door open. Junior said he was forced to the ground and kicked repeatedly, then taken away. He says he was force-fed while in detention.

The students showed IPS the cracks in the wooden door and the bullet hole, next to a second-storey window, on Tuesday. They took to the streets in an angry protest, throwing rocks.

Edmond Mulet, the head of the peacekeeping mission – known by the acronym MINUSTAH – issued a statement blaming an unnamed student for “the provocation” of throwing stones at a patrol, but apologising for the troops’ intrusion on university grounds to seize him.

U.N. troops never fired any bullets or tear gas on Monday, said MINUSTAH spokesperson David Wimhurst. He said only pepper spray and rubber bullets were used to quell an out-of-control protest.

CNN crews heard gunshots, smelled tear gas and saw gas canisters littering the area surrounding the palace. According to witnesses from the surrounding tent camps, U.N. troops blanketed the area with tear gas and fired rubber bullets at 6 p.m. on Monday.

“Everyone ran because nobody wants to be around when there’s so much gas,” Joseph Marie-ange, a 24-year-old mother of four, told IPS. “They’re abusive. They shot the gas in here and the children and elders were falling, everyone was feeling the effects.”

Hours after the protests and swirling gas dissipated, Levita Mondesir trudged with her three-month-old baby towards the General Hospital’s exit.

“We live in Place Petion, across from the Ethnology school,” she told IPS. “The students came, then MINUSTAH released the gas. When I got back to the camp, everyone was running, so I ran too.”

“I tried to cover my child and told the other children to lay down under the bed,” she continued. “There was smoke and the kids and people were falling. My baby wasn’t responding, I was worried he died. I was crying and others helped me take him to the hospital.”

She caught a motorcycle taxi to the hospital and received a reserve ticket for her baby to be x-rayed the next day. Tines Clerge, her husband, said he can’t continue living there now. “I can’t stay at Chanmas anymore,” he told IPS.

The opposition protests continued Tuesday afternoon in Chanmas. Scores of U.N. troops and Haitian police ringed the national palace with barricades. The demonstrators accuse President Préval of seeking to grab power by extending his mandate past the original end date. Parliament approved the extension.

Some are also upset with the Haiti Interim Recovery Commission, which directs the spending of nearly 10 billion dollars in aid money. A majority of the commission members are foreigners, though Préval has a final veto on all decisions.

“If they want to suppress the protest, why didn’t they shoot the gas at the school where the students are?” asked Malia Villa, an organiser with the Haitian women’s group KOFAVIV, who fled the Chanmas area Monday night. “How can they shoot it in the middle of the camp, where we have children and families? They say they’re here for security in the country, but how can the government work with them now when they do this?”

“We can’t continue to tolerate this anymore. It’s revolting to us,” she told IPS, throwing up her hands.

U.N. troops have been dogged by persistent accusations of abuse since their mission was established in 2004 after the ouster of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Incidents occurred in 2008 and 2009 in which Haitian witnesses said troops recklessly fired their weapons, killing or injuring civilians, while MINUSTAH internal investigations cleared their troops of wrongdoing.

Further political demonstrations are scheduled for Thursday, according to opposition groups.

Update 5/26: One blogger says he witnessed a UN armored vehicle firing rounds of rubber bullets into the crowd. CEPR blogged about my article, adding some historical context about the MINUSTAH’s forays into Cite Soleil. And David adds in the comments that protesters yesterday oppose President Preval but also spoke against Edmond Mulet, the UN mission’s head.

Update 5/27: At a UN press conference this morning I asked Edmond Mulet about MINUSTAH’s response to Monday’s demonstrations, mentioning witness accounts of rubber bullets being fired from an armored vehicle and the little girl struck in the face. Mulet responded, “We are investigating what happened and why these crowd control mechanisms, or weapons, were used… Those are facts that we are investigating. It is true, it happened. So we are trying determine why and under what the circumstances were around that. The investigation has been launched.”

A UN spokesperson later told me his Monday claim that no tear gas was fired by UN troops was incorrect. In fact, 32 tear gas canisters, as well as flash grenades, were launched.

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). This piece prompted a medical worker in Port-au-Prince to send the following feedback by e-mail:

I am listening to your radio broadcast this morning and there is a report about Port Au Prince, where I am currently working as a nurse. I was horrified to hear the the reporter (at 7:21 a.m. Haiti time) state that there has been a huge influx of money into the medical system in Haiti. This statement is overstating the situation and if you would like to see this “huge” influx of money, which I assure you does NOT exist, please come visit us. I am currently working at the Project Medishare Hospital and I assure you there is no great flow of aid assisting the Haitians. This grossly misrepresents the situation here and you should be ashamed for reporting that there is aid allowing Haitians to access medical care that could even barely compare to the US system.

Good points all – except that “huge” was never mentioned in the report. My substitute editor, Shannon Young, promptly wrote back:

I am writing on behalf of Free Speech Radio News as the editor responsible for the segment you have commented on.

First, allow me to express my sincere appreciation for the work you are currently performing in Haiti.

Second, thank you for taking the time to email your feedback because it gives me a chance to clarify a few points.

I am including a full transcript of the news report below for reference. You can also find the audio here: http://www.fsrn.org/audio/despite-assistance-health-care-haiti-still-struggles-meet-needs/6785

At no time did the report qualify the influx of aid as “huge” and at least two sources interviewed in the report made it clear that the current system is well below the US standard. The point that was made is that the general hospital is now able to offer services for free that had to be paid for in the past…but that there is no security that such services can retain their level of accessibility after June.

I hope this clarifies the report’s representation of the situation.

Thank you for your time and your service.

And finally we received this reply back:

Thank you so very much for passing this on and for sending me the
response. It genuinely makes me happy to know that you guys and FSRN
care enough to read the emails and I am going to read the entire
transcript, as I may have misheard or misinterpreted some of the
information (I was typing as the reporter was talking and sincerely
thought he used the phrase “huge influx of aid”). There are so many
misleading reports about the situation in Haiti and once I have read
the transcript thoroughly I would like to know if it is okay to send
you an update (factual rather than emotional) about the report. I
don’t have Shannon’s direct email address and if you could please
forward this note, I would greatly appreciate it!

We are working so very hard here and just by accident I found your
online radio broadcast, which I enjoy and adore! I am even more
impressed now because of your quick response and Shannon’s reply to my
email. We have very little in the way of news/media here and when I
can get a connection, I tune in to detour!

Please keep Haiti in your thoughts – things are not getting better
here, quite frankly they are getting worse.

Also, if you know of anyone who would like to investigate a disturbing
situation – ask them to look into the Red Cross and where the millions
of dollars in relief aid for Haiti has really been spent. jVery
little is being spent for relief efforts in Haiti, which very few
people realize (even though the Red Cross makes public its financial
reports). I’ve asked Senator Grassley’s office to investigate their
practices — specific to donations/aid allegedly collected for Haiti
(because his office has previously looked into their questionable
practices). Any additional legitimate investigators/reporters that
put pressure on the subject could be instrumental in getting that aid
directed to Haiti, therefore saving the many lives at risk.

Again, thank you and please pass on my thanks to Shannon for the quick response!

I’ll be contacting the medical worker soon to see if we can look into Red Cross spending. But really: independent, alternative, non-corporate media for the win.

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.