It's emblematic of all that's wrong with Haiti.
An ostentatious plantation-style manse featuring domes, turrets, pillars, and iron bars, it housed Haiti's elite leadership while multitudes subsisted in makeshift shacks of tin and tar-paper. Post-quake, the turrets are gone, the domes collapsed, the pillars mere rubble. Yet it still houses Haiti's elite leadership - protected from the masses by U.S. soldiers armed with high-tech weaponry - while the multitudes now suffer and die in camps flooded by rains and raw sewage, where rape stalks both day and night, while the landed wealthy and the political leadership do their utmost to evict people even from these miserable digs.
No wonder they call it "The Devil's House."
This will not be the usual Haiti diary. I will not be including the organizations, the reading lists, the articles, the books, or anything else of that nature. No action alerts, no special requests, no talk of "higher things" like elections and policy.
No.
I'm tired: Tired of the approach to Haiti relief efforts in our public discourse and our corporate media. Tired of the UN and its protestations of impotence even as it lies openly about conditions on the ground and props up the country's corrupt elite. Tired of watching the Clinton Foundation, the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund, and the Haiti Interim Reconstruction Commission jack around with pointless meetings and press releases, patting themselves on the back for their "generosity" while the billions from their much-vaunted fundraising go unspent and ordinary Haitians continue to suffer and die needlessly.
As you read this, understand something: I speak here for no one but myself. You will note that I have not included "Justice, Not Charity" in the diary tags. That's because I have not vetted what I'm about to say with the JNC diary team - and what I say is not to be imputed to them in any way. If you dislike what I say here, take it up with me, and leave these good people out of it.
Now, I'm going to take you on a short tour. I'm going to show you how the ordinary people of Haiti live . . . and die.
It was 97 degrees today in Port-au-Prince. For the next ten days, highs will range between 95 and 99. Thunderstorms are forecast for that entire period. Hurricane Igor is moving northwest, and while it's expected to track toward Bermuda, Haiti will get additional rains. Hurricane Julia is right behind.
As I said one month ago:
The quake reportedly killed upwards of 300,000 people. More than 1.7 million remain homeless. Hundreds of thousands of those spend their days in one of the more than 1,300 camps, trying survive the suffocating heat and the flooding rains under makeshift tents and tarps, amid pooling water and mud and raw sewage, amid mosquitoes and rats, with no dry surface on which to sleep - indeed, they "sleep" standing up. They barter, trade, beg, and scavenge for minimal amounts of food - for just enough to keep body going one more day, but certainly not enough to hold soul together with it. Drinkable water is at a premium; one wonders how much illness could have been avoided had folks not been driven by desperation to drink the only water at hand. Thousands still suffer needlessly with amputations, crush injuries, and infection. Violent assaults are commonplace. And women and girls continue to be brutally raped on a daily basis, often repeatedly.
Do you have any idea what these camps look like?
Here's an aerial shot of one of the Port-au-Prince camps:
All those colorful little squares? Those aren't roofs. They're tents. And tarps. And they rip in the wind.
Here's what one looks like up close:
But as terrible as these conditions are, they do provide some infinitesimal illusion of shelter - which, psychologically, can be crucial to survival.
Now, the landed elite and Preval's government, overtly aided by the UN, want to deprive ordinary Haitians of even that meagre bit of comfort.
"When we lost our homes, we became garbage to them."
This from an earthquake survivor, referring to the government's forced evictions from the camps. The evictions began months ago, but have been stepped up recently. In some instances, refugees are given a day to gather their belongings and leave; in others, only a matter of hours. In still others, they are granted no time at all - simply forced out at the barrel of a military weapon, while bulldozers roll over their makeshift shelters and all that they have in the world, grinding those few salvaged possessions into the mud.
Last month, Al-Jazeera English ran a special report on the epidemic of rapes and other problems in the camps, noting that Haitian and UN police turn a blind eye. Democracy Now! has published a partial transcript. Even in this snippet, the UN and its people look callous, corrupt, and venal at best:
SEBASTIAN WALKER: . . . A couple of days ago, we were in a camp where women were complaining of rapes going on every single night.
JEAN-FRANCOIS VEZINA, UN Police Spokesperson: Mm-hmm. Rapes? No, that’s not true.
SEBASTIAN WALKER: It was a very big camp. I mean, we spoke to people that are saying there were incidents on a very regular basis.
JEAN-FRANCOIS VEZINA: But actually, we don’t have any information about rapes every night, for sure.
SEBASTIAN WALKER: OK.
But when girls and women are being assaulted under the noses of international peacekeepers and so many thousands languish under the elements in ill-lit IDP camps, it’s no surprise that across the city you meet people who feel angry and abandoned by international NGOs and the United Nations.
There is a lot of hostility on the street towards the presence of NGOs. I mean, it must make things more difficult for you to kind of have—
EDMOND MULET, UN Mission Chief in Haiti: I don’t agree with that term of hostility on the streets against NGOs or international community.
SEBASTIAN WALKER: Well, everywhere you go, you see graffiti saying "Down with the NGOs! NGOs are thieves! And down with the UN!"
EDMOND MULET: Everywhere?
SEBASTIAN WALKER: Pretty much every neighborhood in Port-au-Prince has graffiti which—
EDMOND MULET: Yeah, no, I don’t agree with that assessment. I don’t see that. It’s some groups, maybe some minority groups.
SEBASTIAN WALKER: Have you seen any—
EDMOND MULET: Politically motivated, maybe, at this point, but I don’t think it really reflects the sentiment of the people of Haiti.
SEBASTIAN WALKER: Do you think there’s been a lack of focus on this transitional period? And do you think you may be taking your eye off the ball?
EDMOND MULET: As I said a while ago, I think that we did lose the sense of urgency that was there in the very beginning. And as I said, I think we have to reenergize that, and we’re doing that right now.
And who is Edmond Mulet? Why, none other than UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon's right-hand man, the Chief of Mission in Haiti.
Meanwhile, Haiti president Rene Preval bumbles along ineffectually, sucking up to the landed gentry and Bill Clinton, wasting time meeting with would-be vanity candidate Wyclef Jean, while his people continue to suffer and die. But he averts his eyes from the tragedy:
Just 50ft from the gates of the National Palace, 15,000 survivors live under makeshift canvas. These shelters have no floor which leaves them sleeping in wet mud during the rainy season.
Meanwhile, women like 20-year-old Michaela Degusson, whose husband died and whose home was destroyed in the quake, attempts to keep her two small children alive by feeding them the same mud on which they sleep outside the presidential palace.
She's had no aid for three months and is forced to have sex with men for £2 a time to feed her little girls, aged three and one.
Violence and death stalk the camp, mere feet from Preval's palace.
The camp is plagued by local gang Red Terror at night, as well as gangsters from the Cite de Soleil slum. Carlos Jean Charles, 19, lost his mum and 11-year-old sister in the quake. Three weeks ago his dad Manigat was shot dead by Soleil 19 gangsters. His headless corpse was found on a rubbish dump, the flesh on a rubbish dump, the flesh on one side of his body eaten away by dogs.
Heartbreakingly Carlos' 14-year-old brother was shot dead by Red Terror thugs three months ago. Carlos says: "We are living in hell with the Devil's House our neighbour. The government does nothing. We have no jobs, no money, no food. We're desperate.
"Gangs come at night to terrorise us. They even live here with us with guns at night and rape and kill anyone who gets in their way. My brother and father were butchered by them. There's no law and the police do nothing.
Girls of 10 have have sex for money just so their families don't starve."
And still it continues: the evictions, the rapes, the killings, the starvation, the disease. All within sight of Preval, the UN staff, and the U.S. soldiers who guard the palace.
No wonder they call it The Devil's House.