(English) 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)
(English) By Gerard Maxineau, Le Nouvelliste | Editorial comment by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. The National Federation of Haitian Mayors (FENAMH) has fingered the executive and some lawmakers as having recently drafted a plan to dissolve 140 municipal councils and replace them with municipal boards at the service of the parliamentarians, but this plan was drafted abroad in the prefab constitution that came along with Haiti’s prefab president and its prefab parliament exactly one year ago. It is a plan especially designed to grab lands in northern Haiti.
(English) 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.
(English) 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)
(English) By Frederic Back, You Tube | Based on Jean Giono’s short story « The Man Who Planted Trees. » Director Frédéric Back’s marvellous interpretation of Giono’s allegory won an Oscar for short animation. The story is a tribute to hard work and patience. (English | French | Portuguese | Spanish, 30 min.)
(English) 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)
(English) 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)
Interview du Dr Renaud Piarroux sur le choléra d’Haiti avec Priorité Santé
(English) By Dady Chery, Haiti Chery (English) | Renaud Piarroux and Claire Hedon, Priorite Sante (French). Contrary to the daily predictions of mayhem from the mainstream press about Haiti’s cholera epidemic, Dr. Renaud Piarroux, who has access to up-to-date medical information and laboratory results about the epidemic, says it is waning and now exists only as a series of clusters in the North of the country. Based on his extensive experience in controlling epidemics of tropical diseases, he adds that cholera could be completely eradicated from Haiti in a few months, but not by the oral vaccination campaign promoted by Haiti’s Ministry of Public Health and Population. (English | French)
(English) 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)
(English) 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)
(English) By Staff, AFP via Raw Story. As Rwanda marked the 18th anniversary of a Tutsi massacre, President Paul Kagame accused Western countries of failing to apprehend genocide suspects on their territory. “As we remember those we lost, some of those who killed them are still moving freely in some capitals of the so-called free world.” – Paul Kagame. UPDATE: Arpil 18th, Uwikindi extradited to Rwanda; he is alleged to have led a group of killers to look for and exterminate Tutsi civilians. (English | French)
(English) By Staff, The New Times | Paul Kagame et Kanayo F. Nwanze, Project Syndicate, with French translation by Michelle Flamand for Le Matin. “If the world is to meet the twin objectives of feeding the growing population and protecting the environment we will have to do what we know works… and that is: targeted support and investment in smallholder farming to raise agricultural productivity, contribute to food security and reduce poverty, while protecting our planet.” – Paul Kagame (English | French)
La zone franche de Caracol met en péril le patrimoine naturel et culturel du Nord-Est
(English) 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)
(English) 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)