Hello! Welcome to the latest edition of Woy Magazine’s weekly newsletter, providing you with must-know news and commentary on Haiti and our Diaspora.
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Deliverance Part Deux
On Thursday, it was announced that three out of the seven Catholics kidnapped more than a week ago had been released, while the others remain captives of unidentified abductors.
Meanwhile, the Catholic Church refuses to bow to the threats and demands of the kidnappers, and have called upon the State to put an end to this crisis.
« Je demande à toutes les autorités qui ont la mission d’établir la paix et les conditions pour que les personnes vivent en toute sérénité dans le pays d’agir avec dextérité et célérité pour que les séquestrés recouvrent leur liberté et que tout le monde vive bien dans le pays. C’est le devoir de l’État de garantir la libre circulation des gens dans leur pays. Il faut qu’il prenne ses responsabilités. La situation est très grave. La situation est urgente. Autorités de l'État, remuez-vous », a demandé monseigneur Max Leroy Mésidor qui a remercié les personnes de toutes confessions qui prient, les groupes de la société qui manifestent leur solidarité avec l’Église catholique. (Source: Le Nouvelliste)
Starting on Wednesday, the Church led a three-day shut-down of all their related services, except their hospitals, in protest — modeled after their one-day strike last week:
L’église catholique romaine a gardé à nouveau fermées, le mercredi 21 avril 2021, les portes de toutes ses institutions (y compris les écoles congréganistes), sauf les centres hospitaliers, en signe de solidarité avec les victimes de kidnapping, après la suspension de ses activités, le jeudi 15 avril 2021, observe l’agence en ligne AlterPresse.
Cet arrêt de travail se poursuivra jusqu’au vendredi 23 avril 2021, pour protester contre l’enlèvement, suivi de séquestration, depuis le dimanche 11 avril 2021, d’une dizaine de religieuses et religieux, dont deux de nationalité française. (Source: AlterPresse)
The Church has also made it known that they refuse to pay a cent of the ransom demanded by the kidnappers:
L’Eglise refuse de payer la rançon des sept ecclésiastiques, dont deux Français, enlevés par un gang, et dénonce l’incurie du gouvernement. (Source: Le Monde)
Last year, in an op-ed for the National Catholic Reporter, Woy Magazine’s Valerie Jean-Charles made the case for Pope Francis to weigh in and denounce the current regime and its use of violence to silence the population. If there was ever a time to speak up, it should be now:
Even if the rest of the international community continues to prop up this administration, the Vatican should not fall in line with them. This would be a complete disregard of the fearlessness exhibited by the Haitian Church…
Complicity
While mum’s the word with most international power players, Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic and the Observatoire Haïtien des Crimes contre l’humanité have released a new damning report on the Haitian government’s role in the growing presence of gangs.
Examining three disturbing massacres in Port-au-Prince, “Killing with Impunity: State-Sanctioned Massacres in Haiti,” finds that:
…senior Moïse administration officials planned the attacks or otherwise assisted by providing the gangs with money, weapons, or vehicles. Off-duty police officers and resources were utilized to carry out the attacks. The Haitian National Police repeatedly failed to intervene to protect civilians despite the sites of the attacks being in close proximity to multiple police stations. In each attack, gangs arrived in the targeted neighborhood, shot at residents indiscriminately, raped women, and burnt and looted houses. (Source: Human Rights@Harvard Law)
The report also takes a look at the National Police Force’s complicity with gangs as the root issue of their often violent responses and reactions to activists and protestors within the last several years:
The gangs also have a complicated relationship with PNH. Numerous police officers have personal ties to gangs. Witnesses to violent gang attacks against civilians have reported seeing PNH officers participate directly in the attacks, and official PNH vehicles and uniforms have regularly been used in such attacks.100 PNH has also systematically failed to provide protection to targeted neighborhoods, to intervene during the perpetration of crimes, or to arrest perpetrators with warrants issued against them.101 PNH faces significant budgetary and other resource constraints that limits its ability to effectively tackle gang violence,102 but the police’s failure to take any action during the course of vicious, lengthy attacks against civilians raises the specter of intentional complicity, especially when viewed in contrast to the strong showings of force against demonstrators.
In addition to the English version linked above, you can read the report in Kreyòl and French.
Loud and Clear
Maybe it was a case of foreshadowing, but less than a week before Harvard Law dropped its report, Jovenel Moïse delivered controversial remarks alluding to his ties with gangs. Responding to the loud calls for him to step down, Moïse questioned what would his critics do with “those [he]’ll leave behind.” He also reminded said opposers that he has “people” who back him.
Many took his statements as a veiled threat from the defacto leader that while he may be removed from the seat of power, the country will have a harder go at ridding itself of the armed and financed gangs he has unleashed during his time in office.
Watch the clip below to hear Moïse in his own words:
Referendum Hiccups
As mass insecurity rages on (about seven people were reported to have been kidnapped within 24 hours on Wednesday), it appears that Jovenel’s quest to consolidate power via a new constitution is hitting a few snags.
In a radio interview, the head of the president’s Tèt Kale party Liné Balthazar made it clear that, “neither he nor the political party supports the president’s proposed June 27 referendum to overhaul the country’s constitution.” During the interview on Magik 9, Balthazar made it clear that the party is “not interested in creating a constitution that favors one group at the expense of another, and repeating what we have been doing in this country for years.” (Source: Miami Herald)
Later on that same day, members of the Port-au-Prince Bar Association made striking arguments emphasizing the illegality of Jovenel’s referendum at a conference focusing on the constitution. Here are a few of the points that were raised:
« La mission qui est assignée au CEP dans l’arrêté du 14 septembre 2020 est illégale. D’abord du fait de la hiérarchie des normes. Vous avez une Constitution qui interdit le référendum. On ne peut pas prendre le plus faible degré de normativité qui est un arrêté pour modifier ou pour confronter une interdiction constitutionnelle. Cette illégalité est manifeste », a lâché Me Bernard Gousse, ex-ministre de la Justice…
« Les constitutions naissent dans un contexte de rupture », a soutenu Me Patrick Pierre-Louis. Pour ce dernier, en l’espèce, en Haïti, il n’y a pas eu d’effondrement constitutionnel ou de rupture pour justifier un changement de Constitution.
Pour sa part, Me Blain Chéry n'a fait pas que souligner le caractère inconstitutionnel de l’arrêté du 14 septembre 2020 confiant la mission au CEP de réaliser un référendum pour changer la Constitution. « Nous sommes dans une situation de coup d’État », a-t-il dit. L’avocat a souligné qu’il n’y avait pas en Haïti la création d’un nouvel État ni une révolution pour justifier un changement de Constitution. (Source: Le Nouvelliste)
At the same conference, former presidential candidate and constitutional scholar and professor Mirlande Manigat went on to stress the unlawfulness of the referendum by saying:
La constitutionaliste a expliqué « qu'un référendum n’est pas une élection ». « Un référendum, c’est la demande adressée à la population d’approuver ou de récuser une décision prise par le pouvoir exécutif, quelle que soit la nature de cette décision. Par exemple, on veut construire une route, une école… », a poursuivi la constitutionaliste qui cite des exemples. (Source: Le Nouvelliste)
You can watch the full conference here.
Smoke and Mirrors
While the country struggles under the weight of mass insecurity, economic woes and the threat of an illegal referendum, Moïse and his team are scrambling to give themselves a makeover of sorts on the world stage. According to a new story by the Miami Herald, Jovenel is whipping out major cash to pay U.S.-based lobbyists and media strategists to help him do so, having added four new members to his stateside team within the last month.
This is not entirely surprising considering the recent media blitz Moïse has attempted to create in the States to clean up his image. As you may recall, in a Woy newsletter in March, we shared a writeup by Axios which analyzed how Moïse’s PR team was comparing the actions taken by the opposition and democratic activists in Haiti to the white supremacist-led January 6 insurrection in Washington, D.C. The article also linked to an op-ed the PR team tried to place in Georgia’s Atlanta Journal Constitution where Ambassador Bocchit Edmond reiterates Moïse’s points for changing the Haitian constitution.
In her report, Jacqueline Charles writes:
Records show that the Haitian government contracts amount to at least $804,000 a year in lobbying fees. The actual amount, however, is much higher. One of the firms, Mercury Public Affairs, routes its Haiti contract through Mercury International UK Ltd, according to the firm’s disclosure, and it is unclear what the total contract is worth because it has not been disclosed publicly.
On the other side of the Haiti crisis are lobbying efforts to counter the government’s message, with the Estopinan Group LLC, run by Art Estopinan, a former chief of staff to Rep. Illeana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., representing businessman Dr. Reginald Boulos, who has emerged as a vocal critic of Moïse.
This incredible spending is taking place as, “the government’s spending on lobbyists comes as it turns to printing money and delaying payments, including paychecks to police, teachers and other government employees.”
Diversifying the Conversation
Last week, Professor Camille Chalmers joined Radio Television Caraibe reporter Samy Janvier for a nuanced conversation on the role socialism can play in fixing Haiti’s current troubles. In the conversation, Chalmers weighs in on the current protests, actions taken by the private sector and explains why he thinks the United States goes through so much trouble to meddle in Haiti’s domestic affairs. You can watch the entire discussion below:
Earth Day
With the entire world celebrating and bringing awareness to environmental issues this week because of Earth Day, we wanted to bring your attention to a thread on Haiti’s reported deforestation issues. At this point, we’ve all heard the infamous statistic that practically most, if not all, of Haiti’s forests are depleted, but truth be told there’s more to the story than what we’ve all previously known.
In his May 2016 blog post, Andrew Tarter wrote:
Let me be unequivocally clear: Haiti is severely deforested. But anyone who has traveled extensively in Haiti can corroborate what these recent remote sensing analyses of satellite imagery have confirmed: the oft-cited figure of only 2 percent forest cover in Haiti is a gross exaggeration.
Here’s his complete Earth Day thread:
For a taste of local activities, last weekend the folks over at MWEMtv headed over to the Wynne Farm Nature Reserve in Kenscoff to cover a full-day of celebrations:
Haiti According to Yanick
In a new interview with UNESCO, author Yanick Lahens discusses how Haiti materializes in her work. When discussing how Port-au-Prince emerges as its own character in her books, Lahens says:
I am a daughter of this city. In my very first collection of short stories, Tante Résia et les dieux [Aunt Résia and the Spirits and Other Stories], there is a story called “La Ville” [The City], which describes the long journey of a character trying to catch a woman wearing a red dress. This wandering is a pretext for evoking the history of this city – its myths, its powerful, disconcerting, and lively present. From there, I reflect on myself – I question history, myths, geography, the life force, the world as it is, with its inequalities, its misfortunes and its beauty, against all odds.
The author of nine books, Lahens
Be sure to read the full interview here.
RIP Maître Joseph
This week, it was reported that noted miniaturist Casimir Joseph passed away in Boston, MA. He was 80 years old.
Known for painting scenes depicting Haitian life and landscapes, Casimir returned to his first love of art in the 1970s after working in several different fields. In his obituary for Le Nouvelliste, Claude Bernard Serant details:
Lorsque Carrefour-Feuilles conservait encore les meilleurs de ses enfants, j’allais admirer les marines du peintre de cette banlieue de Port-au-Prince. Je prenais le temps de me perdre dans les subtils dégradés des marines de Casimir, leur atmosphère vaporeuse persistait dans ma rétine ; je voulais saisir l’instant qui passe dans un regard.
Casimir aimait peindre Port-au-Prince, ses quartiers miteux, délabrés offrant des échancrures de mer où tanguaient, sur un air imprécis, des bateaux chargés de sacs de charbon et autres marchandises. Sur les débarcadères grouillaient toujours de pauvres hères vêtus d’habits aux couleurs qui se fondent l’une dans l’autre. Le peintre jetait dans ces milieux vulnérables liés à la mer une lumière douce, harmonieuse qui rendait la misère d’Haïti fastueuse.
Nou Vle
To take us into the weekend, here’s a classic from Ansy Derose. Be safe and we’ll see you next Friday!
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