Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 29 juillet 2021

  

Jovenel Moïse funeral : Haiti president's hometown holds ceremony amid violence

Moise was assassinated at his home in Port-au-Prince on July 7

Edmund DeMarche

The body of slain Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was returned to his hometown Friday for a private funeral amid heavy security following violent protests and fears of political volatility in the Caribbean nation.

Martine Moïse arrived to cries of "Justice! Justice!" as she headed straight to her husband's casket, climbing the stairs and stopping in front of it. Her right arm in a sling, she lay her left arm on the casket and then brought it to her heart as she stood there in silence. Her eyes filled with tears as her three children joined her.

Minutes later, a group of supporters grabbed a large portrait of Moïse and paraded with it as the police band began to play the national anthem over loud wails.

As the ceremony began, hundreds of protesters clashed with police outside the private residence. Shots erupted and tear gas and black smoke wafted into the ceremony. Protesters' cries carried over religious leaders speaking at the funeral.

Earlier, cries of "Assassin!" filled the air at the arrival of Haiti's National Police Chief León Charles. Haitians clad in somber suits, shiny shoes and black and white formal dresses shouted and pointed fingers at the neighboring seating platforms where Haitian officials and foreign dignitaries sat above at least a dozen men with high-powered weapons.

"You didn’t take any measures to save Jovenel! You contributed to his killing!" one woman yelled.

On the grounds below, one Moïse supporter threatened Charles: "You need to leave now or we’re going to get you after the funeral!"

Newly appointed Prime Minister Ariel Henry arrived after to cries of, "Justice for Jovenel!"

White T-shirts and caps emblazoned with his picture were distributed to supporters the day before what is expected to be the final ceremony to honor Moïse, who was shot several times on July 7 during an attack at his private home that seriously injured his wife, Martine.

"This is something that will be engraved in our memory," said Pedro Guilloume, a Cap-Haitien resident who hoped to attend the funeral. "Let all Haitians channel solidarity."

Moïse’s body arrived shortly after dawn at his family’s seaside property where the funeral is being held. Six officials carried the brown casket up a stage where they saluted it and stood before it in silence for several minutes before draping a large red and blue Haitian flag over it.

Before the funeral began, a man wrapped himself in a large Haitian flag and approached the casket, crying out, "We need to fight and get justice for Jovenel!" Next to him, a man carrying a T-shirt commemorating Moïse joined in as he yelled, "Jovenel died big! He died for me and for the rest of the country…We’re not going to back down."

The funeral comes days after a new prime minister supported by key international diplomats was installed in Haiti — a move that appeared aimed at averting a leadership struggle following Moïse's assassination.

Henry, who was designated prime minister by Moïse before he was slain but never sworn in replaced interim prime minister Claude Joseph, and has promised to form a provisional consensus government until elections are held.

On Thursday, violent demonstrations hit neighborhoods in Cap-Haitien as groups of men fired shots into the air and blocked some roads with blazing tires. One heavily guarded police convoy carrying unknown officials drove through one flaming barricade, with a vehicle nearly flipping over.

A priest who presided over a Mass on Thursday morning at Cap-Haitian’s cathedral to honor Moïse warned there was too much bloodshed in Haiti as he asked people to find peace, noting that the poorest communities are affected.

On Thursday evening, Martine Moïse and her three children appeared at a small religious ceremony at a hotel in Cap-Haitien where Henry and other government officials offered their condolences.

"They took his life, but they can’t take his memories," said a priest who presided over the ceremony. "They can’t take his brain. They can’t take his ideas. We are Jovenel Moïse."

Moïse was sworn in as Haiti’s president in February 2017 and faced increasing criticism in recent years from those who accused him of becoming increasingly authoritarian. He had been ruling by decree for more than a year after the country failed to hold legislative elections.

Authorities have said that at least 26 suspects have been arrested in the killing, including 18 former Colombian soldiers. Police are still looking for several more suspects they say were involved in the assassination plot, including a former rebel leader and an ex-senator.

For about 10 minutes, Haitian President Jovenel Moïse attempted to call security forces to counter the early morning raid that unfolded at his home earlier this month before he was assassinated, according to a report.

SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (July 25th, 2021)
2 Kings 4, 42-44; Ps. 145; Eph. 4, 1-6; Jn. 6, 1-15. By +Guy Sansaricq

For the next four weeks we will be meditating prayerfully on Chapter 6 of St. John’s Gospel. The text begins with the stunning miracle of the multiplication of the loaves. Jesus feeds a multitude of five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fishes. That mighty deed is used to introduce Jesus’ fantastic teaching on the “BREAD OF LIFE.”

This miracle is to be seen in the light of two similar mighty deeds reported in the Old Testament: first, the manna in the desert and second, the feeding of 100 people by Prophet Elijah with a handful of barley. In both cases, God fed hungry crowds with very little.
The details reported by John bring forth great teachings:

1.  a)  Jesus does not create the food out of nothing but uses the little resources of the people. The little merchant boy had to give up his 5 loaves and 2 fishes with great trust in Jesus who appears to require FAITH before performing his mighty deed.

2.  b)  The Apostles are used to PUT ORDER in the crowd. The crowd that is being fed must not be in disarray. Likewise, The CHURCH must also be an organized body.

3.  c)  Also God’s gift is abundant. There were 12 baskets of leftovers.

4.  d)  After the miracle Jesus escapes from the crowd who wanted to make of Him their

KING. The do-gooders must not seek human honor nor political stature.

Man’s spirit needs to be fed just like his body. We are called to hunger for the bread of life.

 

*Announcement of Daniel Foote as Special Envoy for Haiti*

The Department of State is pleased to announce that Ambassador Daniel Foote, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, will serve as its Special Envoy for Haiti. The Special Envoy will engage with Haitian and international partners to facilitate long-term peace and stability and support efforts to hold free and fair presidential and legislative elections. He will also work with partners to coordinate assistance efforts in several areas, including humanitarian, security, and investigative assistance. Additionally, the Special Envoy will engage stakeholders in civil society and the private sector as we pursue Haitian-led solutions to the many pressing challenges facing Haiti.

The Special Envoy will, along with the U.S. Ambassador to Haiti, lead U.S. diplomatic efforts and coordinate the effort of U.S. federal agencies in Haiti from Washington, advise the Secretary and Acting Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, and coordinate closely with the National Security Council staff on the administration’s efforts to support the Haitian people and Haiti’s democratic institutions in the aftermath of the tragic assassination of Jovenel Moïse.

Special Envoy Foote brings extensive diplomatic experience to this role – including as Deputy Chief of Mission in Haiti and as the U.S. Ambassador to Zambia. The Department congratulates Special Envoy Foote as he takes on his new role and thanks him for his continued service to his country.

 

Battle for Power in Haiti Extends to Lobbying in Washington

Rival political figures and interests are doling out big sums to the influence industry to win support from the United States even as problems in Haiti remain unsolved.

July 21, 2021

The Haitian government had been ramping up its spending on Washington lobbying in the months before the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.Federico Rios for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The struggle for power in Haiti after the assassination of the country’s president has spilled onto K Street, where rival Haitian politicians, business leaders and interest groups are turning to lobbyists to wage an expensive and escalating proxy battle for influence with the United States.

Documents, interviews and communications among Haitian politicians and officials show a scramble across a wide spectrum of Haitian interests to hire lobbyists and consultants in Washington and use those already on their payrolls in the hopes of winning American backing in a period of leadership turmoil in Haiti.

A group text chat in the days after the killing of President Jovenel Moïse that included Haitian officials, political figures and American lobbyists showed them strategizing about countering American critics and potential rivals for the presidency and looking for ways to cast blame for the killing, according to copies of the messages obtained by The New York Times and confirmed by some of the participants. The chat began before the assassination and originally included Mr. Moïse, though it appeared to take on a more frenetic tone after he was gunned down in his home this month.

The texts and other documents help bring to life how lobbyists from firms including Mercury Public Affairs — which was paid at least $285,000 in the second half of last year by the Haitian government — are working with allied politicians to position successors in the wake of the assassination.

In addition to Mercury, lobbying filings show that Haiti’s government is paying a total of $67,000 a month to three other lobbyists or their firms, some of which have retained additional lobbyists under subcontracts.

At the same time, competing political factions are looking for ways to develop backing in Washington for their own candidates. One former Haitian lawmaker had a series of discussions about hiring a lobbyist to push the United States to recognize Haiti’s Senate president as the country’s interim leader. A different would-be leader expanded the American political team he assembled to seek support in Congress and from wealthy donors for a possible presidential campaign.

Several other Haitian politicians and interest groups approached lobbyists, political consultants and fixers offering fees as high as $10 million or more for their help.

One prominent lobbyist, Robert Stryk, signed a contract in the days after the assassination to represent a prominent Haitian business interest.

Mr. Stryk — who has worked as a fixer of sorts for foreign clients from whom other lobbyists keep their distance, including targets of sanctions and criminal inquiries in Angola, the Democratic Republican of Congo and Venezuela — would not identify his client in Haiti. But he said he was helping the client attract private investment from the United States to Haiti in an effort to shape the debate about the country’s future.

“All of the various personalities are jockeying for position, in the hopes that the United States could elevate their stature in some way,” said Christopher Harvin, a former Bush administration official who works as a lobbyist and political consultant for clients around the world.

It is not clear yet how much effect the influence campaigns might have. But the lobbying push is the latest example of the scale and reach of Washington’s influence industry and its role in seeking to sway foreign policy. Especially in countries heavily reliant on the United States for financial aid and other backing, governments and deep-pocketed interests have long paid handsomely for help winning support in Washington — or at least the appearance of it — sometimes leading to criticism that they are more focused on currying favor in Washington than addressing problems at home.

The dynamic is stark in Haiti, where a quarter of the population is acutely hungry, despite billions in international assistance since an earthquake devastated the country in 2010.

The Haitian government had been ramping up its spending on Washington lobbying in the months before the assassination as Mr. Moïse faced mounting criticism over his efforts to write a new Constitution and hold elections while the country was convulsed by violence, with thousands of protesters demanding he leave office.

As members of Congress voiced criticism, a lobbyist for the Haitian government recommended in the group text chat days before the assassination that “we should make a formal request” for Haiti’s prime minister “to visit and meet with Blinken in DC,” referring to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken.

The chaotic power struggle created by the killing of Mr. Moïse has only intensified the drive for United States government support.

 

Haiti’s president pleaded with top officer during raid: ‘Come save my life’

The suspected assassins were made up of Haitians, Haitian-Americans and former Colombian soldiers. The shooting occurred at Moïse's Port-au-Prince home on July 7.

The attack on the 53-year-old "was carried out by foreign mercenaries and professional killers — well-orchestrated," and that they were masquerading as agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Bocchit Edmond, the Haitian ambassador to the U.S., said.

The paper said it along with the McClatchy Washington Bureau spoke to "at least three people" who received calls from the president’s house on that morning. The paper said it is still a mystery how the team managed to get past several layers of security at the home.

None of the president’s security guards were hurt.

"When I send you to protect a president, I don’t send you to live, I send you to die protecting him," one member of the security detail told the paper.

So far, police have detained more than 20 suspects they say were directly involved in the killing, including a contingent of former Colombian special forces soldiers. Other suspects were killed by authorities as they closed in.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

 

 

Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 20 juillet 2021

 Haiti faces uncertain future as mourning first lady returns

At the Toussaint Louverture International Airport, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Saturday, July 17, 2021, Martine Moise, the wife of assassinated President Jovenel Moise, who was injured in the July 7 attack at their private home, returned to the Caribbean nation on Saturday following her release from a Miami hospital.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Haiti’s political future on Sunday grew murkier after the surprise return of first lady Martine Moïse, who was released from a hospital in Miami where she was treated for injuries following an attack in which the president was assassinated.

Martine Moïse did not make any public statements after she descended a private jet wearing a black dress, a black bulletproof vest, a black face mask and her right arm in a black sling as she mourned for President Jovenel Moïse, who was killed July 7 at their private home.

Some experts — like many in this country of more than 11 million people — were surprised at how quickly she reappeared in Haiti and questioned whether she plans to become involved in the country’s politics.

“The fact that she returned could suggest she intends to play some role,” said Laurent Dubois, a Haiti expert and Duke University professor. “She may intervene in one way or another.”

Martine Moïse arrived just hours after a prominent group of international diplomats issued a statement that appeared to shun interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph, the man currently running the country with the backing of police and the military.

Joseph’s name was never mentioned in the statement made by the Core Group, composed of ambassadors from Germany, Brazil, Canada, Spain, the U.S., France, the European Union and representatives from the United Nations and the Organization of American States.

The group called for the creation of “a consensual and inclusive government,” adding, “To this end, it strongly encourages the designated Prime Minister Ariel Henry to continue the mission entrusted to him to form such a government.”

Henry was designated prime minister a day before Jovenel Moïse was killed. He did not respond to requests for comment.

The U.N., OAS and U.S. State Department did not offer further explanation when contacted.

Given the current state of Haitian politics, Dubois said he believes the arrival of Martine Moïse could have an impact.

“She’s obviously in a position to play a role ... given how wide open things are,” he said, adding that the Core Group’s statement is striking because it makes no reference to Joseph. “One has to wonder whether the developments in the investigation have anything to do with this. They’re all these puzzle pieces that are just changing moment to moment. Right now it seems very hard to figure out how to put these together.”

Authorities in Haiti and Colombia say at least 18 suspects directly linked to the killing have been arrested, the majority of them former Colombian soldiers. At least three suspects were killed and police say they are looking for numerous others. Colombian officials have said that the majority of former soldiers were duped and did not know of the assassination plot.

A day after the killing, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price had said Joseph was the incumbent in the position and was serving as acting prime minister before the assassination: “We continue to work with Claude Joseph as such,” he said.

On July 11, a delegation of representatives from various U.S. agencies traveled to Haiti to review critical infrastructure, talk with Haitian National Police and meet with Joseph, Henry and Haitian Senate President Joseph Lambert in a joint meeting.

The deepening political turmoil has prompted dozens of Haitians to visit the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince in recent days to seek a visa or political asylum.

“We can’t stay anymore in the country,” said Jim Kenneth, a 19-year-old who would like to study medicine in the U.S. “We feel very insecure.”

WASHINGTON POST

U.S. Habit of Backing Strongman Allies Fed Turmoil in Haiti

Washington dismissed warnings that democracy was unraveling under President Jovenel Moïse, leaving a gaping leadership void after his assassination.

July 18, 202

Haiti’s President Is Assassinated

As protesters hurled rocks outside Haiti’s national palace and set fires on the streets to demand President Jovenel Moïse’s resignation, President Trump invited him to Mar-a-Lago in 2019, posing cheerfully with him in one of the club’s ornate entryways.

After members of Congress warned that Mr. Moïse’s “anti-democratic abuses” reminded them of the run-up to the dictatorship that terrorized Haiti in decades past, the Biden administration publicly threw its weight behind Mr. Moïse’s claim on power.

And when American officials urged the Biden administration to change course, alarmed that Haiti’s democratic institutions were being stripped away, they say their pleas went unheeded — and sometimes never earned a response at all.

Through Mr. Moïse’s time in office, the United States backed his increasingly autocratic rule, viewing it as the easiest way of maintaining stability in a troubled country that barely figured into the priorities of successive administrations in Washington, current and former officials say.

Even as Haiti spiraled into violence and political upheaval, they say, few in the Trump administration took seriously Mr. Moïse’s repeated warnings that he faced plots against his life. And as warnings of his authoritarianism intensified, the Biden administration kept up its public support for Mr. Moïse’s claim to power, even after Haiti’s Parliament emptied out in the absence of elections and Mr. Moïse ruled by decree.

When Mr. Moïse was assassinated this month, it left a gaping leadership void that set off a scramble for power with the few elected officials remaining. The United States, which has held enormous sway in Haiti since invading the countrymore than 100 years ago, was suddenly urged to send in troops and help fix the mess.

But in interviews with more than a dozen current and former officials, a common refrain emerged: Washington bore part of the blame, after brushing off or paying little attention to clear warnings that Haiti was lurching toward mayhem, and possibly making things worse by publicly supporting Mr. Moïse.

“It was predictable that something would happen,” said Senator Patrick Leahy, of Vermont. “The message that we send by standing alongside these people is that we think they are legitimate representatives of the Haitian people. They’re not.”

Critics say the American approach to Mr. Moïse followed a playbook the United States has used around the world for decades, often with major consequences for democracy and human rights: reflexively siding with or tolerating leaders accused of authoritarian rule because they advance American interests, or because officials fear instability in their absence.

Mr. Moïse’s grip on power tightened notably under Mr. Trump, who spoke admiringly of a range of foreign autocrats. Mr. Trump was also bent on keeping Haitian migrants out of the United States (they “all have AIDS,” American officials recounted him saying). To the extent that Trump officials focused on Haitian politics at all, officials say, it was mainly to enlist the country in Mr. Trump’s campaign to oust his nemesis in the region: Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro.

The Biden administration arrived in January consumed by the pandemic and a surge of migrants at the border with Mexico, leaving little bandwidth for the tumult convulsing Haiti, officials say. It publicly continued the Trump administration policy that Mr. Moïse was the legitimate leader, infuriating some members of Congress with a stance that one senior Biden official now calls a mistake.

“Moïse is pursuing an increasingly authoritarian course of action,” Rep. Gregory Meeks, now the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a joint statement with two other Democrats in late December, warning of a repeat of the “anti-democratic abuses the Haitian people have endured” in the past.

“We will not stand idly by while Haiti devolves into chaos,” they said.

In a February letter to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, they and other lawmakers called on the United States to “unambiguously reject” the push by Mr. Moïse, who had already ruled by decree for a year, to stay in power. They urged the Biden administration to push for “a legitimate transitional government” to help Haitians determine their own future and emerge from “a cascade of economic, public health, and political crises.”

But Mr. Biden’s top adviser on Latin America, Juan Gonzalez, said that at the time, the administration did not want to appear to be dictating how the turmoil should be resolved.

“Tipping our finger on the scale in that way could send a country that was already in a very unstable situation into crisis,” Mr. Gonzalez said.

Past American political and military interventions into Haiti have done little to solve the country’s problems, and have sometimes created or aggravated them. “The solution to Haiti’s problems are not in Washington; they are in Port-au-Prince,” Haiti’s capital, Mr. Gonzalez said, so the Biden administration called for elections to take place before Mr. Moïse left office.

“The calculus we made was the best decision was to focus on elections to try to use that as a way to push for greater freedom,” he added.

In reality, critics say, the Biden administration was already tipping the scales by publicly supporting Mr. Moïse’s contention that he had another year in office, enabling him to preside over the drafting of a new Constitution that could significantly enhance the president’s powers.

Mr. Moïse was certainly not the first leader accused of autocracy to enjoy Washington’s backing; he was not even the first in Haiti. Two generations of brutal Haitian dictators from the Duvalier family were among a long list of strongmen around the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East and elsewhere who received resolute American support, particularly as allies against Communism.

“He may be a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch,” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt supposedly said of one of them (though accounts vary about whether the president was referring to American-backed dictators in Nicaragua or in the Dominican Republic).

The debate has continued in both Democratic and Republican administrations about how hard to push authoritarian allies for democratic reforms. Once the threat of Communist expansionism faded, American administrations worried more about instability creating crises for the United States, like a surge of migrants streaming toward its shores or the rise of violent extremism.

Elliott Abrams, a foreign policy official in multiple Republican administrations and a special representative on Venezuela in the Trump administration, argued that Washington should support democracy when possible but sometimes has few alternatives to working with strongmen.

“In Haiti, no one has developed a good formula for building a stable democracy, and the U.S. has been trying since the Marines landed there a hundred years ago,” he said.

Early on in the Trump administration, Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former co-star on “The Apprentice” and new adviser to the president, began pressing Mr. Trump and his aides to engage with Haiti and support Mr. Moïse.

Officials were wary. Haiti supported Venezuela at two meetings of the Organization of American States in 2017, turning Mr. Moïse into what one official called an enemy of the United States and scuttling her efforts to arrange a state visit by him.

“I believed that a state visit between Mr. Trump and Mr. Moïse would have been a strong show of support for Haiti from the U.S. during a time of civil unrest,” Ms. Newman said, adding in a separate statement: “Jovenel was a dear friend and he was committed to being a change agent for his beloved Haiti.”

The episode underscored the degree to which some top Trump officials viewed Haiti as just a piece of its strategy toward Venezuela. And in the eyes of some lawmakers, Mr. Trump was not going to feel empathy for Haiti’s problems.

“We are all aware of his perception of the nation — in that he spoke about ‘s-hole’ countries,” said Rep. Yvette Clarke of New York, a co-chair of the House Haiti Caucus.

By 2019, nationwide protests grew violent in Haiti as demonstrators demanding Mr. Moïse’s ouster clashed with the police, burned cars and marched on the national palace. Gang activity became increasingly brazen, and kidnappings spiked to an average of four a week.

Mr. Trump and his aides showed few public signs of concern. In early 2019, Mr. Trump hosted Mr. Moïse at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, as part of a meeting with Caribbean leaders who had lined up against Mr. Maduro of Venezuela.

By the next year, Mr. Moïse’s anti-democratic practices grew serious enough to command the attention of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who publicly warned Mr. Moïse against delaying parliamentary elections.

But beyond a few statements, the Trump administration did little to force the issue, officials said.

“No one did anything to address the underlying weaknesses, institutionally and democratically,” over the past several years, said Peter Mulrean, who served as the American ambassador to Haiti from 2015 to 2017. “And so we shouldn’t really be surprised that the lid blew off again.”

After Mr. Biden’s election, lawmakers and officials in Washington took up the issue with new urgency. Mr. Moïse, who came to office after a vote marred by low turnout and allegations of fraud, had been ruling by decree for a year because the terms of nearly all members of Parliament had expired and elections to replace them were never held.

Mr. Moïse won a five-year term in 2016, but did not take office until 2017 amid the allegations of fraud, so he argued that he should stay until 2022. Democracy advocates in Haiti and abroad cried foul, but on Feb. 5, the Biden administration weighed in, supporting Mr. Moïses’s claim to power for another year. And it was not alone: International bodies like the Organization of American States took the same position.

Mr. Blinken later criticized Mr. Moïse’s rule by decree and called for “genuinely free and fair elections this year.” But the Biden administration never withdrew its public position upholding Mr. Moïse’s claim to remain in office, a decision that Rep. Andy Levin, a co-chair of the House Haiti Caucus, blamed for helping him retain his grip on the country and continue its anti-democratic slide.

“It’s a tragedy that he was able to stay there,” Mr. Levin said.

The Biden administration has rebuffed calls by Haitian officials to send troops to help stabilize the country and prevent even more upheaval. A group of American officials recently visited to meet with various factions now vying for power and urge them “to come together, in a broad political dialogue,” Mr. Gonzalez said.

The Americans had planned to visit the port to assess its security needs, but decided against it after learning that gangs were occupying the area, blocking the delivery of fuel.

“How can we have elections in Haiti when gang members control 60 percent of the territory?” said Pierre Esperance, executive director of the Haitian National Human Rights Defense Network. “It will be gangs that organize the elections.”

David Kirkpatrick contributed reporting.

SIXTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME. (July 18, 2021)
Jer. 23, 1-6; Ps. 23; Eph. 2, 13-18; Mk. 6, 30-34 By +Guy Sansaricq

Today, Jesus is introduced to us as the GOOD SHEPHERD in fulfillment of the prophecies of Jeremiah. In the first reading, we hear God announcing that He would send in due time a good shepherd to teach and guide his chosen people. Jesus stands tall as the ONE who fulfills this prophecy through his teaching and mighty deeds.

We also see Jesus sending his Apostles to do the same, to preach and to heal and expel demons. Today, the Apostles are shown returning from their mission. They are exhausted. The mission is not easy. They had experienced rejection and even insults and persecutions. Jesus calls them to rest in a secluded place. Tired people do not function well. Rest like sleep is a necessity of life. Likewise, a good retreat renews our energy.

But as they try to withdraw from the crowd, the people described as being “like sheep without a shepherd” taking note of their escape followed them. Jesus, seeing the hunger of the people for a saving word, rejoiced and renouncing his project of a time of rest, began to TEACH them at length. What do we learn from these texts?

We must listen to the TEACHINGS of Jesus and not close our ears. We must SEEK understanding. We must encounter JESUS. We must eagerly embrace HIM like the crowds of old, as our SAVIOR, our SHEPHERD. We need to be set free of our demons and be healed! Let’s this hunger for Jesus’ gift of salvation inflame our hearts. Repentance is the first step!

*Former DEA informant, linked to Moïse investigation, turned to agency after assassination*

_BY MICHAEL WILNER,  JAY WEAVER,  KEVIN G. HALL, AND  JACQUELINE CHARLES_

_JULY 12, 2021 10:21 PM,  UPDATED 6 HOURS 17 MINUTES AGO_

A suspect in last week’s assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was once a confidential source for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, two agency officials told McClatchy late Monday.

The Miami Herald and the McClatchy Washington Bureau have learned that the suspect is Joseph Gertand Vincent, first arrested more than 20 years ago for filing false information on a U.S. passport application and who went on to become an occasional DEA informant.

Vincent, 55, was identified by Haitian authorities over the weekend as an arrested suspect along with another South Florida Haitian emigre named James Solages, 35, who until April was a maintenance director in a Lantana senior-living center. Both men told investigators they were hired as translators.

Information swirled for days, some of it first reported by the Miami Herald, about the DEA’s tie to Vincent, and late Monday the DEA confirmed only that a former informant was among the arrested in Haiti. The subject apparently reached out to the DEA following Moïse’s killing, alerting officials to his link and forcing the DEA to reveal one of its sources — an exceptional development.

A source close to Vincent, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the volatile situation in Haiti, which has asked for a U.S. troop presence, confirmed that the South Florida man was indeed once an informant for the DEA. Another news source, also demanding anonymity, said Vincent went by the pseudonym Oliver.

Agency officials would not confirm the identity of the source that they were acknowledging in unusual fashion.

“At times, one of the suspects in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was a confidential source to the DEA,” one DEA official said. “Following the assassination of President Moïse, the suspect reached out to his contacts at the DEA.

“A DEA official assigned to Haiti urged the suspect to surrender to local authorities and, along with a U.S. State Department colleague, shared information with the Haitian government that assisted in the surrender and arrest of the suspect and one other individual.”

The DEA announcement is even more stunning because of reports in Haiti that the attackers who killed the president shouted through a loudspeaker that a DEA raid was taking place. The DEA steadfastly denies any knowledge of or involvement in the monumental events that unfolded in impoverished Haiti.

“DEA is aware of reports that President Moïse’s assassins yelled ‘DEA’ at the time of their attack. These individuals were not acting on behalf of DEA,” said the source.

Interim Haitian Police Chief Léon Charles said Sunday that among the items police found in the home of Christian Emmanueal Sanon, an alleged mastermind of the plot, was a hat with DEA written on it and a cache of arms and ammunition.

Sanon is a medical doctor who had worked in the Boynton Beach area. He appears in numerous online videos criticizing the Haitian government. Officials in Haiti allege Sanon hoped to be installed as president of Haiti in the aftermath of the assassination. Solages and Vincent both have said they were not part of any mission to kill the president.

The Justice Department on Monday night issued a statement saying the agency’s initial assessment of the assassination has been completed.

“An initial assessment has been conducted in Haiti by senior U.S. officials. The department will continue to support the Haitian government in its review of the facts and circumstances surrounding this heinous attack,” said Anthony Coley, a DOJ spokesman. “The department will also investigate whether there were any violations of U.S. criminal law in connection with this matter.”

None of the three South Florida suspects appear to have been assigned a lawyer yet, and they have not been made available for interviews. Their version of events, or those offered by the Haitian government cannot be independently confirmed.

The source close to Vincent said the West Palm Beach man worked as a paid informant who helped the DEA facilitate the arrests of drug-trafficking targets, including the infamous Guy Philippe in early 2017.

Philippe, who had been wanted for more than a decade in the United States, was arrested in January 2017 in Haiti. Federal DEA agents brought Philippe, then 48, on a plane to Miami. A source familiar with that operation confirmed that Joseph Vincent was with the Haitian National Police officers when they turned over Philippe to DEA agents for the flight to Miami.

The ex-rebel leader, charged with drug trafficking by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami under a 2005 sealed indictment, had just been elected to a six-year term in the Haitian parliament as a senator from the Grand’Anse area of Haiti.

His arrest came four days before newly elected lawmakers were set to be sworn in. As a senator, Philippe would have been entitled to immunity from arrest or prosecution during his term in office.

Once in custody, Philippe tried to have his indictment dismissed on the basis of his immunity — to no avail. He eventually pleaded guilty to the drug-trafficking conspiracy charges and was sentenced to nine years in prison.

Philippe’s leadership in a 2004 coup d’état against then-President Jean Bertrand Aristide led to the president’s ouster, and Human Rights Watch accused him of overseeing unlawful killings. In the aftermath, Philippe — along with other Haitian police officers, politicians and drug traffickers — became entangled in the U.S. crackdown on Haiti as a narcotics hub for Colombian cocaine.

Almost two dozen Haitian suspects, including the deposed president’s security guard, were convicted by federal prosecutors in Miami.

After the guard’s conviction in 2005, he played a pivotal role as a cooperating witness, including in the investigation of Aristide himself, though the former president was never charged. The guard, Oriel Jean, was assassinated in 2015 after returning to Haiti.

 

Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 17 juillet 2021

 Which Way For Haiti?

 

Mgr Thomas Wenski

Last April, the Most Rev. Max Mezidor, the Archbishop of Port-au-Prince, in denouncing a rash of gang violence and kidnappings said, “For some time now, we have been witnessing the descent into hell of Haitian society”. 

The surge of violence that has plagued the country for most of the last two years has now also consumed Haiti’s “de facto” President.  (“de facto” because many Haitians, including the bishops, held that his term ended in February 2021.). His murder has provoked a social and a constitutional crisis for the Americas’ second independent Republic. 

With the assassination of President Jovenel Moise by hired foreign mercenaries, Haiti could easily become the Somalia of the Caribbean.  That a number of these mercenaries have themselves been killed by police further raises suspicions.  You would think that professional commandos would know not only how to get to the president but also how to successfully elude capture and escape.  A Haitian proverb says, “voye wòch kache men” which translates, “the rock thrower hides his hand”.  If chaos is to be avoided and Haitians have a chance at a future of hope, those hidden hands need to be exposed and brought to justice.

This is necessary so that this crime does not impede the process of resolving Haiti’s ongoing social and political problems.  The bishops of Haiti in the aftermath of Moise’s assassination have called on all sectors of society to put aside personal pride and to return to the table to dialog for the sake of the common good. A consensus on a credible electoral process needs to be forged and, to that end, a transitional government that is seen as legitimate by a majority of Haitians must be established.

But will America or the UN intervening by sending in troops save Haiti from becoming a irredeemably failed state?  The first American occupation of Haiti after the 1915 mob killing of President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam made some infrastructure improvements (through forced labor) but it arguably left Haiti worse off.  Successive interventions including an extended peace keeping mission of the UN have likewise failed to improve the lot of the Haitian people and have contributed little in strengthening the State’s weak institutions.  As Jovenel Moise himself admitted in an interview some years ago, the State has no effective presence in more than 30% of the country.  Even so, the long-suffering Haitian people have endured the predations of the State as well as its impotence - Haiti has yet to administer its first dose of anti-COVID vaccines. Even Haitians who opposed the Moise’s attempt to remain in power deplored his assassination but were also angered by the fact that the perpetrators were ¨blan¨, i.e., foreigners.  So, no! Intervention that offends Haitian sovereignty has never worked and it will not work now. Haiti is a graveyard of foreigners’ good but ill-fated intentions.

From late 2018 and through 2019, the political opposition as well as civil society challenged the government’s drift towards dictatorship in a mostly democratic ways - through sit-ins, strikes, and mass demonstrations (sometimes led by religious). The support of the US government for Moise’s continued rule by decree allowed him to rebuff their calls for a transition to fair and transparent elections, At the same time, armed gangs in Port-au-Prince’s poorer neighborhoods were permitted to run rampant terrorizing the populace with seeming impunity.

Who is behind the Moise assassination?  One should ask “cui bono?”  Jovenel Moise had boxed himself into a corner as his presidency careened towards dictatorship.  He was coming to the end of his options.  Perpetrators of his murder as Haitian intellectual, Lionel Trouillot, suggests must be sought “in the network of mafia alliances, in private conflicts, or in the fear of some of his allies of losing everything with him.”

In the immediate aftermath of the 2010 earthquake that killed some 300,000 people, the Haitian people conducted themselves with remarkable serenity despite the depth of their grief.  Days before NGO’s and others arrived on the ground, the Haitians themselves were organizing their tent encampments, providing security, helping each other, rescuing the injured, etc. There was no rioting, no widespread looting.  The Haitian people are resourceful enough and resilient enough to find Haitian solutions to Haitian problems, if allowed to do so and if those “hidden hands” are not allowed to continue to throw rocks to thwart the common good and break the fragile bonds of fraternity.  That Haiti becomes the Somalia of the Caribbean is a possibility but not an inevitability.

Mgr. Thomas Wenski, Archbishop of Miami

Biden says US ready to help Haiti after assassination of President Jovenel Moïse

By Emily Jacobs

President Biden is condemning the assassination of Haiti’s presidentWednesday, vowing that the US stands “ready to assist” in the wake of the murder.

In a statement, the US commander-in-chief said the nation was “shocked and saddened to hear of the horrific assassination of President Jovenel Moïse and the attack on First Lady Martine Moïse of Haiti.

“We condemn this heinous act, and I am sending my sincere wishes for First Lady Moïse’s recovery,” the statement continued, “The United States offers condolences to the people of Haiti, and we stand ready to assist as we continue to work for a safe and secure Haiti.”

Speaking to reporters Wednesday morning as he boarded Air Force One, the commander-in-chief added, “We need a lot more information but it is very worrisome about the state of Haiti.”

The Moïses were gunned down in their home, located in the impoverished Caribbean nation’s capital of Port-au-Prince, at about 1 a.m. local time Wednesday.

The president, who did not survive, was 53.

Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph, who revealed news of the attack, said that the first lady was shot during the ambush.

Error! Filename not specified.Haitian President Jovenel Moïse and first lady Martine Moïse were attacked in their Port-au-Prince home. Martine Moïse survived the attack.EPA

Moïse, he said, “was wounded by a bullet and the necessary measures are being taken.”

Joseph also said that he was now in charge of the country.

Calling it a “hateful, inhumane and barbaric act,” Joseph revealed of the attack that, “an unidentified group of individuals, some of whom were speaking in Spanish, attacked the private residence of the President of the Republic and mortally wounded him.”

The primary languages in the Caribbean nation of more than 11 million people are French and Haitian Creole.

The gunmen claimed to be agents with the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Miami Herald reported.

But sources told the paper that the assailants, one of whom spoke English with an American accent, were not with the American agency.

The brazen attack happened a day after Moïse named a new prime minister, Ariel Henry, to prepare the nation for elections in the next two months for president, a new parliament and local government officials.

The killing comes amid deepening political and economic instability and a spike in gang violence in the poorest country in the Americas. It also comes as the country had grown increasingly unstable and disgruntled under the late president’s rule.

Moïse, who entered office in 2017, had been ruling by decree since January 2020 after legislative elections due in 2018 were delayed in the wake of disputes, including over when his own term ends, according to Agence France-Presse.

Opposition leaders have accused Moïse of seeking to increase his power, including approving a decree that limited the powers of a court that audits government contracts and another that created an intelligence agency controlled by the president.

The opposition has also demanded that he step down, arguing that his term legally ended in February.

Moïse and supporters maintained that his term began when he took office in early 2017, following a chaotic election that forced the appointment of a provisional leader to serve during a year-long gap.

He faced steep pushback from large segments of the population that deemed his mandate illegitimate — and he churned through seven prime ministers in four years.

Joseph was supposed to be replaced this week after only three months in the post.

These troubles come as Haiti still tries to recover from the devastating 2010 earthquake and Hurricane Matthew that swept through in 2016.

In addition to the political crisis, kidnappings for ransom have spiked in recent months, further reflecting the growing influence of armed gangs in the country.

Error! Filename not specified.“I am sending my sincere wishes for First Lady Moïse’s recovery,” President Joe Biden said about Martine Moïse, who was shot during the ambush.Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Its economic, political and social woes have also deepened, with gang violence increasing heavily in Port-au-Prince, inflation spiraling and food and fuel becoming scarcer at times in a country where 60 percent of the population makes less than $2 a day.

President Luis Abinader of the Dominican Republic condemned the assassination and ordered the “immediate closure” of its border with Haiti.

“This crime undermines the democratic order of Haiti and the region. Our condolences to his family and the Haitian people,” Abinader said in a statement.

Additional reporting by Yaron Steinbuch and Post wires

Colombian Suspects, Some Former Military, Were Recruited, Police Say

y Associated Press

July 09, 2021 06:39 PM

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI - The Colombians implicated in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise had been recruited by four companies and traveled to the Caribbean nation in two groups via the Dominican Republic, the head of Colombia's police said Friday.

Haitian National Police Chief Léon Charles said 17 suspects have been detained in the killing of Moise.

At a news conference in Colombia's capital, Bogota, General Jorge Luis Vargas Valencia said four companies had been involved in the "recruitment, the gathering of these people" implicated in the assassination, although he did not identify the companies because their names were still being verified.

Two of the suspects traveled to Haiti via Panama and the Dominican Republic, Vargas said, while the second group of 11 arrived in Haiti on Sunday from the Dominican Republic.

Vargas pledged Colombia's full cooperation after Haiti said about six of the suspects, including two of the three killed, were retired members of Colombia's army. U.S.-trained Colombian soldiers are heavily recruited by private security firms in global conflict zones because of their experience in fighting leftist rebels and powerful drug cartels.

Recruited to provide 'protection'

The wife of one former Colombian soldier in custody said he had been recruited by a security firm to travel to the Dominican Republic last month.

The woman, who identified herself only as Yuli, told Colombia's W Radio that her husband, Francisco Uribe, had been hired for $2,700 a month by a company named CTU to travel to the Dominican Republic, where he was told he would provide protection to some powerful families. She last spoke to him, she said, at 10 p.m. Wednesday, almost a day after Moise's killing, and he was on guard duty at a house where he and others were staying.

"The next day he wrote me a message that sounded like a farewell," the woman said. "They were running. They had been attacked. ... That was the last contact I had."

The woman said she knew little about her husband's activities and was unaware he had even traveled to Haiti.

Uribe is under investigation for his alleged role in extrajudicial killings by Colombia's army more than a decade ago. Colombian court records show that he and another soldier were accused in 2008 of killing a civilian whom they later tried to present as a criminal slain in combat.

Besides the Colombians, among those detained by police were two Haitian Americans. Some of the suspects were seized in a raid on the Taiwan Embassy, where they are believed to have sought refuge.

Plan allegedly was to arrest, not kill

Investigative Judge Clément Noël told the French-language newspaper Le Nouvelliste that the Haitian Americans arrested, James Solages and Joseph Vincent, had said the attackers originally had planned only to arrest Moise, not kill him. Noël said Solages and Vincent had been acting as translators for the attackers, the newspaper reported Friday.

The attack, which took place at Moise's home before dawn Wednesday, also seriously wounded his wife, who was flown to the U.S. city of Miami, Florida, for treatment.

The U.S. State Department said it was aware of reports that Haitian Americans were in custody but would not comment.

Solages, 35, described himself as a "certified diplomatic agent," an advocate for children and a budding politician on a now-removed website for a charity he started in 2019 in South Florida to assist residents of his hometown of Jacmel, on Haiti's southern coast.

Solages also said he had worked as a bodyguard at the Canadian Embassy in Haiti, and on his Facebook page, which was also taken down after news of his arrest, he showcased photos of armored military vehicles and of himself standing in front of an American flag.

Canada's foreign relations department released a statement that did not refer to Solages by name but said that one of the men detained for his alleged role in the killing had been "briefly employed as a reserve bodyguard" at its embassy by a private contractor.

Calls to the charity and Solages' associates went unanswered. However, a relative in South Florida said Solages did not have any military training, and that he didn't believe Solages was involved in the killing. 

"I feel like my son killed my brother because I love my president and I love James Solages," Schubert Dorisme, whose wife is Solages' aunt, told WPLG in Miami.

The Taiwan Embassy in Port-au-Prince said police had arrested 11 individuals trying to break into the compound early Thursday.

FIFTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (JULY 11TH, 2021)
Amos 7, 12-15; Psalm 85; Eph. 1, 3-14; Mk. 6, 7-13 By +Guy Sansaricq.

THE APOSTLES ARE SENT IN MISSION!
So far we have seen Jesus drawing his apostles to Him but today we see him sending them

out. It’s just like the movements of the heart that first sucks the blood in from the lungs and then sends it out to the rest of the body. That is also the normal rhythm of the Apostolate: a) through prayer increasing one’s intimacy with the Lord and then
b) through ministry: bringing Christ to the world.

Ministry is not an easy task. Many will reject the Prophet either because they do not understand his message or because they angrily reject the call to change and repent. The Prophet will respect their freedom and move on to a more welcoming site.

Jesus sets conditions for the success of the Mission: a) the Prophet should not be alone, he must have a companion. They will go two by two. b) They will be completely poor, relying only on God’s Providence: no money, no food, no second tunic, only a walking cane!

So, they went, joyfully announcing Jesus as the Messiah, expelling demons and curing many anointing them with oil. From this let us learn that the MISSION is not an easy task but a mighty struggle against evil. Poverty, love and faith are the weapons that defeat Satan, the enemy behind all our troubles. Let’s learn this lesson!

U.S rebuffs Haiti troops request after president's assassination

WASHINGTON/PORT-AU-PRINCE, July 9 (Reuters) - The United States on Friday rebuffed Haiti's request for troops to help secure key infrastructure after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise by suspected foreign mercenaries, even as it pledged to help with the investigation.

The killing of Moise by a squad of gunmen in the early hours of Wednesday morning at his home in Port-au-Prince pitched Haiti deeper into a political crisis which may worsen growing hunger, gang violence and a COVID-19 outbreak.

Haitian Elections Minister Mathias Pierre said a request for U.S. security assistance was raised in a conversation between interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday. Haiti also made a request for forces to the United Nations Security Council, Pierre said.

But a senior U.S. administration official said there were "no plans to provide U.S. military assistance at this time."

A letter from Joseph's office to the U.S. embassy in Haiti, dated Wednesday and reviewed by Reuters, requested the dispatch of troops to support the national police in reestablishing security and protecting key infrastructure across the country following Moise's assassination.

A similar letter, also dated Wednesday and seen by Reuters, was sent to the U.N. office in Haiti.

"We were in a situation where we believed that infrastructure of the country – the port, airport and energy infrastructure – might be a target," Pierre told Reuters.

Another aim of the request for security reinforcements would be to make it possible to go ahead with scheduled presidential and legislative elections on Sept. 26, Pierre said.

The U.N. political mission in Haiti received the letter and it was being examined, said Jose Luis Diaz, spokesman for the U.N. Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs.

“The dispatch of troops under any circumstances would be a matter for the (15-member) Security Council to decide,” he said.

RIDDLED WITH BULLETS

The United States and Colombia said they would send law enforcement and intelligence officials to assist Haiti after a number of their nationals were arrested for Moise's murder.

Police in Haiti said the assassination was carried out by a commando unit of 26 Colombian and two Haitian-American mercenaries. The two Haitian-Americans were identified as James Solages, 35, and Joseph Vincent, 55, both from Florida.

Seventeen of the men were captured - including Solages and Vincent - after a gun battle with Haitian authorities in Petionville, the hillside suburb of the capital Port-au-Prince where Moise resided.

Three others were killed and eight remain at large, according to Haitian police. Authorities are hunting for the masterminds of the operation, they said.

A judge investigating the case told Reuters that Moise was found lying on his back on the floor of his bedroom. The front door of the residence had been forced open, while other rooms were ransacked.

"His body was riddled with bullets," Petionville tribunal judge Carl Henry Destin said. "There was a lot of blood around the corpse and on the staircase."

Haitian officials have not given a motive for Moise's killing or explained how the assassins got past his security detail. He had faced mass protests against his rule since taking office in 2017 - first over corruption allegations and his management of the economy, then over his increasing grip on power.

Moise himself had talked of dark forces at play behind the unrest: fellow politicians and corrupt oligarchs who felt his attempts to clean up government contracts and to reform Haitian politics were against their interests.

COMMANDO UNIT

The United States on Thursday pledged to send senior officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security to Haiti as soon as possible to assess the situation and see how best they can assist, the White House said.

A State Department spokesperson said: "We are aware of the arrest of two U.S. citizens in Haiti and are monitoring the situation closely."

The head of Colombia's national intelligence directorate and the intelligence director for the national police will travel to Haiti with Interpol to help with investigations, Colombian President Ivan Duque said on Friday.

Investigators in Colombia discovered that 17 of the suspects had retired from Colombia's army between 2018 and 2020, armed forces commander General Luis Fernando Navarro told journalists on Friday.

Jorge Luis Vargas, director of Colombia's national police, said initial investigations had shown that 11 Colombian suspects had traveled to Haiti via the resort city of Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

Two others traveled by air to Panama, before flying to Dominican capital Santo Domingo and then Port-au-Prince, Vargas said.

CONFUSION OVER POLITICAL CONTROL

The Haitian government declared a 15-day state of emergency on Wednesday to help authorities apprehend the killers but has since urged businesses to reopen.

Stores, gasoline stations and commercial banks reopened on Friday. The streets were quiet, although some supermarkets bustled with people stocking up amid the uncertainty.

Moise's killing has sparked confusion about who is the legitimate leader of the country of 11 million people, the poorest in the Americas, miring it deeper into a political crisis.

Even before Moise's death, the country only had 11 elected officials - himself and 10 senators - given it had postponed legislative elections in 2019 amid violent unrest.

Swaths of the opposition and civil society no longer recognized him as president due to a disagreement over the length of his mandate.

Joseph has taken over the reins of power so far. Pierre, the elections minister, said he would keep that role until presidential and legislative elections are held on Sept. 26.

But Joseph's authority is in dispute by multiple political factions. In the latest move, the remaining third of the Senate on Friday nominated its head, Joseph Lambert, to be interim president.

The senators also urged Joseph to hand over his office as prime minister to Ariel Henry, a physician seen as more of a consensus candidate. Moise had tapped him earlier this week to form a unity government but he had yet been sworn in.

"The Senate secretariat will write to national and international entities as well as to the general director of the Police and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs so that the embassies accredited in Haiti are informed," Lambert told Reuters.

Henry this week told Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste he did not consider Joseph the legitimate prime minister.

"The assassination... has provoked a political and institutional vacuum at the highest level of state," said Haitian opposition politician Andre Michel. "There is no constitutional provision for this exceptional situation."

Reporting by Steve Holland in Washington and Andre Paultre in Port-au-Prince; Additional reporting by Sarah Marsh in Havana, Stefanie Eschenbacher in Mexico City, Julia Symmes Cobb and Luis Jaime Acosta in Bogota, Brad Brooks in Tamarac, Daphne Psaledakis, Ali Idrees and Mark Hosenball in Washington and Estailove St-Val in Port-au-Prince; Writing by Sarah Marsh and Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Daniel Flynn, Rosalba O'Brien and William Mallard

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.WASHINGTON/PORT-AU-PRINCE, July 9 (Reuters) - The United States on Friday rebuffed Haiti's request for troops to help secure key infrastructure after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise by suspected foreign mercenaries, even as it pledged to help with the investigation.

The killing of Moise by a squad of gunmen in the early hours of Wednesday morning at his home in Port-au-Prince pitched Haiti deeper into a political crisis which may worsen growing hunger, gang violence and a COVID-19 outbreak.

Haitian Elections Minister Mathias Pierre said a request for U.S. security assistance was raised in a conversation between interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday. Haiti also made a request for forces to the United Nations Security Council, Pierre said.

But a senior U.S. administration official said there were "no plans to provide U.S. military assistance at this time."

A letter from Joseph's office to the U.S. embassy in Haiti, dated Wednesday and reviewed by Reuters, requested the dispatch of troops to support the national police in reestablishing security and protecting key infrastructure across the country following Moise's assassination.

A similar letter, also dated Wednesday and seen by Reuters, was sent to the U.N. office in Haiti.

"We were in a situation where we believed that infrastructure of the country – the port, airport and energy infrastructure – might be a target," Pierre told Reuters.

Another aim of the request for security reinforcements would be to make it possible to go ahead with scheduled presidential and legislative elections on Sept. 26, Pierre said.

The U.N. political mission in Haiti received the letter and it was being examined, said Jose Luis Diaz, spokesman for the U.N. Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs.

“The dispatch of troops under any circumstances would be a matter for the (15-member) Security Council to decide,” he said.

RIDDLED WITH BULLETS

The United States and Colombia said they would send law enforcement and intelligence officials to assist Haiti after a number of their nationals were arrested for Moise's murder.

Police in Haiti said the assassination was carried out by a commando unit of 26 Colombian and two Haitian-American mercenaries. The two Haitian-Americans were identified as James Solages, 35, and Joseph Vincent, 55, both from Florida.

Seventeen of the men were captured - including Solages and Vincent - after a gun battle with Haitian authorities in Petionville, the hillside suburb of the capital Port-au-Prince where Moise resided.

Three others were killed and eight remain at large, according to Haitian police. Authorities are hunting for the masterminds of the operation, they said.

A judge investigating the case told Reuters that Moise was found lying on his back on the floor of his bedroom. The front door of the residence had been forced open, while other rooms were ransacked.

"His body was riddled with bullets," Petionville tribunal judge Carl Henry Destin said. "There was a lot of blood around the corpse and on the staircase."

Haitian officials have not given a motive for Moise's killing or explained how the assassins got past his security detail. He had faced mass protests against his rule since taking office in 2017 - first over corruption allegations and his management of the economy, then over his increasing grip on power.

Moise himself had talked of dark forces at play behind the unrest: fellow politicians and corrupt oligarchs who felt his attempts to clean up government contracts and to reform Haitian politics were against their interests.

COMMANDO UNIT

The United States on Thursday pledged to send senior officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security to Haiti as soon as possible to assess the situation and see how best they can assist, the White House said.

A State Department spokesperson said: "We are aware of the arrest of two U.S. citizens in Haiti and are monitoring the situation closely."

The head of Colombia's national intelligence directorate and the intelligence director for the national police will travel to Haiti with Interpol to help with investigations, Colombian President Ivan Duque said on Friday.

Investigators in Colombia discovered that 17 of the suspects had retired from Colombia's army between 2018 and 2020, armed forces commander General Luis Fernando Navarro told journalists on Friday.

Jorge Luis Vargas, director of Colombia's national police, said initial investigations had shown that 11 Colombian suspects had traveled to Haiti via the resort city of Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

Two others traveled by air to Panama, before flying to Dominican capital Santo Domingo and then Port-au-Prince, Vargas said.

CONFUSION OVER POLITICAL CONTROL

The Haitian government declared a 15-day state of emergency on Wednesday to help authorities apprehend the killers but has since urged businesses to reopen.

Stores, gasoline stations and commercial banks reopened on Friday. The streets were quiet, although some supermarkets bustled with people stocking up amid the uncertainty.

Moise's killing has sparked confusion about who is the legitimate leader of the country of 11 million people, the poorest in the Americas, miring it deeper into a political crisis.

Even before Moise's death, the country only had 11 elected officials - himself and 10 senators - given it had postponed legislative elections in 2019 amid violent unrest.

Swaths of the opposition and civil society no longer recognized him as president due to a disagreement over the length of his mandate.

Joseph has taken over the reins of power so far. Pierre, the elections minister, said he would keep that role until presidential and legislative elections are held on Sept. 26.

But Joseph's authority is in dispute by multiple political factions. In the latest move, the remaining third of the Senate on Friday nominated its head, Joseph Lambert, to be interim president.

The senators also urged Joseph to hand over his office as prime minister to Ariel Henry, a physician seen as more of a consensus candidate. Moise had tapped him earlier this week to form a unity government but he had yet been sworn in.

"The Senate secretariat will write to national and international entities as well as to the general director of the Police and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs so that the embassies accredited in Haiti are informed," Lambert told Reuters.

Henry this week told Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste he did not consider Joseph the legitimate prime minister.

"The assassination... has provoked a political and institutional vacuum at the highest level of state," said Haitian opposition politician Andre Michel. "There is no constitutional provision for this exceptional situation."

Reporting by Steve Holland in Washington and Andre Paultre in Port-au-Prince; Additional reporting by Sarah Marsh in Havana, Stefanie Eschenbacher in Mexico City, Julia Symmes Cobb and Luis Jaime Acosta in Bogota, Brad Brooks in Tamarac, Daphne Psaledakis, Ali Idrees and Mark Hosenball in Washington and Estailove St-Val in Port-au-Prince; Writing by Sarah Marsh and Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Daniel Flynn, Rosalba O'Brien and William Mallard

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

A US citizen is among those arrested in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse

Natalie Musumeci

22 hours ago

• A US citizen was arrested in connection with Haitian President Jovenel Moïse's killing.
• A Haitian official on Thursday identified James Solages as a suspect.
• Moïse was assassinated at his home by a group of armed assailants early Wednesday.

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A US citizen and another person believed to be Haitian American were arrested in connection with the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, a Haitian official told The Washington Post and The Associated Press.

James Solages, a US national of Haitian descent, was identified on Thursday as one of six people arrested in Moïse's killing in his home early on Wednesday, Mathias Pierre, Haiti's minister of elections and interparty relations, told the outlets.

One other person who was apprehended is also believed to be a Haitian American, Pierre said. He did not identify the person.

A website for a nonprofit that Solages helped establish in South Florida described him as the president of the board of directors and said he was "the chief commander of body-guards" for the Canadian Embassy in Haiti, the AP reported.

"Preceding his tenure as a consultant, his career began as a volunteer in different nonprofit organization assisting communities in need and Haiti," a bio on the website said. "Mr. Solages is a youth leader and an advocate for underprivileged kids."

The bio also described Solages as a "certified diplomatic agent" and a "building engineer."

The nonprofit did not immediately return Insider's requests for comment.

Moïse, 53, was assassinated by a group of armed assailants who burst into his home at about 1 a.m. on Wednesday.

His wife, first lady Martine Moïse, was critically injured in the attack and flown to Miami for treatment for her gunshot wounds.

Jovenel Moïse and his wife, Martine Moïse, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on November 28, 2016.Jeanty Junior Augustin/Reuters

Léon Charles, the director of Haiti's National Police, told reporters on Thursday that six suspects had been apprehended in connection with the fatal ambush.

Authorities have said four other people believed to be involved in the assassination were killed in a shootout with the police.

Charles said Haitian authorities were still looking for more assailants. "The pursuit of the mercenaries continues," he said, according to the AP. "Their fate is fixed: They will fall in the fighting or will be arrested."

Pierre told The Post that suspects were being held at a police station in the capital and that a mob had surrounded it.

"The special units are trying to protect the police station, because the population is very mad and is trying to get to them, to burn them," Pierre said. "We're trying to avoid that."

The identities of the other suspects were unclear. Pradel Henriquez, Haiti's communications minister, described them as "foreigners," The Post reported.

When Democracy Fails, Bad Things Happen: Haiti in Crisis

When Democracy Fails, Bad Things Happen: Haiti in Crisis Ambassador Curtis A. Ward

Amb. Curtis A. Ward

It pains me to repeat this premise, supported by historic precedents, that in countries lacking democratic ideals and practices, where there are no viable democratic institutions, where autocratic leaders govern with impunity, it is only a matter of time before such countries implode. But violence is never the answer. Violence only begets more violence. It is the hard truth. History repeats itself and the suffering

of the people continues.

The assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Möise and the injuring his wife, First Lady Martine Möise, are abhorrent acts which have no support in modern society. This must be condemned, and the perpetrators must be brought to justice. However, this raises other questions. With a chaotic environment and arguably a corrupt judicial system, is justice possible in Haiti? If nothing else, past practices suggest not.

It further pains me to recognize the fact that CARICOM, the OAS, and the United Nations have repeatedly failed the Haitian people in helping them to establish a system of governance worthy of a modern democratic society. There is no real accountability for any political leader deviating from democratic norms and abusing the powers of office to suppress basic

freedoms. Möise has governed Haiti by decree for over a year without an elected parliament. He was accountable to no one.

To begin with, CARICOM, an organization made up of

mostly democratic governments, has time and again,

proven its uselessness in helping Haiti resolve its issues. Former Haitian

IhavewarnedinthepastthatCARICOMleadersshould PresidentJovenel

Möise

The OAS, reduced to a feckless regional organization during its dominance and manipulation by the Trump administration, has become a moribund organization and a mere shadow of its mission and purpose. The OAS lacks credibility on hemispheric affairs.

The President of Haiti was one of Trump’s hapless sycophants in the OAS. He was rewarded with increased US assistance and inclusion in the Mar-a- Lago five. Can the region look to the OAS to play a meaningful role in Haiti? This is rather doubtful. Interestingly, one of Trump administration’s most ardent critics in the OAS, the government of Antigua and Barbuda, now leads CARICOM. Antigua’s Prime Minister Gaston Browne assumed chairmanship of CARICOM at the beginning of July. Can CARICOM leaders expect any meaningful action in and by the OAS? That will more likely prove a waste of time. Can the US act through the OAS? We will see.

not ignore creeping autocratic trends in the region,
including among traditional democratic member states. CARICOM leaders have been absent from this discussion.

The United Nations, despite many attempts at dealing with the “Haitian crisis” which never seems to end, has never been able to satisfactorily fulfill its mandates in Haiti. The UN generally overstays its welcome in Haiti before being able to build the institutional underpinnings of a viable democratic state. Sometimes it is the UN’s fault, but it is often due to the lack of patience of the

Hon. Gaston Browne,

Haitian people who expect quick fixes to century old
problems. The truth is no organization can impose on
the Haitian people any form of democratic governance without their support. A proud and resilient people, the Haitians generally believe if left alone they can solve their own problems. Haitians believe they should dictate the terms of outside assistance. I have my doubts there is any winning formula.

The UN Security Council will no doubt take up the situation in Haiti. CARICOM member state, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, is a current member. Will CARICOM seek to influence decisions in the Security Council on Haiti? There is extraordinarily little on which to place much hope. In the year and a half of SVG’s tenure in the Council, CARICOM’s voice has featured only marginally. I fully understand the limitations of non-permanent SC members, but if managed effectively, there are significant opportunities for influence.

Among the many problems facing Haiti is the constant
drumbeat of corruption. Successive US governments have
paid lip service to this problem. The perpetual state of
humanitarian crisis in Haiti, created by natural and man-
made disasters, tend to create an environment in which
corrupt Haitian leaders are easily manipulated to serve
Washington’s purposes. Instead of condemning and
punishing, they are rewarded for their blind support of the
American government, particularly on hemispheric issues in
the OAS. Despite repeated calls by members of the US Congress with a history of support of the Haitian people for accountability of President Möise’s government, the Trump administration, rewarded Möise with increased US support to keep him entrenched as leader of Haiti.

The Biden administration preoccupied with other “urgent” global issues has continued Trump’s support for Haiti. One could argue maintaining the status quo pending a new Haitian policy is partially due to the ongoing humanitarian

Prime Minister of Antigua & Barbuda

Hon. Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines

crisis in Haiti and such support helps the Haitian people. Thus far, the Biden administration has failed to articulate a comprehensive hemispheric policy including a specific policy on Haiti. This new crisis in Haiti will elicit an ad hoc response from the Biden Administration but it will not be good enough. A comprehensive policy on Haiti is needed and the people of Haiti cannot wait in perpetuity.

The Haitian president’s assassination should be a wake-up call for Caribbean leaders to re-examine CARICOM’s role in the region. They will condemn this heinous act but mere statements of condemnation of Moise’s assassination are not enough. Caribbean leaders will feign surprise and say such acts have no place in the Caribbean. They will not say anything about the dangers of creeping autocratic rule in the region, the lack of democracy and rule of law, and corrupt governance on the future of Caribbean states. There will be no self-evaluation because they all believe it could not happen to them.

© 2021 Curtis A. Ward/The Ward Post

 

Dominica fights to save Creole forged by slaves in Caribbean

DÁNICA COTO ,  Associated Press July 1, 2021 Updated: July 1, 2021

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — The elementary school student stood up, pulled down her face mask and leaned into the microphone. She swallowed hard before trying to spell the word “discover” in French Creole.

“D-E-K-O-V-I” she tried as she clasped her hands behind her back while standing in front of a row of gleaming trophies.

Seconds later, the teacher announced: “Sorry, that’s incorrect." The word, she said, is “dékouvè.”

The student pursed her lips and sat down, temporarily felled at a Creole spelling bee in the eastern Caribbean island of Dominica. Her difficulty with the language is far from unique on the tiny nation, which is trying to preserve and promote that centuries-old creation by Africans who melded their original tongues with those of the European plantation owners who held them in slavery.

Kwéyòl, as it’s known in Dominica, is one of many Creole variants spoken on more than a dozen Caribbean islands — complex cultural creations that were long considered informal, inferior and broken languages spoken by uneducated people.

“Your ability to use the European language, be it English, French or Dutch, is seen as an indicator of educational attainment,” said Clive Forrester, a linguistics professor at Canada’s University of Waterloo and secretary of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics. “The attitudes have improved, but the underlying feeling is still there. Almost everything related to African culture is seen not as prestigious as European culture.”

Officials in Dominica, an island of some 75,000 people, hope to change that perception: They’ve started teaching Kwéyòl in 16 of the island’s 56 primary schools this year in brief snippets: “A five-minute pause for the Creole cause.” They say a lack of Kwéyòl-speaking teachers holds back a broader program.

Students learn the language’s roots and simple words and phrases and some compete in a spelling bee introduced 11 years ago, said Charlene White-Christian, modern language coordinator for Dominica’s Ministry of Education.

She herself is still learning more of the language since her parents never spoke it with her: She learned via friends and from studying linguistics.

“We don’t want to lose it,” she said. “We view the language as part of our culture. It’s nothing without the language.”

To help preserve the language, Dominican scholars have published two Kwéyòl dictionaries — the newest 150 pages long — and are working on a third as they debate how to say words like “computer” or “flash drive,” which never had a Creole equivalent.

“We’re kind of struggling with that,” said Raymond Lawrence, chairman of Dominica’s Committee for the Study of Creole. “Dictionaries take a lot of time.”

Pride in local Creole languages has grown in recent years, though only a handful of Caribbean nations so far have declared them official, including Haiti, Aruba and Curacao. Only a few offer regular classes, and experts say they don't know of any place where it's the main language of education.

The version spoken in Dominica and nearby Saint Lucia originally mingled African languages with the French spoken by the first colonists and occasionally a bit of the Indigenous language. Dominica was a French colony for 48 years and then a British one for 215 years, which also led to the rise of English Creole on that island.

The most widely spoken French Creole is in Haiti, a country of more than 11 million inhabitants. A few thousand also speak the Kouri-Vini creole of Louisiana, also once a French colony. Linguists say that some people in very rural areas of nations including Haiti and Jamaica speak only Creole languages, often because they did not go to school.

Papiamento, a Portuguese-based Creole, is used in Aruba and Curacao, where it was adopted by a local Sephardic Jewish community, said Hubert Devonish, a Jamaican linguistics professor and member of the International Center for Caribbean Language Research.

English-based Creoles range from the Gullah of coastal North Carolina to the Patois of Jamaica that echoes through that nation's music.

English Creole may have developed in Barbados in the late 1640s after a local population of African slaves grew larger than that of white people, Devonish said. He added that French Creole might have first developed in St. Kitts, the first French plantation colony.

The languages then evolved across the centuries, affected by education, migration and the island’s' relationship with their former colonial powers.

Some people abandoned Creole languages to escape poverty and discrimination, while some of the educated elite eventually seized upon them as symbols of national identity and campaigned for them, Devonish said.

In many Caribbean nations, “there is a broad acceptance that to participate in national life, you have to talk the languages of the people,” he said. That has not yet happened in Dominica.

"Up until now, you can be Dominican without being able to speak Creole,” he said. “Dominica has ended up in a serious situation of language loss.”

Experts aren't sure why the language eroded more in Dominica than on other islands. Some suggest it might be due to a rigorous teaching emphasis on English, or to the presence of a competing English-based Creole known as Kokoy introduced by workers from other islands in the late 19th century and spoken by residents in the island’s northeast.

A push to save and promote Creole languages was born in the 1960s when the Caribbean experienced its own Black power movement, Forrester said.

“Different artifacts of Caribbean culture, the music, the spirituality, the languages, all of those things were being reexamined and, in a sense, elevated by cultural advocates,” he said. “The language came along for the ride.”

Social media also now plays a role, with teens and young adults posting in Creole, said Forrester, whose first language is Jamaican Creole. He noted that there’s a certain pride in using Creole, but that it’s more pronounced in people who also have mastered English.

He said the most at-risk language in the Caribbean now is a dying French Creole in Trinidad spoken only by a handful of aging people despite attempts to revive it, A Berbice Dutch Creole in the South American country of Guyana died more than a decade ago.

“Languages are living things,” he said. “No living thing lives forever.”

 

Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 30 juin 2021

 SENATOR RUBIO PRESS

 

Sen. Rubio: "We have a moral duty and a responsibility to engage with and jointly work with all of the island’s stakeholders for the future of the Haitian people."

DISPLACEMENTS DUE TO GANG VIOLENCE IN PORT-APRINCE

Situation Report No 2

This report is produced by OCHA Haiti in collaboration with humanitarian partners. It covers the period from 8 to 14 June 2021 and is based on the information and data available to date. The next report will be issued on or around 20 June.

•  Since 1 June, an upsurge in inter-gang clashes has caused the displacement of an estimated 10,000 civilians in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince. The inter-gang violence and clashes are having a direct and indirect impact on the whole population of that area. Frequent shootings and regular roadblocks are limiting access to entire neighbourhoods and spreading fear among the population. 

•  Local authorities, the Haitian Red-Cross, national and local NGOs are playing a vital role in responding to the most urgent needs but due to limited resources available and limited access, less than a third of the IDPs is currently receiving assistance and no assistance is provided to host families or the stranded population of Martissant. 

•  The initial response provided is partly drawn from preparedness stocks for the hurricane season. While partners are taking these exceptional measures, this will affect the response capacities of the humanitarian partners to potential hurricane impacts. As such, funding for these operations and for the replenishment of these contingency stocks is urgently needed. 

•  Gender-based violence is reported among the displaced population, with sexual abuse, including rape, among IDPs, in host families and as offer of “sex for shelter”. The ongoing insecurity is limiting capacities for monitoring and addressing support requests. 

•  The current situation is also having an impact on other departments, especially in the Southern Peninsula, due to limitations on the movement of people and goods. 

•  The United Nations are calling for an end to the violence to allow the civilian population to return to their neighbourhoods and resume their daily life and allow humanitarian access to the victims. 


         The mission of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is to Coordinate the global emergency response to save lives and protect people in humanitarian crises. We advocate for effective and principled humanitarian action by all, for all. www.unocha.org

         HUMANITARIAN CONSEQUENCES

         In Martissant, the recent upsurge in inter-gang clashes took a turn for the worse over the past days resulting in the burning and looting of houses, deaths and injuries amongst the civilian population. Gang members attacked several police stations in Martissant and neighbourhood and assaulted two journalists who were reporting on the displacement situation. Residents reported that some corpses remain unattended on the streets and that gang members are requesting money to deliver the deceased to their relatives.

         A large community of more than 1,500 people have settled in the Carrefour Sports Centre but the local authorities have indicated that current sites are not suitable for long-term stay and that beyond the next few weeks, the displaced should be returning or move to other suitable locations.

         CHALLENGES

         One of the main challenges is access and security for humanitarian aid deliveries. Because of the security situation, access to some of the IDP sites, in particular Carrefour and Bas-Delmas areas, is difficult from Port-au-Prince. In Martissant, 'windows' of a few hours are allowing for the safe transit of certain deliveries with an escort. However, the situation is highly volatile, requiring humanitarian partners (including the Haitian Red Cross and local and national NGOs) to negotiate access and take all possible security risk mitigation measures. Partners are looking at the best possible relief delivery solutions, including the use of the UNHAS helicopter and coastal (sea) route. Current access limitations require a well-coordinated and streamlined logistical response from partners, including the consolidation of cargo to limit the number of deliveries required.

         These constraints also directly affect the Haitian population. Particularly worrisome are reports of limited access to health facilities and basic services to and from affected neighbourhoods. People are trapped in their neighbourhoods and unable to freely move. Images have circulated of pedestrians walking, at the request of gangs, with their arms raised in the air.

         Limited access also affects the humanitarian partners’ ability to identify the needs and locating displaced people who are not within identified sites remains a significant challenge, as many are dispersed across the metropolitan area or have relocated in the provinces with relatives.

         In addition to the challenges mentioned above, a strategy for long term resettlement of IDPs having lost their homes to destruction and fires is needed as well as a sustainable solution for the temporarily displaced population currently sheltered in large facilities such as the Sports Centre. In those large sites, the risks of COVID-19 spread and protection remains a concern.

         Amid all these considerations, the operating environment still remains that of a pandemic. Since May 2021, COVID-19 infections and fatalities rose more than fivefold following the arrival of new variants. Officially, Haiti has recorded 15,895 infections and 333 deaths from COVID-19 as of 5 June among its 11 million people. Although these numbers are relatively low compared to elsewhere in Latin America and the Caribbean, data is limited due to low testing rates, leading many to believe that the real numbers are much higher. Additionally, hospital overcrowding due to COVID-19 is reducing capacities to care for the injured and those affected by violence, including GBV. This is of concern for both the population and the humanitarian staff. Several confirmed cases have been reported within the humanitarian community, with some requiring medevac. As such, the humanitarian response requires COVID-19 containment and mitigation measures for both staff and the IDP population, especially those sheltered in crowded spaces.

         Several donors are supporting response efforts of implementing agencies (e.g. ECHO and BHA) but available resources remain limited.

         HUMANITARIAN NEEDS

         At least 5,500 of recently displaced people from Martissant, Delmas 75, Bas-Delmas, and Saint-Martin are in immediate need of assistance. According to local authorities and local partners on the ground, the most urgent needs are drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, shelter, food, bedding kits, access to health and nutrition assistance, and psychosocial support.

 

 

FAKE RICE

 

Foreign entrepreneurs are selling a fake version of Madan Gousse Rice

AyiboPost.com

“Madan Gougous” rice inundate the Haitian market. Officials in charge of cultivation matters at the Ministry of Agriculture say they think the “Madan Gougous” rice variety may still exist, while according to multiple farmers interviewed, it has long disappeared from the country.

Haiti has not produced “Madan Gougous” rice since the 1990s, according to the testimony of several large farmers. Due to the international reputation of this rice, foreign countries continue to use its name. Some of this fake “Madan Gougous” rice landed in Haiti.

“There was a disease called black straw that ravaged “Madan Gougous” and “Lakrèt” rice fields”. Even the “Lakrèt” rice was hard to find for a time. It is because of this disease that the farmers came up with the TCS rice, but the disease did not spread throughout the whole Artibonite plains. “There were “Madan Gougous” rice fields elsewhere, which is why I think it may still exist”. But after Hurricane George in 1998, Haiti lost the “Madan Gougous” rice variety.

AYISYEN MELE

By Garry Pierre-Pierre | The Conversation

Haitian Times

Growing up in Haiti, I remember that when we left home for school, or went elsewhere, no one had a key. Only the help of the house kept watch. Doors were left wide open during the day, to be locked up only when we went to bed at night. For most people at the time, you locked your doors out of a sense of routine, not out of fear for your safety.

But back in the late 60’s and early 70’s, Port-au-Prince was a sleepy, mostly middle-class city. Bel Air, Turgeau, Carrefour Feuilles and other neighborhoods were artist colonies where novelists mingled with sculptors and teachers. Downtown was largely left to commerce and was a hub of transport. 

Petion-ville was an ex-burb and Delmas was a mostly wooded area. 

We’ve come a long way since those tranquil days, when the worry was more about Papa Doc goons, the Tonton Macoutes. But at that time, the rules  were clear. Stay away from politics and don’t speak ill of the wise old doctor turned dictator, and you were fine. 

The other fear we harbored was the mythical loup garou, known in Vodou lore to be a spirit that can cast spells on you or “eat” bad children. 

Today, we find ourselves talking about internally displaced people fleeing Bel Air, which is caught up in fratricidal gang warfare. How did we get here? The decline of Port-au-Prince, once a wondrous Caribbean city where foreign diplomats sent their children to the public schools for quality education started during that idyllic period I recall.

The musicians, functionaries, teachers, and the other professionals began a slow migration out of the city and the country. Old neighbors reunited on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and in Brooklyn, New Jersey and Montreal. The Canadian government, looking to increase its ranks of French speakers, offered professionals legal status and in many cases, a job equal to what they were doing in Haiti. 

My parents were part of that early exodus. I would join them in 1975 — June 24 to be exact. It was one of those searing moments in a person’s life, even at that tender young age. I was ambiguous about coming to America. I missed my friends and the soccer matches and the table tennis tournaments.