Title : Cité Soleil - Between misery and violence : a community taken hostage
Date & Location : Haiti, Port-au-Prince, 10-15 May 2006
Sound : Natural with Creole speech
Duration : 9 minutes
Produced by : Johnny Saunderson, Didier Revol
Source : ICRC – Access all

This report will be distributed free-to-air and rights free over the the Eurovision network for European members at 11.45 GMT as well as on 3 satellites Feeds on ASIASAT , EUTELSAT, NSS806 towards the Americas at 14.00 to 14.10 GMT on Tuesday 30 May 2006.


For full details of the World feed, go to the EBU website and/or see below for timings and technical specification:

For broadcast tapes and information on footage: Virginie Miranda, International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva,

SHOWS - Start at first frame

00:00 General shots of Cité Soleil – Tin shacks full of sewage.
Family washing dishes
Man finishing going to the toilet
Small barefoot child in the street
School girls in a back street of Cité Soleil

00:22 Close-up of water pouring into bucket
Close-up on taps with water coming out – ICRC Water point
Close-up of man talking
Wide shot of the blue water station

00:34 Lorémise François, collecting water at the water point, putting the bucket on her head and leaving for her place.
Women watching Lorémise as she walks away
Lorémise walking with bucket on her head
Lorémise arriving at her home, putting her bucket down and entering

01:11 Lorémise inside her home
Lorémise washing her clothes

ITW Lorémise François
01:44 “When there was no water at the fountains we were paying 7 to 8 gourdes for every small bucket of water, and 10 gourdes for a big bucket (= 13 USD). Now that there is water again at the fountains, we pay only 3 gourdes.” (16’’ total)

ITW Lorémise François
02:00 “My life was sad, you see. My daughter, if she is like she is today, it’s because of everything that has happened here. During the confrontations there were many gunfights and each time she heard a gunshot she would start to cry. I didn’t have a choice, there was nowhere else to go.” (22’’ total)


MEDICAL EMERGENCY

02:22 Pregnant woman (no name) feeling bad
Taxi driver fixing Red Cross emblem flag to taxi
Stretcher bearers running to meet pregnant woman
Red Cross volunteers leaning down
Pregnant woman lying on stretcher
Tattered Red Cross flag fluttering over Haitian Red Cross clinic
Stretcher bearers carrying woman to taxi ambulance
Woman being placed inside the ambulance
Close-up of flag on the taxi as it speeds through the streets of Cité Soleil

03:12 Wide shots of taxi speeding through the streets
Tracking shot of roadside

03:30 Haitian Red Cross volunteers entering
Woman carried into the hospital

ITW Nadège Pequier
03:38 “I see that the majority of kids who are doing well and are on the right track end up leaving this place. I don’t want to leave, but at the same time I can’t help thinking there really is no solution for Cité Soleil. There will always be confrontations here.” (total 21’’)

04:00 “With everything that is happening in the Cité, I don’t know that I’m cut out for living here. Often a sort of anxiety grabs hold of me, I feel my heart beating very hard and it leaves me shaking.“

04:18 “I think this happens to me because of the shooting, especially when they start firing off their guns when I’m outside and I have to find an alternative way home.”
(28’’ total for two last clips)


04:28 Set-up shot, Ghandi Bellefleur Junior, deputy gang-leader
ITW Ghandi Bellefleur Junior, deputy gang-leader

04:37 “Yes, the Red Cross is an independent organisation. It’s an organisation I think, well as far I’ve been told, which hires people from different nationalities. So if you are in the middle of a war, like in Iraq, the Red Cross can treat both American and Iraqi soldiers. Because it’s an independent organisation it has a dialogue with everyone, without discrimination no matter who they are and where they’re from.” (36’’ total)

05:13 Various shots of garbage collection
05:32 Workers cleaning roadside sewage
05:45 Truck removing garbage
05:55 Gang leader Dred Wilme on poster, shot dead by Minustah forces in July 2005
06:01 Minustah post within Cité Soleil
Close-up on UN soldiers peeping out behind sand bags
Inside UN base looking down on the open market of Cité Soleil

ITW Ghandi Bellefleur :
06:18 “For the government, if you are with them, then everything’s fine, you can do what you like, without any consequences. But the minute you stand up to defend your rights – in Cité Soleil we don’t have clean drinking water, no proper housing, no healthcare facilities – we are victims both socially and politically. We, we are saying ‘no’.” (26’’ total)

WATER PUMP REPAIR

06:44 Repairs to water pump
Hacksaw cutting pipe
Close-up on man’s face doing the cutting
Wide shot of man at work on the pipe
Wide shot of men at the pipe
Close-up of the pipes being screwed together

07:00 Repair men (ICRC) turning on the generator
Plume of black smoke from exhaust as generator starts
Man opening the valve
Close-up shots of electric motor starting
Close-up shot of water flowing out of overflow pipe
Wide shot of overflow tank
Water flow, water splashing on the ground
Tight shots of hands washing at tap
Wide shot of ICRC people washing their hands

07:30 Jordanian battalion soldiers driving along on board armoured personnel carrier (APC)
Stopping at UN check-point
UN soldiers on guard at checkpoint on the outskirts of Cité Soleil
Close-up on face and gun of UN Soldier at check point
UN soldiers sitting on top of APC
Shot of MINUSTAH base in Cité Soleil

CITE SOLEIL MARKET PLACE
08:00 Various of Women singing in the market place

09:00 END


STORY: Between misery and violence, a community taken hostage

Originally called Cité Simone, after the first name of President Duvalier’s wife (and hence removed), Cité Soleil is the largest shantytown in the Northern Hemisphere. Meant to house a few thousand workers during the 1960s, it’s population now numbers between 200,000 to 400,000 people on just two square kilometres. Most live in appalling conditions surrounded by filth and litter.

The canals are regularly blocked. Human and animal excrement and every kind of waste sit in stagnant water. Here and there the ground disappears entirely under a thick layer of garbage. With no sewage system and no functioning toilets, residents do their business on the street. The only access to primary healthcare comes from a handful of international organisations.

Cité Soleil is a den of armed gangs. Their members have resorted to kidnapping people in the city and hiding them in the Cité, only releasing them in exchange for a ransom. Although recently there has been a relative lull in kidnappings, the gangs impose their rule over the residents, who have no other choice but to obey.

Lorémise François is a single mother with two children. Unable to pay her rent, she has been living in a school, in a storeroom by day and sleeping in a classroom at night. She survives by preparing and selling food on the street. As for many people in Cité Soleil, the ICRC project to repair the water fountains has improved her daily life. Lorémise can now get more clean drinking water on a regular basis for a better price.

ITW Lorémise François
“When there was no water at the fountains we were paying 7 to 8 gourdes for every small bucket of water, and 10 gourdes for a big bucket (= 13 USD). Now that there is water again at the fountains, we pay only 3 gourdes.”

Given the extent of the kidnappings since 2004, the Minustah forces (United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti) and the Haitian national police have had to intervene against the gangs. 2005 was a year of violent confrontations particularly in June and December, which turned the area around Cité Soleil and some of its neighbourhoods into a war zone. Many residents were forced to flee, leaving everything behind.

The proximity of the water stations, recently rebuilt by the ICRC, provides greater security for women and children. In the past they had to walk long distances for their supplies, putting them more at risk of getting caught up in the violence. Despite a return to calm, the community remains traumatised by the confrontations, including Lorémise’s daughter.

ITW Lorémise François
“My life was sad, you see. My daughter, if she is like she is today, it’s because of everything that has happened here. During the confrontations there were many gunfights and each time she heard a gunshot she would start to cry. I didn’t have a choice, there was nowhere else to go.”

At the height of the confrontations the only organisations on site were the ICRC, the Haitian Red Cross (CRH) and Médecins sans frontières (MSF). The volunteers in the local office of the CRH evacuated nearly 700 people in 2005, most of whom had gunshot wounds. While on the job, two volunteers received bullet injuries, one in the face and one in the hand. With the help of the ICRC the volunteers evacuated victims to the MSF hospital using local taxis protected by the Red Cross sign.

Nadège Pequier, a CRH volunteer from Cité Soleil, is committed to saving lives. But the experience of the confrontations has left her bitter:

“I see that the majority of kids who are doing well and are on the right track end up leaving this place. I don’t want to leave, but at the same time I can’t help thinking there really is no solution for Cité Soleil. There will always be confrontations here.”

She also has to live with the consequences of the conflict:

“With everything that is happening in the Cité, I don’t know that I’m cut out for living here. Often a sort of anxiety grabs hold of me, I feel my heart beating very hard and it leaves me shaking.“

“I think this happens to me because of the shooting, especially when they start firing off their guns when I’m outside and I have to find an alternative way home.”

The ICRC has been accepted by the community because of its neutrality and impartiality, and the numerous contacts made with the Cité’s three principle gangs. Ghandi Bellefleur Junior, a deputy gang leader explains why his organisation has accepted the ICRC in Cité Soleil:

“Because it’s an independent organisation it has a dialogue with everyone, without discrimination, no matter who they are and where they’re from.”

As a result, the work needed to rebuild the water stations and make them operational again has been able to happen, as well as the clean-up and removal of waste in the canals. With time, the ICRC has succeeded in arranging the return of the Metropolitan services for solid waste removal (SMCRS) and the Central Metropolitan Authority for drinking water (CAMEP), two essential public services which were no longer operating in Cité Soleil because of the insecurity.

In July 2005 in the heart of Cité Soleil, Minustah shot Dred Wilme, head of a notorious gang, as well as several of his cohorts. Sadly, residents caught in the crossfire also died. Since then local resentment towards Minustah has grown. Gangs have taken advantage of this situation and portray themselves as defenders of the community fighting for social justice:

ITW Gandhi Bellefleur Junior
“For the government, if you are with them, then everything’s fine, you can do what you like, without any consequences. But the minute you stand up to defend your rights – in Cité Soleil we don’t have clean drinking water, no proper housing, no healthcare facilities – we are victims both socially and politically. We, we are saying ‘no’.”

The persistence of deep inequalities, the steady decline of the economy and sporadic flare-ups of armed violence in Cité Soleil are emblematic of the problems faced across Haitian society. After the turbulent departure of President Aristide in 2004, public services, already few, deserted Cité Soleil altogether.

Since the election of René Préval as President in February 2006, a precarious calm reigns across Cité Soleil and Port-au-Prince. The rise to power of a man described as pragmatic and a former supporter of Aristide, is a sign of hope for this underprivileged community who voted massively in his favour. Local observers however remain cautious: without major reform and a better distribution of wealth in the immediate future, hope could easily give way to disenchantment and violence. It is now in the hands of the state authorities to re-establish services, long-awaited and deserved, to all the population, and to offer effective support to the international community.