Haiti Liberte 16 Mai 2018

This Week in Haiti
As Haiti’s Flag Day Approaches:
University Students
Demonstrate for Investment
in Education
Ending TPS for Haitians, Salvadorans, and
Hondurans Was the “Result of an Overtly
Political Process,” Senate Democrats Find
by Kim Ives
Haitian university students peacefully protested in front of the Prime Minister's
office under the muzzles of police guns on May 11, 2018
by Kim Ives
civilians wearing T-shirts of the ruling
Haitian Bald Headed Party (PHTK)
carrying submachine guns.
Undeterred, on May 15, the
COJEUEH held a picket-line in front
of the Court of Accounts to demand
that the judges there investigate and
explain what happened to the millions
of dollars embezzled from state
coffers filled with revenues from a tax
on phone calls and money transfers,
donations to the international earthquake
relief authority (CIRH), and the
PetroCaribe fund, which has money
from 40% of the nation’s fuel sales.
The students plan demonstrations
each day for the rest of the week
On May 8, the Washington Post
broke a story that the U.S. embassies
in Haiti, El Salvador, and Honduras
warned against ending Temporary Protected
Status (TPS) for some 300,000
immigrants from those countries, but
then-Secretary of State “Rex Tillerson
dismissed the advice and joined other
administration officials in pressuring
leaders at the Department of Homeland
Security [DHS] to strip the immigrants
of their protections.”
In a May 4, 2018 letter to the
Government Accountability Office
(GAO), Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ),
the ranking Democrat on the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, said that
he was “concerned” that Tillerson had
told DHS to “terminate the TPS designations
for El Salvador, Haiti, and
Honduras in deliberate disregard of the
counsel and expertise of State Department
officials in Washington and at the
U.S. Embassies in all three countries.”
Former DHS Chief Elaine Duke,
who announced her April resignation
in February after less than a year in the
post, was brow-beaten (particularly by
White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly)
into reluctantly ending TPS for Haiti
and El Salvador, the Post reported. She
gave Hondurans a six-month evaluation
period, at the end of which TPS
was revoked earlier this May.
The Senate Foreign Relations
Committee (SFRC) Democratic Staff
was responsible for the revelations
and wrote in a May 11, 2018 email
that “Tillerson's recommendation” to
“terminate the TPS designations for El
Salvador, Haiti, and Honduras was the
result of an overtly political process.”
The SFRC Democratic Staff said
that “Tillerson ignored a body of evidence
about the negative consequences
for U.S. national security and risks
“in front of other public institutions in
the country to push the authorities to
assume their responsibilities to build
a good public policy linked with integration
and employment to prevent
the youth from leaving the country,
to ask where [disappeared journalist]
Vladjimir Legagneur went, to say ‘no’
Haitians demonstrating for TPS outside DHS Washington headquarters in
October 2017. “Why do we need more Haitians?” asked President Trump
to the physical safety of TPS beneficiaries
and the U.S.-citizen children that
may accompany them to their country
of origin.”
The three countries’ TPS holders
have about 273,000 U.S.-born children
who will be torn either from their
parents or from their homeland.
President Donald Trump has a
signature anti-immigrant and patently
racist agenda. On Jan. 11, a bipartisan
Congressional delegation tried to
convince President Donald Trump to
allocate the 50,000 “diversity visas”
granted annually to all nations instead
to Haitians who had just seen their TPS
yanked. In response, Trump asked:
“Why do we need more Haitians?...
Take them out.” In the same meeting,
he referred to Haiti, El Salvador, and
African nations as “shithole countries,”
and “suggested that the United
States should instead bring more people
from countries such as Norway,”
according to a bombshell story in The
Washington Post.
On Sat., May 19, 2018, a multinational
coalition called the 1804
Movement for All Immigrants, in
the hike in gas prices, and ‘yes’ to
the involvement of the youth in the
country’s decisions.”
“The Constitution, the flag,
and the national hymn are the three
fundamental elements which make
up the spinal column of the nation,”
COJEUEH said. “Today, we cannot
concert with organizations from Massachusetts
to Florida, is holding a national
rally in front of the White House
in Lafayette Park and on Pennsylvania
Avenue to demand permanent residency
for all 400,000 immigrants from 10
countries who currently hold TPS. Six
of those countries’ immigrants have
had their TPS cut, effective in 2019 or
2020.
In November, Rep. Nydia
Velazquez (D-NY) introduced the
American Promise Act of 2017, to allow
TPS holders, or those with deferred
enforced departure (DED), to apply
for permanent residency, if they do so
within three years of enactment of the
bill.
The May 19 rally in Washington,
DC is also demanding that Trump
apologize for his “shithole” statement
and back off from his aggressive
war-threatening policies against Iran
and Syria. The coalition also calls for
U.S. and UN reparations to Haiti, an
end to police profiling and terror in the
U.S., and the pull-out of the UN occupation
forces deployed in Haiti since
2004.
be proud ... because each day these
symbols of the Haitian people are losing
their meaning.”
The COJEUEH concluded by
saying: “We will not go to Chile, we
will not go to Brazil, and we say to
the authorities: stop pushing us to go,
stop burning up our dreams.”
Heavily armed civilians in PHTK
shirts have threatened student
demonstrators in Port-au-Prince
May 18, 2018 will mark the
215th anniversary of the creation
of the blue-and-red Haitian flag,
a day when Haitians worldwide display
their national pride.
But this year, there is not much
to be proud about because the Haitian
government is neglecting the nation’s
educational system resulting in over
100,000 young people fleeing to
South American nations, particularly
Chile, over the last year.
That was message in a May
14th statement of the Engaged University
Youth of Haiti (COJEUEH) as
it launched a week of demonstrations
leading up to May 18.
“When we consider the meager
money in the university budget, we
see that higher education is not a priority
of this State, which rather maintains
the status quo so that college
kids have to pack their bags and flee
overseas,” the COJEUEH wrote.
When the university students
held their first protest in the capital
on May 11, they were threatened by
Greater Brooklyn
Gastroenterology Care
Michel Jose Charles MD, FACG, AGAF
Board Certified Gastroenterology
Office Locations
3621 Glenwood Rd, Brooklyn NY 11210
9408 Flatlands Ave, Brooklyn NY 11236
1381-B Linden Blvd, Brooklyn NY 11212
By Appointment Only
Tel: 718-434-0202 / 718-869-1501
E-mail: charlesmjcharles@hotmail.com
“Giving care, one patient at a time.”
Vol 11 # 45 • Du 16 au 22 mai 2018
Haiti Liberté/Haitian Times
9