When I showed this amazing picture to my friend, after she registered what she was looking at, her eyes went huge while she exclaimed, “Oh my god!” with her hand over her mouth. The scene is a protest last week in Port-au-Prince. The guy on the left is a clearly unarmed and videotaping journalist from Texas named Ansel Herz, whom I happened to work with when I was in Haiti last month. The uniformed fellow pointing a gun directly at his face is a United Nations peacekeeper.
I didn’t meet many (okay, any) Haitian fans of MINUSTAH, the UN stabilization force that’s been in the country since 2004. I have, for the record, met some MINUSTAH who are definitely good guys and have, for example, helped a woman in labor get to the hospital, and helped stop a man who was trying to kill his wife for refusing to have sex with him. But the force has also shot civilians. It’s had to have meetings about how not to sexually abuse the Haitian population. In fact, last week’s protest erupted after the UN officially renewed MINUSTAH’s mandate. Some of the protesters’ complaints, which echo those I heard while in-country, are that MINUSTAH doesn’t actually do anything to protect civilians living in filthy, violent, rape-infested displacement camps, and that the money could be better spent dealing with those issues.
I asked Ansel how he ended up on the business end of a UN gun, just in case there was any kind of conflict or missing context surrounding this photo. Not so much, he says: “Maybe they felt threatened by my camera.”
Published today by the New York Daily News (definitely not my choice of headline over there). The photo below happens to be the first one that comes up in a Google image search for Jean.
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. Read More…
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. Read More…
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is one of the most powerful organizations today in Haiti. It’s the UN-affiliated agency principally responsible (theoretically, under the direction of the Haitian government) for managing the internally displaced population of around 2 million people who lost their homes in January’s earthquake, including the Palais de L’Art camp – pictured at right at a time when the landowner was preventing access to the camp with padlocks and razor wire. Read More…
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. Read More…
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. Read More…
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.
From Mac McClelland’s latest Haiti dispatch (photo from Gaetantguevera’s photostream):
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. 
The 
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. 
Recent Comments