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Haiti Report for August 28, 2006

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

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Haiti Report for August 28, 2006

The Haiti Report is a compilation and summary of events as described
in Haiti and international media prepared by Konbit Pou Ayiti/KONPAY.
It does not reflect the opinions of any individual or organization.
This service is intended to create a better understanding of the
situation in Haiti by presenting the reader with reports that provide
a variety of perspectives on the situation.

To make a donation to support this service: Konbit Pou Ayiti, 7 Wall
Street, Gloucester, MA, 01930.

IN THIS REPORT:
- - Former Interim Prime Minister Turns Over Luxury Vehicles Purchased
with Government Funds
- - International Donors Pledge $750 Million in Aid
- - Former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune Freed from Prison
- - Gang Violence Results in Mass Exodus from Grand Ravine
- - Interim Government Corruption - Ambassadors and Embassy Staffs Abroad
- - Toto Constant Found Responsible for Damages in Rape Case
- - Armed Gangs in Port-au-Prince Pledge to Hand Over Weapons, Then
Cancel Ceremony Due to UN Raids in Cite Soleil
- - Americans Witness UN Shooting in Cite Soleil
- - Political Prisoner So Ann and Three Others Released from Prison
- - RFK Memorial Center for Human Rights Files FOIA for Information on
Aid Blockade
- - UN Mission Extended Another Six Months
- - Kidnapped Italian Released
- - Making Progress Against AIDS
- - Haitian Legislator Kidnapped and Released
- - Tropical Storm Ernesto Hits Les Cayes

Former Interim Prime Minister Turns Over Luxury Vehicles Purchased
with Government Funds:
Former interim Prime Minister Girard Latortue, yielding to pressure
from a variety of sources, has agreed to turn over to the Haitian
State two luxury automobiles purchased with funds from the Haitian
treasury and which he was keeping for his own personal use in Boca
Raton, Florida. Prior to his sudden departure to Florida, Mr.
Latortue had arranged for the withdrawal of $90,000 (US) for the
purchase of these vehicles that were supposed to be used for official
business of the Haitian government. However he later decided to keep
them after he had returned to Boca Raton. Following pressure from a
variety of sources, Latortue has finally returned the two luxury
vehicles to the Haitian Consulate in Florida from which they are to
be returned to Haiti. Shortly before his departure, the interim
government had decided to grant Mr. Latortue the sum of $15,000 per
month, describing the payment as being under the classification of
fees paid by the State to former prime ministers. (AHP, 7/23)

International Donors Pledge $750 Million in Aid:
International donors pledged $750 million on Tuesday to help fund
impoverished Haiti's economic recovery efforts for the next fiscal
year. Delegates from about 40 nations and financial institutions
gathered in Port-au-Prince for a conference aimed at helping the
turbulent and destitute Caribbean nation build social and economic
stability. Haiti's government had asked for $540 million in immediate
donations as part of an overall request for $7 billion to pay for
long-term efforts to improve security, build roads, improve health
and agriculture and promote institutional reform in the poorest
nation in the Americas. The pledges for short-term funding were
expected to clear the way for the newly elected government of
President Rene Preval to submit a budget to parliament. Participants
in this week's meeting included delegates from the World Bank, the
Inter-American Development Bank, the European Union and the U.S.
Agency for International Development. They planned to meet again in
November in Madrid to consider long-term funding for Haiti. (Reuters,
7/25)

Former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune Freed from Prison:
Former Haitian Prime Minister Yvon Neptune was freed on Thursday from
the prison where he was held for more than two years on what he
called imaginary charges after the
ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Frail from an on-and-off
hunger strike, the 59-year-old walked out of the National
Penitentiary annex supported by two U.N. peacekeepers. They helped
him into an ambulance that took him to a U.N.-run hospital for a
checkup. Neptune was never tried and has repeatedly denied
wrongdoing. "It's not freedom yet," he told Reuters as he left the
prison. "The machinery of injustice didn't stop with my release
today. The laboratories that invented those kind of imaginary crimes
are very strong." Neptune was detained on accusations he
masterminded what Aristide's opponents called a massacre on Feb. 11,
2004, in La Scierie, a small village near the western port city of
St. Marc. U.N. investigators characterized the incident as an armed
clash with casualties on both sides. An appeals court ordered
Neptune's release on Thursday and he was escorted from the prison
amid heavy security shortly afterward.

Brian Concannon, a U.S. lawyer who has campaigned for his release,
said he believed Neptune had been freed on humanitarian grounds.
"This is very good, but he's only been provisionally released. The
charges haven't been dropped," Concannon said. "An appeal of the
charges is before the appeals court in Gonaives. The prosecutor has
recommended charges be dismissed because they are unjustified."
Neptune served under Aristide and was among hundreds of Aristide
supporters jailed by a U.S.-backed interim government after Aristide
was driven into exile. The order for his release was made public a
day after Neptune talked to reporters from his cell. He said then the
government of President Rene
Preval, who took office in May, would be partly to blame if he died
while in prison on charges he called false and politically motivated.
Among the hundreds of Aristide supporters jailed by the interim
government on vague charges, Concannon said only a few had been
released. "There haven't been mass releases. There's been a trickle.
I'd say maybe 10 have gotten out," he said. Preval said recently
about 100 had been released. (Reuters, 7/27)

Gang Violence Results in Mass Exodus from Grand Ravine:
Hundreds of people fled their homes in a hillside slum of the Haitian
capital Friday to escape fierce fighting between gangs that has
killed at least 30 people in the past two months,
officials said. Families streamed away from the Grand Ravine slum
with mattresses, clothing and whatever else they could recover from
their houses -- many of which were set on fire by gangs from
neighboring slums that are fighting for control of the area. "I have
no money, no house, no idea where I'm going," said Joseline Louis, a
55-year-old fruit seller, as she pushed a cart with her belongings.
Witnesses said at least three people were killed, but United Nations
spokeswoman Sophie Boutaud de la Combe said she could not confirm any
casualties. A nearby compound run by the Haitian Evangelical Baptist
Union became a makeshift refugee camp for about 300 people. The
compound is three miles from Grand Ravine along dusty, windy roads
patrolled by U.N. peacekeepers. Florice Mepolelet, 30, squatted in
the corner of the crowded compound with her two young children. She
said her family has received only one bowl of rice with bean sauce
from the Red Cross since fleeing the neighborhood on Thursday. Most
houses in the slum -- home to several thousand people -- appeared
abandoned Friday, their tin roofs and concrete block walls blackened
by fire. Blood was smeared on the door and the floor of one house.
(AP, 7/28)

In this neighbourhood overlooking the placid bay of Haiti's capital,
Port-au-Prince, a ghostly silence wraps itself around the burned tin
shacks, concrete hovels gutted and scorched black by flames, and
jagged rocks that form the paths of the hillside slum, spattered with
blood. "Go down there and you can see for yourself," says Brunet
Pierre, a silver-haired resident who lifts his orange t-shirt to
reveal a fresh bullet wound in his side. "There is nothing but death
in this neighbourhood, no life at all." He motions toward a dirt path
surrounded on all sides with still-smouldering shacks, shell casings
littering the ground, and scorched animals lying among the ruins.
Across the mountaintop slums that ring Port-au-Prince's southern
quarter, collectively known as Martissant, hundreds of homes lie
burned and abandoned. A steady stream of refugees head daily down the
Avenue Bolosse, their belongings piled on their heads, fleeing the
violence. Some 300 have taken refuge in a nearby Baptist mission,
where women and young children sleep on the concrete floor of a
steaming conference hall, sheltered from the summer rains.

Some residents say that gangs operating from the neighbouring zones
of Ti Bois and Discartes have launched a campaign to purge the area
of supporters of Haiti's former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
who was ousted amidst armed revolt and street protests in February
2004. Neither Haiti's Police Nationale d'Haiti (PNH) police force,
nor the 6,500 strong United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti
(MINUSTAH) peacekeeping force seem able or willing to stop it. At
least 30 people have been reported killed in the past two weeks,
though the true total could be higher. In front of a shuttered
'borlette' (lottery bank) in Grand-Ravine, a group of fierce-looking
young men, pistols bulging from underneath some of their shirts, sit
swilling rum from a champagne glass. "You can see what the gangs from
Ti Bois have done," says the group's leader, who says his name is
Wilkens and is dressed in a New York Knicks basketball jersey and a
baseball cap pulled down over a scar that criss-crosses one eyebrow.
"They have killed people, burned down their houses, some police are
giving them weapons," he adds. Many Grand-Ravine residents blame
rogue elements within the PNH for involvement in the killings,
specifically charging a former police official with financing and
organising a gang known as Lamh Ti Machet (The Little Machete Army).

However, the people of Ti Bois and Discartes have their own tales of
woe. "We have children and we are very afraid," says Ti Bois resident
Destine Jocelyn, as she nervously peers out from a square, concrete
home on an otherwise largely deserted path. "Those gangs from Grand-
Ravine come to kill us." "We are suffering. They burn houses, they
kill people with guns and machetes," says a young man amidst a group
loitering at a small, abandoned bandshell further up the path,
marking the apex of a hill covered with gutted homes. He throws a
blue tank-top over his head to shield himself from the blazing son.
His leg sports a recently healed bullet wound. Residents who gather
around produce crude colour photos of at least half a dozen bloody
corpses, including that of a pregnant woman, whom they say the gangs
from Grand-Ravine have killed in the last year. Locals also tell of a
secret grave in a coconut palm grove where the gangs dump their
victims' bodies.

Numbering fewer than a dozen, the Sri Lankan UN soldiers,
interspersed in groups of threes throughout Martissant, are unable to
communicate with the population as they lack a common language. No
Haitian police personnel were visible anywhere in the district. "We
cannot prevent that. We don't have an executive mandate," explains
Edmond Mulet, Head of Mission for MINUSTAH. As of yet, there has been
no request made by the Prival government for UN forces to support PNH
personnel to stop the violence in Matrissant. "We are here to support
the government and we always have to go in accompanying or supporting
PNH actions." (IPS, 8/2)

Interim Government Corruption - Ambassadors and Embassy Staffs Abroad:
Jean Reynald Clirismi, Haiti's Minister of Foreign Affairs, stated
Tuesday that a check in the amount of 70 million gourdes disappeared
under the administration of his predecessor, Hirard Abraham. Mr.
Clirismi made this assertion at a meeting with the Anti-Corruption
and Foreign Affairs commissions of the House of Deputies that was
looking at cases of corruption observed at the Ministry. The
Minister said that the 70 million gourdes check was signed by the
Finance Ministry for the purpose of paying ambassadors and embassy
staffs abroad. As of this date, the salaries and operating expenses
for which this check was originally written have not been paid, he
deplored. Mr. Clirismi also spoke of the disappearance of another
check amounting to more than six million gourdes that was intended
for Haitian students in Cuba. The Foreign Minister criticized the
release of more than $751,000 for repairs to the Haitian Embassy in
Santo-Domingo. He said he believes that the work could have been done
for less than 10%% of that amount, or $65,000. Jean Reynald Clirismi
asked the Superior Court of Accounts and Administrative Disputes and
other relevant authorities to shoulder their responsibilities in this
matter. Mr. Clirismi said he is optimistic that this case will be
addressed and has made available a senior Ministry official, Harold
Bruno, to deal with corruption issues. For his part, the president of
the Anti-Corruption Commission of the Lower House, Steven Benont,
said he is not counting on the current authorities to make progress
on this issue, because, he said, there have never been any arrests
following investigations by the Superior Court of Accounts at any
time over the past 40 years or so. According to Mr. Benont, most of
the individuals suspected of acts of corruption over the past two
years have already left the country. (AHP, 8/22)

Haiti will recall several overseas diplomats for alleged
incompetence, including some suspected of corruption, the foreign
minister said Wednesday. The diplomats, all appointed by the U.S.
backed interim government that ruled the Caribbean nation between
2004 and 2006, could be fired or punished upon a review of their
cases, Foreign Affairs Minister Jean Raynald Clarisme told The
Associated Press. The announcement came a day after Haitian
legislators alleged that several million dollars (euros) may have
disappeared during that period from at least three foreign missions:
the Haitian Embassy in Washington, and missions in Cuba and the
Dominican Republic. The move could open the door for the first major
probe into alleged corruption under the interim government. Clarisme
said the recalls "should happen very quickly" but declined to say
which diplomats would be ordered home or from what countries. He said
the move was first suggested by lawmakers, who recommended recalling
diplomats for a review.

"The deputies have suggested we recall people who have been nominated
by the interim government," Clarisme said. "I think its a wise
approach and Im willing to do that." "We are working on cleaning
house and putting order in the administration," he added. Clarisme
said the Haitian consul in Barahona, Dominican Republic, was fired
this month for selling entry visas to Chinese migrants. He said other
diplomats will be disciplined, but noted that most are accused of
incompetence, not corruption. "Some will be recalled, but we have to
take it on a casebycase basis," he said. "People involved in
corruption will be severely reprimanded for their behavior." In a
legislative session Tuesday, Sorel Francois, a deputy in the lower
house and president of the Commission on Foreign Affairs, said
receipts showed that US$250,000 vanished from Haitis Embassy in
Washington in June 2005. He said another US$1.9 million was
transferred from the same embassy to a nongovernment account in
October 2005.

Reached by phone in Washington, Haitian Ambassador to the United
States Raymond Joseph denied embezzling any funds. "No money
disappeared in Washington," Joseph said. "It didnt go into my pocket
or the pocket of anyone else." Joseph, appointed by former interim
Prime Minister Gerard Latortue in 2004, said the money may have been
used to pay bills owed by the government, including the purchase of
weapons for Haitis police force. "If there is a full audit of this
embassy I have no doubt that everything will be very, very clear," he
said. Joseph said he didnt know if he would be recalled, but said he
would be present for an audit. Joseph is the publisher of the New
Yorkbased weekly newspaper Haiti Observateur, and was an outspoken
critic of Aristides Fanmi Lavalas political party. Francois, the
legislator who alleged that funds disappeared, is a member of Fanmi
Lavalas. Joseph declined to say whether he thought the allegations
against him were politically motivated. (AP, 8/24)

Toto Constant Found Responsible for Damages in Rape Case:
A federal judge has ruled in favor of a human rights organization
that sued the notorious head of a Haitian paramilitary group because
he never responded to a complaint alleging he sanctioned gang rapes
by his forces. In a decision issued Wednesday, U.S. District Judge
Sidney Stein set an Aug. 29 hearing to determine if Emmanuel "Toto"
Constant must pay unspecified damages to three women accusing his
troops of rape in the lawsuit brought by the San Francisco-based
human rights group Center for Justice and Accountability. The judge
said he ruled against Constant because since the unidentified women
sued in December 2004 he "has not answered the complaint and the time
for answering the complaint has expired." No attorneys are listed for
Constant in the federal filings, and a lawyer representing him in a
separate mortgage fraud case declined to comment Thursday. (AP, 8/17)

Armed Gangs in Port-au-Prince Pledge to Hand Over Weapons, Then
Cancel Ceremony Due to UN Raids in Cite Soleil:
Haiti's government threw down the gauntlet to the impoverished and
violent Caribbean nation's armed gangs on Thursday, telling them to
lay down their weapons or be killed. "It's clear. You surrender your
weapons and enter the DDR program," said Prime Minister Jacques
Edouard Alexis. "If you refuse, you'll be killed." Alexis was
referring to a Demobilization, Disarmament and Reinsertion program
run by U.N. peacekeepers aimed at stabilizing Haiti and curbing
kidnappings and endemic political bloodletting. His comments, before
a legislative assembly, marked the first ultimatum to gang leaders
from the newly installed government of President Rene Preval.
Government officials have said drug lords were now seeking to
bankroll armed gangs, to win de facto control over them and block any
disarmament plans. The violent status quo in Haiti provides good
cover for trafficking in narcotics, the officials say. "They (drug
kingpins) want to make sure the chaotic situation endures so that
they may continue to carry out their dirty work," Alexis said.
(Reuters, 8/10)

Armed gangs in Haiti's largest slum pledged on Thursday to hand over
their weapons to the government next week, heeding President Rene
Preval's call for a peaceful disarmament. The move came a week after
Preval and Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis demanded that the
gangs surrender their weapons or risk being killed. William Baptiste,
a gang leader known as Ti Blan, said the gangs in Cite Soleil, a
teeming seaside slum outside the capital, would give up their weapons
at a ceremony next week. "We are going to hand over our weapons to
the constitutional government on Monday because we want peace," Ti
Blan, a spokesman for the gangs in Cite Soleil, told Reuters. "The
use of those weapons only leads to violence and that's not what the
society needs," said Ti Blan. He urged the government to disarm all
armed groups, including those linked to Haiti's small but wealthy
elite and to political foes of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The gangs in Cite Soleil, which is home to thousands of Aristide
supporters, were mostly responsible for violence aimed at
destabilizing the U.S.-backed interim government installed after
Aristide was ousted from power on Feb. 29, 2004. The gangs said they
took up arms against the interim government to protect themselves and
slum residents against repeated attacks by the Haitian police and
U.N. peacekeepers. Past attempts to disarm the gangs have failed or
have produced only a few weapons. "We held those weapons to protect
ourselves and our communities from the interim government which was
our enemy," Ti Blan said. "Now, since we don't consider Preval's
administration an enemy, there is no more
justification for us to keep those weapons." The gangs said they had
invited media and diplomats to witness the weapons handover to
Haitian authorities and representatives of the
Demobilization, Disarmament and Reinsertion program, run by the
United Nations. Several other gangs are expected to make the same
move in the coming days, said a government official, who did not want
to be named. (Reuters, 8/17)

The leader of a major gang on Monday defied Haitian President Rene
Preval's orders to disarm, saying his followers would give up their
weapons only if U.N. peacekeepers stop
conducting raids in the slums. Earlier this month, Preval told gang
members suspected of being behind a surge of kidnappings and attacks
in this impoverished Caribbean nation that
they must disarm or face being killed. Gang leader Amaral Duclona's
refusal comply sets up one of the biggest challenges to Preval since
he became president in May. Duclona said he and his men in the Port-
au-Prince slum of Cite Soleil had planned to disarm on Monday but
reconsidered because of what he called deadly raids by U.N. troops.
"As long as (U.N. troops) keep attacking, we are not going to lay
down our weapons," Duclona told reporters in the seaside slum,
sitting on a red motor scooter. A military official denied that U.N.
troops were launching unprovoked attacks in Cite Soleil, a densely
populated shantytown lined with bullet-pocked concrete homes, burned-
out cars and mounds of trash. "If armed gangs do not attack us, we
will not fire at them," said Lt. Cmdr. Neuzivaldo Dos Anjos, a
spokesman for the military of Brazil, which is heading up the 8,800-
strong U.N. force in Haiti. (AP, 8/21)

"U.N. troops don't want peace and disarmament because they want a
justification for their presence here," said Amaral Duclona, one of
the gang leaders in Cite Soleil, a teeming warren of cement block
homes and shanties on the outskirts of the capital. Duclona, acting
as a spokesman for all the gangs in Cite Soleil, said there were no
plans for a rescheduling of Monday's public ceremony, during which he
and other gang leaders were to carry out a pledge made last week to
lay down their arms. (Reuters, 8/21)

Americans Witness UN Shooting in Cite Soleil:
On a quest to evaluate whether life in Haiti is improving under the
new presidency of Reni Prival, retired postal employee David Welsh of
Berkeley, Calif. and Haiti Action Committee activist Ben Terrell of
San Francisco got a poignant answer from the barrel of U.N. rifles.
On Thursday, Welsh, Terrell and three others in a delegation that had
been meeting with Haitian activists in Port-au-Prince, went to Citi
Soleil, a desperately poor seaside shantytown where Lavalas remains
strong.(Lavalas is the political movement of the popular leader Jean
Bertrand Aristide, forced out of office in 2004 by U.S. forces and
exiled in South Africa. After his removal, the U.S. sent in Marines
to police the country. A few months later, the Marines were replaced
by UN troops, which occupy Haiti today.)

Accompanied by four Haitians, the foreigners entered Simon Pele, a
Citi Soleil neighborhood where U.N. troops had reportedly attacked
people in recent weeks. The plan was for the group to interview
residents to ascertain what actually had happened at that time. We
saw a church and a health clinic and a school that had been
completely blasted away and couldnt operate any more, Welsh said.
They had just begun to interview people, when they saw four UN
armored personnel carriers approaching. Two went down one street and
two came down the street we were on, Welsh said in an interview in
Berkeley on Saturday. Market stalls were operating in front of the
houses and there were many people on the street, including children,
Welsh said. Accompanying the APCs, manned by Brazilian soldiers, was
a UN bulldozer and a UN dump truck filled with sand. The sand was
dumped and the bulldozer scooped it up, placing it to form a barrier
in a roadway apparently to block an escape route from the
neighborhood, said Terrell in a phone interview from Haiti on
Sunday. From previous experience, people understood that this was the
first step in a U.N. operation that would culminate in an attack on
the neighborhood, Welsh said, adding that the bulldozer and dump
truck seemed to scare the people more than the familiar sight of the
occupying troops atop the APCs.

Then the troops started firing. They were shooting down the street
and into houses, said Welsh, describing the shots as repeated and
apparently random. Both Welsh and Terrell said they heard two pops
coming from the direction of the houses, which they said could have
been return fire from a small caliber weapon. The soldiers ignored
the foreigners, who filmed and photographed the incident, hoping that
their presence would deter a full-scale assault by the UN soldiers on
the people. We tried to talk to them, but they wouldnt talk to us,
said Welsh, who, for some of the time, was as close as five feet from
where the soldiers were shooting. At one point, I saw five or six
Brazilians run out of the APCs and into the neighborhood, Terrell
said. Welsh commented that one of the Brazilians firing his weapon
waved the foreigners out of the way, so that he could shoot down the
street. In discussions with Haitian friends after the incident,
Terrell concluded that The UN is not telling the truth to Prival and
those in the administration who want to help the people. Theyre
saying people in the neighborhoods fired first. Thats not what we
saw and its not what weve been told. The UN so called
peacekeepers are playing a very destructive role. If these are
legitimate cases where they need to arrest people, they can do it
like police operations. One death and nine injuries were reported
that day, Terrell said, although, having left the area as soon as it
was safe to do so, members of the delegation were unable to
independently verify these figures. (ZNet, 8/28)

Political Prisoner So Ann and Three Others Released from Prison:
A well-known singer and supporter of ousted former Haitian President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide has been freed from prison where she was held
on what she decried on Tuesday as
politically motivated charges. Criminal court magistrate Fritzner
Fils-Aime issued the release order late on Monday for Annette
Auguste, known as So Ann and jailed for more than two years, and
three other prisoners, after deciding there was no proof they were
linked to violence. Auguste, 62, and the three others were arrested
over an outbreak of violence at a university and the wounding of its
dean but no evidence was produced, as in the cases of many other
former Aristide allies jailed during the U.S.-backed interim
administration of prime minister Gerard Latortue.

"There has been no evidence linking those people to these incidents,"
said Judge Fils-Aime. About a dozen prominent Aristide allies --
including former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune and former Interior
Minister Jocelerme Privert -- have been freed since President Rene
Preval took over from the interim government in May. "The interim
government and its allies had locked me up because they were aware of
my capacity to mobilize the masses," Auguste told Reuters. "They
wanted to make sure I did not play any political role that could
benefit Aristide. As a brave woman, I confronted that injustice with
courage, but it feels good to be free again," she said. The three
other Aristide militants released along with Auguste were
Paul Raymond Jr., Yvon Antoine and George Honore. Preval said
recently that about 100 Aristide allies had been released since he
took office. But Auguste said hundreds more were still being held.
(Reuters, 8/14)

RFK Memorial Center for Human Rights Files FOIA for Information on
Aid Blockade:
A human rights group asked a federal judge Tuesday to force the
Treasury Department to release information about whether it blocked
millions of dollars in development loans to Haiti. The dispute dates
back to 2001, when international lenders suspended more than $500
million in loans and grants to the impoverished country after
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's party swept to victory in
legislative elections that opponents said were rigged. The Robert F.
Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights says the U.S. government
wrongly told the Inter-American Development Bank to withhold $146
million in loans approved for public health and education in Haiti,
the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. Aristide called the
move "genocidal." Eighty percent of the country's 8 million residents
lives in abject poverty.

The center filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 2003 seeking
documents about the U.S. government's role in blocking the loans. The
lending process is not supposed to be political, the center said.
Though international aid to Haiti has since been restored and a new
government is in place, the center says it needs to know the motives
behind the process. "There's a precedent for intervention that can
stop these loans at a critical point and there's no guarantee this
isn't going to happen again," said Monika Kalra Varma, the center's
acting director. "We don't think we can effectively battle that today
if we don't understand how it happened." The lawsuit, filed in a
Washington federal court, seeks an order forcing
treasury officials to comply with the information request. Neither
the Treasury Department nor the Inter-American Development Bank had
an immediate comment Tuesday morning. (AP, 8/15)

UN Mission Extended Another Six Months:
The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Tuesday to extend the
U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti for six months and urged its
troops and police to help fight gang violence and
kidnapping. The council condemned all human rights violations and
called on all Haitians to renounce violence. It said the mission
shall comprise up to 7,200 troops, nearly 2,000
international police officers, and 16 corrections officers to address
the shortcomings of the Haitian prison system. This represents a
slight increase over the current mission. The council strongly
supported Secretary-General Kofi Annan's intention to maximize the
U.N. force's "crime prevention role, particularly with regard to the
threat of gang violence and kidnapping." The council also urged
Haitian authorities to complete run-off legislative and municipal
elections as soon as possible. The council said the U.N. mission
"constitutes a key actor in the continuing stabilization of the
county" and in assisting the government to ensure stability in the
country. (AP, 8/15)

While Annan had called for a 12-month extension of the mission's
mandate, the United States insisted on just a six-month renewal,
council diplomats said. Without council action, the mandate would
have expired at the end of the day. Annan, who visited Haiti earlier
this month, had argued that it would take at least a year to make
progress in improving the legal system and local and national
governance. As a compromise, the resolution stated the council's
"intention to renew for further periods." Annan has said that
previous international aid missions in Haiti failed because they
ended before reforms could take hold. (Reuters, 8/14)

Some members of the 48th Legislature expressed reservations Wednesday
as to the assertions by the UN force that they are determined to
conduct themselves better on the ground in Haiti. Senator Eddy
Bastien, reacting to Resolution 1702 adopted Wednesday by the UN
Security Council extending the mandate of MINUSTAH by six months,
said he was somewhat disappointed, because this resolution offers
nothing different from any of the preceding resolutions. "I do not
believe that the UN soldiers are going to change their behavior with
respect to their mission in Haiti", Eddy Bastien complained. At the
same time he said he did not expect MINUSTAH to leave Haiti for the
time being. Deputy Faustin Poly denounced what he termed the
hypocritical attitude of the international community on the question
of Haiti. "Does the international community truly wish to help
Haiti", asked Faustin Poly, recalling President Reni Prival's wish,
when he took the oath of office last May 14 , to see the United
Nations convert its instruments of war into construction equipment to
be used in the development of the country. According to Deputy Poly,
nothing will change with the presence of the UN force in these
conditions. Nothing was foreseen in the way of a redefinition of
MINUSTAH's mandate, he deplored. (AHP, 8/17)

Kidnapped Italian Released:
An Italian woman kidnapped in Haiti by gunmen who killed her husband
was freed after three days in captivity, her family and U.N.
officials said Friday. The U.N. gave no details on how Gigliola
Martino was freed. Investigators believe she was kidnapped for
ransom. Martino, 65, was released Thursday, U.N. police spokesman
Fred Blaze said. Paolo Vitiello, Martino's nephew, said he had seen
her and added she was in good health. Armed men entered the couple's
villa Monday in the capital Port-au-Prince, shooting Martino's
husband, 67-year-old businessman Guido Vitiello, before abducting
her. Vitiello later died of his wounds in a hospital. Martino, who
has lived in Haiti for about 30 years, was also briefly
kidnapped last year. Haiti experienced relative calm after President
Rene Preval's February election. Since May, however, dozens of
foreigners and Haitians have been kidnapped, and gang fighting has
forced hundreds to flee their homes in the capital. (AP, 8/11)

Making Progress Against AIDS:
Even as an unstable government, warring gangs and frequent
kidnappings have brought despair to many in Haiti, the fate of AIDS
patients has begun to improve. Haiti has long had the highest AIDS
rate outside of Africa, and for years the impoverished country lacked
the money to buy AIDS drugs, leaving thousands to die. But since
2003, when a massive influx of foreign support for treatment began,
the number of people receiving AIDS drugs has climbed from a few
hundred to nearly 8,000. Testing for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS,
and care for patients who have HIV but do not yet need drugs are also
increasing across the country, with funding to bring care to nearly
all who need it by 2008. ''The prospects for controlling the AIDS
epidemic in Haiti look very good,'' said Dr. Jean William Pape, one
of several Haitian AIDS doctors discussing Haiti's progress at this
year's International AIDS Conference, which opened Sunday in Toronto.

Progress has been so dramatic that a story now making the rounds in
Haiti describes patients who become distraught when they learn they
don't have AIDS -- because they know that AIDS patients receive free
medicine, treatment and sometimes food, all of which are often
unavailable to those with other illnesses. The implication: The
infusion of more than $100 million in foreign aid has in many parts
of the country boosted the level of support for AIDS patients far
above the care given people with other illnesses in the fragmentary
national healthcare system. ''We are putting a diamond into mud,''
said Dr. Georges Dubuche, of Management Sciences for Health, a
nonprofit group that runs several healthcare projects in Haiti.
Doctors are not suggesting that there is too much money for AIDS care
in Haiti. The funding -- most of it targeted directly to a handful of
nonprofit healthcare groups, largely bypassing government agencies --
has begun to address the acute inequality that emerged in the 1990s,
when expensive new drug cocktails transformed AIDS into a manageable
disease in rich countries, while patients in poor nations continued
to die because they couldn't afford the drugs.

But as the acute inequality of access to AIDS drugs has eased,
broader, chronic inequalities have returned to the fore. Life
expectancy in Haiti is 53 years for men, 56 for women. One child in
eight dies before age 5 -- and only 20 percent of those children have
HIV, reports one recent study. Nationwide, 2 percent to 3 percent of
Haitians are infected with HIV -- down from 6 percent a decade ago.
''There are 97 percent of people with other diseases and other
issues,'' said Dubuche, who cites care for pregnant mothers as an
example. ''We are putting prevention of mother-to-child transmission
[of HIV] into maternity wards that are not proper. Many things are
not there -- drugs, IVs. There is no operating room. Most of them
can't do blood transfusions.'' The disparity between AIDS patients
and others is apparent at the Immaculate Conception Hospital in Les
Cayes, one of several provincial public hospitals with new AIDS
treatment teams. Gheskio oversees the project in conjunction with the
Ministry of Health. International funding pays for drugs, laboratory
equipment, local staff members and mobile teams -- comprising a
doctor, nurse, social worker, pharmacist and lab technician -- that
make regular training and monitoring visits to each site.

About 200 patients now receive AIDS drugs at the hospital. The staff
is treating hundreds more who are HIV-positive but don't yet need
drugs, and dozens of new patients are tested for HIV every day. Some
of the money flowing in to the AIDS project has benefited the
hospital as a whole. For the first time in years, for example, the
hospital can consistently pay its water and electricity bills every
month, although power outages are still frequent, said Dr. Reynold
Grand'Pierre, the Gheskio physician who manages the national
expansion program. But because people with ailments other than AIDS
must pay for care, the hospital's main wards -- large, concrete rooms
with open windows and rows of metal beds -- remain half-empty. On
Haiti's rural Central Plateau, the nonprofit group Partners in Health/
Zanmi Lasante is addressing the same problem by making a complete
package of basic healthcare available free to indigent patients,
whether or not they have HIV. Since 2003, the group -- which has its
Haitian base in Cange, on the Central Plateau, and also has offices
in Boston, where its founder, Paul Farmer, is on the Harvard faculty
- -- has expanded outward from a single site into formerly
dysfunctional public-health clinics throughout the Central Plateau.
And working in the remote villages that surround the clinic are 65
accompagnateurs, villagers trained by Partners in Health and paid $40
a month to make daily visits to a half-dozen or so patients to
monitor their health and make sure they take their medicine. The
program has been cited as a model for developing AIDS programs in
poor, rural settings worldwide. Yet even here, the outlook is grim
for many patients who lack jobs, and whose makeshift huts don't keep
the rain out.

Throughout Haiti, poverty has remained in many ways a more
intractable problem than HIV. (Miami Herald, 8/14)

Haitian Legislator Kidnapped and Released:
Gunmen kidnapped and briefly held a Haitian legislator before
releasing him unharmed, local radio reported Saturday. Rodney Alcide,
a deputy in the lower house of Parliament, was seized late Friday in
a suburb north of the capital of Port-au-Prince along with his driver
and bodyguard, Kiskeya radio said. Alcide was reportedly freed
unharmed two hours later, but the driver and bodyguard were still
held Saturday. It was unclear whether a ransom was paid to free
Alcide, the first lawmaker to be kidnapped in a recent spate of
abductions sweeping Port-au-Prince. Kidnappings surged to their
highest level in months in July, with at least 60 abductions
reported. Authorities say many more go unreported, as families prefer
to negotiate with kidnappers rather than notify police. Authorities
blame the kidnappings mostly on well-armed street gangs based in the
capital's violent slums. The crimes have raised fears of a return to
the lawlessness seen in the aftermath of a bloody revolt that toppled
former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004. Earlier
this month, President Rene Preval ordered gangs to disarm and rejoin
society or face death. The gangs have said they won't lay down their
weapons until U.N. peacekeepers patrolling the Caribbean nation halt
offensives in the slums. The United Nations, which has 8,800 troops
and police in Haiti, has said it won't change its operations. (AP, 8/26)

Tropical Storm Ernesto Hits Les Cayes:
Hurricane Ernesto has slumped back to tropical storm force as it
lashed Haiti's southern coast with heavy rain, flooding homes and
threatening deadly mud slides in the impoverished country as it
steamed toward Cuba and the Gulf of Mexico. Ernesto had winds of near
95 kph, down from 120 mph earlier in the day on Sunday, when it
became the first hurricane of the Atlantic season, according to the
US National Hurricane Center in Miami. But it was projected to
intensify again early this week, sweeping through Cuba and
threatening the eastern US Gulf coast, prompting officials to order
the evacuation of tourists from the Florida Keys. A storm surge of up
to 6 feet sent waves crashing into cinderblock homes on the shoreline
of Les Cayes, a town 155 km west of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Residents tied goats and cows under thatched huts and fishermen
pulled their nets ashore as the wind bent palm trees. (AP, 8/28)

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