Haiti mass grave to be site of memorial service (Roundup)

Jan 11, 2011, 19:53 GMT

Port-au-Prince - Haitians are expected to gather at one of the largest known mass graves in the Americas on Wednesday for an anniversary memorial service for those who died in its massive earthquake a year ago.

The Haitian government is organizing the service at Titanyen, where the bodies of an estimated 100,000 people who died in the January 12, 2010 quake were dumped, in many cases without identification or even a counting of the number of bodies.

Titanyen has also been the burial place for many of the 3,650 people who have died since November in a cholera epidemic that dealt an added blow to the poorest country in the Americas.

All told, the magnitude 7 quake claimed an estimated 230,000 lives and left 1.7 million homeless.

Other ceremonies are planned in the Caribbean country - as well as at the UN, which will commemorate the 102 UN peacekeeping personnel who died in the disaster. A minute's silence is urged at 4:53 pm (2153 GMT), the precise time of the disaster a year ago. Former US president Bill Clinton is to attend a Haiti service.

Beyond ceremonies, a lot remains to be done. Only a small fraction of rubble has been cleared, and the anniversary has triggered a flow of criticism not only of the slowness of the international response but also of Haiti's own inability to push the reconstruction.

Haitians themselves are bitter about the unresolved outcome of the November 28 presidential elections, blaming the governing party for lack of leadership in reconstruction.

Some aid workers - like Barbara Hoefler, a German doctor engaged in Haiti since 1998 - places some of the blame on the Haitians themselves, for settling into the temporary camps and failing to pitch in to help rebuild their destroyed country - handicapped, she believes, by what she feels is the Haitians' too strong subservience to higher authority.

A group of human rights groups denounced that local and international authorities have ignored 'an epidemic of sexual violence' suffered by Haitian women and girls in refugee camps since the quake.

'One year after the earthquake in Haiti, sexual violence against women and girls continues to occur at shocking levels,' said Annie Gell of the the French-based lawyers' group BAI, which joined with Haiti's Institute for Justice and Democracy, the International Women's Human Rights Law Clinic at City University of New York and the international women's group MADRE to produce the report.

Kristalina Georgieva, EU commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response, noted that, bad as the quake was, it was not Haiti's biggest challenge. The difficult political situation, with a lack of reliable institutions and good government leadership, was extremely concerning, she said.

'The current instability prevents EU humanitarian aid (from) reach(ing) the people in need and makes the reconstruction process slower and more complex,' the EU's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said.

Haiti advocates like Sean Penn blamed the private and government aid agencies for their slow response and lack of funding, triggering a new round of calls for more money.

The World Health Organization (WHO) however noted how miserable Haiti was even before the quake, when nearly half the population of the Caribbean country lacked access to medical care. The lack of clean water that followed the quake is often cited as a contributing cause of the cholera epidemic.

But even all the doom and gloom could not eclipse the human spirit over the weekend, when die-hard soccer enthusiasts who lost a limb or two in the earthquake gathered for a match at the Athletic Haiti soccer club in the destroyed capital, Port au Prince.

They even wore uniforms, including a snazzy red-and-white striped pattern.

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