Canadians Working with NGOs in Haiti

26 January 2010


Families and Friends of ATHABASKAN


A FEW WORDS FROM OFF THE COAST OF HAITI

Good day to you all. As I pen these words we have many of the crew ashore providing aid and assistance to the people of Haiti. I want to assure you that the Canadian Forces, indeed all of Canada, are pitching in together to provide some relief to the Haitians in their time of need. I am sure that all of you are aware of these efforts from the news reports so I will confine myself to the spectacular contributions of your loved ones here in ATH. We are currently patrolling about 3-5 miles off the coast of a town called Leogane; it is west of the capital city of Port au Prince. It is from here that we send, on average, about 50 people ashore each day to provide humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. I will provide more details on what we are doing a little further on.

Leogane is one of the worst hit areas and is one of the focal efforts of Canadian humanitarian assistance. Leogane was very close to the epi-centre of the earthquake and has suffered unbelievable destruction. I would assess (please note that I am not a structural engineer and this is a personal observation) that up to 90 percent of the buildings have been destroyed. Those that remain are largely single level homes that were either very well built or had a “flexible” structure. Two story homes generally “pancaked”: the first floor gave way, unable to take the load of the second floor during the shaking. I would say that most of the 130,000 (approximately) residents of the city are now homeless and have moved to tent cities or are living in their yards and streets. It is a very sobering sight. Because of the many aftershocks, some of which would qualify as earthquakes themselves, the people are reluctant to move back into their homes that have received less damage. I don’t blame them and in the same situation would do the same thing. Water has been scarce, food limited and medical care facilities were destroyed. We are helping with temporary shelter, water and medical support. Several Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have spooled up to provide medical, food/water and shelter relief. The Canadian sailors, soldiers and airmen are helping these NGOs as much as possible.

ATHABASKAN has done, and is doing, a fantastic job down here and I am, as you are, very proud of our accomplishments. Although some times it seems so little in an area where the need is so great, I am glad that we are here. On the 13th of Jan we all came to work in Halifax thinking that the ship was in a work period and that shoveling snow was our greatest concern. A short 36 hours later we were at sea heading south at speed. I cannot thank you enough for your support to make this happen, especially those families of sailors from other ships that joined ATH to fill critical shortages. Not knowing exactly what the situation would be like, we planned for the worst, training people and designing humanitarian assistance teams on the way. On that first day when we went ashore it was clear that we had prepared well. I am relieved that we did not have to deal with the deceased victims of the tragedy as for the most part, that task had been completed. We were able to set our minds and efforts to providing help, comfort and medical care to the survivors.

One of the first jobs that we took on was the set-up of the Canadian Medical Assistance Team camp. Located close to the centre of Leogane, this team of doctors from Canada has treated well over a thousand of Haitians since we arrived. In addition to setting up the facility itself, we helped process patients using our casualty clearing teams; carried patients to and from the treatment tents; and, our medical teams – Doctor, Physicians Assistant and Medical Assistants - have been treating patients alongside the CMAT doctors. CMAT estimates that with our help they are able to treat twice the number of patients that would normally be possible. There have been all manner of operations done in this tent facility from setting of fractures to amputations. Our sailors, especially those who speak French, have proved invaluable in providing comfort and care to patients. On a brighter note, as has been in the press over the last day or two, two ATHABs helped bring a newborn into the world. An excerpt from our daily report:

A Babies Tale (23 Jan 10) 
Two members of ATH assisted in the delivery of a baby while working with CMAT. The event took place in a makeshift surgical tent on an army cot in what used to be school playground. OS Jean-Francois Cloutier-Joly was on the field translating when someone asked him for help delivering the child. Lt(N) Kate Wyand was asked to provide assistance to the doctor and provide some privacy for the young mother to be. Although there were complications, the mother gave birth to a healthy baby boy. OS Cloutier-Joly, a Haitian orphan himself, held this tiny miracle in his arms and fed him sugar water. Lt(N) Wyand asked a young Haitian translator if he knew the name of the newborn. He informed her that Haitians typically wait seven days before naming a baby in case the child does not survive. Lt(N) Wyand’s words: “a sobering response and a quick reminder of where we are.”

We have also been providing security to the CMAT camp during the day. Let me assure you that the Haitian people have been very orderly and calm throughout this tragedy. Line-ups for treatment have been long and they have been patient and brave, considering the seriousness of some of the injuries. The need for security has not as yet been called for but is a reasonable precaution on my part to ensure the safety of our personnel should things change.

We are working with two orphanages to help them get back on their feet. The first one cares for about 45 kids and the couple in charge is a husband and wife - she is Canadian from Quebec City and he from California. They have a reasonable supply of food having just received a shipment from the States and we are giving them a steady supply of clean fresh water until their purification system is repaired. We built a shelter for the kids and temporary toilet facilities. Their house is still standing but has significant cracks that make it dangerous, especially with the aftershocks. They were lucky in that everyone survived the earthquake but it broke my heart to see those kids and I don’t mind saying that I shed a tear watching our sailors playing with them amid the destruction that was their home. We just took on a second orphanage with 80 kids and we are working with Crisis International to provide some temporary shelter. Our sailors are working in the heat to build a wooden frame and tarp building that will get the kids off the ground and out of the brutal heat. Crisis International is providing the materials and food and water to this mission.

We have also gone out into the community to seek areas in which we can help – we have fixed solar panels, got generators running and restored water purification systems. Sailors have great skills that they have learned both through the Navy and from their hobbies and pastimes. All are in demand and being put to good use.

One of the biggest assets that we have is the helicopter. It has flown everyday, landing in airports, clearings and farmers fields to move people and materials where they are most needed. We moved most of the DART medical equipment from the capital to a neighboring city, many soldiers to Leogane, and loads of supplies all over the region. We even flew two critically injured people to the US hospital ship, Comfort, who is operating a floating hospital just offshore. The aircrew is flying 8 -10 hours a day and the aircraft never goes anywhere empty. The technicians and landing crew are working in 30 to 40 degree weather to make this happen!

Here onboard, those who are not ashore are working double time to support the teams and keep the ship running. I estimate that it takes just as many people to launch and load the boats as go ashore. The engineering spaces have been as hot as 50 degrees and guys have been down there keeping our water making at 100 percent when the tools are too hot to hold. Everyone is doing their part. I am trying to make sure that over the period that while we are here helping Haitians, everyone who wants to get ashore to help will have that opportunity.

I know that this has been a long letter, but I wanted to let you know personally what a great job your loved ones are doing here. The pride that I feel for their accomplishments is immeasurable and moves me greatly. We were one of the first military organizations to get ashore and make an immediate improvement in the conditions ashore. While we cannot build them new homes, we can help with medical care, water and temporary shelter. I have taken the liberty of modifying the ATHABASKAN motto: We Fight (and Help) as One.

Peter Crain
Commander
Commanding Officer
HMCS ATHABASKAN

“We Fight (and Help) As One”

Hello Colleagues,


Flavia Cherry from St. Lucia is now in Haiti. Sharing some emails from her:

2010-01-30
"I have been here in Haiti for a few days now and what I find most striking, is not only the resilience of the people, but the extent of volunteerism which is evident in every single camp and in every recovery effort at building and rescue.

"There are thousands of young Haitian men who speak English and they show up at the make-shift hospitals every single morning from 6am till late at night as volunteer translators between the people and the international medical personnel and relief workers. I have never seen anything like this! One Canadian volunteer introduced me to three young men who came across the boarder from the DR as soon as they heard of the earthquake. They are born of a mother from the DR and Haitian fathers, so they came over to look for their fathers. They were drawn together by grief when they each learned that their fathers had passed away and those three young men decided to stay in Haiti to assist in the camps. When the Canadian volunteer introduced me to those three young men, I had to hold back the tears. Like everyone else, they are living in tents and can barely find something to eat, but they stayed to help their Haitian people.

"What you really do not see, is Haitians helping Haitians and the extent to which the people have organized themselves. Civil Society has set up huge signs in areas which read in English "Please, Help us Here. Those signs point to the areas where the need is greatest. But what you do not see on TV, is the extent to which aid efforts are being mishandled by those international people who think they know everything. What you do not see on TV is the thousands of military officers heavily armed, standing, milling around doing nothing when there is absolutely no need for this kind of military presence. Just think of what it must take to house, feed, pay and care for each of those heavily armed military officers. Compare this to the women and children living under tents made of bedsheets, who are yet to see any aid efforts reaching them.

Regards,

Flavia"
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Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2010
I have met with doctors, women, patients, women and children who need help etc.  I am now at the ofice of SOFA (one of the women's organisations).  I am starving but no supermarkets are open.  It does not  even make sense to have money now, when there is no place to buy food.  But my spirits are up and I am surviving.  The determination of the Haitians is all i n eed for inspiration.


Regards,

Flavia
***************************************************

Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2010

Hi Joyce, friends:

I am now in Haiti - incredible!  The situationis so absolutely unlivable, terrible.  Will give an update when i can.

Regards,

Flavia
****************************************

Sent: Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Hi ROK:

We had meetings all day yesterday and for half a day today and listened intently to reports from the women of Haiti who came.  It is really incredible to listen to the stories of hope, survival, despair and pain! I am leaving tonight at 11:30pm.  Can you please send me Jenny´s number? Send me the gentleman´s name and number again.

We have been successful in getting a women´s media team to come to Haiti with us and they will be broadcasting live from Haiti. They will be interviewing me in creole. We had meetings with the media licensing authority here and they have agreed to assist us in setting up a radio station in Haiti, which will be run by the women. It is incredible what can be done with international solidarity.

I was able to get supplies in and we have loaded two buses which will take them into Haiti. Buses leave the border at 6am, 9am and 2pm.

Things are happening very quickly here. I am not sure about internet access when I get into Haiti, but I will come back here in the DR for a day or two before I get home. I hope the supplies leave Barbados quickly because people are really desperate in Haiti.

Regards,

Flavia

Caricom's false start

CCN senior journalist Andy Johnson Sunday, January 24th 2010

PHOTO: New home: Refugees from earthquake-ravaged Haiti unload from a military transport plane Friday afternoon, at Orlando-Sanford International Airport, in Sanford, Florida, USA. -Photo: AP CCN senior journalist Andy Johnson spent five days last week in Haiti, embedded with a contingent of the members of the Jamaica Defence Force. This is the first part of a series on his journey into Haiti. Port-au-prince, Saturday VELDIA V Coleby, is the Second Secretary and Vice Consul at the Bahamas Embassy in Haiti. The Bahamas is one of a few of the Member States of Caricom with diplomatic missions resident in Haiti. Barbados is another one of those few. At dusk on Friday, Ms Coleby was not clear about what was the Caribbean Community’s effective response to the latest tragedy in Haiti caused by the earthquake on January 12, which registered 7.0 on the Richter scale. She was aware, however, that her embassy was supposed to have been used as the base for an official Caricom mission to Haiti, ostensibly to undertake its own assessment of the damage and to decide on a co-ordinated regionwide response. No meetings had taken place at the embassy thus far. Ms Coleby was aware, though, that executive director of the Barbados-based Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), Jeremy Collymore, was to arrive in Haiti yesterday. She also understood that the region had decided to undertake a project in Lougane, a town some considerable distance away from the capital. On what basis that decision had been taken, she was also not clear. The story of Caricom and its efforts to join in the international relief efforts in the wake of the earthquake disaster has itself been dismal thus far, mired in a deep, dark atmosphere of lack of co-ordination, and an embarrassing absence of independence. Whereas the Bahamian diplomat confessed to knowing Colin Granderson, she had not seen nor heard from him in the ten days since January 12. A crippling breakdown in most areas of telecommunications inside Haiti had made contact near impossible for most people operating in the middle of the earthquake-induced crisis. Granderson, a Trinidadian diplomat who is a deputy Secretary General of Caricom, had twice endeavoured to make it into Haiti in the wake of the crisis. The first time he was part of a mission which was frustrated by its inability to land. He had planned to make it in from the Dominican Republic after an emergency meeting there on January 18. In the wake of the current crisis, the government of Jamaica rushed a 150-member contingent of the Jamaica Defence Force, to establish what has been described as ’the Caricom footprint’ amid the jungle of international military, disciplined forces, aid workers, humanitarian agencies and non-governmental organisations scampering in. So swift was the action of the Jamaican Government that a portion of those troops was on the ground at Toussaint L’Ouverture International Airport when Jamaica’s Prime Minister Bruce Golding and Opposition Leader Portia Simpson-Miller arrived there in a joint mission on January 14. This was less than 48 hours after the devastating earthquake. The JDF barge had been ordered to sail overnight, the night before, leaving behind hundreds of pounds of vital cargo and equipment for the troops. In the days between January 14 and 22, the Jamaican contingent representing the Caribbean, has had to suffer, silently, the indignity, frustration and the embarrassment arising from its total dependence on a foreign ’partner’. The Canadian Defence Force has been the agency moving people, supplies and equipment between Kingston and Port-au-Prince. Those operations have been hampered by the decision of the Canadians to place their own needs and requirements entirely above those of the Caribbean’s. For three days last week, Major Jamie Ogilvie, the Commanding Officer of the JDF forces in Haiti, waited for definitive word from the Canadians on the availability of an aircraft, to transport personnel and equipment, as well as the tonnes of relief supplies transported to Kingston from other Caricom destinations, for distribution in Haiti. On Wednesday the aircraft was ’likely to come’. That advisory looked ’more likely’ for Thursday, only to have been called off by mid-morning that day. One of the ’problems’ given was that ’permission to land’ was not forthcoming, because of what was described as an absence of space at the airport tarmac. Resentment was developing over what was being reported as ’the American takeover’ of the operations at the airport. Quite possibly as a result of this, the Canadians decided to move the base of their own operations from Port-au-Prince to the town of Jacqmel, on the other side of Haiti. The Caricom initiative, or what presented itself as such, was suffering considerably.

Comments: Caricom's false start

This just goes to show Caricom has always been third world and will always be		Posted: 2010-01-23 9:59:00 PM
This article just goes to show the Caricom as a whole will always be classified as a third world community which nobody pays attention to until they get their act together.....
False Start		Posted: 2010-01-23 10:01:00 PM
There will always be a false start with Caricom mainly because there really is no unity amongst its members and also amongst the populations of the member states.When Mr. Manning postulates some ideas what is the natural reaction in T&T.....negativity. Regardless of how many nationals are suffering certain actions must still be taken to develop a brotherhood, but we continue to miss this point yet when tragedy strikes we all want to look good. Sacrifice is what is required to achieve a well oiled an functioning caricom that can rise to the occasion at a moments notice, until we all understand this....Haiti i'm sorry.
Where are our true leaders		Posted: 2010-01-24 00:17:00 AM
The issue is not lack of communication. The issue is what are we going to do about out incompetent leaders. Is it the system of government we inherited from our former colonizers that makes us so incapable and lackadaisical? The Caribbean produces many intelligent people, when will we begin to purge the incompetents and issue in the brilliant minds?

Haiti: The Pain of Jacmel and Rural Areas

There is no longer a major search-and-rescue effort in the town of Jacmel

Haitians show fortitude in face of disaster

By Christian Fraser BBC News, Jacmel

The remote mountain road to Jacmel took us past landslides, around boulders to the southern-most edge of the island.

They had told us the route was impassable, but we made it in three hours. No aid has come this way. Only the rugged vehicles can get through.

Jacmel, a former colonial coffee town, is desperate for help. Perhaps one in three buildings in the old town now lies in ruins - more than 100 years of history, shattered in a few catastrophic seconds.

At the Saint Michele hospital the patients are lying in the garden, baking in the heat, without enough doctors to help. The hospital buildings are too unstable to use.

In the operating theatre, nurses swat flies as the surgeons do what they can. Outside, the injured scream for painkillers.

'Emotional experience'

On the day we visited, an expeditionary team of Canadian doctors had just arrived to lend a hand. But with only basic supplies, they could only perform what resembled battlefield triage.

The aid operation is finally beginning to reach the more remote parts of Haiti

Ted Alexander, an orthopaedic surgeon from Washington DC, was almost in tears when we interviewed him. He has been forced to remove limbs he knows he might have saved.

One patient, Marie Laurie, was trapped by falling masonry and has lost her arm beneath the shoulder.

"When I got here she had been sitting here for days because there was no surgeon available. Her arm had gone black. It was too late to save it," Dr Alexander said.

"It has been such an emotional experience for us all," he added. "I guess I am getting kind of tired... but, there's no place I would rather be. This is where it is happening. This is what you've got to do."

Grateful
There is no longer a major search-and-rescue effort in Jacmel. The Colombians who were here have long gone. It is the smell that signposts the dead. We have not seen anyone here, no-one has come to help us," she says. "We are on our own."

But then she thanked us for coming. She seemed genuinely pleased that the world might be interested. I could not help but wonder why she was so grateful, because help has not come fast enough here.

Extraordinary fortitude
In the past few days, a Canadian team has at last opened up a tiny airfield, a vital second front in the relief operation.

The need is great. The football stadium is a sea of plastic sheeting home to some 6,000 people and growing. Ninety percent of the people in Jacmel are living out in the open, too afraid to sleep indoors.

And yet, despite the fact they are surviving in sweltering conditions, they show some extraordinary fortitude.

But then they have experienced disaster before. Two years ago, this town was hit by an enormous hurricane, from which they had barely recovered.

The UN World Food Programme was distributing basic supplies here within 24 hours of the disaster. They are now feeding 14,000 people and are very well organised.

They can provide rice and beans for people to cook for themselves. They have divided the people into teams, each of them responsible for their own cooking. They choose the cooks, someone to set the fires and someone to serve the rice.

The people of Jacmel experienced another natural disaster in 2008

But the logistics of moving everything into this town by air for the moment prevents them from doing much more.

Hazem el-Zein, the head of the south-east division for the WFP, is working flat out and like everyone else he is frustrated.

I asked him why, after 10 days, the UN had still not mobilised diggers to clear the mountain road and open up the south-eastern corner of Haiti. It would not be a big job.

"We ask the same questions to the people in charge," he responded.

"They promise rapid response. To be honest, I don't know why it hasn't been done. I can only think that their priority must be somewhere else."

We left Jacmel on the US Black Hawk helicopters now flying aid on repeated shuttles from Port-au-Prince. For this town, they are at least a lifeline.

But on the way home - barely a 10-minute journey to the capital - we crossed miles of the most remote and mountainous terrain. How many other people did we fly over who are still cut off without any help at all?

Haiti rescuers pull man alive from rubble after 11 days

Search ends for Survivors
A 24-year-old man has been rescued alive from the rubble of a ruined hotel in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince, 11 days after the earthquake.

It came hours after Haiti's government declared a formal end to the search for survivors.

Onlookers cheered as Wismond Exantus - smiling and apparently in a good condition - emerged on a stretcher from what remains of the Napoli Inn Hotel.

He later told reporters that soft drinks and snacks had kept him going.

"I survived by drinking Coca-Cola and I ate some little tiny things," Mr Exantus, who worked in the hotel's grocery store, told news agency AFP from his bed in a French field hospital.

"Every night I thought about the revelation that I would survive," he was quoted as saying by the Associated Press agency.

Greek, French and US rescue teams were involved in the two-and-a-half-hour operation to bring him out of the remains of the hotel.

A French rescue worker, Lt Col Christophe Renou, described his survival as "a miracle".

He said rescuers - who had been alerted by the man's family - had managed to get water to him while they worked to dig him out.

Lt Col Renou said the man had probably been helped by the fact that the 5-6m (16-20ft) of debris above him was largely wood, rather than concrete.

He said the man had told his rescuers that another four people were trapped with him but that they had stopped moving a couple of days ago.

The BBC's Adam Mynott, in Port-au-Prince, says some Haitians have questioned the announcement that search-and-rescue operations are to end - and the discovery of Mr Exantus will have lent weight to their argument.


Drank his own urine
Speaking before Mr Exantus's rescue, UN spokeswoman Elizabeth Byrs in Geneva said the decision to end the search for survivors was "heartbreaking" but that it had been taken on the advice of experts.

She said most search-and-rescue teams would now be leaving Haiti, although some with heavy lifting equipment might stay to help with the clean-up operation and with aid distribution.

Two people, an 84-year-old woman and a 21-year-old man, were pulled alive from the rubble in Port-au-Prince on Friday.

The woman, who was found in the wreckage of her home seriously injured and severely dehydrated, was taken to the main city hospital for treatment.

The 21-year-old man, Emmannuel Buso, was rescued by an Israeli search team and is said to be in a stable condition.

Speaking from his hospital bed, he described how he had had no food, and had drunk his own urine to keep thirst at bay.

An estimated 1.5 million people were left homeless by the 7.0-magnitude quake, which some have estimated has killed as many as 200,000 people.

AT THE SCENE

By Adam Mynott, Port-au-Prince
It took two-and-a-half hours for the rescue of Wismond Exantus to take place.

It might never happened, had not a member of his family approached a Greek journalist on the street and said they had heard noises coming from underneath a building.

The Greek journalist said he also heard the noises, and approached a Greek rescue team. They then went into operation in combination with French and American teams, and pulled the man free from the rubble.

As he was gingerly put on a stretcher and carried towards a waiting ambulance, Wismond Exantus smiled. He didn't say anything but he was, if not totally unharmed, clearly in a very good state of health.

VIDEO

'Miracle' rescue from under the rubble

Testimony of a Doctor in Haiti

No Security Issues in Haiti



http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/19/doctor_misinformation_and_racism_have_frozen

Haiti Relief Update

The Militarisation of Haitian Relief

Ezili Dantò's Note:

HLLN will not tolerate the maligning of the Haitian people. We urge all in this Network please use some of these points made below to send letters to MSNBC, Foxnews, Reuters, AP, CNN et al. Let them know you won't tolerate the criminalizing of the good people of Haiti. Please send us a letter we could circulate. Many hands make light a heavy load.

*****************************

To the Mr. Champagne

Re: Mr. Champagne's Haitian Lawyers Association letter dated Jan. 19 2010 and copied below and made a part herein

Sir, in your letter dated January 19, 2019 to President Obama, you write, on behalf of the Haitian Lawyers Association, inter alia, that your organization, the Haitian Lawyers Association in Miami, Florida:

"urge the administration to address the rising lawlessness, created by the criminals who have escaped Haiti's broken penitentiary. Not only does it threaten the current humanitarian relief efforts, but it also unacceptably increases the vulnerability of women and children, many of whom now orphans. More should be done to curtail the lawlessness before it becomes uncontrollable."

Point one: As lawyers and advocates who represented many of the detainees who were in the National Penitentiary, we find your statements criminally negligent, odious, irresponsible and not based on any verifiable facts. It is a well-known fact, that most of those detainees you are depicting as "criminals who escaped from the National Penitentiary were poor Haitians from poor neighbourhoods who were summarily rounded up into preventive or indefinite detention during the 2004 Bush/Bicentennial coup d'etat without ever being charged, tried or convicted of any crime. As of 2008, it is reported that there were 8,204 prisoners in Haiti and of this only 1,764 have been convicted of a crime. Of the 8,204, 3900 were warehoused at the National Penitentiary.

The majority awaiting charge and a hearing, some suffering five years of prolonged detention, without ever having been charged, tried or convicted of any crime. These prison population statistics come from the 2008 US State Department Human Rights Report on Haiti and do "not include the large number of persons held in police stations around the country in 'preventive detention' (without a hearing or filed charges)."

For your legal association to call them "criminals" is unethical. For most were indefinitely detained without any charges, hearing or trial and have never been charged with a crime.

Point two: It is reported that when the earthquake hit, the wall of the National Penitentiary collapse on these men, most of whom have suffered tremendous injustice of indefinite incarceration without charge, and whose wives, children, mothers and families lost valuable time they could have had with their love one but for their unjust and illegal incarceration. Their "escape" Mr. Champagne was when concrete fell on their heads!

There is NO EVIDENCE that these men are either criminals or committing crimes right now.

We don't know how injured they were when the Penitentiary collapsed on them or how many perished and for you to repeat, like a parrot, what you are hearing from CNN, Fox news and MSNBS is unprofessional. As a legal organization you are charged with knowing the law and speaking factually. This depiction is objectionable also, especially as most reporters and even the general on the ground have said there is no significant violence amongst the earthquake wounded, thirsty and hungry. This idea of POTENTIAL violence, or as you put it "the rising lawlessness, created by the criminals who have escaped Haiti's broken penitentiary" is defamation and libel against people who are not here to defend themselves but HLLN is and we demand a retraction.

Point three: HLLN runs the Ezili Danto Witness Project and we have people on the ground in Haiti. Their first hand account of the current situation is that a natural disaster of epic proportion has hit the poorest of the poor and they are wounded, hungry, hurt, traumatized and most without food, clean water and medical treatment since last Tuesday. For you Mr. Richard to criminalize and vilified these people at such a time is repugnant. The people of Haiti are not violent or naturally prone to lawlessness. The US is statistically more violent than Haiti and the only times, in the past 20 years, that the violence in Haiti increases is when the US supports death squads and regime change that massacre the poor.

Point four: Haiti needs conscious disaster relief with human rights and dignity, it does not need your propaganda Mr. Champagne alleging the innate violence of people who were not ever committed of any crimes. Medical relief, food, shelter and water are its priority right now, not 12,000-pentagon gun, to, as you write "curtail the lawlessness before it becomes uncontrollable." This projection of fear is arbitrary and capricious Mr. Champagne.

Here are two reports that contradict your irresponsible assertions about the current situation in Haiti:

1. Doctor: Misinformation and Racism Have Frozen Recovery Effort at General Hospital in Port-au-Prince | http://bit.ly/7zZ4gu “There are no security issues,” says Dr. Evan Lyon of Partners in Health, reporting from the General Hospital in Port-Au-Prince in Haiti, where 1,000 people are in need of operations. Lyon said the reports of violence in the city have been overblown by the media and have affected the delivery of aid and medical services. http://bit.ly/7zZ4gu

2. Tell CNN to stop hyping fears of violence in Haiti. For shame at http://bit.ly/6bXnPz

HLLN is working at over capacity right now. But, we are prepared to provide testimony, including from some who were held indefinitely, detained without ever having been convicted or charged with a crime, and who are now seriously injured and dying and who you are maligning. Their survivors are ready for a class action suit against the media and you and your organization, Mr. Richard, to take all to court for this vilification/defamation. As HLLN is working over capacity, we are prepared to make a general call to human rights attorneys who wish to assist should your organization not make a retraction IMMEDIATELY.

This letter will go public - on facebook, twitter, our blogs and all the social networks and to the Ezili Listserve. We are hereby asking civil rights and human rights lawyers who would like to assist the earthquake victims to help HLLN stop the maligning and criminalization of the people of Haiti and anticipate your retraction within the next 3 days.

Very Truly Yours,
Ezili Dantò
Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network

Villagers in Haiti Try to Stay Stoic as Aftershock Hits

Wednesday 20th January 2010

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

PHOTO: People sheltered from the rotor wash of an American helicopter carrying food and water in Léogâne, Haiti on Wednesday. 

By RAY RIVERA and MARC LACEY

Published: January 20, 2010

LÉOGÂNE, Haiti — A strong aftershock struck near the Haitian capital on Wednesday morning, shaking buildings and spreading terror through the thousands of survivors who have been living outdoors since last week’s devastating earthquake.

The aftershock, which had a magnitude 6.1, came around 6 a.m. and was centered on Gressier, a village west of the capital, Port-au-Prince. The most powerful to hit Haiti since the initial earthquake eight days ago, it caused some additional damage to the ravaged capital; the United Nations said it was trying to assess how much.

On the road to Léogâne, the badly damaged town that was the epicenter of the Jan. 12 earthquake and close to the heart of the Wednesday aftershock, it was hard to tell the new damage from the old. Some cracks on the paved, two-lane road from Port-Au-Prince were wider and deeper than they had been when a reporter drove them the day before. People put cinder blocks on the new fissures to warn drivers.


In Gressier, a small village outside the town that was said to be the epicenter, men worked on the rubble piles of their destroyed homes. They said there was little new damage, but weakened walls had finally given way.
“Most have been leaning,” said Ely Annaud, 42, a Gressier villager. “After this morning, they are totally gone.”
Asked if they were scared, a crowd of men around Mr. Annaud shout “oui, oui.”

“It was just so fast and so strong,” said Pierre Chermami, 47.


Speaking through an interpreter, he said matter-of-factly that he lost his wife and 22-year-old daughter here. The interpreter, who grew up nearby, said the calm was a kind of contract; if one cried, all would break down. “It is how they try to support each other, not to cry,” the interpreter said.

In the capital, Josette Lilas, a 25-year-old beautician, said she felt as if her heart had leaped into her throat when the shaking began. The shaking lasted several seconds, and the ground continued to move for at least a minute after — a calm swaying as if the capital were a ship in gentle swells.

“I thought this time, my good God, it was the end of the world,” said Josette Lilas, a 25-year-old beautician who has been sleeping in the street, bathing by the curb, hiding her disheveled hair beneath a shocking pink scarf. “I screamed and screamed. Then I realized it was over. I was still alive. Hallelujah.”

Survivors’ resilience remained undimmed.
Squatting on the sidewalk in central Port-au-Prince, her thigh bandaged from an injury suffered during the main quake, Ange Toussaint, 55, smiled broadly. “I’m here,” she said. “It happened again and I’m still here. Wow!”


Jean Michel Petithomme, 45, stood in the middle of Capois Street near downtown pointing to the cracks on his masonry home above an abandoned store-front pharmacy. He has not stayed in the house since the earthquake but returns daily to see if still stands, he said.

“That was one of the biggest aftershocks since the earthquake, but there have been many like it,” he said. “Those cracks are wider. I thought it would fall at last, but it is still there.”


Manno Dorsmond, a police officer who sleeps in his car, was bathing by the curb when the shaking broke a fissured wall, dropping a block of concrete on his shoulder.

“After 8 days, we thought it was over, and suddenly it was happening again,” said Mr. Dorsmond, 30. “Should we leave this land, say adios, bye bye, sayonara Haiti?” He said he was more angry than afraid.
“I am not afraid because the foreigners are calm,” Mr. Dorsmond said. “My people are screaming. But the foreigners who are risking their lives to help us are not scared. I will be like them.”


The village of Léogâne was bustling, with people walking in from surrounding villages because they heard that the Marines who arrived Tuesday had food to give. In fact, the Marines were helping Catholic Relief Services distribute lentils, oil and bulgar supplied by the United States Agency for International Development. The villagers walked off with hundred-pound sacks of the bulgar, not quite sure what to do with the unfamiliar grain. Sergio August, 25, walked from the town of Binola Point about 20 minutes away with a group of 25 people to find the Marines.

“You guys need to know it’s not just here that is damaged, the town back there is badly damaged,” he said, pointing back to Binola, a town that he estimated at 15,000 people. “We have gotten no help,” he said. “No one visits us.” Every so often, a bus or truck hurried by loaded with people fleeing to the hoped-for safety of the country side.

On Wednesday, the United States ordered another 2,000 Marines and 2,000 sailors to Haiti as expected, diverting an amphibious group of three ships. Some 11,500 U.S. military personal are in Haiti or offshore and 16,000 are expected by week’s end, according to a Pentagon spokesman, The Associated Press reported.
Signs of the international relief operation building here, underscoring the rising complaints that the Haitian government had all but disappeared in the week since a huge earthquake struck.


Haiti’s long history of foreign intervention, including an American occupation, normally makes the influx of foreigners a delicate issue. But with the government of President René Préval largely out of public view and the needs so huge, many Haitians are shunting aside their concerns about sovereignty and welcoming anybody willing to help — in camouflage or not.

“It is not ideal to have a foreign army here, but look at the situation,” said Énide Edoword, 24, a waitress who was standing Tuesday in a camp of displaced people. “We are living amid filth and hunger and thirst after a catastrophe.”

Mr. Préval, an aloof leader even in the best of times, has been huddling with advisers at a compact police station that has become the government’s de-facto headquarters. Aides described him as being as traumatized by the recent events as every other Haitian but still fully engaged in the nation’s recovery.

They said he and his ministers were engaged in a furious effort to organize all the outside aid, find refuge for the hundreds of thousands of people living in the streets and bury bodies, thousands and thousands of which have been collected and put in mass graves. There is still no widely accepted death toll.


They said the president would soon address the nation for the first time since the quake struck on Jan. 12.
But the international effort has far outpaced anything Haiti could manage: supply flights from around the world continued to arrive in numbers, though aid groups complained of being turned away.


In Port-au-Prince, foreign rescue teams continued to scour buildings for survivors under the rubble.. Foreign doctors were providing medical care and carrying out scores of life-saving amputations.


But the demand for medical care far outstripped the supply of doctors. Debarati Guha-Sapir, a professor of epidemiology and the director of the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the University of Louvain in Belgium, said in an interview on Tuesday that deaths in large earthquakes generally declined after the first day or two.


“Haiti, I think, is going to be a little different,” she said. “They will die simply because there is no care. People will die of wounds. They will die of lack of surgical care. They will die of simple trauma that in almost any other country would not lead to death.”


Elisabeth Delatour Préval, Haiti’s first lady, insisted that the country’s sovereignty remained intact, although she acknowledged that there was widespread concern among the population about whether the government was functioning, especially given the heavy damage sustained by the palace and other highly visible government buildings.

“Visually, people can’t see what they used to recognize as the symbols of the state,” she said in an interview on Tuesday. “That has generated some kind of panic. ‘Are they there or aren’t they there?’ ”
The American military, patrolled in Humvees up and down Boulevard Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the capital’s main commercial strip, took pains to reassure Haitians that the United States was in the country in a support role.


Meanwhile, 125 Marines arrived in helicopters on Tuesday in the damaged farming town of Léogâne, south of the capital, delivering cases of water and food.
At the same time, Col. Gregory Kane of the United States Army told reporters at the Port-au-Prince airport that the Haitian government remained in charge. He said that United States forces were on the ground only to assist with the relief efforts.


“There have been some reports and news stories out there that the U.S. is invading Haiti,” Colonel Kane said. “We’re not invading Haiti. That’s ludicrous. This is humanitarian relief.”


Most Haitians seemed to see it that way, despite deep historic concerns about American troops in particular.
President Woodrow Wilson sent American Marines to Haiti in 1915 to restore public order after six different leaders ruled the country in quick succession, each killed or forced into exile. Opposition was intense, but it would be nearly two decades before the Marines would leave, in 1934.


When President Bill Clinton ordered troops into the country in 1994 to restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was ousted as president by a group of former soldiers, Haitian critics raised that earlier intervention.
A decade later, Mr. Aristide was forced out of office, and he accused the United States of orchestrating his ouster.


But as the American troops in combat fatigues bounded out of the helicopters and moved across the palace grounds, hundreds of Haitians who had gathered at the white-and-green palace gates erupted in cheers and called out in Creole for food and water.


“We can’t do it without them,” said Ms. Pierre-Louis, the former prime minister. “This country has been mismanaged for the last 50 years, and if we can’t run the country well in normal times how can we do it now?”


So far, violence has been scattered in Port-au-Prince. But senior United Nations officials said it might boil over at any moment as the difficulties of living without water, food and shelter mounted. Mrs. Préval said that she and the president were about to enter their private residence when the earthquake struck. They stepped back from the home, she said, and it collapsed before them. For hours, rumors circulated around the capital that she had been killed.


She said that Mr. Préval quickly jumped onto the back of a motorcycle taxi to tour hospitals and damaged areas with top aides, and that he had been in nonstop emergency meetings ever since. Government ministers, she added, initially held meetings in the yard of the president’s home.

Sarkozy backs off from Haiti spat as US military airdrops aid

(Justin Stumberg/AP)

An LA fire team rescue a Haitian woman from a collapsed building in downtown Port-au-Prince

President Sarkozy of France has moved quickly to bury a transatlantic spat after one of his ministers complained that American soldiers were effectively "occupying" earthquake-ravaged Haiti.
The French minister for international co-operation, Alain Joyandet, officially protested on Saturday after US military controllers at Port-au-Prince airport turned back a French aid flight carrying a field hospital. French and European aid agencies have also complained of obstruction.
In a particularly undiplomatic outburst yesterday, Mr Joyandet went even further, demanding that the United Nations clarify the Americans' role in the aid effort. “This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti," he said.
The remark betrayed widespread sensitivity in France - Haiti's former colonial master - about President Obama's decision to order a "swift and aggressive" military campaign to deliver humanitarian aid to Haiti, where a 7.0 magnitude quake last Tuesday is thought to have killed more than 100,000 people.

But in a statement this morning the Elysee Palace insisted that President Sarkozy was entirely supportive of the American campaign, which he discussed in a phone call with Mr Obama last week. The statement praised America's "exceptional mobilisation for Haiti" and the "essential role" it was playing on the ground and said that Paris was "entirely satisfied" at its cooperation with Washington.


The comments came as scores of US troops landed on the lawn of Haiti’s shattered presidential palace today and the UN said it would add 3,500 police and soldiers to the aid effort. It is hoped the UN force will help control the outbursts of looting and violence that have slowed distribution of supplies.


The Security Council approved adding 2,000 troops to the 7,000 military peacekeepers already in the country as well as 1,500 more police to the 2,100-strong international force. The arrival of the six US Navy helicopters was welcomed by the Haitians in the area who jammed the fence of the palace grounds as they landed. “We are happy that they are coming, because we have so many problems,” said Fede Felissaint, a hairdresser.

With Haiti’s main port out of operation, the huge international relief operation has had to use Port-au-Prince’s congested airport, which has delayed the arrival of urgently needed medical and food supplies.
The US military has also started airdrops of food and water, delivering 14,500 meals and 15,000 litres of water to a site just outside Port-au-Prince... more

Haiti: The politics in Humanitarian Aid

France bridles at US Haiti take-over

It did not take long for France to start quarrelling with the United States over Haiti. The American take-over of the relief operation has not gone down well with Paris. Media cover over the past two days has depicted a virtual American invasion, with heavy-handed military pushing around French agencies. The words domination and even occupation were used on radio news reports this morning. 
Alain Joyandet, the Minister supervising the French operation, said that he had requested a formal protest to Washington after US controllers refused landing permission to a French Airbus with a field hospital on Saturday. The role of the US needs to be clarified, Joyandet said on Europe1 radio this morning. "It's a matter of helping Haiti, not occupying Haiti." [watch interview here]
French evacuation flights have been delayed while priority is being given to the US military, Joyandet said. He argued with US commanders on the airfield and at one stage grabbed a radio microphone to talk to the Airbus pilots, he added.
The Elysée palace and Foreign Ministry are trying to calm the fuss, but the annoyance is palpable. Haiti may be in the US back yard, but France, the former colonial power, sees it as part of its overseas family. The Pearl of the Caribbean, as the colony was known, is part of la Francophonie, the French-speaking commonwealth that is run and financed from Paris. Haiti's writers, artists and musicians have close links to la Metropole and some 70,000 immigrants live in France. [picture: Alain Joyandet in Haiti]

Listening to the press review on France-Inter radio this morning, you might have got the impression that Uncle Sam had occupied Haiti. They quoted L'Alsace newspaper saying that the United Nations, not the United States, should be running Haiti now. "The take-over of Port-au-Prince airport by the American military is a bad signal which indicates that the big guys are once again preparing to impose their law," said L'Alsace.  The newspaper also recalled that occupying Americans "killed thousands" of Haitiens in the years after their intervention there in 1915.
The state radio quoted an article from Haiti Liberté weekly which accuses un-named powers of imposing themselves on the devastated nation. "The capitalist countries, exploiters of the riches of the Haitian soil, are going to come hypocritically to our assistance. Not that we should slap it away. But we want it disinterested." The article may have been talking about the west in general, but America was the implied target. France-Inter did not bother to point out that the weekly in question is a small leftist journal run by expatriate Haitians from New York.
Three national radio stations also highlighted the London Guardian's front page picture of Americans frolicking in the water by their cruise liner at Labadee, a heavily-protected beach in northern Haiti.
Media commentators have also been discerning ulterior motives behind President Obama's huge relief operation -- showing that the US military can do more than wage war and scoring some peace credentials to justify his Nobel Prize. That, at least, was how Europe1 news put it.
L'Humanité, the Communist Party daily, is naturally accusing Obama of reverting to "the old imperialist imperative" and establishing a new permanent US military foothold in the Caribbean. On the other side, Le Figaro, the conservative daily, says that it is the wrong time to criticise the Americans.
Judging by the public chatter on French news sites today, public feeling is split on similar lines. There is a lot of admiration for Obama's action as well as complaining about Yankee excess.
France says the European Union has asked it to lead the continent's Haiti evacuation operations. President Sarkozy is also planning to assert the French role there by dropping in for a visit in the next couple of weeks or so.  The President is proposing sending 1,000 European gendarmes to Haiti and he is also trying to organise a world conference to co-ordinate relief.
[Alain Joyandet's ministerial blog here]

Caribbean at risk of more large quakes like Haiti mega earthquake: Report

London: Earthquake experts have warned that the devastating quake that struck Haiti on January 12 could be the first of several in the region, which means the region is at risk of more large tremblors.

According to a report in New Scientist, historical records suggest that not all the energy that has built up in the faults running through the Caribbean region was released in the Haiti quake.

Their fear is that enough energy remains in the fault system to trigger another earthquake of the same scale as the one on January 12.

The last time Haiti was struck by earthquakes of this scale was in 1751 and 1770, when three large earthquakes hit within the space of 20 years.

They ruptured the same fault segment as the one that slipped on Jan. 12, as well as segments lying further to the east, in Haiti and the neighbouring Dominican Republic.

"Last time round there was a sequence of earthquakes," said Uri ten Brink, an expert on earthquakes in the region from the US Geological Survey in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

"I'm worried, as we might expect the eastern side of the fault to rupture next," according to other geologists.

"Stress transfer along the fault is likely to trigger a chain of quakes," said Bill McGuire from University College London.

Another, larger earthquake could affect surrounding nations as well.

The fault that was responsible for the Haiti quake extends west through Jamaica. Another runs parallel to it in the north, along the southern edge of Cuba and the northern side of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Historical records suggest that both these faults produce large and destructive earthquakes every few centuries.

"They are dangerous especially when large population centres like Port-au-Prince, Kingston in Jamaica or Santiago in the Dominican Republic are so close to them," said Paul Mann from the University of Texas at Austin.

The region harbours a third fault to the east, which is a further cause for concern.

Measurements over several decades show that the sum of all earthquakes that strike on "splinter faults" on the Caribbean plate have accounted for around half of the energy associated with this movement, leaving the other half stored up in the system.

McGuire and his colleagues are concerned that much of the stress may be accumulating on the undersea thrust fault to the east.

If that stress were to be released on the submarine fault, it could trigger a catastrophic tsunami of the scale of the 26 December 2004 Indian Ocean disaster.

Source: Click to go to source

Haiti Update: Still No Relief

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, January 18, 2010 – Millions of dollars in aid are pouring into Haiti. Another head of state visits each day. But as of yesterday, the United Nations reported that humanitarian relief is still being bottlenecked at the main airport and roads remain blocked with debris.

Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) said that one of its planes carrying essential medical supplies was not permitted to land at the airport.
"Despite guarantees, given by the United Nations and the US Defense Department, an MSF cargo plane carrying an inflatable surgical hospital was blocked from landing in Port-au-Prince on Saturday, and was re-routed to Samana, in Dominican Republic," the group said in a statement yesterday. "All material from the cargo is now being sent by truck from Samana, but this has added a 24-hour delay for the arrival of the hospital."

The Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, is also working with Haitian authorities to set up a land corridor to bring in relief from the Dominican town of Barahona 130 kilometres away.

With the dead still being counted, and thousands missing, Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive has said that 100,000 deaths "would seem a minimum". The country's interior minister reported that some 50,000 bodies have already been recovered.

European Union ministers called an emergency meeting for today to determine the costs of the massive reconstruction that will needed in coming months. The United Nations has already issued an appeal for US$562 million to aid Haiti which, even before the earthquake, was the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere.

That money would target the estimated three million Haitians affected for a period of six months, with half of the funds being earmarked for emergency food aid, and the rest for health, water, sanitation, nutrition, early recovery, emergency education and other key needs.

But in many parts of the devastated capital, there was little evidence of outside assistance.

In the suburb of Santo, dozens of Haitian men organised a digging and rescue operation on a pile of rubble. A huge orange Caterpillar bulldozer sat nearby, stationary. Heavy equipment from the Haitian construction company CNE is all over the city.

In the absence of any visible relief effort in the city, help came from small groups of Haitians working together. Citizens turned into aid workers and rescuers. Lone doctors roamed the streets, offering assistance.

At the crumbling national cathedral, a dozen men and women crowded around a man swinging a pickaxe to pry open the space for a dusty, near-dead looking woman to squeeze through and escape.

The night of the quake, a group of friends pulled bricks out from under a collapsed home, clearing a narrow zig-zagging path towards the sound of a child crying out beneath the rubble.

Two buildings over, Joseph Matherenne cried as he directed the faint light of his cell phone's screen over the bloody corpse of his 23-year-old brother. His body was draped over the rubble of the office where he worked as a video technician. Unlike most of the bodies in the street, there was no blanket to cover his face.

Central Port-Au-Prince resembles a war zone. Some buildings are standing, unharmed. Those that were damaged tended to collapse completely, spilling into the street on top of cars and telephone poles.

In the day following the quake, there was no widespread violence. Guns, knives and theft weren't seen on the streets, lined only with family after family carrying their belongings. They voiced their anger and frustration with sad songs that echoed throughout the night, not their fists.

"Only in the movies have I seen this," said 33-year-old Jacques Nicholas, who jumped over a wall as the house where he was playing dominoes tumbled. "When Americans send missiles to Iraq, that's what I see. When Israel do that to Gaza, that's what I see here."

Nobody knows what to expect. Some people said Haiti needs a strong international intervention - a coordinated aid effort from all the big countries. But there was no evidence on the streets of any immediate cavalry of rescue workers from the United States and other nations.

"My situation is not that bad," said Nicholas, "but overall the other people's situation is worse than mine. So it affects me. Everybody wants to help out, but we can't do nothing."

Haitians are doing only what they can. Helping each other with their hands and the few tools they can find, they lack the resources to coordinate a multi-faceted reconstruction effort.

UN agencies and humanitarian organisations on the ground are struggling to help survivors of the quake, but many are hindered by large-scale damage to their own facilities, as well as lack of heavy equipment to clear rubble.

Logistics remained the main obstacle, with damage to the main airport, impassable roads and problems at the docks continuing to bottleneck the outpouring of international relief workers and basic supplies. (Adapted from IPS)

Caricom blocked from landing in Haiti

Haiti We are Sorry!

BY RICKEY SINGH Observer Caribbean correspondent

Sunday, January 17, 2010

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados -- The Caribbean Community's emergency aid mission to Haiti, comprising heads of government and leading technical officials, failed to secure permission Friday to land at that devastated country's airport, now under the control of the USA.

Consequently, the Caricom "assessment mission" that was to determine priority humanitarian needs resulting from the mind-boggling earthquake disaster last Tuesday had to travel back from Jamaica to their respective home destinations.

On Friday afternoon, the US State Department confirmed signing two Memoranda of Understanding with the Government of Haiti that made "official that the United States is in charge of all inbound and outbound flights and aid offloading".

Further, according to the agreements signed, US medical personnel "now have the authority to operate on Haitian citizens and otherwise render medical assistance without having to wait for licences from Haiti's Government".

Prior to the US taking control of Haiti's airport, a batch of some 30 Cuban doctors had left Havana, following the earthquake, to join more than 300 of their colleagues who have been working there for more than a year.

Last evening, the frustration suffered by the Caricom mission to get landing permission was expected to be raised in a scheduled meeting at Jamaica's Norman Manley International Airport between Jamaica's Prime Minister Bruce Golding and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Golding, who was making arrangements for the meeting with Clinton, following her visit earlier in the day to witness the devastation of the capital Port-au-Prince, said he could not comment on details to be discussed.

He, however, told this correspondent: "I appreciate the chaos and confusion at Haiti's airport, where there is just one operational runway. But Haiti is a member of Caricom and we simply have to be facilitated and the truth is there is hardly a functioning government in Haiti."

Asked whether the difficulties encountered by the Caricom mission may be related to reports that US authorities were not anxious to facilitate landing of aircraft from Cuba and Venezuela, Prime Minister Golding said he could "only hope that there is no truth to such immature thinking in the face of the horrific scale of Haiti's tragedy".

Golding, who has lead portfolio responsibility among Caricom leaders for external economic relations, got a first-hand assessment of the damage when he flew to Haiti on Thursday. A contingent of some 150 members of the Jamaica Defence Force has since established a camp with medical facilities in the vicinity of Haiti's airport.

Ahead of last evening's scheduled meeting with Clinton, Prime Minister Golding had discussed on Friday in Kingston some of the problems to be overcome at a meeting with the prime ministers of Barbados and Dominica and the Community's secretary general Edwin Carrington.

Carrington explained that proper use of the Norman Manley Airport would be consistent with a decision last week for Jamaica to serve as the Sub-regional Operational Focal Point for responses to the Haitian humanitarian crisis.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Caricom-Haiti-blocked 

Mob justice on Haiti's streets of blood as looter is lynched and police shoot rioters

A Reason to speed up Aid
By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 11:57 PM on 17th January 2010

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The naked body of a hanged suspected looter is dragged through the devastated streets of Port-au-Prince.
Children watch as the corpse is battered with pieces of wood.
This is street justice Haiti style as the capital city of the earthquake-devastated country teeters on the brink of anarchy.
Alongside the desperate worldwide aid effort there are chaotic scenes in the blighted island as looters armed with knives and guns pillage stores.

Street justice: Lynched then dragged through the streets of Port-au-Prince, the looter's body is battered with staves

Foreign aid agencies say they can operate only with the protection of United Nations soldiers and are awaiting the arrival of thousands of U.S. troops.
While most of the capital's 3million people are focused on finding food and water, clearing debris and pulling bodies from the rubble, there are pockets of violence and reports of looting and ransacking of shops.
The lynching came after police brought a man to Petionville, a once wealthy area of the capital, and told a crowd he had been arrested for looting.

Vigilante justice took over and he was hanged before his body was dragged through the streets and set on fire under a heap of rubbish.
In another incident, police opened fire on hundreds of rioters yesterday, killing at least one of them as they ransacked a market.
A man in his 30s was shot in the head as he grabbed food. Witnesses said another looter quickly snatched the rucksack off the dead man's back as clashes continued and police reinforcements descended on the area armed with pump-action shotguns and assault rifles.

Daggers drawn: One looter demands another's booty

Gun guard: A policeman protects stores against looters in a business district of the capital

There have also been reports of attacks on aid workers attempting to distribute the hundreds of tons of supplies arriving in the city.

And heavily armed gang members who once ran Haiti's largest slum like warlords have returned with a vengeance since Tuesday's earthquake damaged the National Penitentiary, allowing 3,000 inmates to break out.

 

More...

• After wife's anguished plea on Facebook for news, Briton is found dead in Haiti horror

An official with the World Food Programme said aid trucks were using armed guards and security had been posted at food distribution locations to protect staff. Some 10,000 U.S. troops are on the way to try to restore order.
Amid the death and destruction, survivors were still being found. One woman was plucked from the rubble of the university, 97 hours after being buried.

Tied up: A policeman restrains a looter suspected of stealing a tin of milk

At war: A policeman opens fire on the streets of Haiti. At least one rioter has been shot dead

British rescue workers from the Rapid UK team pulled another woman, aged 39, from the ruins of her home yesterday and members of Kent Fire and Rescue Service said they had reached a man after seven hours of tunnelling.
Other stories of hope also emerged with a man and teenage girl found alive under the collapsed remains of a grocery store.
A two-month-old baby who was brought to the UN hospital alive after four days was airlifted to Florida for emergency treatment.
The girl, named Jeanne, was found by a U.S. TV news reporter. Her mother, who feared her daughter had died, was also found alive and U.S. authorities are making plans for them to be reunited.

On the run: Looters grab what they can and flee during a police assault near the Hypolite Market in Port-au-Prince

Surrender: Looters keep the hands up after seeing the police

Despite these tiny pieces of good news, the overall picture is apocalyptic, with the death toll expected to reach 200,000. More than 30 rescue teams from around the world are now working in harsh conditions of heat and humidity in Haiti.
Many people with relatives in the city have been using Facebook and Twitter to seek information about loved ones.
Thousands of messages and photographs have been posted on the social networking sites.
Port-au-Prince's main hospital reopened yesterday but with few doctors and even fewer medical supplies. Despite the aid pouring into the city, tens of thousands of people are living in the streets without access to food and water.

The UN has described the disaster as being 'worse than the tsunami'.
Officials co-coordinating the UK relief efforts said water, food and hygiene supplies had been distributed to 2,000 people.

Anarchy: A man tries to keep crowds away from a woman injured during scuffles among people taking goods from quake-damaged stores

Desperation: Haitian people gather in the streets trying to get supplies

A British Red Cross convoy reached Haiti after an overland crossing from the neighbouring Dominican Republic with trucks loaded with medical supplies and equipment to help in search and rescue.
A spokesman for the Disaster Emergency Committee, made up of the UK's main relief aid charities, said a 300-bed field hospital was being set up over the weekend. The distribution of aid has been hampered by the small airport in Port-au-Prince becoming jammed with flights.
With the ships unable to dock in the port and many roads blocked by debris the airport has been the main lifeline for supplies.
The U.S. navy is using helicopters to drop supplies of bottled water and the UN also has distribution points handing out high-energy bars to the hungry. But demand is outstripping supply - with food and water being taken faster than they can pass it out.
UN Secretary General Ban Kimoon said the quake was the worst humanitarian crisis for decades.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Port-au-Prince to pledge continued and lasting support. 'As President Obama has said, we will be here today, tomorrow and for the time ahead,' she said standing beside President Rene Preval, whose palace was destroyed in Tuesday's 7.0-magnitude quake.
Despite the chaos President Preval has made no broadcast address to his nation, nor has he been seen at any disaster site.
Instead he has met Cabinet ministers and foreign visitors at a police station which serves as his base following the collapse of the National Palace.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1244034/Haiti-earthquake-disaster-Mob-justice-Haitis-streets-blood-looter-lynched-police-shoot-rioters.html#ixzz0cwqWkW0Q