Haitian Women Fight Sexual Violence | RHRealityCheck.org

Haitian Women Fight Sexual Violence | RHRealityCheck.org

Beginning of the End

Corruption begets more corruption, the unscrupulous feasts, and the vulnerable loses the self.

“The mother came back, got her daughter and checked her daughter and she said, ‘her inside was so’ --she emphasized-- ‘opened.’  And then she asked the daughter, ‘what happened to you?’ And the daughter said, ‘while I went to the bathroom there was this man that held me and had sex with me’.”

To say “Beginning of the End,” is not to indulge misplaced nostalgia or sentimentality. That scenario, difficult as it might have been to read, have finally exposed an age-old concealed window into the stark realities of scores of Haitian women and children, Flore, in this particular instance. She is a 10-year-old girl who has been sexually assaulted three times in the camp where she lived with her mother.

The horror

Flore’s mom described her daughter’s ordeals through the reporting of Carla Murphy, a journalist covering the rebuilding process in Haiti. Murphy used the pseudo name “Flore” to protect the identity of the child.

The first man who ‘wasted’ her daughter, the mom explained, was a friend who asked for Flore to babysit his child while he went out.  She later found out that he repeatedly raped Flore when she watched his baby. The second attack came at the hands of a 22-year-old man, literally. She caught him red handed, his fingers inside of her daughter. Furious, she had him thrown in jail only to watch him roaming the same camp later. The aforementioned third episode, naively recounted by the child, occurred at night.

The cataclysmic earthquake has not only affected Haitian women disproportionately, but has also created new norms for them. Gender discrimination, and structural inequalities have literally reshaped their realities. In many instances, affected women have had to defend themselves, their children, and aging parents against sexual violence. A Human Rights Watch report highlighted a woman whose kidnappers took to an undisclosed location where she was “gagged, beaten repeatedly, and gang-raped for two to three days until she was finally able to escape.

The presence of an effective Haitian government to meet obvious systematic security needs is but an illusion and the UN response units are a scarce resource; hence, the rapists, pedophiles, and child traffickers alike have created their own version of the Wild West in the camps, which many have branded “breeding grounds for criminals.”

Abnormal Norms

 The dysfunctional judicial system, ineffectiveness of the police force, and an increased tolerance on the part of the victims have all but ensured the elusiveness of the culprits, condoned their sick behaviors, and perpetuated their vicious cyclical tendencies. In June 1999, 600 police officers --10 percent of the force-- were dismissed on human right violations, including sexual violence. Further characterization by Pierre Denize, Haiti’s Chief of Police then, unearthed the roots of the problem. “Haitian police force was the product of a society whose historical development was such that it did not recognize nor have any experience of an institutional human rights policy,” he expressed to the United Nations’ Commission of Human Rights. In addition, The Lancet published a chilling mortality study of Haiti, which revealed, in no small measures, that a staggering 35,000 women were raped between March 2004 and December 2006 in the capital alone during the instability that followed the ousting of President Jean Bertrand Aristide.

Meanwhile, government officials have continually downplayed the presence of a systemic problem; hence, the barely noticeable –underreported-- empirical evidence has not done any justice to the victims. Nevertheless, the sharp increase of rape cases since Jan. 12^th of this year can barely be dismissed as random or sporadic acts. According to its July 19^th preliminary report, the Commission of Women Victims for Victims (KOFAVIV) has informally tracked 230 rape cases in only 15 of the 1,300 camps. Moreover, a survey conducted in March 2010 by the University of Michigan revealed that 3 percent of women and girls living in displacement camps have been sexually assaulted, half of whom, minors.

Long Road Ahead

It has become abundantly clear that the atrocities against women and children in Haiti are a byproduct of systemic failures and increased vulnerabilities of the displacement camps. As one coalition of

Haitian civil society groups noted, “The extent of the disaster is certainly linked to the character of the colonial and Neo‐colonial State our country has inherited, and the imposition of neo‐liberal policies over the last three decades.”

Beyond its necessary legislative and judicial infrastructure, Haiti needs a mechanism for inclusive participation and interactive engagement of all stakeholders. That is, men, women, and children – rich or poor-- have to be an integral part of ongoing discussions and strategic planning. Transitioning from a status quo, which --for far too long-- has been insensitive to their ordeals, is a daunting task. 

Clearly, such an intergenerational initiative has to be spoon-fed to Haitians. Eventually, the increased knowledge will help remap the psychographics of the cultural consciousness. Ideological changes are complex and require elaborate skills and a great deal of time to materialize, as UNICEF’s 2010 report indicates. Moving too fast risks alienating the victims and/or provoking more aggression. Some women may even be reluctant to move away from the inhumane treatments that they have learned to recognize as a safe place.

Broader Perspective

Several NGO have rightfully called for Haiti’s leaders to prioritize their responses to remedy current atrocities. However, Haiti’s emergent political and social culture presents a rare opportunity to discover her sustainable roots and incite, in the context of evolutionary ideology, a psychological revolution in the malleable cognition of her youths.

Failure to design and implement an effective strategy with the participation of all Haitians would be inadequate and would exacerbate structural human rights infringements that pre‐date the earthquake. The devastating result would leave the most vulnerable members of Haitian society: women, children, and the poor in an even more fragile state.

Rapadoo,

CURRENTS BETWEEN SHORES: Wyclef Jean's Naive Passion

CURRENTS BETWEEN SHORES: Wyclef Jean's Naive Passion

Corrosive Legacy

Shards of untold chronicles of deceit and distrust have poisoned the atmosphere in Haiti over the past couple of centuries: residual resentments over tumultuous relationships between the country and the world, particularly the United States. Those historical scars have casted some antagonistic clouds over the authenticity and genuineness of the world’s sudden altruistic and empathic initiatives.

Characterized by the Dalai Lama, “such a massive show of global assistance and solidarity -- one sign of the world's increased interdependence -- would not have been possible 100 years ago,” and many observers have agreed. As the shocking images grabbed the world’s attention, governments around the globe pledged about $10 billion over the span of 10 years to help with the long-term reconstruction of Haiti. In addition, individual benevolence had also funneled about $1.3 billion through NGOs and other aid organizations with direct access to the people of Haiti.

Nevertheless, history may disagree with the naïveté of some perceptions, as many now tend to look at Haiti’s prolonged torments through the prisms of finality. In fact, it may outright reject the notion that the recent chaotic implosion is the turning point for the poor nation. This is due, in large measure, to a legacy of corrosive policies aimed at-- according to some-- “hindering any step towards progress” of several generations.

 Those policies or “Haiti’s Death Plan”, as Tom Reeves explained in his extensive report, have literally constituted a death grip around the neck of a feeble nation then scrambling to establish its identity.

The U.S. and its powerful, influential imperialist partners needed to ensure that Haiti’s abolitionist ideals didn’t spill over into the entire Western Hemisphere. Hence, Haiti’s turbulent history was marked by centuries of strategic invasions, presidential assassinations, military coups, civil unrests, embargos, outright neglect, dismissals, and denials. In the meantime, Haiti’s economic infrastructure regressed to prehistoric status while its citizens starved. Consequently, some Haitians have been wondering about the true intentions of the foreigners this time around.

As recently as 2004, the incriminating fingerprints of the U.S. and its loyalists were found all over the civil unrest that led to the removal of the democratically elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide whom they restored to power only ten years prior. To accomplish this endeavor, U.S. Special Forces (about 200 of them) trained a 600-member paramilitary army of anti-Aristide Haitians in the neighborhood country of Dominican Republic and supplied them with 20,000 M16 rifles. Hipolito Mejia, the president of the Dominican Republic, inked that initiative.

Further, the same U.S. government, currently one of the largest donors in the rebuilding efforts that managed, in 2001, to convince Europeans countries, the IMF, WORLD BANK, and the European Union to suspend credits for Haiti. In addition, it also funds the International Republican Institute (IRI) with $3 million annually, an organization with strong connections to well-known criminals and thugs who led the civil uprising and eventual overthrow of Aristide. For instance, three months after the IRI met with the leader of the anti-Aristide movement, Guy Phillippe, 20 of his commandos attacked a hydroelectric plant in Haiti’s central plateau killing a security guard.

Not surprisingly though, incidents such as those were nothing new to Haitians; they have been at the mercy of imperialism’s iron fists since 1915 with the first U.S. invasion. It was then characterized as a strategic deterrent to growing German geopolitical ambitions over Haiti’s accessibility to the Panama Canal. However, five additional U.S. military interventions in Haiti would follow, yet the people of the country, 70 to 80 percent of whom has been unemployed, have not experienced any significant improvements in their lives as a result.

In light of this perpetual cycle, some have even conceded that every foreign intervention has left the country worse off and that the first sovereign black state in the Western Hemisphere was being punished for their insolence 206 years ago; hence, the residual resentments.

With presidential elections scheduled for November 28, 2010, what could be the agenda of the Obama Administration and his loyal imperialist following? “This was one of those moments that calls for American Leadership,” he argued passionately soon after the disaster leveled Port-au-Prince, and added that this intervention was “for the sake of our common humanity.”

On the other hand, several hundreds NGOs, with enough cash to perhaps purchase the entire country, continue to operate in stealth mode, about 24,000 foreign troops are on the ground, a crippled government plagued by a history of corruption, and enough power starved political parties to fill all 50 seats in the United States’ National Governor Association. This scenario may have provided some validity to the concerns and nervousness of so many Haitians.

While this impotent people look outward to the international gods to wave a magic wand and make its troubles disappear, they also question the credibility of the flood of emotions thrown at them. Meanwhile, some familiar tune has invaded the atmosphere in Haiti: it will take some drastic steps to convince donors to honor their pledges.

"I'm going to call all those governments and say, the ones who said they'll give money to support the Haitian government, I want to try to get them to give the money, and I'm trying to get the others to give me a schedule for when they'll release it,"

These are the words of former President Bill Clinton in a televised interview with CNNs Anderson Cooper.

Rapadoo,

Renewed Hope or Despair

CNN announced this morning that Haitian-born philanthropist, Wyclef Jean, would officially announce his bid for the November 28^th Haitian presidential race on Larry King tonight. That event would undoubtedly underline the singer’s global reach since he would become the first Haitian presidential candidate to make such an announcement abroad. More significantly however, it would perhaps show the disadvantage of the competition, including his own uncle and ambassador to the U.S., Raymond Joseph. In addition, Jean told the press that he would also resign from Yele Haiti, his charity organization to focus on his campaign.

‘Not a Joke’

"It's not something that was taken lightly, it's not a joke, it's something very, very serious," younger brother --Samuel Jean-- told the Associated Press in a phone interview. According to many Haitians, this stage would demonstrate the hip-hop artist’s grasp of public relations and media matters. Should that be the case however, what should we say to those who think that he is tending the wrong media since the Haitian media would play an indispensable role covering his national campaign? Still, his brother maintained, “It is different for us, but we a proud of him and we are going to support him in any way we can.”

‘Not like the others’

Inarguably, his loyal and empathic commitment to the neglected majority coupled with the inherent distrust of Haitians in their corrupted political system would put a populous wind at his back going into November. A commonsensical scenario that would also make him an overwhelming favorite as the people of Haiti has desperately been waiting for its Moses to lead it to its promise land. Among the enthused are Dominique Lapierre, a sales person in Port-au-Prince and 28-year-old Michelle Volma.

“He is not like the others, he has an authentic heart,” Lapierre said. “Wyclef has done so much for this country,” she continued, “especially for the youth. Lapierre then declared, “I believe that he can really change this country.” Similarly, Volma feels “Haiti needs something new. I’ll vote for him,” reported the Associated Press. She found his age and outsider status very attractive. In fact, many of Jean’s supporters share her views. They cling to his genuine motivation and hang their hats on the fact that his vast wealth makes him less likely to do this for personal gain, the perpetual cycle of local politicians.

On the other hand, growing murmurs escaping the debris inhabiting the land would pose an important question: could the hip-hop icon take ravaged Haiti on the road to recovery and finally put it on the map?

‘Not a politician’

“I don’t really think he knows the country, he’s like an American,” argued 27-year-old Anise Ulysse to the Christian Science Monitor. Ulysse said she would not vote for anyone in the up coming elections because “It’s difficult for Haitians to have any faith in the election, we are so used to politicians taking advantage of us,” she argued, “The people living on the streets have other things to think about” she later added. Marie Lacrete, 26, also echoed these very sentiments highlighting Jean’s lack of a college education.  “I don’t have a problem with Wyclef, but he’s not the right person to be president,” Lacrete Said. “He’s a musician, not a politician,” she added. She also pointed out the singer’s wealth, popularity, and the people lack of understanding on the issues would help him galvanize votes.

The 3-time Grammy Award winner will have to do much to appease his critics and the fact that he has chosen a primetime international stage to roll out his campaign made the stakes even higher. “He can’t even manage an enterprise properly,” decried Lacrete, referring to TV station Telemax, which –she said-- has been on the decline since its acquisition by the singer. “How is he going to manage Haiti?” The presidency is no small task especially after the recent catastrophe. Hence, what Jean says tonight could potentially make or break his dreams.

Rapadoo,