30706L Minsky: (report) On Eve Ensler's Haiti visit and First Women's Safe House to open in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Tequila Minsky <tminsky@ix.netcom.com>

In April, Eve Ensler went to Haiti for V-Day (This report came from her website
http://www.vday.org/contents/vday/vmoments/070420#.  At a  performance last 
nite,
she reported that the First Safe House has opened in PAP)


Eve Ensler Writes from Haiti

I write to you as I am leaving Port Au Prince, Haiti. I am moved, inspired, in 
deep sorrow, in outrage. I am filled with a vastness of contradictions that 
explode the heart and bend the mind. Beauty in the mountains, the sky, the 
earth, the stars, the air, the jasmine, the moon. Rhythms and music - Boukman 
Eksperyans, you can feel the entire world pulse through your body. Extreme 
poverty so devastating it is a serious form of violence.  People living on as 
little as a dollar a day, living in squalor, in terror, in insane deprivation. 
Poverty and humiliation and rage creating gangs and shootings and kidnappings 
and of course women's bodies are the battleground on which this war is fought.

One woman told a story of how one of her daughters was shot in the leg and 
died. (There is little to no medical support for the poor) then her husband was 
murdered. Then they came and gang raped her 14-year-old daughter and she tried 
to run away to a Protestant church for help, but they wouldn't let her stay 
cause she was Catholic. She couldn't go home, but had to get a job to feed her 
kids. She had no one to help her. She needed to wash and clean houses, but 
there was no one to take care of her kids. Her raped daughter had almost lost 
her mind and needed her attention. Her daughter couldn’t tell her who raped her 
cause she was too terrified they would come back and kill her.

This is a terrible story, but all too common in the slums. Seven-year-olds are 
raped by three men, people’s houses are set on fire in the middle of the night, 
children kidnapped and sold. Myriam Merlet, the Chief of Staff of the Ministry 
for Women said, "That since the 1991 coup d'etat, war taught a country to rape. 
Before there was rape of course, but it was not a common practice. Now when a 
man wants to rape, he rapes. It was used as weapon of war  - the military 
institutionalized it and now when a robber gets into your house, he rapes you.” 
She said, "What is different about Haiti than other countries is that fifty 
percent of the women who are raped in the country are not raped in their house 
but they are raped by a stranger."

The situation is grim in Haiti. But then there are the women working with their 
lives for change. These women are fierce and beautiful and devoted and 
passionate. They inspired me to be bigger, bolder, more devoted, to believe 
deeper, to keep going.

We were hosted and treated with care and kindness by the Minister of Women's 
Affairs and Rights, Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue, and her extraordinary 
team, Myriam Merlet and Ann Valerie Timothee Milfort. It is a wonder to see 
Feminist activist women in power.  There were press conferences, interviews, 
dancing under the moon, fruit punch, a siren armed motorcade that took us 
everywhere, a women's march in the hot Haitian sun through the streets of Cap 
Haitian, chanting, dancing, wild passion, young and old, and there was Elvire 
Eugène, one of the great women activists of the world and her group, AFASDA, a 
Cap Haitian based, solely volunteer organization that networks and raises 
awareness about violence facing women.

We visitied a hospital where we discovered there is not even a camera to take 
pictures of corpses for autopsies. There are no procedures to seek or secure 
evidence for women who are raped. There is no ambulance or car or doctor to 
receive the dead. The woman who runs this unit, the director of the Forensic 
Institute, Marie Claude Jasmin said that coming to work is” like dancing 
folklore.”

There was no support, no resources. Everywhere we went in Haiti women were 
inventing something out of nothing. A common theme was women saying they 
couldn't afford to think about what's going on, they couldn't let themselves 
get depressed. They simply had to keep going. There were three sold out 
performances of The Vagina Monologues in Port Au Prince in French and Creole. 
One performance in Cap Haitian was in a Catholic girls school where 500 people 
showed up on a hot steamy night. Many men stood at the end promising to stop 
the violence. There were meetings with local women's groups and testimonies 
from women from Grand Ravine and Cité Soleil who gathered in Port Au Prince on 
April 3, National Haitian Women's Movement Day.

One of the main problems in Haiti is the lack of justice, the failure of law, 
the lack of accountability. We visited the women's prison - the only one in 
Haiti, built for 78 women, it now holds nearly 400. Women are crammed into 
small cells, sometimes holding up to 22 women in a single cell. Many of the 
women I spoke to have been there 1- 3 years and have never been charged. They 
get infections in their vaginas from the dirty water. They rarely have a 
visitor. Only a few had lawyers. Most have no idea when their case will be 
processed. There was a gas leak in one of the cells and the women there were 
feeling very ill. Many of the women were young - lots of teenagers. I 
interviewed one woman, Erina Dorjilus who was there because she had stabbed her 
husband. He had been violently beating her, kicking her, tying her up with 
steel strips. She showed us scars all over her body. The last time he almost 
murdered her and she grabbed a knife and stabbed him. She brought herself to 
the police. She had been in the prison for nine months and did not know if her 
husband was alive or dead. She had never been charged and she had not seen her 
children as they had no idea where she was. It was Kafkaesque. The 
disappearance of people - kidnappings, arrests, murders, is a theme. The people 
of Haiti have been forgotten and made invisible by the world.

We made this trip to see how V-Day could join forces with the women of Haiti. 
When we asked what they most needed, they were totally clear. They wanted a 
Safe House in Port Au Prince. One out of every three woman is raped or beaten 
in Haiti. There is nowhere for women to escape. THE GOOD NEWS, THE MIRACULOUS 
NEWS IS THAT WE ARE NOW IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE MINISTRY OF WOMEN AND HAVE 
AGREED TO HELP THEM OPEN THE FIRST V-DAY SAFE HOUSE FOR WOMEN IN HAITI. Our new 
safe house will be a place of refuge and more importantly will be a place where 
women who have been abused get treated for trauma and trained for jobs. 
Marie-Laurence had already scouted ten houses before we left. The excitement 
level was that high.

We hope the house will open very soon and we would so love any support that you 
can give us. We have committed to supporting the house for three years with the 
hope that at the end of this time the Haitian government will take on the house 
as its own. There are already plans for a huge V-Day next year in Port Au 
Prince.

The trip simply ripped my heart open. We are all responsible for what happens 
to the people of Haiti. If I have learned anything in these years, it is that 
we are intrinsically connected.  I urge each of you, to read about Haiti, to 
think about Haiti, to get active in groups that are working to change the 
situation there, to give generously to our new Safe House. V-Day stands with 
the women of Haiti today and will remain with the women of Haiti until this 
terrible violence ends and each Haitian woman is free and safe.