Flowers and calls for unity mark Haiti’s 10th anniversary quake commemoration

Haiti marked the 10th anniversary of its greatest tragedy Sunday with a low-key commemoration that included private ceremonies, a blood drive and a renewed call for unity from its president.

Following a brief wreath-laying ceremony at St. Christophe in Titanyen, the barren mountaintop and official memorial site where many of the 300,000-plus dead are buried, Haitian President Jovenel Moïse said now, more than ever, Haiti needs the type of solidarity Haitians showed in the days and weeks after the magnitude 7 temblor struck at 4:53 p.m. on Jan. 12, 2010.

In a speech across from the razed presidential palace, Moïse recalled how Haitians were the first to come to each other’s aide, many digging through the rubble with their bare hands, even before the arrival of foreign urban search and rescue teams. Everyone, he said, was in the same situation.

“Do you remember who pulled you from under the rubble? Did you even know the person? Do you remember who helped you get your first hot meal?” Moïse said in the garden of the National Pantheon Museum (MUPANAH) on the Champ de Mars, where the heroes of Haitian independence are featured along with the country’s culture and history.

“In this moment, we need more than ever this solidarity, this fraternity.”

For much of his 35 months in office, Moïse has faced a constant wave of protests, the most recent of which ended in November after nearly three months. Often violent, the protests led to a countrywide lockdown that bankrupted businesses, shuttered schools and prevented the holding of elections to renew the entire 119-member lower chamber of Parliament, all local offices and some members of the Senate.

As a result of the canceled vote, Moïse as of Monday will find himself ruling by decree as the Parliament will become dysfunctional. His one-man rule, which some fear could ignite a new round of tensions, comes as Haiti experiences a rare period of calm after a difficult year — and difficult decade amid the failed reconstruction from the quake.

Donors pledged $13.3 billion to help Haiti “build back better,” while also promising free public housing. But 10 years later, the Parliament has not voted in a building code and while most of the 1.5 million who were displaced are back into neighborhoods, tent cities and homelessness persist among survivors.

This population, the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights said in a report released this week, “has never been a priority for the state authorities” and today lives in the most complete denial of its fundamental rights while exposed to insecurity and without access to drinking water, education, health care and latrines.

“The last 10 years have simply been used by state authorities to hide their eyes, the earthquake victims and get rid of them,” the human rights group said. “The last 10 years have been used to further impoverish the Haitian population.”

During his speech Moïse acknowledged the worsening economic situation, in which inflation today is hovering above 20 percent and 4 million Haitians, according to the United Nations, are facing a humanitarian crisis.

But he said the three lockdowns Haiti suffered last year had a worse impact economically than the 2010 earthquake.

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Unlike past commemorations, which have featured life-size photos of some of the 44 destroyed public buildings, high-profile visits and a concert at Titanyen, Moïse’s administration settled for a low-key wreath laying at St. Christophe, where there are a dozen mass graves. Three others were dug near Cité Soleil not far from the airport.

After Moïse and his wife placed a wreath of white carnations at the memorial, members of the foreign diplomatic corps, including the U.S. ambassador and head of the United Nations mission, each stuck a white rose in the wreath.

The U.N., which had a peacekeeping mission in the country at the time, lost 102 of its personnel including its mission chief and political officer who were meeting with a visiting Chinese delegation when the quake struck at 4:53 p.m. A small private ceremony was later held at the hotel that served as their headquarters for families of the dead.

Haiti’s 2010 earthquake killed hundreds of thousands. The next one could be worse

Remembering all who lost their lives, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres noted that “over the past decade, Haiti has drawn on the resilience of its people and the support of its many friends to overcome this disaster.”

His special representative in Haiti, Helen Meagher La Lime, said: “While we honor the victims, the commemoration of this tragic event must also be a source of renewed engagement and a call to unite behind a vision for a stable, democratic, inclusive and prosperous Haiti.“

Moïse was later rushed out of the memorial site after about a dozen protesters tried to enter it, carrying their own blue and white floral arrangement. As the presidential motorcades took off for the National Pantheon Museum, the protesters screamed, “we’ve fired the state,” and trashed his flowers.

Also on Sunday, Moïse announced the winner of the competition to rebuild the National Palace, which was destroyed in the quake along with the Port-au-Prince Cathedral and Cathédrale Sainte Trinité, which belongs to the Episcopal Church. None have been rebuilt. The local Haitian firm Raco Deco, which had teamed up with David Adjaye, the Tanzania-born British architect, was announced as the winner to design Haiti’s new palace. Adjaye is the architect behind the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.

There were a handful of private ceremonies, including a gathering by feminists and other civic leaders at the Foundation for Knowledge and Liberty, and by friends and family of the U.N. peacekeepers who died and others who perished at the Montana Hotel.

Meanwile, the alumni at Institution Saint-Louis de Gonzague, an all boys Catholic school, which had its grounds turned into a tent city after the devastation, held a blood drive. Dr. Bernard Nau and Prospery Raymond, who spent two hours under the rubble before he was rescued by neighborhood kids, said they wanted to commemorate this year’s anniversary by celebrating life.

“It’s really important for us and to motivate people,” Raymond said. “It’s good way to remember those who passed away.”