News from Haiti evolves by the hour. Last Thursday, we learned that the hospital of the State University of Haiti, the largest hospital center in the country, was forced to close its doors. With clashes between gangs and police nearby – and numerous kidnappings of healthcare workers – it was no longer possible to keep the establishment in operation.
Then, over the weekend, gangs stormed the country’s two largest prisons. On Monday, Toussaint-Louverture airport was surrounded, forcing the cancellation of all flights to the capital. On Tuesday, the Port-au-Prince police academy was targeted in turn.
Ariel Henry, the Haitian Prime Minister, neither appointed nor elected to this position, had to land urgently in Puerto Rico while returning from Nairobi. Wednesday morning, Miami Herald revealed that American diplomats were pushing for Ariel Henry to resign and make way for a transitional government. Leaders of the Caribbean community, CARICOM, are reportedly in talks with leaders of the Haitian opposition to try to find a way out of the political and security crisis which has been escalating since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021 .
I stop here because I want to ensure that, beyond the transmission of the facts, we understand the human consequences of the situation described.
The crisis in Haiti has caused food insecurity to explode. According to the latest data from the World Food Program, almost half of the Haitian population is hungry.
Second — and thanks to Haitian journalist Nancy Roc for her courageous work on this issue — the reign of gangs has increased sexual violence against Haitian women and girls tenfold in recent years. In October 2022, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights already deplored that “women and girls [soient] constantly raped by the men of their community, but also exposed to collective and repeated rapes during massacres and armed attacks.”
Finally, with schools repeatedly closed for security reasons for several years, we are witnessing a live rise in illiteracy and under-enrolment in the country. The crisis has already lasted long enough for the system to have escaped an entire generation in the greater Port-au-Prince region. By the same token, this generation, without access to the outside world, is all the more susceptible to the gang rule under which they grow up.
I still want us to understand the repercussions of all this on the atmosphere, let’s say, within the group of more than 150,000 Quebecers of Haitian origin.
I want us to understand to what extent the elders of the Haitian community of Montreal are fighters. I am talking here about a generation who had to go into exile, often leaving behind loved ones already imprisoned or murdered, to escape the Duvalier dictatorship, certainly, but also to fight it. This generation not only fought here against a regime of incredible violence, supported by the Canadian and American governments, but also founded and held at arm’s length the community organizations that made it possible to welcome the diaspora, disproportionately represented in jobs that were discovered to be “essential” just four years ago.
Many Haitian elders in Montreal, after the fall of the Duvalier regime in 1986, sought to contribute to the reconstruction of Haiti. There are, in Montreal as elsewhere in the diaspora, intellectuals, social organizers, feminist leaders, men and women of state who have sacrificed a significant part of their economic resources, and precious time with their children. — my generation —, for the dream of Haitian democracy. In the constant trips back and forth to the country, we wanted to revive a republic.
But there was the coup d’état against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004, orchestrated by foreign powers. Then, the imposition of MINUSTAH by the UN from 2004 to 2017, which brought with it even greater destabilization of the country (and cholera). There was the earthquake of January 2010, its 220,000 deaths, its indelible consequences on the country. Then, the controversy surrounding the results of the November 2010 presidential election by the Organization of American States, which launched the domination of the Haitian Tèt Kale Party (PHTK) over the Haitian people, first with Michel Martelly, then Jovenel Moïse, now Ariel Henry. The PHTK relied on criminal gangs to rule before losing control.
In all this, the dream of Haitian democracy was beaten up from abroad, with the complicity of local puppets.
Every year I see the steps of the elders of the Haitian community become heavier. The sighs heavier. I assure you that age is not the cause. And despite this gravity, these elders are still there to hold at arm’s length the organizations that serve asylum seekers in particular, who come from everywhere, and no longer just from Haiti. And many of them continue to go to Haiti despite the dangers. Elders are stubborn. It is the honor of a lifetime to meet them.
Many readers will feel helpless in the face of this text. But we are not. Even within the scope of our very provincial jurisdiction, we can do something — concretely, immediately — to support the Haitian diaspora with whom we have often said we have special solidarity in Quebec. We can, at the bare minimum, stop throwing sugar over the heads of asylum seekers.
Please. Not now. I want to tell you: never. But above all, not now. In the name of what decency there may be left in this world. THANKS.