This week Radio Diaspora pays homage to a fallen griot, as we interview his granddaughter, Aziza Wilburg, we cover International Women's Day with a discussion about Colombia.

International Women’s Day (IWD) is marked on the 8th of March every year. It is a major day of global celebration of women. In different regions the focus of the celebrations ranges from general celebration of respect, appreciation and love towards women to a celebration for women’s economic, political and social achievements.

Flood waters that killed eight people in quake-hit Haiti over the weekend have receded in the country’s southeast.

Al Jazeera’s Todd Baer, reporting from the capital Port-au-Prince, said water levels in the most affected areas of Les Cayes and surrounding villages may have gone down, but people were continuing to flee on Sunday night.

Short but intense downpours at night triggered the floods, and there are fears that there will be more and worse flooding when the rainy season starts in earnest in a few weeks.

Hundreds of thousands of people remain living on the streets or under inadequate shelter nearly seven weeks after their homes were destroyed by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake.

Haiti’s government, which says up to 300,000 people may have perished in the January quake, had planned to set up dozens of camps with ordinary tents for the displaced.

But now it wants to try to get as many people out of capital as possible and give them thick tarps to whether the impending rainy season, our correspondent said.

Haitian officials say eight people, including at least one child, were killed and two remain missing after the rains and floods on Saturday.

UN assistance

A hospital and prison were evacuated after they flooded and UN troops helped to ensure patients were taken to safety and prisoners were accounted for.

Attempting to minimise the effects of the bad weather, residents have been clearing up rubbish that had been piling up on the streets and canals even before the quake struck on January 12.

The authorities are working to clear the capital’s drainage canals and remove debris from neighbourhoods so people can return to some undamaged homes and leave the crowded encampments that may flood when the rainy season starts in coming weeks.

A UN-led group is also inspecting houses to see if any are in good enough condition for people to move back home.

But a volunteer helping to clear the rubbish, Dorval Vanesse, said the government had not done anything to help clean a canal choked with debris in the Martisian neighbourhood.

“This is a problem that we will need to solve ourselves at the camp,” Vanesse said, adding that the government even told residents they needed to pay to get the canal cleared.

The death toll from Chile’s 8.8 magnitude earthquake looks like being a fraction of the 220,000 people who were killed in Haiti in January.

This is despite the Chilean quake being 500 times stronger than the one in Haiti.

Clearly, Chile is a more prosperous country, with economic output per head of the population more than 10 times greater than Haiti.

That has meant that buildings in general are better built, but Chile was also better prepared.

People in Chile knew the safest places to go to when the earthquake struck.

Also, since an even stronger earthquake in 1960, Chile has developed a seismic design code for new buildings, which has made them better able to stay standing in an earthquake.

One system that helps buildings stay up is called the “strong columns weak beams” system.

The idea is that buildings are held up by reinforced concrete columns, which are strengthened by a steel frame.

Reinforced concrete beams are joined onto the columns to make floors and the roof.

If there is an earthquake, the idea is that the concrete on the beams should break near the end, which dissipates a lot of the energy of the earthquake, but that the steel reinforcement should survive and the columns should stay standing, which means the building will stay upright.

The problem is that an 8.8 magnitude earthquake is “towards the top end of what you’re designing for”, according to Professor Colin Taylor, professor of earthquake engineering at Bristol University.

Another advantage for the Chilean quake was that its epicentre was 21 miles (34km) underground, off-shore and 70 miles (115km) from the nearest big city, Concepcion.

The energy from earthquakes falls the further away you are from the centre.

The Haitian quake on the other hand was only 8 miles (13km) underground and right on the edge of Port-au-Prince.

Chile has deployed thousands of troops and police to restore order in the city of Concepcion after looters ransacked several shops for food.
The growing anger over inadequate relief follows the 8.8-magnitude earthquakethat rocked central Chile on Saturday.

The authorities said on Monday police had arrested at least 160 people for violating a curfew imposed to prevent looting.

Meanwhile, the Chilean government appealed to the United Nations for international aid to help its recovery efforts.

Emergency officials raised the death toll of those killed in the quake to 723 on Monday, and said at least 19 other people were listed as missing.

‘Emergency without parallel’

The government faces the stiff challenge of providing aid to thousands of people left homeless across the country.

Michelle Bachelet, the country’s president, has promised deliveries of food, water and shelter for thousands living on the streets.

“We are confronting an emergency without parallel in Chile’s history,” she said, adding that a “growing number” of people were recorded as missing.

Lucia Newman, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Concepcion, said there is “a feeling of desolation” in the city.

“There’s no water, no food, no fuel, no electricity. There’s been wide looting … we saw people looting a flour mill.

“At night, the neighbours have been arming themselves with bats, in some cases even with guns.

“People are afraid that groups of gangs will try to go into their apartments,” she said.

The United Nations has said it will rush aid deliveries to Chile in response to the request from the government.

“We are prepared to provide assistance,” Elisabeth Byrs, a UN humanitarian spokeswoman, told the AP news agency.

“It could be quite fast, given that our experts are on standby and were alerted in the region.”

Angry survivors

Bachelet has said she expects the death toll to rise as the scale of the devastation became clear from coastal towns and villages engulfed by giant waves.

Angry survivors have taken out their frustration on firefighters delivering water in Concepcion, damaging their vehicles.

“We don’t have water or anything. No one has appeared with help and we need more police to keep order,” a 78-year-old woman in the badly hit city of Talca, told the Reuters news agency.

“There are many people here who are robbing,” she said.

Jacqueline van Rysselberghe, the mayor of Concepcion, said the situation was getting “out of control” due to shortages of basic supplies.

But she warned that the looting was “totally unjustifiable”.

“We’ve got a very complicated situation and the people feel very vulnerable,” she told local radio.

Saturday’s quake also triggered a tsunami that killed at least four people on Chile’s Juan Fernandez islands and caused serious damage to the port town of Talcahuano.

More than 60 aftershocks of magnitude 5 or greater were reported in the hours after the quake.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the earthquake struck 92km northeast of Concepcion at a depth of 63km at 3:34am local time (06:43 GMT) last Saturday.

Aid organisations and government officials in Britain and the US have offered to help Chileans in their efforts to rebuild their country.

Johnny Rivas is a vocal member of the Unified Movement of Aguan Farmers (MUCA), an organization that claims over 3,500 families demanding the redistribution of land in the North Coast of Honduras. For over five years Rivas has fought for land rights in Aguan, known as the ‘capital of agrarian reform.’ MUCA formed in 2001 in order to reclaim lands that Rivas says “were transferred to corrupt businessmen under fraudulent terms.” Rivas has recently been a target of constant death threats for his participation in the movement.

Palm Oil Cooperatives and Big Business

The Aguan Zone (named after its river), is located in the department of Colon and claims some of the most fertile lands in the country. It is known for its African Palm Oil plantations, which occupy over 90,000 hectares according to a Jan 2008 report by the US Embassy. Palm oil is a common ingredient in many food products and can be used as biodiesel.

In 1962 the Law of Agrarian Reform reallocated land from the hands of transnational companies back to Honduran farmers. Cooperatives formed that managed the palm oil plantations. In 1992, 1994 and 1995 many cooperatives sold their land back to wealthy business owners. In a document presented on April 30, 2009 MUCA asked for the annulment of the sale from 1994, on the grounds that the sale was illegal under the Agrarian Reform Laws. The terms of the sale stipulated that the land would remain state owned, but the farmers could continue to cultivate it. The contract expired in February 2005 and has never been renewed.

As a strategy to apply pressure on authorities to negotiate with the farmers, in May 2009 MUCA occupied a palm oil factory that belonged to Miguel Facusse, one of the largest landowners in Honduras. A new agreement was signed on June 12, 2009 with President Zelaya that guaranteed state resources to resolve the conflict. On June 23, after a follow up meeting on the same factory, a member of MUCA, Fabio Ochoa was shot 7 times.

Coup d’etat Halts Negotiations

Although President Zelaya had shown the political will to deal with the country’s agrarian problems, his term was cut short with a coup d’etat last June. Most of the farmer organizations prioritized their efforts to protesting for his constitutional return, temporarily putting their land struggle on hold. Realizing that after several months of nonviolent resistance on behalf of the nations teachers unions, workers, indigenous groups, and farmers, they were unable to reverse the coup, MUCA resumed the land recuperations in December 2009.

According to Rivas, direct land recuperation is “the only strategy farmers have to be heard.” Living in rigged plastic tents among the palm oil plantations that occupy their land, the farmers participating sometimes eat only once a day, under constant threat from the authorities.

The farmers occupied four cooperatives; La Confianza, La Aurora, San Isidro, and San Esteban Cooperative.

The National Agrarian Institute which deals with the appropriation of land has measured 9,000 hectares that are under dispute thus far.

Since December there have been dozens of confrontations between the farmers and security forces in the area.

Under the de facto government of Roberto Micheletti, military forces were used several times to illegally evict the farmers. There have been dozens of detained farmers and there are over 80 orders of arrest for people involved.

Conflict Intensifies

On the evening Feb. 11 witnesses reported that two unidentified helicopters flew over communities participating in the land recuperations. The next morning crossfire left at least four guards from the private security company dead.

Security forces also entered the community of La Concepcion, a commuinty neighboring a land recuperation. When a pastor of the local Mennonite Church saw aggressive driving almost running over children in the community, he intervened and had a firearm pointed at him.

“They came here intimidating the community, pointing out houses. If one of the farmers is killed we will know who to hold accountable,” he said.

In a formal meeting on Feb. 16 with President ‘Pepe’ Lobo, known to MUCA as ‘the son of the coup,’ Lobo promised to disarm the farmers. MUCA maintains that they are not an armed struggle, but will defend themselves against aggression from security forces. Rudy Hernandez, also a member of MUCA, maintained that “we are not a group of delinquents, we are farmers who are here to claim our land because hunger forces us to be here.”

This week Lobo presented two options to resolve the conflict: either purchase a portion of the cultivated land or farmers will be relocated to neighboring areas. Both options look for an immediate resolution to the problem but do not deal with the underlying issue of the concentration of land ownership or the illegal acquisition in the first place.

Unsustainable Investment

As the second poorest country in Central America, Honduras heavily relies on international financing.

“One of the most important things for those of us in Honduras, is the image that we give to the investor” said Facusse.

Facusse admitted to a Honduran newspaper that the World Bank, the Interamerican Development Bank (BID) and an unnamed German Bank have authorized loans which are currently ‘paralyzed’ due to the situation.

“We paid for the farm and paid well for it, those of the agrarian reform had the money but did not invest and misspent the money, for that I believe that agrarian reform is not the solution,” he added.

Marco Ramiro Lobo, a legal advisor to the National Agrarian Institute (INA), previously the legal advisor to MUCA who presented the demand against Facusse in 1994, stated that Facusse’s business interests were never for the social good of the community.

“There are grand restrictions on the workers, miserable salaries, before they were associates and now they are workers. Now they have a salary less then the minimum wage. Most of the farmers live in extreme poverty, which is what is causing this situation,” said Ramiro Lobo. “I don’t think anyone is arguing that Facusse brings investment to the area, but what we are arguing is the form in which the lands were acquired. In reality there is no sustainable development, this is a business model that looks for lucrative pay, not social investment.”

MUCA has the support of dozens of other farmer organizations in the country, including international organizations such as FIAN and Via Campesina. They are also supported by the National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP), an organization which grew out of the resistance movement opposed to the coup d’etat against President Manuel Zelaya.

Tamar Sharabi is an environmental engineer and freelance journalist living in Central America. She is working on media empowerment with human rights organizations and on a documentary about the Honduran coup detat. To support her work visit: www.giveforward.com/tamardocuments.

Private military contractors have quickly positioned themselves at the center of an emerging “shock doctrine” for earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

VANCOUVER, Canada, Feb 19, 2010 (IPS) — Critics are concerned that private military contractors are positioning themselves at the center of an emerging “shock doctrine” for earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

Next month, a prominent umbrella organization for private military and logistic corporations, the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA), is co-organizing a “Haiti summit” which aims to bring together “leading officials” for “private consultations with attending contractors and investors” in Miami, Florida.

Dubbed the “mercenary trade association” by journalist Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: the Rise of the World’ Most Powerful Mercenary Army, the IPOA wasted no time setting up a “Haiti Earthquake Support” page on its website following the Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated the Caribbean country.

IPOA’s director Doug Brooks says, “The first contacts we got were journalists looking for security when they went in.” The website of IPOA member company, Hart Security, says they are currently in Haiti “supporting clients from the fields of media, consultancy and medical in their disaster recovery efforts.” Several other IPOA members have either bid on or received contracts for work in Haiti.

Likewise, the private military contractor, Raidon Tactics, has at least 30 former U.S. Special Operations soldiers on the ground, where they have been guarding aid convoys and providing security for “news agencies,” according to a Raidon employee who told IPS his company received over 1,000 phone calls in response to an ad posting “for open positions for Static Security Positions and Mobile Security Positions” in Haiti.

Just over a week following the earthquake, the IPOA teamed up with Global Investment Summits (GIS), a UK-based private company that specializes in bringing private contractors and government officials from “emerging post-conflict countries” together, to host an “Afghanistan Reconstruction Summit,” in Istanbul, Turkey. It was there, says IPOA’s director Doug Brooks, that the idea for the Haiti summit was hatched “over beers.”

GIS’s CEO, Kevin Lumb, told IPS that the key feature of the Haiti summit will be “what we call roundtables, [where] we put the ministers and their procurement people, and arrange appointments with contractors.” Lumb added that his company “specialize[s] in putting governments together [with private contractors].”

IPOA was “so pleased” with the Afghanistan summit, says Lumb, they asked GIS to do “all the organizing, all the selling” for the Haiti summit. Lumb pointed out that all of the profits from the event will be donated to the Clinton-Bush Haiti relief fund.

While acknowledging that there will be a “a commercial angle” to the event and that “major companies, major players in the world” have committed to attend, Lumb declined to name most of the participants.

One of the companies Lumb did mention is DACC Associates, a private contractor that specializes in management and security consulting with contracts providing “advice and counsel” to governments in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

DACC President Douglas Melvin, a former Special Forces commander, State Department official and director of Security and Administrative Services for President George W. Bush, acknowledged that “from a revenue perspective, yes there’s wonderful opportunities at these events.”

Melvin added that he believes most attendees will be “coming together for the right reasons,” a genuine concern for Haiti, are “not coming to exploit” the dire situation there, and does not expect his company to profit off of their potential contracts there.

Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, is concerned that the thesis of her best-selling book will once again be tested in Haiti. She told IPS in an e-mail, “Haiti doesn’t need cookie cutter one-size fits all reconstruction, designed by the same gang that made same such a hash of Iraq, Afghanistan and New Orleans — and indeed the same people responsible for the decimation of Haiti’s own economy in the name of ‘aid.’”

Unhappy with critics’ characterization of the IPOA, Brooks said, “If Scahill and Klein have the resources, the capabilities, the equipment, to go in and do it themselves then more power to them.”

University of California at Los Angeles professor Nandini Gunewardena, co-editor of Capitalizing on Catastrophe: Neoliberal Strategies in Disaster Reconstruction, told IPS that “privatization is not the way to go for disaster assistance.”

“Traditionally, corporations have positioned themselves in a way that they benefit at the expense of the people. We cannot afford for that to happen in Haiti,” she said, adding that “any kind of intermediate or long-term assistance strategy has to be framed within that framework of human security.”

This, according to the U.N-.based Commission on Human Security, means “creating political, social, environmental, economic, military and cultural systems that together give people the building blocks of survival, livelihood and dignity.”

Denouncing the “standard recipe of neoliberal policies,” Gunewardena said, “If private corporations are going to contribute to Haiti’s restoration, they have to be held accountable, not to their own standards, but to those of the people.”

Reached by telephone, Haiti’s former Minister of Defense under the first presidency of Jean Bertand Aristide, Patrick Elie, agreed. He’s worried about the potential privatization of his country’s rebuilding, “because these private companies [aren't] liable, you can’t take them to the United Nations, you can’t take them to The Hague, and they operate in kind of legal limbo. And they are the more dangerous for it.”

Elie, who accepted a position as advisor to President Rene Preval following the earthquake, added “These guys are like vultures coming to grab the loot over this disaster, and probably money that might have been injected into the Haitian economy is going to be just grabbed by these companies and I’m sure that they are not only these mercenary companies but also the other companies like Halliburton or these other ones that always [come] on the heels of the troops.”

In its 2008 report, “Private Security Contractors at War: Ending the Culture of Impunity,” the NGO Human Rights First decried the “failure of the U.S. government to effectively control their actions, and in particular the inability or unwillingness of the Department of Justice (DoJ) to hold them criminally responsible for their illegal actions.”

The IPOA’s Brooks told IPS that members of the Haitian diaspora and Haiti’s embassy have been invited and are “going to be a big part” of the summit.

While stressing that it’s impossible to know the exact details of an event that is planned outside of public scrutiny, Elie countered that if high-level Haitian officials were to participate, “It’s either out of ignorance or complicity.”

Worried that Haiti is already seeing armed contractors in addition to the presence of more than 20,000 U.S., Canadian, and U.N. soldiers, Elie says he has seen private contractors accompanying NGOs, “walking about carrying assault rifles.”

If the U.S. military pulls out and hands over the armed presence to private contractors, “It opens the door to all kinds of abuses. Let’s face it, the Haitian state is too weak to really deal efficiently with this kind of threat if it materializes,” he said.

The history of post-disaster political economy has shown that such a threat is all too likely, says Elie. “We’ve seen it happen so many times before that whenever there is a disaster, there are a bunch of vultures trying to profit from it, whether it’s a man-made disaster like Iraq, or a nature-made disaster like Haiti.”

Patricia Mazzei reports for the Miami Herald on the lack of sanitation and the possibility of diseases spreading throughout the make-shift camps:

“But now, more than five weeks after the quake, the dangers of inadequate sanitation could amount to the most pressing public health issue in this quake-wrecked city. “

On February 22 the UN Office of Humanitarian Coordiantion reported that:

“the WASH cluster has recently worked on an acceleration plan for latrine construction with a short-term phase (before end of March and the beginning of the rainy season), erecting 12,950 latrines along with hand washing facilities; and a mid-term phase (before end of June), erecting 21,182 latrines. As of 22 February, more than 2,605 latrines have been completed by WASH Cluster partners, for 130,250 persons.”

In their previous report, from February 19, OCHA stated that:

“To date, there have been no proven outbreaks of epidemics and all reported cases have been tested and confirmed negative. However, the Health cluster warns that there is a risk of a large-scale outbreak of diarrhea, given the present overcrowding, poor sanitation and lack of effective waste disposal systems in spontaneous settlement sites. While there is no direct relationship between natural disasters and the outbreak of diseases, there is a strong relationship between congested living situations, poor sanitation and diarrhea.”

The Miami Herald continues,

“Diarrhea, abdominal pain, fever, lots of infection, vaginal discharge, headache, ear infection. . .’ Fabienne Ulysse, a nurse practitioner from Columbia University who is working at an International Medical Corps tent in the Pétionville Club camp, listed as conditions she has been treating recently.

…

With the rainy season looming and about a million people living in makeshift settlements, it is becoming increasingly critical to bring portable toilets in and get the sewage out.

BOGOTA – Some candidates in next month’s Colombian congressional elections are threatening voters with the loss of government aid if they don’t support the ruling party at the polls, members of an international observer mission said on Monday.

The mission, put together by non-governmental organizations from the United States, Mexico and a half-dozen other countries, held a press conference in Bogota to present its findings.

“Aspirants to the (lower) house and the Senate have attended meetings with beneficiaries, in which they have said that if they don’t vote for them and for the presidential candidate of the Party of the U (President Alvaro Uribe’s party), the subsidies they receive from the president will end,” the report says, without mentioning any candidates by name.

“(A)s many people live from those subsidies, it is a threat that is unfair and which has a lot of impact,” Laura Carlsen, director of the Americas Program at the International Relations Center, told reporters in the Colombian capital.

The observer mission, led by U.S.-based NGO Global Exchange, visited the northern provinces of Cordoba, Antioquia and Santander and the southern region of Valle del Cauca.

Besides the threats about the loss of government assistance, the observers cited assassinations and persecution of community leaders during the run-up to the elections.

In a detailed final report to be presented early next month, the mission will offer recommendations to authorities on ways to ensure a free and fair ballot on March 14.

Between the congressional vote and the presidential contest set for May 30, Colombians may be asked to turn out for a referendum on amending the constitution to allow the conservative Uribe to seek a third consecutive four-year term.

If Uribe doesn’t run, his party will be represented by former Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos.

Colombia’s security forces are on alert for possible incidents linked to the busy electoral calendar. Five people were killed and five others wounded Sunday when leftist FARC rebels ambushed the motorcade of a gubernatorial candidate in the southern province of Guaviare. EFE

Los subsidios que entrega el Gobierno Nacional por medio de programas como Familias en Acción están siendo utilizados para presionar a los beneficiarios con el fin de que en las elecciones de Congreso y presidente de la República voten por los partidos afines al uribismo. Así lo denunció un grupo de ONG internacionales, liderado por Global Exchange, que realizó una misión de observación preelectoral en Antioquia, Córdoba, Santander y Valle del Cauca.

“Escuchamos esta denuncia más en Medellín, donde representantes de Acción Social les han comentado (a los beneficiarios), primero que si no hay reelección del presidente Uribe van a perder sus subsidios y más reciente que si el señor Juan Manuel Santos no gana entonces ellos van a perder sus subsidios, y en esas zonas donde la gente es muy pobre no lo van a denunciar, porque van muy contentos porque están recibiendo sus subsidios”, aseguró John Lindsay-Poland, codirector para América Latina y el Caribe de Fellowship of Reconciliation, una de las ONG que participó en el proceso de observación. Su tarea fue analizar la situación preelectoral en el departamento de Antioquia.

Ted Lewis, coordinador de la misión y director de Derechos Humanos de Global Exchange, agregó que este es un informe preliminar y que las conclusiones de los estudios se darán a conocer el próximo 7 de marzo, una semana antes de que se cumplan las elecciones de Congreso, Parlamento Andino y las consultas internas de los partidos Verde y Conservador.

Ante el informe, el director de la Agencia Presidencial para la  Acción Social y la Cooperación Internacional, Diego Molano, aseguró que no conocía de las denuncias realizadas por las ONG y de paso invitó a los beneficiarios de los programas de la entidad “a votar libremente en los comicios de marzo y mayo, a no dejarse presionar por los que intentan condicionar nuestros servicios al respaldo de determinados candidatos y a denunciar a todas las personas que pretenden sacar provecho político de las necesidades de los ciudadanos vinculados a nuestros programas sociales”.

El funcionario agregó que el único caso que conocen al respecto es uno que se presentó en Barbosa (Santander) y que ya está siendo analizado dentro de la entidad para que después, en caso de que lo amerite, pase a las autoridades competentes.

Elisabeth Ungar, de Transparencia por Colombia, llamó la atención sobre el incremento que ha tenido en los últimos días la publicidad de este programa presidencial.