In These New Times

Daily Mail
19th January, 2010

The UN must step in to ensure the U.S. is not occupying Haiti in the wake of a devastating earthquake that may have killed 200,000 people, a French minister has said.

French Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet spoke as the country descended into anarchy. Aid is only just trickling through the ‘bottleneck’ at Haiti’s airport, while angry Haitians desperate for help are striking out at international agencies – and each other.
Some 10,000 U.S. troops are on the way to try to restore order – but their role is being questioned.
‘This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti,’ Joyandet, in Brussels for an EU meeting on Haiti, said on French radio.

Last week U.S. forces turned back a French aid plane carrying a field hospital from the damaged, congested airport in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, prompting criticism from the French minister. The plane landed safely the following day.
More…Haiti’s Ground Zero: 30,000 dead and almost every building flattened in town at epicentre of earthquake

Meanwhile desperate, starving and increasingly angry victims were still struggling to find food and water despite the international aid flowing in to the country.

Six days after the quake only a trickle of aid was reaching those beyond the devastated capital Port-au-Prince.

The UN admitted that just 10 per cent of those who needed aid have received help.

On the ground, violence was stalking the shattered streets of Haiti. There were reports that one American had died and three had been injured during a relief operation being carried out at the airport. No further details were available.

At least two suspected looters were shot dead on Sunday, witnesses said, but police said they had been told to adopt a more low-key approach.

‘Whether things explode is all down to whether help gets through from the international community,’ said police commander Ralph Jean-Brice, in charge of Haiti’s West Department, whose force is down by half due to the quake.

In some cases, police fired tear gas to disperse looters in the city’s downtown area as several nearby shops burned.

‘We’ve been ordered not to shoot at people unless completely necessary,’ said police officer Pierre Roger ‘We’re too little, and these people are too desperate.’

Security was expected to improve with the arrival last night of 2,200 Marines – part of a 10,000 U.S. military deployment to the area. The UN is also to send an extra 3,500 police and peacekeepers.

Lt General Ken Keen, the U.S. commander in Haiti, said he feared the death toll could exceed 200,000 and said relief agencies were dealing with ‘a disaster of epic proportions’.

On Monday there were some signs of progress as international medical teams took over damaged hospitals where the seriously injured had lain untreated for days.

Doctors say that in some cases they have had to amputate broken limbs rather than reset them because they had turned gangrenous.

Trucks piled with corpses were ferrying bodies to hurriedly excavated mass graves outside the city, but tens of thousands of victims are still believed buried under the rubble.

There were jostling scrums for food and water as U.N. trucks distributed food packets and U.S. military helicopters swooped down to throw out boxes of water bottles and rations.

Colonel Buck Elton, commander of the U.S. military directing flights at Haiti’s airport, said there had been 600 takeoffs and landings since he took over the one-runway airport’s traffic on Wednesday, though 50 flights had been diverted.

But the Geneva-based Doctors Without Borders charity said bluntly: ‘There is little sign of significant aid distribution.

Enlarge Members of the Los Angeles County Fire Department Search and Rescue Team rescue a Haitian woman from a collapsed building

The aid group complained of skewed priorities and a supply bottleneck at airport. Spokesman Jason Cone said the U.S. military needed ‘to be clear on its prioritisation of medical supplies and equipment’.

Just 60 miles from the devastation in Haiti’s earthquake zone, luxury liners are docking at private beaches.

Passengers enjoyed jet ski rides, parasailing and rum cocktails, when the Independence of the Seas ship landed at Labadee, on the north coast, on Friday.

Another ship, Navigator of the Seas, was due to dock on Monday.

Royal Caribbean International leases five beaches from the government, which are armed by guards.

They said the ships carry some food aid and the cruise line has pledged to donate all proceeds from the visit to Haitians.

One passenger wrote he was ‘sickened’ on the Cruise Critic internet forum.

‘I just can’t see myself sunning on the beach… while there are tens of thousands of dead people being piled up on the streets with the survivors stunned and looking for food and water,’ he wrote.

Some were afraid desperate people might breach the resort’s 12ft high fences.

‘Labadee is critical to Haiti’s recovery; hundreds of people rely on Labadee for their livelihood,’ said the company’s vice-president, John Weis.

‘We cannot abandon Haiti now that they need us most.’

Forty pallets of rice, beans, powdered milk, water and canned foods were delivered on Friday, and more are due on other cruises.
The £23million raised in three days
Money is pouring into the official British appeal for victims of the Haiti earthquake. More than £23million has been raised since the Disasters Emergency Committee launched its TV appeal on January 15.

DEC chief executive Brendan Gormley said: ‘The response from the public has been absolutely overwhelming.

‘It shows that whatever financial concerns people are experiencing here in the UK, they feel a deep level of empathy for the people of Haiti, and will give whatever they can.’

Despite concerns that the aid is not getting to those most in need , he was optimistic that the obstacles could be overcome.

‘We know that people are being reached, but there is a huge challenge ahead, and much more work to be done,’ he said. ‘The area affected by this earthquake is huge, and devastation wrecked upon the infrastructure of Haiti means agencies face many obstacles.’

The DEC is an umbrella organisation of 13 humanitarian aid agencies including ActionAid, British Red Cross, Cafod, Save The Children, Oxfam and Christian Aid.

The British Government has pledged £20million in aid. The Department for International Development said £2 million would go on providing logistical support and communications to help speed up the distribution of supplies.

On the ground, Oxfam teams gave out water to thousands of people in the capital over the weekend and aid workers from Concern Worldwide distributed 2,000 jerry cans and 100,000 water purification tablets.