Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 6 mars 2015

Compte tenu de l’importance qu’a accordé l’ex-président du Venezuela à Haïti, Hugo Chavez, le Premier ministre, Evans Paul, dit qu’il était important, ce 6 mars 2015, marquant le 2e anniversaire de son décès, de saluer la mémoire de ce grand homme d’État et d’exprimer, au nom du gouvernement, la reconnaissance du peuple haïtien envers le peuple vénézuélien.

 « Nous profitons de l’occasion pour dire merci au Venezuela pour tout son support à Haïti. Le fonds Petro caribe en témoigne bien. Nous n’avons pas oublié Hugo Chavez », .

Le chef de la Primature a également profité de l’occasion pour souligner que les relations bilatérales entre Haïti et le Venezuela sont au beau fixe ainsi que les relations trilatérales entre Haïti-Cuba-Venezuela.

Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 10 mars 2015

 La « Platfòm Pitit Desalin » s’apprête à participer aux prochaines compétitions électorales. Mais, ce ne sera pas avec l’équipe Tèt Kale, d'après ce qu’a déclaré l’ex-sénateur, Moïse Jean Charles, ce mardi 10 mars dans les locaux de Rendez-vous 33.

Cette structure, indique Moïse Jean Charles, est à pied d’œuvre sur tout le territoire national en vue de participer aux prochains scrutins. L’organisation de ces compétitions, dit-il, nécessite un environnement  propice. Aussi, a-t-il souligné que l’équipe au pouvoir a fait des mis en place, en procédant à la nomination de juges de paix en vue de s’accaparer  des résultats.

Quant à l’invitation du Conseil électoral provisoire (CEP), M. Jean Charles n’entend pas y participer, critiquant l’absence de conditions adéquates à ces compétions. Celles-ci, insiste-t-il, doivent être transparentes, crédibles et honnêtes. Toutefois, ce Conseil, convient-il, a été mis en place selon l’esprit de l’article 289 de la Constitution du 29 mars 1987/ version amendée.

Pour l’ancien parlementaire, la mobilisation reprendra son cours. Car,  ce qui importe est de chasser le président Michel Joseph Martelly du pouvoir en vue d’organiser des élections générales cette année dans le pays.

Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 11 mars 2015

 ‘Recurrent’ attacks’ shut Dominican Republic consulates in Haiti

Santo Domingo.- The Foreign Ministry (Mirex) said last week that its counterpart in Haiti was informed about  the Dominican Government's decision to temporarily close its five consulates, because of recent "recurrent" attacks by Haitian groups, which it affirms pose a risk to their staff.

Mirex spokesman Miguel Medina said Foreign minister Andrés Navarro sent the missive to Haiti counterpart Pierre Duly Brutus Wednesday, noting that the attacks on Dominican consulates there have prevented their day-to-day activities.

In the letter, Navarro says the decision was made because in is view it’s impossible to achieve the security Dominican consular personnel needs, adding that the facilities will remain shuttered until Port-au-Prince guarantees adequate protection.

Caricom again slams Dominican Republic on Haiti row

Santo Domingo.- Caribbean Community (Caricom) leaders expressed "serious concern" with the difficulties which people of Haitian descent face in Dominican Republic, EFE reports.

The statement by Caricom is the latest salvo in a war of attrition pitting the Caribbean’s biggest economy and the regional bloc over the issue of undocumented Haitian immigrants, but which they also reject.

"We’re concern with the increasing number of policies that seriously affect Dominicans of Haitian descent and Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic" said Caricom leaders in a statement released today.

The regional leaders said Govt. Dominican representatives didn’t extend the deadline to apply for the Foreigners Regularization Plan, in which only 6,937 of those affected could request legalization on time.

Dominican Republic’s special Naturalization Law and Plan emerged after a Constitutional Court ruling in September 2013, which sets the parameters to request citizenship, and unleashed a backlash across the region.

The deadline to apply for the Plan, aimed at people without an official ID and who were born outside the country, ended on February 1.

According Caricom, the fact that 6,937 persons requested to join the Plan implies that "over100,000 people are vulnerable to expulsion."

Caricom cited the Inter-American Human Rights Court ruling handed down on October 22, 2014, which orders the Dominican court to amend its laws to recognize the citizenship of those born in that country.

Haitian immigrants' Brazilian dream sours as work hard to find for tens of thousands

SAO PAULO – Under a scorching sun, dozens of Haitians shuffled impatiently about the brick-walled courtyard of Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church. The sight of an approaching employer sparked a skirmish, with the men pushing against each other, jostling for attention.

"How many people you need?" several men shouted. "I need a job, what do you want me to do?" No matter what the job was, someone in the crowd yelled out, "I can do that!"

There are fewer jobs in Brazil than there are Haitians looking for work. An open-door policy intended to help migrants from the impoverished island is fueling Brazil's largest immigration wave since World War II and prompting calls for lawmakers to do more to help the new arrivals.

"Seeing so many seeking jobs and so much hunger for work, it creates tension," said the Rev. Paolo Parise, a priest who directs the parish's efforts to help Haitian migrants and other impoverished newcomers.

While Haiti is picking itself up from the 7.0 earthquake that devastated its capital in 2010, progress has not been enough to keep tens of thousands of Haitians from chasing opportunities abroad, mainly in the United States and the Dominican Republic. But Brazil also has become an attractive landing spot for migrants eager to find a toehold in Latin America's biggest economy.

Brazil has no limit on the number of humanitarian visas it issues to Haitians. National Migration Council figures suggest more than 52,000 Haitians have migrated since 2012 and have become the country's largest group of foreign laborers, outpacing Portuguese who long held the top spot.

"No other country opened the doors for them like Brazil," said Duval Magalhaes, a demographer at the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais state who has researched the Haitian migration in Brazil.

Wooldeens Turenne, 23, once earned a reliable income guiding missionary workers helping quake victims in Haiti. But such work gradually dried up and, last year, Turenne saw it was time to leave. Despite being fluent in English, going to the United States wasn't an option due to its restrictive immigration laws. Instead, he flew to Panama, then Ecuador, where he received his visa to enter Brazil. He then flew to Sao Paulo.

Jobs can be found in construction, agriculture and factories, but the salaries barely cover Brazil's high cost of living, let alone leave Haitians enough money to support family back home. Employers know Haitians are desperate, and commonly pay them $300 to $400 a month, barely above the legal minimum.

"If they know you are an immigrant, they don't pay you the salary they are supposed to, and they will give you a lot of work to do," Turenne said. "It's better than Haiti, yes, but it's not possible to make a good living."

Two out of three companies interested in hiring migrants through Parise's church are turned away because they don't want to comply with labor laws, or their work sites don't meet safety standards.

Migrant advocates say the Haitians also face racial discrimination, and many struggle to understand Portuguese. Trying to survive on sporadic and meager incomes, most crowd into shared rooms amid the poorest slums ringing cities such as Sao Paulo.

Brazil has gone through a construction boom, both due to an economic expansion that lifted tens of millions out of poverty and because of public works projects tied to last year's World Cup and next year's Olympics. But the economy is now sluggish, contracting the first half of 2014 and barely moving as the year closed.

Former Presidential Security Chief Shot to Death in Haiti

The chief of presidential security under former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was shot to death Monday in the capital, where he had lived since returning to the country after finishing a prison sentence in the United States.

Oriel Jean, who had received a reduced sentence because he provided substantial assistance to U.S. authorities investigating allegations of drug trafficking tied to the Aristide government, was killed in an apparent ambush in the Delmas district of Port-au-Prince, police said.

National Police spokesman Gary Desrosiers said two men on a motorcycle came up to Jean and one opened fire before they fled into the crowded streets. The former official was struck in the neck and stomach. No suspects were in custody.

After the attack, as officials tried to collect evidence and witness testimony, Jean's body was sprawled on the street as if he had been shot just as he stepped out of the vehicle, a grey Toyota SUV with tinted windows. The street, in a busy commercial and residential district, was packed with people heading home in the late afternoon.

Jean, who was about 50, had returned to Haiti after completing a sentence in the U.S. for money laundering.

From 2001 to 2003, he had been the head of security for Aristide, who was forced from power in a violent rebellion in February 2004. The following month, Jean was arrested in Canada and extradited to the United States to face charges stemming from an investigation focused on officials and associates of the former government.

Jean had faced up to 20 years in prison but was sentenced in Miami to only three years after providing what officials described in court documents as "substantial assistance" with other cases. The three-year investigation resulted in the arrests of 14 Haitians who held top government and private jobs during the Aristide administration.

He testified in one case that an accused Haitian drug kingpin received a security badge, at a cost of $40,000, which enabled him to travel freely about the country without Haitian police searching him at a time when the Caribbean country had become a transit point for cocaine bound for the United States. Jean testified that the badge had been approved by Aristide but said that the then-president was unaware at the time that his security chief was involved in the drug trade.

Aristide, a former priest who became the first democratically elected president of Haiti, was forced out by a violent rebellion in February 2004. He returned from exile in March 2011 and has kept a low profile though he has been under investigation for corruption while in office.

As a potential witness in that case, Jean had been ordered not to leave the country, Desrosiers said.

Film Review: 'Murder in Pacot'

(variety.com) A chamber drama in which even the chamber itself is on the verge of collapse, Raoul Peck’s “Murder in Pacot” offers little scope for healing as it surveys the geographical and psychological wreckage wrought by Haiti’s catastrophic 2010 earthquake. A dramatic companion piece to “Fatal Assistance,” Peck’s 2013 doc on the same subject, this allegorical story of two couples warring across divisions of class and turf in Port-au-Prince’s post-quake wasteland positively trembles with the weight of its own symbolism; in his first narrative feature since 2000’s “Lumumba,” former Haitian culture minister Peck remains a political filmmaker of stern conviction. Overlong and far from subtle, “Pacot” is nonetheless engrossing enough to entice topically-minded arthouse distributors, and should make considerable waves in Francophone territories.

Peck claims Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Theorem” as the guiding inspiration for his original screenplay, co-written with veteran scribe Pascal Bonitzer (who also worked on “Lumumba”) and Haitian novelist Lyonel Trouillot. The surface resemblance is clear — both films detail the effect of a sexually magnetic drifter on a fractiously fragmented household — though the social context of the invasion and ensuing fallout in “Pacot” is a world away from Pasolini’s Euro-bourgeoisie satire. Instead, Peck’s narrative complicates notions of outsider identity by bringing race and nationality into the stew, while still identifying subtler conflicts within Haiti’s indigenous community.

For starters, the household in question is divided across every imaginable fault line, including the physical ruptures that have rendered most of the house — a once-substantial villa in suburban Port-au-Prince — uninhabitable. Having been all but bankrupted by the earthquake, its married, pointedly unnamed owners (played by Alex Descas and Nigerian singer-actress Ayo) are ordered by the authorities to renovate their ruined home or face having it demolished. To raise money for the necessary repairs, they are forced to move into an adjacent shed, renting out the house’s remaining rooms to Alex (Thibault Vincon), a young white Frenchman working for a foreign aid organization. That this would-be do-gooder is purportedly bringing relief to disenfranchised Haitians while benefiting from one couple’s homelessness is just one of the film’s many blunt ironies. The husband regards Alex with scarcely-contained hostility; his traumatized wife is haunted by less material losses, principally that of their adopted son, who disappeared during the disaster and may be buried under the rubble.

Despite the film’s intimacy of scale — set over just eight days, methodically marked with title cards, it never leaves the confines of the property — this is expansive, high-stakes storytelling, ramping up the melodrama ahead of a punchy, somewhat overwrought climax, complete with thunderclaps and rain-soaked fisticuffs. “Murder in Pacot” (not the most discreet of titles) is most powerful, however, when it tunes into finer sociopolitical observation, as it does in one remarkable sequence where Andremise throws an all-native party in Alex’s absence, with previously separated classes grinding up against each other on the dance floor. Despite such fleeting glimpses of unification amid adversity, Peck’s outlook remains angrily pessimistic: Referred to at frequent intervals, the fetid odor emanating from the couple’s basement is yet another broad metaphor for decaying national foundations.

Handed such a bristling script, the actors are smart enough to underplay the material, largely letting the subtext speak for itself. Kermonde Fifi, in her screen debut, is a particularly riveting presence, playing the heated facade of “Jennifer” with sultry humor while exposing the cool, crafty wiring of the prematurely grown woman behind her.

Tech credits are stark but strong. With its liberal use of astute, peering close-ups, Eric Guichard’s bright, clear lensing contributes to the hothouse atmosphere of the enterprise — a virtue that could use more assistance from Alexandra Strauss’s overly deliberate editing.

Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 17 mars 2015

 Farewell to Nicole Magloire

It is with great sadness that Melody FM and Haiti En Marche learned about the death of Doctor Nicole Magloire.

She left on tiptoe, without her family, colleagues and many friends realizing that the end was near. She was taken to the hospital on Wednesday, March 11th, after feeling faint. She died during night between Thursday, March 12^th and Friday, March 13^th.

But who was Nicole Magloire?

First, she was a doctor - a gynecologist who worked hard delivering the children of poor mothers. But Nicole Magloire was also a great activist, who fought till the end of her days to better her country, so that once and for all, the rule of law would be established and justice would reign.

She was a board member of the Foundation of Knowledge and Freedom (FOKAL)

She was a founding member of the national dialogue on violence against women and led the efforts to establish its foundation.

Nicole Magloire was also a member of the group against impunity, which has sought to bring together plaintiffs - against the ex-dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier and human rights organizations.

In 2005 Nicole Magloire was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize within the framework of the Campaign 1000 Women for the Nobel Prize 2005.

Nicole Magloire was a brave fighter with countless friends. This was evident by the large number of friends and acquaintances who spontaneously went to her residence in Nerettes, immediately after hearing the news of her death. It was as if they all wanted to show their sympathy to her family and to show them that they were not alone.

Haiti on the March and Melody FM honor her memory and share the pain of her loved ones, particularly her daughter Kalinda, her son-in-law Maxwel, and her grand-daughter Alysée.

The funeral of Nicole Magloire will take place on Wednesday, March 18^th.

Haiti teacher among 10 finalists for $1M prize

BY JACQUELINE Cette adresse e-mail est protégée contre les robots spammeurs. Vous devez activer le JavaScript pour la visualiser.

03/12/2015 5:33 PM 03/12/2015

PORT-AU-PRINCE - A few years ago, a group of high school students attending the modest, privately run Collège Catts Pressoir came up with an innovative thought for their physics final: They would get a broken traffic light down the street to work again.

After studying how traffic lights work, they installed an inverter operated by 10 batteries in their classroom and ran an electrical cable to the nearby four-way intersection. Weeks later, at the corner of John Brown and Martin Luther King, the lights came alive.

“Difficulties are the ingredients of development,” said school headmaster and chemistry teacher Guy Etienne, recalling the day the lights came on. “What we are developing in students’ minds is that when you are confronted with a challenge, go find a solution; don’t just cross your arms and say you can’t because it’s difficult.”

That empowering philosophy has made Catts Pressoir one of Haiti’s most prestigious private schools. It also has given Etienne the biggest recognition yet of his 34-year teaching career: He is among 10 finalists for a $1 million award that is considered the “Nobel Prize for teaching.”

“For 30 years, a lot of parents haven’t agreed with me. But today, the world does,” said Etienne, who beat out more than 5,000 nominees from 127 countries for a chance to be recognized as the world’s most exceptional teacher. “This encourages me to keep doing the work that I am doing.”

Awarded by the Varkey Foundation, the prize is the brainchild of Indian-entrepreneur Sunny Varkey. Varkey said the competition isn’t about the money, but rather drawing attention to the enormous impact and achievements of teachers. He will name the winner Sunday at his Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai. Etienne and his wife, Marilyn, also a teacher at the school, will be there.

“This is a great honor; not just for me but for the country,” said Etienne, 61. “What makes me proud is that every Haitian is identifying him or herself with this honor.”

Education Minister Nesmy Manigat, who named Etienne to his curriculum reform commission, isn’t surprised by his global spotlight.

“Guy is a leader and role model,” said Manigat, who has launch an aggressive push to fix Haiti’s broken education system — in which more than half of graduating students last year failed exit exams. “My wish is that our teachers use his nomination as a positive drive to help bring excellence to our schools.”

For Etienne, the Global Teacher Prize shortlist is the latest in a string of honors. In 2011, mobile giant Digicel named him Entrepreneur of the Year in Education. Three years later, he was named a senior fellow of Ashoka, an organization that pays tribute to the world’s social entrepreneurs.

Next month, Etienne will travel to Denmark to collect another prize. The LEGO Foundation recently named Catts Pressoir among 10 champions in its Re-imagine Learning Challenge for the school’s “skills building and ‘changemaking’ in a tough environment.”

Among Haiti’s middle class, Catts Pressoir has long been known for students’ ingenious science and technology projects, and its rigorous teacher training.

Last year, for example, students developed a street surveillance camera and offered it to Haiti’s National Police and to the government. No one responded, Etienne said. But when the government announced months later that it was adopting such a system, students rejoiced.

“They said, ‘Yes! Our idea was adopted,’” Etienne said. “What we teach them is that when you develop a project, it’s not for you. It’s for the community.”

When he isn’t teaching, Etienne is in his second-floor administrative office overlooking the concrete basketball court that doubles as a running track. His walls are decorated with plaques and students’ photos. Not far from the front door, Jeanine Vaval, 92, sits in a rocking chair, keeping a watchful eye over the students and her star pupil.

“He was my student you know,” she said proudly of Etienne, a graduate of the school

Vaval and her husband Ernest founded the school in 1955 and named it in honor of Catts Pressoir. Pressoir, a family friend, was a doctor and science professor who was forced into exile with his school teacher wife, Soeurette.

ELECTIONS:

The President summons the public to convene for upcoming elections

Port-au-Prince, Sunday, March 15, 2015: The General Secretary of the Presidency informs the entire population that it is to convene on Sunday, August 9th, 2015 for the first round of legislative elections; on Sunday, October 25th, 2015 for the first round of presidential elections, local elections and the second round of the legislative elections, and, if necessary, on Sunday, December 27th, 2015 for the second round of the presidential election.

General outcry against the Electoral Council (CEP) following the publication of the electoral decree and the transmission of the timetable of the elections, without consulting with the political parties.

Fanmi Lavalas Challenges

Dr. Maryse Narcisse, Fanmi Lavalas’s national coordinator, indicated that her party is ready to participate in the upcoming electoral contests and to win them hands down. However, she said, the party will mobilize to demand that they be credible, transparent, fair and inclusive.

The head of the majority party is stunned at the electoral council’s (CEP) decision to submit the electoral calendar to the head of state, first discussing it with the political parties, the first ones to be concerned with such a decision.

To remedy this situation, Narcisse invited the CEP to work in cooperation with the National Office of Identification to undertake efforts to support credible elections. Namely, to purge the name of deceased people, in particular those who passed away during the earthquake of January, 2010 and to register the citizens who reached adulthood, as required by the Constitution of March 29th, 1987.