(Ramon Espinosa/AP)
Members of the American church group who were detained in Haiti. The group's leader, Laura Silsby, is in the centre of the front row. (Source: Times Online, Jan 31, 2010)
Although UNICEF warns people to avoid adopting Haiti orphans
for fear of encouraging child trafficking, there are plane loads of
Haiti's children being taken out of Haiti right now when the people are
in crisis - this is ill advised and dangerous. (Anti-Trafficking Efforts in Haiti .)
33 Haitian children were kidnapped by Americans alleging they were rescuing orphans. One 8-year-old girl, told workers, "I am not an orphan" she believed her mother had arranged a short vacation for her. (10 Americans Arrested in Haiti Await Charges.)
...After the admission of the children (to SOS Children's Village), three persons came to the village claiming been the fathers and old brother of five children, they said the woman who took the children to DR said she organised summer camps for the children, and that now, because of the Haitian situation, she offered them to take care of their children in DR but they had not intended it to be permanent. ( See- Americans arrested: children brought to SOS, traumaticised state of trafficked children.)
Haitian mothers bleed for their children just as all mothers - parents- do. There should be no wholesale evacuation and adoption. Haitian families abroad with earthquake orphan children or relatives may be given expedited immigration provisions along with financial and social service support for family reunification and caring for these children in their own communities. All international adoptions or evacuations of "disaster orphans" must stop. Let us step back and take a moment to consider the best long term interests of these earthquake orphans as well as getting them the immediate protection from predators and short term life-saving relief - food, water, medical treatment, shelter and love, children need. Both must be done. We are too tired of the opportunistic use of either man-made or natural disasters in Haiti, to permanently exile Haitians, without consent, from the reach of their relatives, homeland, its resources, ancestral legacy and culture. The myth that Haitians do not CARE for their children is just that, a myth. As HLLN has proven over and over again in our work to expose the foreign predators hiding behind white privilege, NGO legitimacy and the victorious US/UN occupation of Haiti since 2004. (See, Statement on Haiti adoptions from the international community of adoptees of color.)
Unlike many "helping" Haiti, HLLN has been doing this work for two decades now and yet the only fundraising HLLN has ever done is to ask people who read our writings and get our post to consider subscribing at $12dollars a month. But that can no longer be the case. Good-hearted citizens from all over the world are donating money to "help" Haiti but they don't have the slightest clue of the corporate predators out there that will feed off their generosity, no clue.
When I first was the legal advisor to President Jean Bertrand Aristide in Haiti in 1994, I had another title at the Ministry of Justice, it was Coordinator of Haiti Donors Coordinateur Des Bailleurs des Fond. In that position, working in the Ministry of Justice as the Haitian minister's legal advisor and as liaison between the Haitian justice ministry and the international donors, I got first hand experience on how Haiti's friends, Haiti donors, the International community pledge funds to secure their country's interests, to corrupt and buy Haiti officials to that end. Foreign aid is NOT about empowering Haitians, or securing Haitian interests. We Haitians know it, I lived it, HLLN lawyers who wanted to secure Haiti's interest, were forced out of Haiti by the USAID and the then US ambassador to Haiti because as they said clearly and loudly we had a "conflict of interest."
HLLN did not let that stop our work to change Haiti's paradigm. We've used our own limited resources, continued since 1994 to this day, to try and expose the corrupting USAID/US embassy presence in Haiti and their NGOs that deny Haitian sovereignty. Entrap Haitian leaders, like President Aristide and President Preval. HLLN has experience with the colony narrative, the two most common neocolonial storylines about Haiti and false charity, false orphanages, false benevolence, and false donor aid. That is why, the minute the extent of the earthquake became known, we could SEE -through these predator's eyes - the money they KNOW they will make from Haiti's misfortune: over 200,000 dead; maybe 400,000 bodies yet to be recovered from under the rubble, over a million Haitians displaced, 236,000 Haitians have fled to the Haitian outback, between 700,000 to 800,000 are living in makeshift camps. Untold numbers are suffering injuries and wounds without any pain medication or medical treatment; the number of injured is estimated at 194,000. 70 percent of the buildings in Port au Prince collapsed on their occupants and in Kafou and other towns closer to the epicenter of the quake 90 percent of the buildings flattened their inhabitants. Leogane, Les Cayes, Petit Goave and other points South, destroyed. This colossal tragedy is so unfathomable, so unfathomable.
But we can see how the proponents of disaster capitalism, of profit-over-people values are looking at this and USAID is nothing if not the arm of the US State Department/Pentagon for pursuing the interests of the corporatocracy, of Wall Street, not Main Street. That is indisputable in Haiti and has been so for 50-years. The vultures are circling the mounds of Haitian corpse and earthquake injured and envisioning dollar signs. Their industrial military complex, private security companies and mercenary "police" enforcers like Dick Chenney's Halliburton and Blackwater-types, Brown and Root (mentioned over 4 decades ago in referenced to constructing an oil transfer facility and pipelines in Haiti), DYNCORPS, etc.. are about to make some dough off this Haiti earthquake for some time to come.
I know for those who don't understand, who live in suburban amnesia, that
this reality is unfathomable and too ugly to contemplate. I know because once upon a time, I too was also so blissfully ignorant. I know those Americans and others who are raised and bred on "we do not use our power to subjugate others, we use it to lift them up!!!" as Barack Obama said just recently in reference to Haiti, will think we Haitians at HLLN are "ungrateful morons." I know it because I've gotten the defensive mail to prove it. Here's one example that summarizes them all:
"Please - get over yourself!!! Stop blaming the US and Bush for all the
worlds problems!! Earthquakes happen!! If the US wanted to take over Haiti we would already own it!!! We come to someone's aid and people cry takeover!! If our coming to a country's aid is so dangerous perhaps we should stop helping, then where would the world be and how many would die?? Get a life & go bash someone else for a bit!!! I'm PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!!!!" (http://bit.ly/74Klj3 )
But as difficult as it is for proud Haitians and proud Haitian-Americans, who have a long history with US/Euro false benevolence and inequalities to articulate such injustices and depravities, we also CANNOT take on the
imposition of hurt feelings from defensive folks, programmed to see "the land of the free and the brave with justice and liberty for all." It's that yes,
and also a predatory empire that conducts under-the-radar resource wars all over the planet. Both are true. That's the meaning of Bourgeoisie Freedom, which the African warriors who liberated Haiti from Euro enslavement and colonialism, rejected. The US is the land of great freedom, dignity and decency AND the land of profit-over-people values that enslaves the poor, fleeces Main Street. Haiti is the FIRST place where the Europeans brought the Africans in chains to work their gold mines and plantations. First place where the curse of Euro-inflicted genocide and organized racial exclusion of the Black masses begun in the Western Hemisphere. Haitians were born, became Haitian in the land of the Tainos, as an anecdote to that curse.
The Haitian struggle is the greatest David vs. Goliath battle being played out on this planet. Neither Vodun nor Haitians have ever gone out to dominate any one or any country. We've fought in self-defense only to live free, helped to free many other countries that were enslaved. Would have freed or inspired more, as Harriet Tubman said, if they knew they were enslaved.
USAID MUST GO Let Our People Go!
The first error is that Obama has refused to understand HLLN's concerns in this and that USAID is part of the problem and so can NEVER be part of the solution in Haiti. And yet, their agency are the ones assigned to run the US earthquake relief effort and working to REBUILD Haiti! What a TRAVESTY! (See, Travesty in Haiti - False aid, false charity, false orphanages, false benevolence ; The Slavery in Haiti the Media Won't Expose . See also - Haitian-Americans ask the Obama team to end the UN/US occupation, stop USAID and the NGOs, support sustainable development... and HLLN on oversight needed on USAID, 2008.)
HLLN's mission has NOT changed. If the Obama State Department wants a different paradigm, a change in US-Haiti relationship, then this earthquake relief effort should not be militarized and must NOT be led by USAID nor, for that matter its counterparts in France/Canada, et al and their racist NGO subcontractors who are busy telling all and sundry how there are "zones of security instability" in Haiti and to view the Haitian people as violent animals about to pounce on charity workers and US military. It's this self-serving myth that allowed for the UN/US/France/Canada occupation of Haiti since 2004 in the first place. (See, Expose the lies: Violent Haiti is a myth - There's MORE violence in Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, even in the United States than there is in Haiti .)
this reality is unfathomable and too ugly to contemplate. I know because once upon a time, I too was also so blissfully ignorant. I know those Americans and others who are raised and bred on "we do not use our power to subjugate others, we use it to lift them up!!!" as Barack Obama said just recently in reference to Haiti, will think we Haitians at HLLN are "ungrateful morons." I know it because I've gotten the defensive mail to prove it. Here's one example that summarizes them all:
"Please - get over yourself!!! Stop blaming the US and Bush for all the
worlds problems!! Earthquakes happen!! If the US wanted to take over Haiti we would already own it!!! We come to someone's aid and people cry takeover!! If our coming to a country's aid is so dangerous perhaps we should stop helping, then where would the world be and how many would die?? Get a life & go bash someone else for a bit!!! I'm PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!!!!" (http://bit.ly/74Klj3 )
But as difficult as it is for proud Haitians and proud Haitian-Americans, who have a long history with US/Euro false benevolence and inequalities to articulate such injustices and depravities, we also CANNOT take on the
imposition of hurt feelings from defensive folks, programmed to see "the land of the free and the brave with justice and liberty for all." It's that yes,
and also a predatory empire that conducts under-the-radar resource wars all over the planet. Both are true. That's the meaning of Bourgeoisie Freedom, which the African warriors who liberated Haiti from Euro enslavement and colonialism, rejected. The US is the land of great freedom, dignity and decency AND the land of profit-over-people values that enslaves the poor, fleeces Main Street. Haiti is the FIRST place where the Europeans brought the Africans in chains to work their gold mines and plantations. First place where the curse of Euro-inflicted genocide and organized racial exclusion of the Black masses begun in the Western Hemisphere. Haitians were born, became Haitian in the land of the Tainos, as an anecdote to that curse.
The Haitian struggle is the greatest David vs. Goliath battle being played out on this planet. Neither Vodun nor Haitians have ever gone out to dominate any one or any country. We've fought in self-defense only to live free, helped to free many other countries that were enslaved. Would have freed or inspired more, as Harriet Tubman said, if they knew they were enslaved.
USAID MUST GO Let Our People Go!
The first error is that Obama has refused to understand HLLN's concerns in this and that USAID is part of the problem and so can NEVER be part of the solution in Haiti. And yet, their agency are the ones assigned to run the US earthquake relief effort and working to REBUILD Haiti! What a TRAVESTY! (See, Travesty in Haiti - False aid, false charity, false orphanages, false benevolence ; The Slavery in Haiti the Media Won't Expose . See also - Haitian-Americans ask the Obama team to end the UN/US occupation, stop USAID and the NGOs, support sustainable development... and HLLN on oversight needed on USAID, 2008.)
HLLN's mission has NOT changed. If the Obama State Department wants a different paradigm, a change in US-Haiti relationship, then this earthquake relief effort should not be militarized and must NOT be led by USAID nor, for that matter its counterparts in France/Canada, et al and their racist NGO subcontractors who are busy telling all and sundry how there are "zones of security instability" in Haiti and to view the Haitian people as violent animals about to pounce on charity workers and US military. It's this self-serving myth that allowed for the UN/US/France/Canada occupation of Haiti since 2004 in the first place. (See, Expose the lies: Violent Haiti is a myth - There's MORE violence in Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, even in the United States than there is in Haiti .)
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asked Israel to send a police contingent to Haiti "to fight the growing anarchy on the streets. The plea comes amid reports that the city is being transformed into a battle zone between various gangs and looting is escalating. " Israel decided to send 100 police officers to Haiti in response to the UN request. (100 Israeli Police heading for Haiti.)
But most of our folks on the ground in Haiti, don't see this "growing anarchy," only flesh and blood people writhing in pain, hungry, thirsty and coping with unspeakable grief. (Ezili Dantò Witness Project)
