67 Haitians Drown: But Does Anybody Care?

Every few months it happens: a small
dilapidated sailboat crammed with refuges and a few inches of freeboard capsizes
and sinks with a great loss of life somewhere north of Haiti. Late Sunday or early
Monday morning, no one is quite sure when, it happened again and this time 67 people
are missing and 15 bodies have been recovered. When we read about these tragedies
(they can hardly be called accidents), we are reminded of something Albert Camus
wrote: “Of all of the evils in Pandora’s Box, by far the most terrible is hope.”
Desperate Haitians cling to the hope of a better life and hope the boat they step
in will make it. Many don’t.

Have you ever wondered why people are willing to risk probable death to escape from
Haiti? Perhaps these few statistics will give you a clue: the annual average per
capita income is under $400; the average life expectancy is 53 years; 8% of the
new births don’t make it to their first birthday; there are at least 163,000 orphans
in a country of 8 million people; and, 80% of the population live in a grinding
poverty that makes the U.S. Great Depression look like Heaven on earth.

We have long since given up any hope that U.S. government assistance will make any
real difference in Haiti. Only NGOs (non government organizations) such as church
groups, seem to make any real impact on the lives of Haitians in need. If you want
to do something to help the people of Haiti, our advice is to contribute to a trustworthy
NGO working there in healthcare or education projects.

See news video
about the tragedy --

To find out more about the latest Haitian boat sinking tragedy we offer you the
following article from the New York Times--



By DAMIEN CAVE


Published: July 28, 2009



MIAMI — The Coast Guard said Tuesday that for a second day it was scouring a wide
area of the Atlantic for dozens of Haitians who had crammed onto a rickety sailboat
that sank near the Turks and Caicos Islands with 200 people aboard. As of 5:30 p.m.,
Coast Guard officials here said 15 bodies had been found, 118 people had been rescued
and at least 67 were missing.



The Coast Guard said the boat had hit a coral reef and sunk two and a half miles
from the coast of West Caicos, the westernmost island in the Turks and Caicos archipelago.
It was unclear whether the boat sank Sunday or Monday. The boat, believed to be
a shoddily built sail freighter 30 to 50 feet long, had been heading north from
Haiti.



Survivors said the boat had departed carrying 160 people and had picked up 40 more
before sinking, according to Coast Guard officials. All were believed to be migrants.
Most of the missing passengers have probably drowned.



“We’re getting reports of 20-knot winds and six-foot seas out there,” said Petty
Officer Jennifer Johnson, a Coast Guard spokeswoman in Miami. “If you put 200 people
on a vessel that’s 30 or 40 feet, it’s bound for disaster.”



The sinking is potentially one of the worst disasters in years to strike Haitians
fleeing the destitution of their country, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.
If no other survivors are found, the death toll will be the largest since at least
2007, when about 80 Haitians drowned or were eaten by sharks after their boat capsized
near Turks and Caicos with 150 people aboard.



Such tragedies have become fixtures of the teal-blue Caribbean. Many Haitians, among
others, pay thousands of dollars to smugglers for passage in flimsy boats in hopes
of landing in the Bahamas, or reaching the United States, about 700 miles away,
to find work.



But traveling without navigation equipment, in overloaded boats, is often perilous.
In May, at least nine Haitians died when their boat sank about 15 miles off the
Florida coast.



Traffic on the seas off Florida’s coast seems to be increasing. The Coast Guard
says it has stopped more than 1,500 migrants from Haiti since October, an increase
of about 20 percent over the same period in the previous year.



The boat that sank had been at sea for at least three days when passengers saw a
police vessel and accidentally ran the boat onto a reef as they tried to hide, a
survivor, Alces Julien, said at a hospital treating some survivors, The Associated
Press reported.



The Coast Guard was alerted to the accident at 3 p.m. Monday, and by Tuesday, it
was assisting the rescue ships from the Turks and Caicos with helicopters, a C-130
transport plane and a cutter, the Valiant.



The rescue craft picked up 118 survivors, most of them stranded on the shallow coral
reef, the Coast Guard said. Petty Officer Johnson said two bodies had been recovered
near the reef; most of the other 13 were found slightly farther north.



The search effort, covering 1,600 square miles, ran the course of the day. “We searched
through the night and have been at it full force since first light,” Petty Officer
Johnson said.



She added that migrant shipwrecks often occurred in the reef-filled waters around
Turks and Caicos. “It’s shallow and can get extremely rough,” she said. “All they
have is a sail and a rudder, and when they head north, avoiding these hazards becomes
extremely difficult.”



The survivors were shuttled from the reef by boat and helicopter to Providenciales,
another island in the western part of the archipelago. It will be up to the Turks
and Caicos authorities to decide whether to send the survivors back to the destitute
nation they risked their lives to flee.


Mark McDonald contributed reporting from Hong Kong, and Sharon Otterman from New
York.