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Haitian aid effort rushes out tents with anger building
Port-Au-Prince (AFP) Feb 7, 2010 Aid workers in Haiti rushed to provide tents on Sunday with the coming rainy season threatening further misery and anger building among the desperate population over the stumbling relief effort. While officials said food distribution had finally moved into high gear, more Haitians protested Sunday, saying the government had done nothing for them as the one-month anniversary of the January 12 devastating earthquake approached. Meanwhile, the case of 10 Americans charged with kidnapping children in the wake of the disaster here took another turn, with their Haitian lawyer saying he had quit after being accused of seeking to bribe the judge. Haitians have warned that temporary housing for tens of thousands of homeless is vital ahead of the rainy season that arrives in the coming weeks, since huge numbers of people are sleeping on the ground. Some one million people are estimated to have been left homeless overall by the quake. French aid group Doctors Without Borders handed out 1,800 tents over the weekend, a spokeswoman said. "If more people need it here, we'll provide it," Caroline Livio said at a clinic operated by the organization. "We have more tents now." The United Nations announced last week that more than 10,000 family-sized tents had been distributed with some 16,000 in stock. On Friday, the UN estimated that 460,000 people remained in makeshift camps throughout Port-au-Prince. The UN has warned that sanitation is becoming a serious problem in such camps and that an increasing number of children are falling ill. Desperate Haitians have protested in parts of Port-au-Prince in recent days, including Friday during ex-US president Bill Clinton's visit, when hundreds gathered outside the complex where he met President Rene Preval. Clinton, the UN special envoy for Haiti, said several thousand tents would be arriving soon as well as a hundred trucks. On Sunday, about 100 people who said they were living in a camp marched in the Petionville suburb of the capital. "People aren't getting anything from the food distribution," said Louis Willy, a 35-year-old father of two. Preval, under increasing pressure over the government's response to the disaster, on Saturday urged Haitians to remain calm. The US military, meanwhile, vowed to help Haiti for as long as was necessary and seven of the world's leading industrialized countries -- the G7 -- have said they will cancel their nation's bilateral debt with Haiti. In an interview with AFP on Sunday, a 24-year-old woman who waited a day to be rescued after her house collapsed in the quake spoke of the trauma. She has since had an arm and a leg amputated. "I felt like it was a dream -- well, a nightmare, as if I were sleeping," said Darling Exinor. "I called my cousins so that they could help me and I prayed to God for him to help me." The case of the 10 Americans charged last week with kidnapping and conspiracy has distracted from the relief effort. On Sunday, their lawyer said he had quit the case after being accused of trying to bribe the judge. Edwin Coq strongly denied the accusation and said there had been a "misunderstanding." "The parents of these Americans have ended their association with me over the payment of my fees," he told AFP. "Not only have they given me nothing up to now, they have also sought to ruin my reputation by saying that I asked them for money to corrupt the judge." Coq said, "we had agreed that I would be paid 60,000 dollars (44,000 euros) and part of it would be sent to me as a deposit on the account." The American Baptists were arrested near the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic travelling with 33 children. They have claimed they meant no harm and had taken only children they thought were orphans, but some of the children's parents have told AFP they had reached a deal to give away their kids. Further hearings were scheduled in the case for Monday. Separately, Dominican Republic soldiers detained a Venezuelan after he illegally brought six Haitians, four children and two adults, into the country. It was not clear where he was taking the Haitians and why he was transporting them.
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US military plots difficult path in Haiti Port-Au-Prince (AFP) Feb 7, 2010 From an air-conditioned tent in what used to be a Port-au-Prince bus station, the mighty US military controls its 17,000 troops deployed to help Haiti's earthquake relief, amid questions over how long they will stay. Colonel Gregory Kane paces across the tent, past rows of personnel - wearing various iterations of camouflage - who tap away at double-thick high-security laptops. "What's ... read more |
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