By staff, AHP | Translation by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery | AlJazeera, YouTube. Nineteen year-old Johnny Jean from Port-Salut was heard on Thursday May 10 by Uruguayan Judge Guido Alejandro. Jean identified in court the soldiers he accuses of having raped him in a Port Salut base of the U.N. Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). (English | French)
By Nocles Debreus, Le Matin | Translation by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Haiti’s agricultural sector creates 50% of the country’s employment overall and 80% in rural areas. Agronomist Phito Blémur and many others believe that policies toward development and poverty reduction must take into account the vital role this sector played immediately after Independence when it accounted for 95% of the GDP (instead of the current 26%). Revival of this sector will require a departure from neoliberalism and the establishment of serious fiscal and monetary policies.
By Staff (EJ), Radio Metropole | Editorial comment and translation by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. The mandates of one third of the Haitian Senate and various municipal executives expired in mid-January 2012, and the mandate of another third of the Senate expired on May 8. Mayors and local officials have been dictatorially replaced by presidential decree, and no administrative provision has been made to assemble a new electoral body to organize new elections so as to replace the elected parliamentarians whose terms have expired. (English | French)
By Emmanuel Bruno Marino, AlterPresse | All-India Drug Action Network | Translations by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Within two months of the start of a campaign of vaccination with pentavalent vaccine in India by the World Health Organization (WHO), four healthy inoculated children died. Nevertheless, on April 16, 2012 Haiti announced that it would introduce pentavalent vaccine into its national immunization program at a cost U.S. $11 million. According to Expanded Vaccination Program Director Dr. Ronald Jean Cadet, this program will make up for “a lack of sanitary control over foreigners who can travel with these viruses into the country.” (English | French)
By Amos Cincir, Le Nouvelliste | Translation by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. A tripartite agreement of collaboration was signed at Haiti’s National Palace on Wednesday, April 25, 2012 between Foreign Affairs Minister Laurent Lamothe, Deputy Foreign Minister of Venezuela Temir Porras, and Ambassador of Argentina to Haiti Marcelo Sebaste. The aid will consist of agricultural tools, an identification system, and literacy education. (English | French)
Haitian National Police on Strike After 3 Killed in 48 Hours (UPDATED)
By Staff (rh gp jep kft rc), AlterPresse | Jose Flecher, Le Matin | AHP | Translation by Dady Chery for Haiti Chery. Since the beginning of the year, 12 policemen have been killed in Port-au-Prince, including 3 who were killed within 48 hours on April 16-17. One of them, traffic policeman Walky Calixte, was shot by the bodyguard of a Member of Parliament. The next day the police tried to grab the MP while he was participating in a radio show, and on Monday April 23rd police used the neighborhood of the murdered policeman’s family as the point from which to block all traffic into Port-au-Prince from the south. UPDATES: April 24, memorandum of protest issued by student comrades of Calixte, who was a psychology major at the National University of Haiti; MP Rodriguez Sejour is questioned by an examining magistrate about Calixte’s murder, and the MP’s bodyguards and chauffeur are remanded in custody. April 30, renewed protests. (English | French)
Interview of Hassan Nasrallah with Julian Assange, Cuba Debate (RT, Reuters) | Translation by Dady Chery for Haiti Chery. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who is under house arrest in London, made his debut today as the host of a Russia Today television show with the first interview in 6 years of Shiite guerrilla and Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
By Staff, AHP | Translated from the French by Dady Chery for Haiti Chery | Staff, AFP via News 24 I Staff, AFP via La Presse | When the foreign press considers a bad road accident in Haiti, which caused no harm to their nationals, to be newsworthy, something is afoot that involves foreign interests. In this case, two fatal Haitian road accidents resulted in an immediate decree to ban transit vehicles from transporting passengers together with their goods and livestock: a move that will gravely damage the little that is left of the country’s peasant economy. (English | French)
By Staff (rh gp), AlterPresse | Translation by Dady Chery for Haiti Chery. According to one of Michel Martelly’s passports, the former singer traveled to 21 countries that did not affix any seal of entry. Another passport is dated 1981 to 1991, although a Haitian passport is valid for only 5 years. (English | French)
Poison Seeds, Herbicides, Pushed Again on Haitian Farmers in Spring 2012
By Edner Son Décime, AlterPresse | Benjamin Fernandez, Le Monde Diplomatique | Marie-Monique Robin, YouTube | Translation and editorial comment by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Unwanted Monsanto hybrid and genetically modified (GMO) seeds are once again being pushed as aid on Haitian farmers. Together with expensive fertilizers, and harmful pesticides and herbicides, these seeds that cannot reproduce themselves are not genuine aid but a project to convert Haitian farmers from producers into helpers. UPDATE on April 3rd, full-length documentary video “The world according to Monsanto.” (English | French)
“Dodo Titit” Introduction and English translation by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery | Sheet music, photo from Lullabologist | Performance courtesy of Miremonde, You Tube. Haiti’s classical lullaby. Verses are improvised to report the different chores of Mom and Dad and are sung softly, almost as if being hummed, until the darling little one sleeps.
Caracol Free-Trade Zone Jeopardizes Natural and Cultural Heritage
By Rachelle Charlier Doucet, AlterPresse | Translation and editorial comment by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. A massive industrial park is scheduled to open in the Caracol Bay area of Haiti at the end of March 2012, although no plan is in place to mitigate the park’s impact on a region that has been proposed as a World Heritage Site for its ecological, historical, and archaeological importance. The park’s manufacturing and textile dyeing alone will require pumping 6,000 cubic meters of water daily from the groundwater and ejecting toxic wastewater into the Trou du Nord River and, ultimately, Caracol Bay. Electricity will be produced from oil, resulting in heavy and toxic wastes. Construction of 5,000 homes for a predicted migration of 30,000 to 300,000 people is expected to result in bantustanization of the area and neighboring communities. (English | French)
By Mergenat Exalus, AlterPresse | Translation and editorial comment by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. The northern Haitian city of Gonaives has been without water since a sabotage of three water pumping stations last December. The forced dependence of the Haitian population on bottled water, uninspected by local health authorities, poses a grave danger. (English | French)
By Staff, AHP | Translation by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Just out in Haitian bookstores: a new book by former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide titled “Pwezi filosofik pou dekolonizasyon mantal” (Publisher: Henri Deschamps, 2012). It is the Creole version of “Philosophical Reflections for Mental Decolonization” (Publisher: Paradigm Press, 2011). Dr. Aristide shows how the 300-year Haitian journey to freedom has been guided by the African philosophy of Ubuntu: an ethical concept that values connectedness, respect, justice, dignity, freedom, and love. He believes this philosophy gave the strength to resist slavery and can continue to motivate resistance.