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Showing posts with label Haitian refugees. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Haitian refugees. Show all posts

Sunday, April 30, 2023

Stop deporting Haitians to Haiti - says UN

The UN independent human rights experts requested States parties in the Americas to investigate all allegations of excessive use of force, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, and racial profiling against Haitians


The experts also called for measures to prevent and combat xenophobic and racist violence and incitement to racial hatred against people of Haitian origin, and to publicly condemn racist hate speech, including those uttered by public figures and politicians


Violations and abuses against Haitians in The Americas
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) sounded the alarm after 36,000 people of Haitian origin were deported during the first three months of the year, according to figures from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).  Some 90 per cent were deported from the Dominican Republic.

Violations and abuses against Haitians

The experts expressed concern over collective expulsions which did not take into consideration individual circumstances and needs.

They also highlighted alleged human rights violations and abuses against Haitians on the move along migration routes, at borders and in detention centres in the Americas region, “as a result of strict migration control, the militarization of borders, systematic immigration detention policies and the obstacles to international protection” in some countries.

Such obstacles exposed these vulnerable migrants to “killings, disappearances, acts of sexual and gender-based violence, and trafficking by criminal networks”, the Committee warned.

Demanding protection for Haitian refugees

Caribbean countries, such as the Bahamas as well as the Turks and Caicos Islands, have announced measures against undocumented Haitian migrants.  The United States in January also made public new border policies to permit fast-tracked expulsions to Mexico of Haitian migrants and others, crossing the southern border of the US without documentation.

Considering the desperate situation in Haiti, which does not currently allow for the safe and dignified return of Haitians to the country, as pointed out by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Committee called for an end to the collective expulsions of Haitians on the move.

It also said assessments of each individual case needed to be carried out, to identify protection needs in accordance with international refugee and human rights law, with particular attention to the most vulnerable groups.

Combatting racism and xenophobia

The independent human rights experts requested States parties in the Americas to investigate all allegations of excessive use of force, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, and racial profiling against Haitians.

They also demanded protection of refugees against other allegations of human rights violations and abuses committed by both State and non-state actors; including at borders, migrant detention centres and along migration routes, to punish those responsible and to provide rehabilitation and reparations to victims or their families.

The experts also called for measures to prevent and combat xenophobic and racist violence and incitement to racial hatred against people of Haitian origin, and to publicly condemn racist hate speech, including those uttered by public figures and politicians.

Independent human rights experts are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, in Geneva.  They are mandated to monitor and report on specific thematic issues or country situations.  They are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work.


Source

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

One year since the earthquake in Haiti

Bill Van Auken


Today marks the first anniversary of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that devastated the impoverished Caribbean nation of Haiti, leaving a quarter of a million of its people dead, more than 300,000 injured, and approximately a million and a half homeless.

One year after this natural disaster, the horrors facing Haiti’s population have only deepened, with a cholera epidemic claiming thousands of lives and a million left stranded in squalid tent camps.

This festering crisis underscores the social and political sources of the suffering inflicted upon Haiti’s working class and oppressed masses. That such conditions prevail virtually on the doorstep of the United States, which concentrates the greatest share of the world’s wealth, constitutes a crime of world historic proportions and an indictment of the profit system.

Those familiar with the conditions on the ground in Haiti provide an appalling account of the indifference and neglect of American and world imperialism toward the country’s people.

“The mountains of rubble still exist; the plight of the victims without any sign of acceptable temporary shelter is worsening the conditions for the spread of cholera, and the threat of new epidemics becomes more frightening with each passing day,” said former Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, the Caribbean community’s special representative to Haiti. “In short, there has been no abatement of the trauma and misery which the Haitian populace has suffered.”

Roland Van Hauwermeiren, country director for the NGO Oxfam in Haiti, described 2010 as “a year of indecision” that had “put Haiti’s recovery on hold.” He added, “Nearly one million people are still living in tents or under tarpaulins and hundreds of thousands of others who are living in the city’s ruins still do not know when they will be able to return home.”

Of the approximately one million people living in makeshift tents or under tarps in the crowded camps of Port-au-Prince, more than half are children.

The Haitian capital remains buried in rubble. It is estimated that less than 5 percent of the debris has been cleared by Haitian workers attacking the mountains of fallen concrete and twisted metal with shovels and their bare hands. Heavy equipment has not been present in any significant amount since the withdrawal of the US military more than six months ago.

At its height, the US deployed some 22,000 soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen in Haiti, seizing unilateral control of the country’s main airport, port facilities and other strategic facilities. The US military’s priority was to secure the country against the threat of popular upheaval and to deploy a Coast Guard and naval force to prevent Haitian refugees from making their way to the US.

To those ends, in the critical first weeks after the earthquake when aid was most needed to prevent loss of life and limb for the hundreds of thousands of injured, the Pentagon repeatedly turned away planes carrying medial aid and personnel in order to keep runways free for US military assets.

Within just 11 days of the earthquake, the US-backed Haitian government of President Rene Preval declared the search and rescue operation over—with only 132 people having been pulled alive from the rubble. Had an adequate response been organized, many more could have been saved. Decisions were taken in Washington based not on humanitarian considerations, but rather on the cold calculus of national interests and profits. Undoubtedly, this included the calculation that rescuing injured Haitians would only create a further drain on resources.

In contrast, the spontaneous response of the people of the United States and the entire world was one of solidarity with the suffering Haitian masses. An unprecedented outpouring of support yielded $1.3 billion in contributions from the US alone, the vast majority of it coming from ordinary working people.

One year later, however, just 38 percent of those funds have actually been spent to aid in the recovery and rebuilding of Haiti, according to a survey by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. In Haiti, there are widespread suspicions that vast amounts of money have been diverted into the coffers of NGOs and aid organizations.

Even worse is the response of governments. At a donors’ conference convened in March of last year, more than $5.3 billion was pledged. Of that, only $824 million has been delivered. Worst of all is the response of Washington, which pledged $1.15 billion for 2010, only to subsequently announce that it was postponing payment of virtually the entire pledge until 2011.

Last July, former US President Bill Clinton, who serves as the Obama administration’s envoy to Haiti, the UN’s special envoy to the country and the co-chair together with Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), expressed frustration over the slow pace of the payments and promised to pressure donors to make good on their promises. Apparently he has had little success in this effort, including with his own wife, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. He has repeatedly made it clear that the only acceptable path to Haiti’s reconstruction lies through private investment and the assurance of profitable conditions—based largely on starvation wages--for US-based banks and transnationals.

On top of the earthquake’s devastation has come an epidemic of cholera, which has already claimed 3,600 lives and is expected to infect at least 400,000 people. Public health experts acknowledge that the spread of the disease has still not peaked, yet the terrible toll of this disease merits barely a mention in the US media.

The Obama administration’s indifference to Haitian life has been underscored by the decision to resume deportations to the country, with 350 Haitians slated to be sent back this month. With many of these people destined for incarceration in Haitian jails, which are rampant with cholera, the action amounts to a death sentence.

The epidemic is not a product of the earthquake, but rather, like the extraordinarily high death toll from the quake itself, the outcome of grinding poverty and backwardness resulting from the domination of Haiti by imperialism and, in particular, the role played by the US government and American banks and corporations over the past century.

Haiti is by far the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Even before the earthquake, less than half of the urban population and less than a fifth of those in rural areas had access to sanitation, leaving the country vulnerable to cholera. Prior to the quake, nearly three quarters of the Haitian populace was living on less than $2 a day, while barely 20 percent had jobs in the formal economy and 86 percent of urban dwellers were housed in slums.

These conditions are inextricably bound up with an oppressive political and social order that was forged through the US military occupation from 1915 to 1934, the savage 30-year dictatorship of the US-backed Duvalier dynasty, and the subsequent enforcement of so-called "liberal free market" policies by Washington and the International Monetary Fund.

The growing frustration and anger of the Haitian people over the criminal policies of Washington and the country’s narrow and corrupt financial elite have erupted repeatedly in mass resistance in recent months, first against the United Nations troops over the spread of cholera and then in response to the fraudulent November 28 election.

This popular resistance deserves the full support of working people in the US and internationally. The demand must be raised for immediate and massive aid to Haiti.

But aiding the people of Haiti and rebuilding the country on the basis of human needs rather than the interests of the native elite and the foreign banks and corporations can be achieved only by uniting the working class in Haiti, the US and throughout the hemisphere in a common fight for the socialist transformation of society.

12 January 2011

wsws

Monday, September 20, 2010

Haiti needs a democratic revolution not an election!

By Jean H Charles:


“After Rwanda and Yugoslavia, Haiti seems to be the next theater of a major mischief by some international institutions.”

I must state at the outset that I am not advocating nor promoting neither a violent nor an armed revolution. I am talking about a democratic revolution in the minds and the spirit of the people, a revamping of the institutions and a new covenant of the government to usher in a true process of democracy. Once this revolution is on the way, Haiti can then proceed with a free and fair election.

Jean H Charles MSW, JD is Executive Director of AINDOH Inc a non profit organization dedicated to building a kinder and gentle Caribbean zone for all. He can be reached at: jeanhcharles@aol.comThe country needs a hiatus of three to five years of reconstruction, free of politicking, to heal the nation and set the country on the road of reconciliation and nation building. The present regime can be compared to a piece of wood filled with termites in a piece of furniture. To repair the furniture one needs to cut and throw away the damaged wood before affixing a new piece. Otherwise the damage part will eventually infect the entire furniture, including the new piece.

It was Alexis de Tocqueville who coined the concept of democratic revolution, while speaking of the birth of the United States. Akin to South Africa before Mandela, Haiti must transform itself from a de facto apartheid country to a state where the sense of appurtenance is the rule. It needs now a democratic revolution not an election.

I have this week visited a rural community named Mazere on the road from Grand River to Bahon. I have in mind these pictures that depict the extent of the misery, the magnitude of the squalid conditions as well as the inequality that 85% of the population of Haiti is forced to live under.

The public school, the only state presence of the area is located across the river. There is no bridge for easy access. I asked the kids how they get to school, one of the mothers interjected to let me know they carry the younger ones across the river, which sometimes destroys everything in its way, including an irrigation dam recently built.

Inquiring further with the adults, I asked them what their most pressing needs are. They told me that the government used to protect the land with rock formation on the hills to prevent avalanches during the rainy season. This operation has not been done for the past decades. We have now huge amount of water sitting for months in the fields destroying our produce.

It has been decades that the Haitian government has been a predatory entity preying on its people instead of providing services and support to help its citizens to enjoy the pursuit of happiness.

As such the people of Haiti educated or otherwise are waiting for the Blanc (the white man) to bring about deliverance. On the political scene, the question is not what is the agenda of the candidates, it is rather who has the blessing of Barack Obama for the presidency of Haiti? The sense of civics patriotism and leadership has been dimished by the last sixty years of corrupt governance.

The entire population is a crowd in transit. The rural world with no services from the government is in transit towards the small cities. The small towns have become ghost entities with the citizens in transit towards the larger cities, their citizens are in transit towards the capital and there the dream is to find an American visa or take a leaky boat towards Florida or the Bahamas.

Building up the sense of nation has not been a governmental priority or a United Nations foreign intervention initiative. MINUSTHA (the UN force) is substituting itself as the Haitian army without assuming the defense of the country. Inequality and injustice is queen, extorting the notion of appurtenance from and for each other. The sense of noblesse oblige of the past that kept the poor ones afloat has been substituted by the doctrine of “rock in the water against rock in the sun” or class warfare by Aristide. The Preval regime has introduced the concept of “swim to the shores at your own risk” leaving everyone to fend for themselves... It has left no lifeline of security for the majority of the population which is going into a free fall abyss.

In an article this week in the Miami Herald, Jacqueline Charles depicted the fetid situation where the Haitian refugees are living under in the Corail camp. “What was supposed to be the model for a new Haiti looks like the old one, a menacing slum.” Jean Christophe Adrian the United Nations Human Settlements Program added “the international community has a tremendous responsibility for creating this monster.”

Haiti, after Rwanda and Yugoslavia, could be the scene of a major catastrophe orchestrated by a non sensitive government with the connivance of major international institutions. I was in Washington last June at the OAS mansion at a conference on Haiti organized by CARICOM. In a conversation with Mr Colin Granderson, the Haiti resident, I shared my intention of running in the next election. His answer: how much money do you have, instead of what is your vision for Haiti? Sounds like “how many regiments do you have at your disposal?”

The gang of three -- the UN, the OAS and CARICOM -- in its dealing with Haiti is using according to Emil Vlajky in the wretched of the modernity, the absolute rationality which is anti-human. The human rationality with its sense of ethics is not in favor. The poor, the wretched, the refugees of the catastrophe will continue to live with unkept promises. While the entire country is decrying the upcoming election as a masquerade with the president holding all the marbles, the General Secretary of OAS characterize the process as “credible”. The Haiti of the Duvalier’s, the Aristide’s and the Preval’s culture is a gangrene that must be extirpated to create a modern nation sensitive to the needs of its people.

Any policy short of this radical intervention is unfriendly to the gallant people of Haiti that deserve a break from a life of abject misery.

September 20, 2010

caribbeannewsnow