For months, an anti-corruption movement has been growing, aided by social media and peaceful street protests. But tensions are rising as the government turns to repression.
An Op-Ed piece by Jake Johnston for The New York Times.
It started with a few keystrokes in a living room in Montreal. Gilbert Mirambeau Jr., a Haitian filmmaker and writer, took to Twitter on Aug. 14 to post a photo of himself, blindfolded, holding a piece of cardboard with a simple question written on it in Haiti’s Creole: “Kot Kòb Petwo Karibe a???” — Where is the Petrocaribe money???
He was referring to funds that had gone missing from some $2 billion in low-interest loans provided by Petrocaribe, a Venezuela-led oil-purchasing alliance of Caribbean states, since 2008 to help Haiti’s economy. It became a critical emergency resource in 2010, when an earthquake devastated the country.
A few days after the Mirambeau tweet, the popular Haitian…
View original post 1,076 more words
Monique L. Desir 