Over 100,000 Haitians flee Port-au-Prince the past 30 days

Over 100,000 Haitians flee Port-au-Prince the past 30 days

Published April 19, 2024 at 6:54 PM

The United Nations says an estimated nearly 100,000 people have fled the violence in Port-au-Prince in the past month.

There is a political void in Haiti and many can no longer wait as gangs launch regular attacks in the city. CGTN’s Harold Isaac reports.

 

Haiti’s former capital seeks to revive its hey-day as gang violence consumes Port-au-Prince

People ride on a motorcycle in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, Wednesday, April 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

By Dánica Coto, The Associated Press

Posted Apr 20, 2024

CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti (AP) — They call it Okap, home to Haiti’s kings, emancipated slaves and revolutionaries.

Sitting on the shimmering north coast, the city of Cap-Haïtien was abandoned as a capital during the waning years of the French colonial era and again when the Kingdom of Haiti fell after its king died by suicide and his teenage son was slain.

It was once known as the Paris of the Antilles, and now it is on the brink of becoming what some say is Haiti’s de facto capital as Port-au-Prince crumbles under the onslaught of powerful gangs.

“History repeats itself,” Yvrose Pierre, Cap-Haïtien mayor, told The Associated Press on a recent afternoon.

Business owners, anxious parents and even historic state ceremonies have been relocating here, and that began even before gangs started attacking key government infrastructure in Port-au-Prince in late February. Gunmen have burned police stations, stormed Haiti’s two biggest prisons to release more than 4,000 inmates and fired on the country’s main international airport, which hasn’t reopened since closing in early March.

Right now, “Cap-Haïtien is the only city that connects Haiti to the world,” Pierre said.

Palm trees dot the city that is home to roughly 400,000 people who walk about freely and stay out late. They don’t have to sidestep bodies strewn on sidewalks, run to avoid being hit by stray bullets or flinch if a pop-pop-pop fills the air, confident it’s only fireworks. Such luxuries are absent in Port-au-Prince.

More than 2,500 people were killed or injured in gang violence from January to March across Haiti, a more than 50% increase from the same period last year, according to a report Friday by the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti. The vast majority of violence is in Port-au-Prince.

Pierre credits Cap-Haïtien’s tranquility to the recent demolition of more than 1,500 homes in the city’s southern outskirts that gangs had infiltrated.

The calm is one of the biggest reasons the city has attracted some of the nearly 95,000 people who have fled Port-au-Prince’s gang violence in the past month alone.

Local authorities recently demanded that all new arrivals register at City Hall to keep track of the influx.

“A lot of people are coming, and there’s a risk of this becoming unbalanced,” the mayor said. “Cap-Haïtien doesn’t have enough resources to welcome everyone who is fleeing violence.”

She said that there are no camps or shelters for the migrants and that the city is struggling to provide food and housing for everyone, with some people forced to sleep in front of churches and grocery stores.

Schools also are overwhelmed.

At the Bell Angelot school in downtown Cap-Haïtien, officials have seen a 10% increase in enrollment and say it is still rising.

“There are too many students,” director Jocelyn Laguerre said.

He said he has had to hire new teachers and add more courses because many children arriving from Port-au-Prince are extremely behind in their studies since gang violence has forced hundreds of schools there to close.

And not all the incoming families are able to pay, which Laguerre said he understands.

“We know what is happening in this country,” he said.

There is no security at Laguerre’s school — a sharp contrast to Port-au-Prince, where heavily armed guards are a fixture at institutions where students of all ages have been kidnapped and gangs have extorted principals.

In general, private guards are largely absent in many businesses across Cap-Haïtien. On a recent afternoon, the clacks of dominoes played on a rickety outdoor table mingled with fans arguing over a yellow card issued during the Real Madrid-Manchester City soccer match, which attracted dozens of people who crowded around the doorways of open-air bars.

No one looked around in fear they might be assaulted, kidnapped or killed.

“There is more peace here than in other cities,” Alfred Joseph said as he sat in a red plastic chair in a nearby lush public park. “For me, Cap-Haïtien has always been the capital of Haiti.”

Despite the charms of the city, it shares many of Port-au-Prince’s familiar woes: poverty, grinding traffic and mountains of garbage that choke the streets, rivers and ocean.

But the absence of violence is enough for Baby Dovelus, who returned to Cap-Haïtien after a student was kidnapped at her daughter’s school in Port-au-Prince.

“It was a big relief,” she said of the move. “I feel good here. It’s my city.”

Others planning to move to Cap-Haïtien include the mother and female cousin of a university student who provided only his first name, John, for safety reasons.

John said he himself moved from Port-au-Prince to Cap-Haïtien after gang violence forced his university to close last month. He flew to Florida on Friday after obtaining a visa to study for a master’s degree in information technology.

He worries about his mother and cousin making the hours-long trip by bus from Port-au-Prince, which is more than 100 miles (200 kilometers) south of Cap-Haïtien. The gangs that control the main road heading north from Port-au-Prince have shot at public buses.

“Everyone is in danger,” he said.

As Haitians continue streaming into Cap-Haïtien, some caution that the only way for the city to really become the capital again is to decentralize the government. All state-related business is currently conducted only in Port-au-Prince.

Patrick Almonor, Cap-Haïtien’s deputy mayor, has hope. He believes that if his city avoids Port-au-Prince’s mistake of concentrating everything in a small area, it’s possible.

“We deserve to be the capital,” he said. “This is about to change.”

Dánica Coto, The Associated Press

Labour targets TikTok microinfluencers ahead of election

Jim Waterson Political media editor
Sat, 20 April 2024 

Labour has appointed a dedicated employee to work with influencers and seed positive messages about Keir Starmer’s party on TikTok and Instagram.

Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA

Labour has appointed a dedicated employee to work with influencers and seed positive messages about Keir Starmer’s party on TikTok and Instagram, as the UK’s political parties prepare to target “microinfluencers” during the general election campaign.

During previous British elections, political parties often asked big-name celebrities to send a supportive tweet or attempted to win over YouTubers with millions of followers. But this election, the focus is shifting from a top-down approach towards winning over more “authentic” influencers with smaller but loyal followings.

The intention, according to political campaigners and digital marketing consultants, is to cut through to niche audiences hooked on scrolling through videos on their phones.

“It’s less about finding people with a million followers. It’s more about finding authentic people who talk about an issue and can deliver a good message,” said one campaigner.

Labour candidates say the party has been offering training to produce influencer-style content themselves, circumventing a dying local news industry. Candidates are now being promised support from HQ in wooing influencers, with the party recently hiring a dedicated creator outreach manager – a standard role in many private-sector advertising campaigns.

The party did not return a request for comment but pro-Labour influencers are likely being offered support, updates on policies, and access to politicians during the general election campaign.

The policy shows how political parties are increasingly shifting resources away from wooing political journalists in a bid to directly reach audiences who are not consuming traditional news outlets. Political parties also believe influencers are more trustworthy than politicians and some media outlets.

Marco Ricci from influencer agency Takumi said this reflected how consumption habits have changed since the 2019 general election, with people spending hours a day on apps such as TikTok.

He said: “This is where people are now. There are huge parts of the population who are inaccessible through TV and radio. The big advantage of influencer marketing is you can be very laser-focused on who you’re going after.”

Microinfluencers also benefit from the way social media algorithms operate in 2024, where large follower counts are increasingly less important than an ability to make engaging content.

Thomas Walters, of digital influencer agency Billion Dollar Boy, said it made sense for political parties to target TikTok as voters increasingly switch off traditional media outlets. “Gen Z are glued to their phones and get a lot of news from TikTok. They also get a lot of opinions from creators,” he said.

But he added it was wrong to think of this as a youth voter policy, with influencer content increasingly reaching all age groups. He said: “Linear TV is declining rapidly, it’s a shift in eyeballs and it’s [an] algorithm thing … The breadth and depth of audiences now is a lot greater than in 2019.”

The challenge for the UK’s political parties is how to balance the reward of working with supportive influencers with the risk of causing a backlash by being perceived as inauthentic. A botched attempt to reach out to an influencer could result in private messages being made public and negative headlines, meaning parties have to accept a degree of risk when offering access.

The Conservatives have struggled in this area due to the toxicity of their brand among younger voters. One video featuring Rishi Sunak and the food influencers TopJaw was deleted within minutes after a slew of negative comments from their audience.

The prime minister had more success with a series of interviews with personal financial Instagram influencers in Downing Street around the time of the spring budget, where his announcements on free childcare and national insurance cuts landed better with an audience already looking for financial tips.

Labour’s policy on Israel’s invasion of Gaza has also been strongly criticised by many younger online audiences, creating a potential risk for any content creators who want to align themselves with Starmer’s party.

Yet there is one Rubicon that is yet to be crossed in UK political content: paying influencers to make content. In the USA, political campaigns think nothing of handing over money in return for supportive content by small-follower TikTok or Instagram accounts.

Although there are no laws banning political parties from doing the same in the UK, British advertising rules require paid social media promotions to be labelled as adverts – meaning any paid partnership is likely to look inauthentic.

Walters predicted British people would not react well to influencers taking cash from political parties: “People want to feel that the person promoting the cause is genuinely engaged in the cause – not taking a paycheck to do it. But if people are gifted an experience to have their travel paid for to visit a factory with Keir Starmer, then disclosing that is fine.”

Another influencer agency boss described paid political work as “high-risk, high-reward work if you can get it”. They said political parties can be dream clients because they have “no idea of value” but the risk of reputational damage to the agency and the influencer is high.

Ricci said the trick is to flood the zone with noise and try to see what works, rather than focus on a few high-profile collaborations: “It’s about creating a cross-platform noise. You need a snowball of momentum that’s continuous and constant.”

He said influencer content only works if the public believes an endorsement is legitimate – and he predicted this would become an issue during the election: “You want real voters, you want real people. What’s the difference between an authentic endorsement and deceptive manipulation?”

JUST LIKE AMERIKA

UPDATE: Kyrgyzstan’s TikTok block builds censorship fears

By

 AFP

In her photography studio in the capital of Kyrgyzstan, Aku Sharsheeva, tried unsuccessfully to connect to TikTok this week.

“Nothing loads. There are no videos,” the 22-year old told AFP, showing an error message displayed on the app’s home page.

The Central Asian country this week blocked the video-sharing platform after its security services expressed concern over the influence on children.

Sharsheeva had used TikTok, which has more than one billion monthly users worldwide and is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, to market her photography business. Now she will have to find another way.

The ban in Kyrgyzstan — a small, ex-Soviet country of seven million people — is just one small part of a global backlash from politicians and regulators to the app’s surging popularity.

TikTok is embroiled in a string of battles over issues ranging from the mental health effects of the app to the data it allegedly scoops up from users.

Azamat Asanov, an official in Kyrgyzstan’s digital ministry, told AFP the decision to cut access had come down from the security services.

“The decision was motivated by TikTok’s failure to comply with a law on preventing harm to children’s health,” he said.

Some TikTok users in the country question that reasoning.

“Closing down TikTok is absolutely absurd. The malicious content they want to protect children from can be found everywhere, on any social network,” said Sharsheeva.

She said the block was the latest sign of a “repressive deterioration” unfolding in the country.

“Those who block it are doing so to control freedom of speech,” she said.

– ‘Pressure’ –

Kyrgyzstan, once seen as the most politically open country in the region, has mounted an escalating campaign to bring independent media and civil society under closer state control in recent months.

Authorities have arrested several journalists, suspended independent media outlets and passed a “foreign agents” law that critics say is designed to silence dissenters.

“I don’t think there was any need to block TikTok,” said Aigerim Bekbosunova, a 20-year-old medical student who often watched educational videos on the platform.

Another student, Syymyk Zhyrgalbekov, said a ban could help — but more as an antidote to social media addiction.

“It will help school kids. I and others were really addicted to TikTok,” the 18-year-old said. “It was hurting our studies”.

TikTok is also in the spotlight over its data policies in the United States and European Union, where fears are growing over the company’s links to Beijing.

Kyrgyzstan borders China where it has important economic ties.

The country’s State Committee for National Security, which requested the ban — is a successor to the Soviet-era KGB secret police and headed by the powerful Kamchybek Tashiev.

Asked whether a ban on other social media platforms could follow, the agency was non-committal, telling AFP it “doesn’t know at the moment.”

Studio owner Sharsheeva said blocking the app left no doubt as to the direction the ex-Soviet country was heading in.

“We have had a lot of pressure on activists, on journalists, on various media. It was on TikTok that you could promote your point of view,” she said.

“It seems that the state doesn’t like the fact that some alternative opinions are wandering freely around the internet.”

by Arseny MAMASHEV

X owner Musk says opposed to US ban of competitor TikTok


Elon Musk says TikTok should not be banned in the USA, even though such a ban may benefit the X platform. — Reuters pic

Saturday, 20 Apr 2024

SAN FRANCISCO, April 20 ― Elon Musk yesterday came out against banning TikTok in the United States, even if it would mean less competition for his social media platform X, formerly Twitter, as the initiative sees fresh bipartisan momentum in Congress.

The US House of Representatives is set to vote today on a bill that would force TikTok to divest from Chinese parent company ByteDance or face a nationwide ban.

The measure, which has the vocal backing by many Democrats and Republicans, has also been written into a massive aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, which could ease its passage in both chambers of the US Congress.

“TikTok should not be banned in the USA, even though such a ban may benefit the X platform,” Musk said in a post on the social network he acquired in 2022.

“Doing so would be contrary to freedom of speech and expression.”

A number of replies to Musk's comment on X expressed concern that a TikTok ban would set a precedent that could be used to target other social media and messaging services.

Under the bill, ByteDance would have to sell the app within a few months or be excluded from Apple and Google's app stores in the United States.

It would also give the US president the authority to designate other applications as a threat to national security if they are controlled by a country deemed hostile.

TikTok slammed the bill, saying it would hurt the US economy and undermine free speech.

“It is unfortunate that the House of Representatives is using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance to once again jam through a ban bill,” a company spokesman said.

He added a ban would “trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans, devastate 7 million businesses, and shutter a platform that contributes US$24 billion to the US economy annually.”

Western officials have voiced alarm over the popularity of TikTok with young people, alleging that it is subservient to Beijing and a conduit to spread propaganda, claims denied by the company and Beijing.

Joe Biden reiterated his concerns about TikTok during a phone call with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in early April.

The House of Representatives last month approved a similar bill cracking down on TikTok, but the measure got held up in the Senate. ― AFP

 UK

Hilary Cass says criticism of gender care review ‘inaccurate’ and ‘unforgivable’

Retired consultant paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass (Yui Mok/PA)

By Rachel Vickers-Price, PA

Yesterday at 23:45

The British doctor behind a landmark study into transgender treatment in the UK has called criticism of her research “inaccurate” and “unforgivable”.

Dr Hilary Cass told the Times she wished to address the “disinformation” circulating about the findings and recommendations handed down by the Cass Review when it was published on April 10.

The physician also said she fears using public transport and for her personal safety after receiving online abuse in the wake of the report’s release.

Dr Cass with a copy of the report (Yui Mok/PA)

The report found the evidence base for gender care in young people had been thin and children had been let down by a “toxic” public discourse around gender.

Dr Cass told the Times: “I have been really frustrated by the criticisms, because it is straight disinformation. It is completely inaccurate.

“It started the day before the report came out when an influencer posted a picture of a list of papers that were apparently rejected because they were not randomised control trials.

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“That list has absolutely nothing to do with either our report or any of the papers.”

She added: “If you deliberately try to undermine a report that has looked at the evidence of children’s healthcare, then that’s unforgivable. You are putting children at risk by doing that.”

She also hit out at Labour MP Dawn Butler, who questioned Health Secretary Victoria Atkins during a House of Commons debate on Monday about why “over 100 studies have not been in this Cass report”.

Dr Cass accused the Brent Central MP of making assertions that were “completely wrong” about the data and findings.

She said researchers had appraised every research paper that was involved in the Cass Review, but not all were deemed to be the high or the minimum level of medium quality to make the threshold for inclusion.

Dr Cass said the total number of datasets deemed to be of high or medium-quality standard was 60 out of 103.

Ultimately, the Cass Report made more than 32 recommendations to the NHS to restructure the medical system to address how trans youth receive care in Britain.

Dr Cass now fears for her safety in the wake of the Cass Report (Yui Mok/PA)

The review declared an entire sector of medicine to be operating on “shaky foundations”, with not enough evidence in support of prescribing hormones to under-18s to pause puberty or to transition to the opposite sex.

NHS England has since announced a second Cass Review-style appraisal of adult gender clinics.

Dr Cass confirmed to the Times that she will not take part in the adult report after the abuse she suffered in recent weeks.

She said: “You heard it right here: I am not going to do the adult gender clinic review.”