HAITI EARTHQUAKE – RE-BUILDING WHAT KIND OF ECONOMY/ SOCIETY?
February 19, 2010
Even as emergency relief work continues, the re-building process begins.  A majority of poor Haitians are demanding to participate in the process of ‘What kind of economy will be re-built?’
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TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATIONS IN CANADA & USA
THANK-YOU to all who have donated funds.  Please continue to donate funds for emergency response and re-building.  Make checks payable to "Rights Action" and mail to:
UNITED STATES:  Box 50887, Washington DC, 20091
CANADA:  552 - 351 Queen St. E, Toronto ON, M5A-1T8
Credit card donations: http://rightsaction.org/contributions.htm
Stock donations: Contact Grahame Russell, info@rightsaction.org
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BELOW

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Grahame Russell, Connecticut, info@rightsaction.org, 860-352-2448

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EDUCATIONAL-SOLIDARITY DELEGATION TO GUATEMALA, APRIL 17-25
"Mining companies * versus * community development, environmental justice, indigenous & human rights” (for more information: info@rightsaction.org)
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“HEALING HAITI” - AL JAZEERA - FAULTLINES REPORT: http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/faultlines/2010/02/201021113542380300.html
Just weeks after the earthquake that took more than 200,000 lives and devastated Haiti's capital city, a new normalcy is taking shape in Port-au-Prince. The shock of so much loss has barely worn off, but the mountains of rubble are slowly being cleared. And where landmarks like the national palace and the cathedral once towered, a new architecture has appeared.  Hundreds of tent cities have been set up, camps of internally displaced people who have lost their homes. Food distribution points dot the city, run primarily by the UN, with support from US troops.  These structures might be temporary, but at the makeshift government head quarters, in donor conferences, and in the boardrooms of international financial institutions, attention is turning to the long-term plan.
As pledges of billions of dollars of international aid and investment are made, Avi Lewis travels to Port-au-Prince and to the Plateau Central and finds that debates over the vision of a new Haiti are already underway.
This report includes a good focus on the work of Partners in Health & presents a clear discussion of what should and can be an alternative vision of economic development.
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THE LARGEST MEDICAL RELIEF EFFORT IN HAITI
http://www.medicc.org/ns/index.php?s=19&p=19
February 11, 2010 – An international team of some 50 doctors trained at Havana's Latin American Medical School (ELAM) has arrived in Port-au-Prince to join Cuba's medical relief contingent in post-quake Haiti. Coming from a dozen countries, they are the first wave of ELAM graduates expected to number over 200 from 24 countries in the next week.
They will join the 1,147-strong Cuban-led International Henry Reeve Emergency Medical Contingent, already comprised of 736 Cubans plus 402 ELAM graduates from Haiti, 7 from the USA and 2 from Nicaragua—together the largest medical relief effort in Haiti.
Heading the international team is Dr. Luther Castillo, a Garifuna physician from Honduras, who was in ELAM’s first graduating class in 2005. “When Hurricane Mitch hit my country in 1998, the Cuban doctors were right there with us, among the poorest of the poor,” he told MEDICC. “They taught us never to abandon anybody, and they’re the reason I’m a doctor today.  Now ELAM has given all of us the chance to pass on that solidarity.”
"AS LONG AS NECESSARY"
Dr. José Ramón Balaguer, Cuban Minister of Public Health, speaking at the team’s sendoff last night, emphasized the long-term responsibility of the young physicians and their Cuban partners to “help build a public health system that meets the needs of all the Haitian people”.
Gabriel Jacques, a 1st-year Haitian medical student at ELAM, told the departing graduates of his school that “even in the hell that my country has become, you will find people like you who believe in the future, and who are willing to dream and rebuild.”
ACTIVATING THE NETWORK
Since the first class of 2005, ELAM has graduated 7,290 physicians from the Americas, Africa, the Mideast, Asia and Oceania. The graduates began organizing former classmates immediately following the earthquake, sending out thousands of emails, and recruiting hundreds willing to serve in Haiti. From all over Latin America they have come; from the Caribbean and the USA; and a few from as far away as Mali.  Dr. Bechri Ahmed Ali hails from the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic: “But Haiti is where I belong right now,” he told MEDICC.
"This isn't an adventure. This is a commitment,” said Dr Wilberth Barral, a Bolivian ELAM graduate preparing to depart for Haiti. "My classmates are Haitian. Some lost their whole families, fathers, siblings, their homes. They need our help."
None of the dozens of ELAM-trained doctors interviewed expressed anxiety about the open-ended nature of their assignment. On the contrary, said Dr María Esther Betanco from Nicaragua, "we'll stay as long as necessary, unconditionally."  This is no small effort for many of these young doctors who themselves come from low-income families, and who will depend on networks back home to cover their absence.
DISASTER MEDICINE TRAINING
In preparation for departure, the ELAM graduates attended a week-long disaster course organized by the Latin American Center for Disaster Medicine (CLAMED), including modules on epidemiology, disease prevention, and vector control. They also had sessions in Haitian geography, culture, and history. In addition to a battery of vaccinations and basic materials every Henry Reeve volunteer receives before departure, each doctor also packed MEDICC’s trilingual Spanish-Creole-French Health for All Glossary of 4000+ essential health care terms.
To date, the Cuban-led Henry Reeve Contingent in Haiti has treated over 65,000 victims and performed more than 3,600 surgical interventions in field hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and other health installations throughout Haiti.
COUNTRIES REPRESENTED IN THE HENRY REEVE INTERNATIONAL EMERGENCY MEDICAL CONTINGENT
This is also the first time the Henry Reeve Contingent -- which has provided health services in post-disaster Guatemala, Pakistan, Indonesia and elsewhere -- will formally include ELAM graduates. The Contingent, named after a Brooklyn-born hero of Cuba's independence war against Spain, was created after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast of the USA.
In addition to Cuban and Cuban-trained Haitian physicians, the Contingent in Haiti includes over 200 ELAM graduates from the following countries, expected to continue arriving in Haiti over the next five days: Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Lebanon, Mali, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic, St. Lucia, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela.
MEDICC: medic@infomed.sld.cu; www.medicc.org; www.saludthefilm.net.
To donate to Cuban-trained Haitian doctors on the front lines of Haiti relief: www.medicc.org.

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CUBA'S AID TO HAITI IGNORED BY THE US MEDIA?
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/01/201013195514870782.html
by Tom Fawthrop, February 15, 2010 by Al-Jazeera-English
Among the many donor nations helping Haiti, Cuba and its medical teams have played a major role in treating earthquake victims. Public health experts say the Cubans were the first to set up medical facilities among the debris and to revamp hospitals immediately after the earthquake struck.
However, their pivotal work in the health sector has received scant media coverage.
"It is striking that there has been virtually no mention in the media of the fact that Cuba had several hundred health personnel on the ground before any other country," said David Sanders, a professor of public health from Western Cape University in South Africa.
The Cuban team coordinator in Haiti, Dr Carlos Alberto Garcia, says the Cuban doctors, nurses and other health personnel have been working non-stop, day and night, with operating rooms open 18 hours a day.
During a visit to La Paz hospital in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, Dr Mirta Roses, the director of the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) which is in charge of medical coordination between the Cuban doctors, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and a host of health sector NGOs, described the aid provided by Cuban doctors as "excellent and marvellous".
La Paz is one of five hospitals in Haiti that is largely staffed by health professionals from Havana.
HISTORY OF COOPERATION
Haiti and Cuba signed a medical cooperation agreement in 1998.  Before the earthquake struck, 344 Cuban health professionals were already present in Haiti, providing primary care and obstetrical services as well as operating to restore the sight of Haitians blinded by eye diseases.
More doctors were flown in shortly after the earthquake, as part of the rapid response Henry Reeve Medical Brigade of disaster specialists. The brigade has extensive experience in dealing with the aftermath of earthquakes, having responded to such disasters in China, Indonesia and Pakistan.
"In the case of Cuban doctors, they are rapid responders to disasters, because disaster management is an integral part of their training," explains Maria a Hamlin Zúniga, a public health specialist from Nicaragua. "They are fully aware of the need to reduce risks by having people prepared to act in any disaster situation."
Cuban doctors have been organising medical facilities in three revamped and five field hospitals, five diagnostic centres, with a total of 22 different care posts aided by financial support from Venezuela. They are also operating nine rehabilitation centres staffed by nearly 70 Cuban physical therapists and rehab specialists, in addition to the Haitian medical personnel.
The Cuban team has been assisted by 100 specialists from Venezuela, Chile, Spain, Mexico, Colombia and Canada and 17 nuns.
Havana has also sent 400,000 tetanus vaccines for the wounded.
Eduardo Nuñez Valdes, a Cuban epidemiologist who is currently in Port-au-Prince, has stressed that the current unsanitary conditions could lead to an epidemic of parasitic and infectious diseases if not acted upon quickly.
MEDIA SILENCE
However, in reporting on the international aid effort, Western media have generally not ranked Cuba high on the list of donor nations. One major international news agency's list of donor nations credited Cuba with sending over 30 doctors to Haiti, whereas the real figure stands at more than 350, including 280 young Haitian doctors who graduated from Cuba.
The final figure accounts for a combined total of 930 health professionals in all Cuban medical teams making it the largest medical contingent on the ground.
Another batch of 200 Cuban-trained doctors from 24 countries in Africa and Latin American, and a dozen American doctors who graduated from Havana are currently en route to Haiti and will provide reinforcement to existing Cuban medical teams.
By comparison the internationally-renowned Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF or Doctors without Borders) has approximately 269 health professionals working in Haiti. MSF is much better funded and has far more extensive medical supplies than the Cuban team.
But while representatives from MSF and the ICRC are frequently in front of television cameras discussing health priorities and medical needs, the Cuban medical teams are missing in the media coverage.
Richard Gott, the Guardian newspaper's former foreign editor and a Latin America specialist, explains: "Western media are programmed to be indifferent to aid that comes from unexpected places. In the Haitian case, the media have ignored not just the Cuban contribution, but also the efforts made by other Latin American countries."
Brazil is providing $70mn in funding for 10 urgent care units, 50 mobile units for emergency care, a laboratory and a hospital, among other health services. Venezuela has cancelled all Haiti debt and has promised to supply oil free of charge until the country has recovered from the disaster.
Western NGOs employ media officers to ensure that the world knows what they are doing. According to Gott, the Western media has grown accustomed to dealing with such NGOs, enabling a relationship of mutual assistance to develop.
Cuban medical teams, however, are outside this predominantly Western humanitarian-media loop and are therefore only likely to receive attention from Latin American media and Spanish language broadcasters and print media.
There have, however, been notable exceptions to this reporting syndrome. On January 19, a CNN reporter broke the silence on the Cuban role in Haiti with a report on Cuban doctors at La Paz hospital.
CUBA/US COOPERATION
When the US requested that their military plans be allowed to fly through Cuban airspace for the purpose of evacuating Haitians to hospitals in Florida, Cuba immediately agreed despite almost 50 years of animosity between the two countries.
Josefina Vidal, the director of the Cuban foreign ministry's North America department, issued a statement declaring that: "Cuba is ready to cooperate with all the nations on the ground, including the US, to help the Haitian people and save more lives."
This deal cut the flight time of medical evacuation flights from the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba's southern tip to Miami by 90 minutes.
According to Darby Holladay, the US state department's spokesperson, the US has also communicated its readiness to make medical relief supplies available to Cuban doctors in Haiti. "Potential US-Cuban cooperation could go a long way toward meeting Haiti's needs," says Dr Julie Feinsilver, the author of Healing the Masses - a book about Cuban health diplomacy, who argues that maximum cooperation is urgently needed.
RICH IN HUMAN RESOURCES  
Although Cuba is a poor developing country, their wealth of human resources - doctors, engineers and disaster management experts - has enabled this small Caribbean nation to play a global role in health care and humanitarian aid alongside the far richer nations of the west.
Cuban medical teams played a key role in the wake of the Indian Ocean Tsunami and provided the largest contingent of doctors after the 2005 Pakistan earthquake. They also stayed the longest among international medical teams treating the victims of the 2006 Indonesian earthquake.
MORE: http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/01/201013195514870782.html
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DEMONSTRATORS DEMAND FRENCH PRESIDENT SARKOZY TO PAY UP HISTORIC DEBT AND RETURN OUSTED PRESIDENT ARISTIDE TO HAITI
by Kevin Pina, February 17, 2010. See original, with photos: http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/2_18_10/2_18_10.html
Port au Prince, Haiti - Thousands of supporters of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide took to the streets on Wednesday as French president Nicolas Sarkozy toured the earthquake ravaged capital of Port au Prince. Holding pictures of the ousted president aloft they chanted for France to pay more than 21 billion dollars in restitution and reparations and to return former President Aristide, as Sarkozy's helicopter landed near Haiti's quake damaged national palace.
Their demands stem from a long held dispute over compensation a nascent Haiti was forced to pay French slave owners in exchange for recognition of their independence and over France's role in ousting Aristide in 2004.
Aristide, who remains widely popular among Haiti's poor, first raised the issue of restitution and reparations in April 2003. His government argued that an agreement reached in 1825 forcing Haiti to pay 90 million gold francs to compensate their former slave masters severely crippled Haiti's economic development. The debt included massive interest and took 122 years to pay off with the final installment made in 1947. His government calculated that the total sum of the debt Haiti was forced to pay with interest, along with reparations for the unpaid labor of millions of slaves kidnapped from Africa and forced to work on French plantations in Haiti, came to more that 21 billion dollars.
Aristide's administration pushed the issue on the international stage while airing commercials several times a day in Haiti that said, "We demand reparations and restitution. France, pay me my money, $21,685,135,571.48."
Aristide was forced out of the country in a coup ten months later on Feb. 29, 2004 and flown to the former French colony of the Central African Republic. Although the main author of the coup is still seen as the administration of George W. Bush, Haitians have never forgotten the role that France played in supporting the opposition movement to Aristide and their demands that he resign.
Several weeks before Aristide was forced onto a plane and flown into exile, the government of then French president Jacques Chirac dispatched Véronique Albanel and Régis Debray to demand that he resign. In an interview with writer Claude Ribbe one year after his ouster Aristide said, "These two French personalities came to the National Palace and asked me so. That is already known. The threats were groundless, they were evident and direct. As good Haitians, we are respectful but we demand to be respected and we replied with respect and dignity. The threats were evident and direct: you resign or you might be !"
Before his tour of the destruction in Haiti's capital and during an address to Haitian dignitaries, French president Sarkozy offered $400 million dollars in emergency assistance, reconstruction funds, and support for the Haitian government's operating budget. This was in addition to France's earlier decision to cancel Haiti's debt of $77 million dollars.
Paulette Joseph, a member of the Lavalas Mobilization Commission and one of the organizers of the demonstration responded, "That's great that Sarkozy has come to give France's support to the Haitian people in this difficult moment after the terrible earthquake that killed so many of our people and now forces us to live in greater misery." Joseph continued, "But $477 million dollars doesn't even come close to the damage France inflicted upon Haiti before the earthquake.  We were suffering from poverty before this crisis as a result of the debt Haiti was forced to pay the slave masters to recognize our independence. If our country is not equipped to handle this crisis and we are suffering more after the earthquake it is a direct result of that debt."
"We need Aristide to return!" shouted demonstrators as Haitian president Preval made a rare appearance on the lawn in front of Haiti's destroyed seat of government following Sarkozy's visit. Waving photos of Aristide they also began chanting, "If Aristide were here he would be suffering along with us!" as Preval turned his back on the crowd and withdrew to his luxury jeep amid tight security.
For information about Haiti Information Project: http://www.teledyol.net/HIP/about.html; HIP@teledyol.net.
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FRANCE PLEDGES $450M TO HAITI
SARKOZY IS THE FIRST FRENCH PRESIDENT TO VISIT THE FORMER FRENCH SLAVE COLONY 
Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has pledged an aid and debt relief package amounting to about $450m to earthquake-ravaged Haiti. The amount includes a cancellation of Haiti's debt to France of $77m, Sarkozy said during a brief visit to the Caribbean nation on Wednesday.
Sarkozy arrived in Haiti to support international relief efforts after last month's deadly earthquake which killed around 230,000 people and left more than a million homeless.
His visit is the first ever by a French president to the former French slave colony, which fought for and won its independence in 1804, becoming the first independent black republic.
Staying in Haiti for less than four hours, Sarkozy greeted French embassy staff and aid workers and took a helicopter tour to see the extent of damage left by last month's quake. Later speaking alongside Rene Preval, the Haitian president, Sarkozy said he wanted to turn the page in France's long history of troubled relations with its former colony.
But for many Haitians, Sarkozy's visit highlighted the bitter legacy of the price paid by Haiti to secure its freedom from French rule. Following a succesful revolt in 1804, Haiti was forced to pay compensation to France – a debt that took more than half a century to pay off.
'CLEAR RESPONSIBILITY'
In today's money the payments amount to more than $20bn. For many Haitians those payments are what set the seal on Haiti's endemic poverty and at a demonstration on Wednesday hundreds of Haitian protesters called on France to pay back the money.
"France has played an important role in the way the country is suffering economically, and it has a clear responsibility to pay reparations," Camille Chalmers, a Haitian economist, told Al Jazeera.
During his visit Sarkozy acknowledged that France and Haiti had had a troubled relationship, saying he was conscious that France "did not leave a good legacy" in its former colony. "We are staring at history in its face, we have not discarded it and we assume responsibility," he said.
However, asked by Al Jazeera about the issue of reparations for Haiti's post-independence payments to France he appeared dismissive. "Non, non, non (No, no, no)", he said.
'NEW ERA'
Al Jazeera's Steve Chao, reporting from the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, said that French officials hoped that the visit "will summon a new era between France and its former colony".
"Sarkozy and his people are very much cognisant of the fact that Haitians hold a lot of suspicion and resentment over its former brutal years of slavery as a colony and over feelings that France has continued to meddle in politics on this island in more recent years," he said.
Sarkozy surveyed the devastated Haitian capital and other affected areas by helicopter, and was also to visit a French-run field hospital. He was also due to meet Haiti's leaders to offer France's financial support for a plan for post-quake recovery and reconstruction that is being put together by foreign donors with the Haitian government.
Economists from the Inter-American Development Bank have estimated the cost of rebuilding Haiti after the quake, which killed more than 200,000 people and left more than one million homeless, could reach nearly $14 billion, making it proportionately the most destructive natural disaster in modern times.
Besides providing immediate emergency aid to the hurt and homeless from the quake, international donors are looking to support Haiti's long-term recovery to try to pull the country out of a cycle of poverty and political instability.
While aid workers rush to distribute tarpaulins before the rainy season starts, the United Nations says only about 272,000 people have been provided with shelter materials so far.
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WHAT RIGHTS ACTION IS SUPPORTING
Via Western Union transfers and bank wires, we are directly funding Haitian non-government and community based organizations that are operating:

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GROUPS WE RECOMMEND – Please consider providing funds directly to these groups
KONPAY - WORKING TOGETHER FOR HAITI (Konbit Pou Ayiti)
Working Together for Haiti strengthens existing organizations, builds national networks, creates relationships between individuals and organizations in the U.S. and Haiti, and supports collaboration and the sharing of technology and expertise.  KONPAY focuses on Haitian solutions to environmental, social and economic problems and provides training and funding to grassroots and community-based projects: http://www.konpay.org/; melinda@konpay.org.
The ARISTIDE FOUNDATION has established a medical facility at its headquarters in Tabarre and adjoining former medical school of Haiti (the one taken over by U.S. Marines in 2004 and used by UN troops until recently).  Thousands of people are receiving treatment.  Services are being provided by Haitian doctors, students and Cuban doctors.  Contributions may be done through the “Haiti Emergency Relief fund”: http://www.haitiaction.net/About/HERF/HERF.html.
INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE & DEMOCRACY IN HAITI
The IJDH works with the people of Haiti in their non-violent struggle for the return and consolidation of constitutional democracy, justice and human rights, by distributing objective and accurate information on human rights conditions in Haiti, pursuing legal cases, and cooperating with human rights and solidarity groups in Haiti and abroad: http://www.ijdh.org/; brianhaiti@aol.com.
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TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATIONS IN CANADA & USA
THANK-YOU to all who have donated funds.
Please continue to donate funds for emergency response and re-building.  Make checks payable to "Rights Action" and mail to:
UNITED STATES:  Box 50887, Washington DC, 20091
CANADA:  552 - 351 Queen St. E, Toronto ON, M5A-1T8
Credit card donations: http://rightsaction.org/contributions.htm
Stock donations: Contact Grahame Russell, info@rightsaction.org
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