Bill Quigley teaches at Loyola
University New Orleans and is Associate Director of the Center for
Constitutional Rights. Jocelyn Brooks is an Ella Baker associate at
CCR working at Bureau des Avocats Internationaux in Port au Prince.
For more information on this project visit www.ijdh.org
“We women demand!…” sang out a
hundred plus voices “…Justice for Marie!” Marie, a 25 year old
pregnant mother, was injured by government agents when they slammed a
wooden door into her stomach during an early morning invasion of an
earthquake displacement camp in Port au Prince. The government is
using force to try to force thousands to leave camps without
providing any place for people to go. The people are fighting back.
The people calling for justice are
residents of a make shift tent camp called Camp Django in the Delmas
17 neighborhood of Port au Prince. They are up in arms over injuries
to Marie, one of their young mothers, and repeated government threats
to demolish their homes. Despite the 100 degree heat, over a hundred
residents, mostly mothers, trekked across town to demand the
government protect their human right to housing.
At their invitation, we followed them
back to the place they have made lived since the January 12, 2010
earthquake that left hundreds of thousands homeless. In a sloping lot
smaller than a football field, two hundred fifty families live in
handmade shelters made out of gray and blue plastic tarps/tents,
scraps of wood and mismatched pieces of tin. The tarps under which
they live are faded from a year and a half of sun but still show
brands of USAID, World Vision, Rotary International, UNICEF, UNFAM,
Republic of China and others. Outside the camp, big green trees with
flame orange flowers provide color and shade.
Inside, babies and little children peek
out of tent openings that reveal mats on the ground and beds and
boxes. Families live inches from their neighbors. They buy water
outside and carry it back to their tents. Four topless wooden boxes
with blue plastic UN tarps are the showers where people can wash
themselves if they bring their own water and soap. Hole in the dirt
toilets are few, full and pungent in the 100 degree heat. They are
surrounded by razzing flies. When it rains, rainwater flows into
tents and the mess from the toilets spreads all over.
A teenage boy clad only in his
underwear soap washes himself in between tents. A middle age woman
sits under a banana tree nursing a dollar bill size patch of open
wound on her foot, a quake injury that demands a skin graft she
cannot afford. A family has an aluminum pan filled with gray water
and skinned bananas. Camp leaders tell us their community contains
over 375 little children including 20 children whose parents died in
the earthquake.
“We are earthquake victims,” the
women and men of the camp tell us as they show us around. “We have
a human right to live somewhere. We do not want to fight for the
right to stay in these camps. It is very hot here and we cannot stay
in the tents in the middle of the day. But we all search and search
and there is no other place to go. Until we get housing, these homes
are everything we have.”
There are nearly a thousand such camps
of people across Port au Prince. Some house thousands, many like Camp
Django, housed hundreds.
A government myth says people gather in
the camps only to receive food and water and medical services. The
truth is that many, many camps, including Camp Django, get no water,
food or medical services. They are there, they tell us, because they
have no other place to go.
We visited Marie (not her real name for
her protection) in her boxlike tent. She lies on a bed writhing in
pain. She has been vomiting and bleeding and was surrounded by other
residents of the camp. They were taking turns propping her up and
drying her forehead. They explained to us that she had been
assaulted by men who entered their camp at the order of the Mayor of
the Port-au-Prince suburb of Delmas.
Last Saturday, a group of five men,
some armed with guns, stormed into the camp and threatened the
residents. Four of the men were wearing green t-shirts that read
“Mairie de Delmas” (The Office of the Mayor of Delmas).
The Mayor’s men told the people that
they would soon destroy their tents. They bragged they would mistreat
people in a manner worse than “what happened at Carrefour Aero
port,” referring to the violent unlawful eviction of a displacement
camp at that location by the same mayor and police less than a
month ago.
The Mayor’s men pushed their way
through the camp, collecting the names and identification numbers of
heads of household and marking tents with red spray painted numbers.
When the men pounded on the wooden door
of the tarp covered shelter where 25-year-old pregnant Marie lived
with her husband, she tried to stop them from entering. Marie tried
to explain that her husband was not home. But the leader of the
group, JL, violently slammed open the wooden door of her tent into
her stomach, causing her to fall hard against the floor on her back.
Three days later, Marie remained in
severe pain and bed ridden, worried sick about her baby.
When one of Marie’s neighbors
protested JL’s brutality, JL became enraged and threatened to kill
him. Onlookers in the camp feared his words, particularly when they
noticed a pistol tucked into his belt.
When the government pushed their way
into the camp, residents called human rights advocates from BAI and
asked them to come at once.
Jeena Shah, a BAI attorney, arrived at
Camp Django while government agents were still there. Jeena asked JL
who had sent his group to Camp Django and why they had marked the
tents with numbers. JL was evasive, repeating over and over that “the
government” had sent him. Finally he stated that “the National
Palace,” a reference to current President Michel Martelly, had sent
him. As of the writing of this article, the President had neither
confirmed nor denied authorization or participation in the threatened
eviction.
Camp Django residents rightfully feared
that their camp faced the same fate that so many displaced persons
had since the earthquake more than 18 months ago—violent eviction,
exacerbation of their already vulnerable situations and
homelessness.
Camp Django is but a small example of
what is going on in Haiti. The International Organization on
Migration estimated that as of April 201, 166,000 homeless earthquake
survivors were facing imminent threats of eviction, one fourth of the
displaced population. The evictions have been carried out by the
government or with the government’s tacit approval despite rulings
by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights’ directing to the
Haitian government to place a moratorium on evictions and create
adequate measures to protect the displaced population from unlawful
forced evictions.
It is still unclear whether the Mayor
of Delmas encouraged or condoned these specific acts of violence
against the residents of Camp Django, but the Mayor’s stand on
forced evictions is well known. After leading a rampage of violent
unlawful evictions last month, he recently stated on Haitian
television that he will continue forcing displaced communities out of
their tent camps, even though they still have nowhere else to go.
President Martelly, who has refused to
publicly condemn the violent forced evictions perpetrated by the
Mayor of Delmas, is responsible for any threats and harm that befall
the community of Camp Django and Haiti’s thousand other
displacement camps.
The women sing out for justice. “The
rich,” they tell us, “use force against the poor in Haiti.”
They demand justice for Marie. And they insist their human right to
housing be protected. They are organizing. Their voices are strong.
Their passion is pure. Their cause is just. They inspire us to join
them.
