A round-up of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to China
Continue reading...Category Archives: Haiti
Haiti has no Covid vaccine doses as violence looms larger than pandemic
- Caribbean republic’s 11m people have yet to receive a single jab
- Doses due to arrive in May but delays expected
Haiti does not have a single vaccine to offer its more than 11 million people over a year after the pandemic began, raising concerns among health experts that the wellbeing of Haitians is being pushed aside as violence and political instability across the country deepen.
So far, Haiti is slated to receive only 756,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine through a United Nations program aimed at ensuring the neediest countries get Covid-19 shots. The free doses were scheduled to arrive in May at the latest, but delays are expected because Haiti missed a deadline and the key Indian manufacturer is now prioritizing an increase in domestic demand.
Continue reading...Haiti deportations soar as Biden administration deploys Trump-era health order
There have been more ‘Title 42’ expulsions in the space of a few weeks than during an entire year of Trump’s administration, report says
The Biden administration has so far deported more Haitians in a few weeks than the Trump administration did in a whole year, with the use of a highly controversial Trump-era public health order denying asylum seekers basic legal rights, according to a new report.
The report, The Invisible Wall, due to be published on Thursday by a coalition of immigrant rights groups, focuses on Title 42, part of the 1944 Public Health Service Act invoked a year ago by the Trump administration as grounds for summary expulsion of migrants because of the supposed health risk they posed during the Covid pandemic.
Continue reading...Prison director and gang leader among 25 killed in Haitian jailbreak
Notorious gangster Arnel Joseph shot dead at police checkpoint after more than 400 inmates escape in country’s biggest breakout for 10 years
More than 400 inmates have escaped and 25 people have died in a prison breakout in Haiti, authorities say, making it the country’s largest and deadliest one in a decade. A prison director and a powerful gang leader were among those killed.
The breakout at Croix-des-Bouquets prison on the outskirts of the capital Port-au-Prince on Thursday was believed to be an attempt to free gang leader Arnel Joseph, who had been Haiti’s most wanted fugitive until his 2019 arrest on charges including rape, kidnapping and murder.
Continue reading...Oxfam GB released from supervision by watchdog after Haiti scandal reforms
Charity made changes after 2019 earthquake response report found allegations of child sexual misconduct by staff weren’t properly investigated
Oxfam will no longer be subject to strict supervision by the charity watchdog following “significant” reforms prompted by a 2019 report into conduct by its staff after the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
The Charity Commission for England and Wales found allegations that staff working in disaster zones sexually abused children were not fully disclosed, with the watchdog also citing a “culture of poor behaviour” among Oxfam GB staff sent to help victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
Continue reading...Outcry as more than 20 babies and children deported by US to Haiti
Ice accused of sending ‘defenseless babies into the burning house’ as deportations of 72 carried out in apparent breach of Biden order
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) deported at least 72 people to Haiti on Monday, including a two-month-old baby and 21 other children, in an apparent flagrant breach of the Biden administration’s orders only to remove suspected terrorists and potentially dangerous convicted felons.
The children were deported to Haiti on Monday on two flights chartered by Ice from Laredo, Texas to the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince. The removals sent vulnerable infants back to Haiti as it is being roiled by major political unrest.
Continue reading...US steps up deportation of Haitians ahead of election, raising Covid fears
The Trump administration justifies the expulsions under a public health law but critics say they risk spreading coronavirus in the Caribbean nation
US immigration authorities have radically stepped up deportation flights to Haiti in the weeks before the election, raising concerns over returned migrants’ safety on their return home and the risks of spreading coronavirus in the impoverished Caribbean state.
Continue reading...Haiti FA president accused of sexually abusing young female players
- Claims of abuse by Yves Jean-Bart at national centre
- Jean-Bart denies all allegations made against him
The president of the Haitian football federation has been accused of sexually abusing young female footballers at the country’s national training centre.
Yves Jean-Bart, known as “Dadou”, the president of the Fédération Haïtienne De Football (FHF) since 2000, denies accusations that he coerced several players at the Centre Technique National in Croix-des-Bouquets into having sex. The alleged incidents are understood to have taken place within the last five years.
Continue reading...‘Our heritage is abandoned’: burning of Haitian church fuels anger at politicians
Damage to part of Unesco world heritage site is emblematic of uncaring government, critics say
Cultural leaders in Haiti have described the gutting by fire of a celebrated 200-year-old church as an avoidable tragedy that highlights the fragility of the Caribbean nation’s patrimony – and the need to preserve its historical treasures.
The Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception church in the town of Milot is part of a Unesco world heritage site that includes the ruins of the Sans Souci palace and the Citadelle Laferrière, an imposing fort that looms over Haiti’s northern plains.
Continue reading...The US military would be superb at fighting coronavirus. Let’s use it | Ann Lee and Sean Penn
After the 2010 Haitian earthquake, we saw the US military in action as a humanitarian force. They can do this
In 2010, a devastating earthquake hit Haiti. In three minutes it killed more than 200,000 people and displaced two million more.
Our humanitarian aid organization, the Community Organized Relief Effort (CORE), was on the ground in Haiti. In Haiti – as well as on the front lines of other disasters, like Hurricane Florence in North Carolina and Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas just a few months ago – we saw how dangerous inaction and political paralysis can be, and how rapid mobilization saves lives. In a crisis, every minute – every second – counts.
Continue reading...‘It became part of life’: how Haiti curbed cholera
When cholera broke out just months after a devastating earthquake, Haiti’s health system was pushed to the brink. The extraordinary rearguard action that followed offers an object lesson in dealing with a public health crisis
Marie Millande Tulmé was at work in a prison when she received a call confirming her fears: the gruesome sickness spreading rapidly across her nation was indeed cholera.
The head nurse for Haiti’s Central Plateau region at the time, Tulmé was investigating rumours that prisoners were getting violently ill and that two had died. “I thought: ‘Haiti will perish,’” she says, recalling her reaction when Haiti’s national laboratory phoned with the news. “Because I knew that cholera was grave. That it spreads easily.”
Continue reading...Haiti cancels carnival after gun battle between police and soldiers
- Soldier died of his wounds after gunfight
- Authorities warned of risk of ‘bloodbath’
Fears are growing over an increasingly febrile security situation in Haiti after police and soldiers fought a deadly gun battle which lasted for hours outside the country’s presidential palace.
The exchange of gunfire on Sunday shattered the opening of Haiti’s annual carnival as police and soldiers exchanged volleys of gunfire sending bystanders diving for cover.
Continue reading...Haiti: 15 children die in fire at orphanage run by US Christian group
- Two burned to death and 13 died in hospital due to asphyxiation
- Facility was run by US Christian group
Fifteen children have died after a fire swept through an orphanage in Haiti run by a US Christian group, triggering renewed controversy over the proliferation of non-registered orphanages in the poorest nation in the Americas.
Two children burned to death when fire broke out at the orphanage of the Church of Bible Understanding on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince on Thursday night. Thirteen others died in hospital due to asphyxiation.
Continue reading...2019: year of unrest in the Americas – in pictures
Wave of protests and violence against austerity measures and political corruption swept Bolivia, Venezuela, Chile and other Latin American countries
Continue reading...Sick of corruption, Haiti looks back to its revolutionary hero for hope
As conflict racks the nation and anger at a political scandal grows, Haitians are rallying to the country’s founding father more than 200 years after his assassination
On the walls across Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, a stencilled image can be found. Depicting a figure in a Napoleonic-era cocked hat and military frock coat, it first emerged amid the country’s long-running political and security crisis that began last year.
The man portrayed is Jean-Jacques Dessalines – Emperor Jacques I of Haiti – the rebel general who defeated French forces at the battle of Vertières to found the state of Haiti in 1804. And it is not only in graffiti that Dessalines’s two centuries-old legacy has been seen in the recent months of political turmoil that has gripped the country.
Continue reading...Killers lurk in the shadows as Haiti chaos takes a sinister turn
Mired in poverty, corruption and violent unrest, Haiti faces a fresh problem in the form of paid gunmen out to settle scores
At the barricaded junction next to the international airport in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, protesters burn tyres and block the road with stones and a large truck.
Cars and commercial vehicles that approach turn back or risk being stoned, while pedestrians wade on through the smoke.
Continue reading...Why people are protesting in Haiti – video report
Weeks of widespread protest have paralysed parts of Haiti. Demonstrators are calling for the country's president, Jovenel Moïse, to resign from office, but despite violence and charges of corruption he has so far refused to stand down
- An explosion of protest, a howl of rage – but not a Latin American spring
- Haiti protesters clash with police hours after journalist shot dead
An explosion of protest, a howl of rage – but not a Latin American spring
From Chile to Ecuador and Bolivia to Haiti police and protesters are clashing on the streets, but what are the common threads and will they lead to change?
Tanks on the streets in Chile. Barricades and bloodshed in Bolivia. Weeks of unrest that have pushed Haiti to the brink and forced Ecuador’s president to relocate his government.
“This is a social revolution,” said Andrea Lyn, a 61-year-old actor who took to the streets of Santiago this week. “It is us saying: ‘No more’.”
Continue reading...Haiti protesters clash with police hours after journalist shot dead
Killing of Néhémie Joseph throws fresh fuel on crisis as protesters demand Jovenel Moïse’s resignation
Haitian protesters have clashed with police in the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, hours after a journalist who had covered previous anti-government protests was found shot to death in his car.
The killing of Néhémie Joseph, a reporter with Radio Méga, has thrown fresh fuel on the mounting crisis in Haiti that has seen political turmoil in the impoverished Caribbean island.
Continue reading...Haiti and the failed promise of US aid
After an earthquake struck in 2010, the US pledged to help rebuild the Caribbean country. A decade later, nothing better symbolises the failure of these efforts than the story of a new port that was promised, but never built. By Jacob Kushner
When Bill and Hillary Clinton travelled to the Caribbean nation of Haiti as newlyweds in 1975, they were enchanted. Bill had recently lost a race for Congress back home in Arkansas, but by the time they returned to the US, he had set his mind to running for Arkansas state attorney general, a decision which would put him on the path to the White House. “We have had a deep connection to and with Haiti ever since,” Hillary later said.
Over the next four decades, the Clintons became increasingly involved in Haiti, working to reshape the country in profound ways. As US president in the 1990s, Bill lobbied for sweeping changes to Haiti’s agricultural sector that significantly increased the country’s dependence on American food crops. In 1994, three years after a military coup in Haiti, Bill ordered a US invasion that overthrew the junta and restored the country’s democratically elected president to power. Fifteen years later, Bill was appointed United Nations’ special envoy to Haiti, tasked with helping the country to develop its private sector and invigorate its economy. By 2010, the Clintons were two of Haiti’s largest benefactors. Their personal philanthropic fund, The Clinton Foundation, had 34 projects in the country, focused on things such as creating jobs.
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