Wednesday, February 3, 2010
(One day from "A Chronology of Haitian Protest and Resistance since the Earthquake")
A resource produced by Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade

Numerous Protests Across the Capital

Haiti quake death toll tops 200,000

Al Jazeera, February 4, 2010
Source

Photo: "Angry Haitians desperate for food aid staged protests across the capital [AFP]"

Haitians protest
Before the long-term rebuilding can even begin, however, angry protests have flared across the Haitian capital over complaints that aid delivery remains sluggish despite the massive operation in the past three weeks.
 

"The Haitian government has done nothing for us, it has not given us any work. It has not given us the food we need," Sandrac Baptiste said bitterly as she left her makeshift tent to join angry demonstrations on Wednesday.
 

In separate protests after a tense night when shots were fired in the capital Port-au-Prince, some 300 people gathered outside the mayor's office in the Petionville neighbourhood.
 

Another 200 protesters marched towards the US embassy, crying out for food and aid...

Three weeks after earthquake, angry protests over aid delays
By Bill Van Auken
World Socialist Web Site, 4 February 2010
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/hait-f04.shtml

Three weeks after the January 12 earthquake leveled most of Port-au-Prince and claimed the lives of over 200,000 people, anger in Haiti over the slow pace of relief and the impotence of President Rene Prevals government has erupted into protests.
...
Government workers, lawyers and crowds of hungry people staged demonstrations and protests in various parts of the devastated capital Wednesday as frustration over the failure of the anarchic relief effort to reach the majority of those affected by the quake boiled over.

Hundreds of people ran through the streets of the Port-au-Prince suburb of Petionville waving tree branches and shouting, They stole the rice! They stole the rice, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

The protesters said that local officials were charging earthquake victims for coupons entitling them to food aid that has been donated by the United Nations World Food Program.

For us to get the coupon, we must give 50 Haitian dollars (US$7) so we can get the rice, Danka Tanzil, 17, told the AP.

There are mounting charges of official corruption in the food relief program, even as nearly two thirds of those affected by the earthquake have yet to receive any aid at all. At street markets set up amid the rubble of Port-au-Prince, sacks of rice clearly marked as donated are being sold at elevated prices.
...

Meanwhile, Haitis Radio Metropole reported Wednesday that several hundred people marched in the streets of Port-au-Prince this morning demanding food and work.

The Haitian government has done nothing for us, protester Sandrac Baptiste told the radio station. We cant find work. It does not give us food.

Meanwhile, hundreds of former employees of state-owned enterprises that were shut down under pressure from Washington, the International Monetary Fund and other financial institutions protested outside the temporary seat of the Haitian government in the judicial police headquarters.

Most of the workers lost their jobs after the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of Haitis President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. They have demanded 36 months pay as compensation. The demonstrators chanted slogans denouncing President Rene Preval. Some in the crowd called for Aristides return.

(1) Protest in Petionville, an affluent suburb of Port-au-Prince

Haiti Confirms Toll of Over 200,000

"Protests over a lack of aid continued Wednesday with a march on the mayor’s office in the neighborhood of Pétionville. Another 200 people rallied near the US embassy, calling for food and water."

Democracy Now, February 4, 2010

Watch Video.  Coverage starts at 1:16.

Haitians protest against the mayor of the Petionville suburb, Claire Lydie Parent, in Port-au-Prince, Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Source

Earthquake survivors wave branches and chant "Lydie stole the rice, we see that she's a crook" as they protest against the mayor of the Petionville suburb, Claire Lydie Parent, in Port-au-Prince, Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2010. ... Protesters claimed local officials were charging them for donated food.
Source

Hungry and angry, the people protest Haiti official's demand they pay for aid
By Ailene Yasmin Torres
Virgin Islands Daily News, February 5, 2010
Source

Wednesday morning dawned with reports of a riot.

People who arrived at L'Hopital de la Communaute Haitienne to volunteer said multitudes of angry Haitians had gathered in the streets.

It has been 24 days since the earthquake, and the people are hungrier with each passing day

On the main road leading away from the hospital, everyone was marching in one direction.

The throng reached the post-earthquake residence of Pétion-Ville Mayor Lidy Parent at the Hotel de Ville, which is across from one of Port-au-Prince's tent cities.

The riot was, in actuality, a civilized protest. People are angry because they are hungry. They shouted in Creole. They threw their fists in the air.  But they were not violent.

The day before, Parent revoked the food cards given to the city's poorest. Those cards give access to the food donated by the international community. Instead, Parent requires that the people - the homeless, the unemployed, the starving - pay 30 Haitian dollars for one pot of rice and beans. "We need rice. We need tents. We have no place to sleep," a woman yelled.

The Haitian government has received aid from USAID and PAN International but demands payment from the people for whom the food and supplies were intended. At the hospital, the people now are required to pay to enter triage.

They are in pain. They are starving. They take to the streets to demand either rice or Parent's removal.

The scene at Parent's temporary residence is loud but controlled. People fill the entryway as armed Haitian police officers stand guard.  A woman in the crowd has a small bag of shelled and roasted chestnuts. She picks one out and lets it linger between her index finger and thumb.

She nibbles it, taking one small bite of the nut at a time. She savors the flavor because it is all she has to eat.

Across the street, a mother washes her 5-year-old from a basin in the street.

They all watch the hotel, wait for a sign of life. One word of compassion. A change of heart. They wait for food. Nothing comes. Some of the protesters decide to walk the several miles to the Haitian Police Academy to demand food there.  They file out on foot past St. Peter's Church, many without shoes. Along the way, they chant in Creole. They want their rice. They want their food.  In their quest for something to eat, they pass Belvil, a gated community for the upper class, the richest Haitians - the ones who have plenty to eat.

The walk takes a long time. With each step in the hot, dry sun, the Haitians grow hungrier, thirstier.  As they arrive, they meet other Haitians who are waiting across the street from the gates of Police Nationale D'Haiti. There is no food there either.  "The mayor is playing politics with the food while people starve," one man shouted in Creole.

A man who is preaching against the current regime holds a crowd of protesters' rapt attention as he encourages them to mobilize.

By afternoon, however, people start to drift away and the crowds disperse from the mayor's residence and the police academy.

They had to go find food on their own.

Haiti Quake Victims Protest Slow Aid Handout
The aid flooding into Haiti by plane and boat is not reaching earthquake victims quickly enough to stem growing unrest because of transportation bottlenecks and isolated violence. (Feb. 3) From: AssociatedPress...

Watch Video (1:22)

[This video clip begins by showing a protest from February 3, and then beginning at 55 seconds it shows another protest from February 2.]

Protests, frustration at Haiti aid bottlenecks

By PAISLEY DODDS (AP) – Feb 3, 2010
Source

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The aid flooding into Haiti by plane and boat is not reaching earthquake victims quickly enough due to red tape, security fears, transportation bottlenecks and occasional corruption.

Anger boiled into a protest Wednesday by hundreds of hungry people who jogged down a broad avenue in a Port-au-Prince suburb waving branches and chanting, "They stole the rice! They stole the rice!" Protesters alleged local officials were charging them for donated food.

...
Haitians complain that corrupt officials have started to manipulate some of the aid that reaches the streets.

Danka Tanzil, 17, said a local official in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Petionville was demanding a bribe before he would give people the coupons that entitle them to bags of rice from the U.N. World Food Program. "For us to get the coupon, we must give 50 Haitian dollars (US$7) so we can get the rice," she complained.

Earthquake survivors demonstrate against the mayor of Petionville suburb, Claire Lydie Parent, during a protest in Port-au-Prince, Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2010. The aid flooding into Haiti by plane and boat is not reaching victims of the Jan. 12 earthquake quickly enough due to red tape, security fears, transportation bottlenecks and occasional corruption.

Protesters alleged local officials were charging them for donated food.

Source

Le cri «nous avons faim, à bas Préval» retentit à Port-au-Prince

The cry "we are hungry, down with Preval" rang out in Port-au-Prince
By Daniel Lozano

Haïti Liberté
10 au 16 Février 2010

Over a thousand people, desperate, hungry yesterday [February 3] demanded food on the square of St. Peter, the main square of Petion-ville. A tide of human beings who huddled against each other in a small space...opposite the Town Hall. Leriche Jean-Roger, age 54, speaks loudly, there is nothing to lose because he has nothing left. "The mayor has deceived us. For this reason we are here because we are hungry. Neither Preval nor the mayor serve us something...."

The protests of some stimulate those of others. They throng around the journalist with all their misfortunes. The event heats up because someone (the reporter) is listening. ... Leriche, facing hundreds of people who suffer like him. [said] "Yesterday a truck came with a water tank and had to leave because the mayor was not present."

Reviews for U.S. troops John Peter takes over from Jean-Roger Leriche and gives a political coloration to the protest: "Aristide [Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a priest, president in 1991, between 1994-1996, then from 2001 to 2004] can help us. He must return...." Peter is a member of Lavalas [Creole: the rain], the political movement of former President Aristide, toppled by the military forces of the United States in 2004 and currently in exile in South Africa, but who wants to return the country. Lavalas, which is very strong in the extremely poor areas of Port au Prince - like Cité Soleil and Bel Air - oppose the presence of the Marines of the United States and the United Nations in Haiti.

Haiti: quake victims protest corruption in food distribution

WW4 Report, February 9, 2010

Source

On Feb. 3 several hundred Haitians marched in Pétionville, a generally well-to-do suburb southeast of Port-au-Prince, to protest what they said was corruption in the distribution of food to survivors of a Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated the capital and surrounding cities. The demonstrators said Pétionville mayor Claire Lydie Parent was illegally charging 150 gourdes (about $3.77) each for the coupons now being used to organize distribution of food. The protest began in front of the military academy on the Route de Frères and then moved to an encampment outside the mayor's office.

Port-au-Prince metropolitan area residents charge that aid distribution has been slow and chaotic. Although tons of food have come to Haiti from international relief efforts, many survivors had received little or no aid more than three weeks after the earthquake. On Feb. 3 US marines were guarding long lines of hundreds of people waiting in the hot sun outside food distribution centers in Pétionville, in the capital and in the western suburb of Carrefour. To keep men from taking all the food, aid agencies had started limiting distribution to women, but the Haitian media noted that the women seemed exhausted after transporting the heavy bags of rice.

A week earlier, a similar protest broke out in the city of Léogane, west of Port-au-Prince, near the quake’s epicenter.

Haiti: Quake Victims Protest Food Distribution

Source

On Feb. 3 several hundred Haitians marched in Pétionville, a generally well-to-do suburb southeast of Port-au-Prince, to protest what they said was corruption in the distribution of food to survivors of a Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated the capital and surrounding cities. The demonstrators said Pétionville mayor Claire Lydie Parent was illegally charging 150 gourdes (about $3.77) each for the coupons now being used to organize distribution of food. The protest began in front of the military academy on the Route de Frères and then moved to an encampment outside the mayor’s office.

(Haiti Press Network 2/3/10; Radio Métropole 2/4/10)

(2) Protest at the US Embassy

US marines seize Haitian photographer's camera

RSF/IFEX

Source
 

Homère Cardichon, a photographer working for the daily Le Nouvelliste, had his camera confiscated by US marines yesterday while covering a demonstration by disgruntled residents outside the US embassy in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Tabarre.

We urge culture and communications minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn-Lassègue to demand an explanation from the US military authorities.

“Six marines come up and surrounded me,” Cardichon told us. “Then they took my camera in my opened work bag and left with it. An hour later, one of them came back and photographed me. Then he returned my camera to me. I saw that the soldiers had erased some of the photos.”

There is growing discontent in Port-au-Prince with the countries involved in the humanitarian relief effort, including the United States. In this case, the US soldiers reacted in the worst possible manner in an attempt to protect their image. Aside from being a flagrant act of censorship, it has done further harm to their reputation in the eyes of the Haitian population. The government has a right to expect an explanation from the US military and to hope that such an incident will not recur.

(3) Protest at a Tent Encampment

(4) Protest at the Haiti government's headquarters

Frustrated Haitians Demand Government Action
New Tang Dynasty TV, 2010-02-04
Watch Video (1:07)

Scores of destitute Haitians are directing their frustration and anger towards the nation’s leader.

They are demanding urgent action from President Rene Preval in the wake of a 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck three weeks ago, killing up to 200 thousand people.

[Jack Estanly, Protester]: "We lost our jobs in 2004-2007, we looked for jobs but there's nothing, the people in the streets have nothing, no water for drinking, no house. There are some children orphaned, but no help also. Today I come here to ask the Preval government to pay us."

The protest came as the United Nations admitted the aid operation had been frustratingly slow, but was showing signs of progress. 

(4) Rally at the amphitheater in the Carrefour Aviation area

500 women march on MINUSTAH and U.S. Embassy to demand “Tents, not guns!”  
by Christian Guerrier and Brian Jackson

Haïti Liberté, February 17-23, 2010
Source

"Throughout the week, huge rallies had been taking place each afternoon at an amphitheater located in the Carrefour Aviation area. By Thursday, February 4, we had amassed about 500 people from the community."

[Note: The "huge rallies" mentioned here appear to have been the beginnings of the "January 12 Movement to Liberate Haitian Women". This organisation held its first protest march on February 5 (see detailed article). That march included 500 women who walked to the MINUSTAH (UN military occupation force) headquarters and the US Embassy to demand “Tents, not guns!”  They also held another protest and sit-in on February 9.

The photo above shows a crowd of women at the "amphitheater located in the Carrefour Aviation area."  The first six photos in the collection of the 12 Janvye Mouvman Fanm show women gathering in this amphitheatre on February 5.]

Wednesday, February 3, 2010
(One day from "A Chronology of Haitian Protest and Resistance since the Earthquake")
A resource produced by Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade