... and, at least I, loved it.
Extremely timely issue, but film in a very visually arresting and sometimes surreal, detached intellectual way, all with a musicality that is so Almodovarian, even if displaced.
Provocative and unmatchable.
It also made me wonder if, ever, anywhere, anyone had such a wonderful friend...
We'll need it, there is few in life we'll ever need that much.
What Haitians remember and hope, 15 years after the devastating 2010 earthquake
The remembrance of the 2010 catastrophic event that struck Haiti comes as the country faces major challenges, including gang-driven violence, extreme pockets of poverty, hunger and numerous health issues.
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| Bulldozer clears the rubble of a building that collapsed in the earthquake in Brefet, a neighbourhood of Les Cayes, Haiti, on August 17, 2021 - Reginald Louissaint, Getty Images |
"I remember the day the earthquake happened very very well. That year, I was 19 years old, I was in my final year of high school. I lived in a two-story house. I was working on a math assignment with my cousin, it was about 4:45 pm. when suddenly, the earth started shaking... I had no idea what was happening and I started running," Claudine St Fleur told RFI from Port-au-Prince, despite very poor connection and limited means of communication.
She will never forget this day who took the life of our aunt, who was her only caretaker. "She was everything to me", Claudine says, in a sobbing voice.
She and her cousin lived for weeks under a tent, and only found solace thanks to an uncle almost months later. An American friend of her aunt, who used to live in the same house as them, later helped her to pursue her studies.
Despite her resilience, Claudine is however unemployed now. "I lost my job because of the gangs and violence," she confesses.
Catastrophe
The earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 took place on 12 January 2010, killing at least 200,000, and displacing 1.5 to 2 million people.
The catastrophe hit and within 30 seconds the city was turned upside down, families torn apart and tens of thousands put at risk of going hungry.
Fifteen year later, scars of the tragedy remain visible in Port-au-Prince, ... according to inhabitants of Port-au-Prince.
Antonal Mortimé at the time was executive secretary of the Platform of Haitian Human Rights Organisations (POHDH). He told Haitian media that the allocated funds by international actors were not actually invested in the reconstruction action plan after the earthquake.
Foreign countries and international groups had said they raised more than $9 billion for Haiti, pledging to rebuild the island and support its people.
"Everything would have been different if the allocated funds had actually been invested," Mortimé reported.
Like him, many Haitians blame the international community and even the United Nations, for their slow response, the focus on western staff in the emergency search, and later on for the cholera crisis, which broke out just a few months after the earthquake and claimed more victims.
It took the UN six years to half-heartedly acknowledge its responsibility for the epidemic.
Generation of 'chaos'
A generation of children is bearing the scars of Haiti’s earthquake, according to the NGO Save the Children, with their futures shaped by repeated displacements, ongoing crises, and persistent disruptions to their education over the past 15 years.
"While Haiti has made some strides in recovery, ongoing violence from armed groups has crippled progress, leaving children’s futures hanging in the balance", the NGO wrote in a statement.
Chantal Sylvie Imbeault, Save the Children’s country director in Haiti, said that “life has been a series of crises for many children in Haiti".
From hurricanes to earthquakes to the rampant violence we’re seeing today, many families we’ve spoken to have been displaced eight, nine, 10 times in the past 15 years, she added.
And "today, armed groups have turned Port-au-Prince into an open-air prison for children," she said, where nowhere in the city is safe. "They can’t safely go to school, play outside, or leave their neighbourhoods. These children’s futures are slipping away.”
One of those children, 17 today, told Save the Children that her education is on hold.
“My mom talks to me about the earthquake and how it affected us. I had bumps covering my skin because we were sleeping outside in poor conditions,” she said.
“I have lost two school years - one because of the earthquake, and another because of the violence. It is painful. I don’t know when I will return to school,” she added.
Multiple crises
The Haitian capital has since been witnessing a spike in violence, especially due to the rule of gangs over the past two years, despite the presence of a multinational security mission from 2024.
These armed gangs are accused of widespread murder, kidnapping and sexual violence.
The United Nations says gangs control around 80 percent of Port-au-Prince, and regularly attack civilians despite the deployment earlier this year of a multinational security mission led by Kenya.
President Jovenel Moise's 2021 assassination exacerbated instability, and consequences of many natural disasters, including the 2010 earthquake but also hurricanes and other quakes, have worsened the crisis.
Nearly half the population now lives in severe hunger and extreme poverty, according to the International Rescue Committee who put Haiti on its list of the top 10 crises the world can’t ignore in 2025.
But Haiti has suffered from political violence for decades, due to political instability, years of dictatorship followed by poor governance, US interventions and the consequences of the enormous debt inflicted by the former colonial ruler, France, since Haiti's independence in 1804.
France thus lost its then-richest colony, and Haitians have had to pay over 112 million francs to France - about $560 million - until 2022, according to research from The New York Times and to academic centres.
The cost of these 'Reparations for Freedom', as many call them, could now amount to about $560 million in today’s dollars.
In his book Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti (2024), Jake Johnston, researcher and writer at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington DC (CEPR), also showed how long-standing US and European capitalist goals ensnared and re-enslaved Haiti under the guise of helping it.
"To the global West, Haiti has always been a place where labor is cheap, politicians are compliant, and profits are to be made," he writes.
"Over the course of nearly 100 years, the US has sought to control Haiti and its people with occupying police, military, and euphemistically-called peacekeeping forces."
Earthquakes and hurricanes only further devastated a state already decimated by the aid industrial complex, he concludes.
African support
Beyond Kenya, which is already leading the UN mission, Benin is also willing to support Haiti, more than ever before.
On Wednesday this week, the Foreign ministers of the two countries discussed sending troops to Haiti, with Benin saying stability in the strife-torn nation was symbolic to "all black people" around the world.
"For all black people in the world Haiti is symbolic, it is the first black republic in the world," Benin's foreign minister, Olushegun Bakari, said, "and so if Haiti falls all we black people fall."
Benin is one of the countries in Africa where a large part of formerly enslaved people are supposed to have been deported from towards Haiti.
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Link to my piece for RFI:
Haiti's future remains 'hanging in the balance' 15 years after earthquake
Read also my other piece, from 2024:
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Read from here:
US determines Sudan's RSF committed genocide and imposes sanctions on its leader
The United States has determined that Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) had "committed genocide" in Sudan and imposed sanctions on the paramilitary group's leader. If conflict resolution NGOs welcome the decision, many organisations and analysts fear the move only offers 'too little too late.'
By Melissa Chemam
The announcement came on Tuesday. It deals a blow to the RSF's attempts to burnish its image and assert legitimacy - including by installing a civilian government.
The paramilitary group seeks to expand its territory beyond the roughly half of the country it currently controls.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the determination was based on information about the RSF's systematic murder of men and boys and the targeted rape of women and girls from certain ethnic groups.
"The United States is committed to holding accountable those responsible," Blinken said, announcing sanctions against RSF leader Mohammad Hamdan Daglo, known as Hemedti, for his "role in systematic atrocities committed against the Sudanese people."
Daglo had been designated for his involvement in gross violations of human rights in Darfur, namely the mass rape of civilians by RSF soldiers under his control, and he and his family members are now ineligible for entry to the United States, he said.
Avaaz and other NGOs welcomed the decision.
The genocide determination will substantially impact the RSF's ability to continue fighting, Mohammed Suliman, a Sudanese researcher and writer based in Boston, told Avaaz, particularly given the Emirati lobby's efforts to neutralise US involvement in the Sudanese conflict.
Call to action
The US Treasury Department unveiled its own sanctions against Daglo on Tuesday, accusing the RSF of engaging in "a brutal armed conflict with the Sudanese Armed Forces for control of Sudan."
"Through its campaign in Darfur, Gezira and other combat areas, the RSF has committed a litany of documented war crimes and atrocities," it said.
As the overall commander of the RSF, Daglo "bears command responsibility for the abhorrent and illegal actions of his forces," it added.
The Treasury designated seven companies and one individual linked to the RSF for their roles in procuring weapons for the group.
"The United States continues to call for an end to this conflict that is putting innocent civilian lives in jeopardy," said deputy Treasury secretary Wally Adeyemo.
"The Treasury Department remains committed to using every tool available to hold accountable those responsible for violating the human rights of the Sudanese people," he added.
In response, the RSF has accused the US of double standards, saying it is failing to effectively address the ongoing crisis.
Criticisms
The announcement has been expected by many in Sudan and in the humanitarian workers community. But for most of them, it is "too little too late," as Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in DC, wrote on social media.
"It's too late to fix a failed (non-existent) Sudan policy and it's too late to get on the right side of history," the African policy expert added. "The fact is that this Administration had all the evidence they needed to make these announcements months ago when they could have had an impact on this war and they chose not to make them. With less than 2 weeks left in power, this is nothing more than a reflection of a guilty conscience."
Blinken's announcement is only as meaningful as the actions taken to address it, civil society groups also said.
Lauren Fortgang is executive director of Preventing And Ending Mass Atrocities (PAEMA), a US-based organisation working with communities in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burma, and Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, dedicated to preventing and ending mass atrocities by amplifying the integral role of community centered solutions.
She published a statement stating that "while this genocide determination is welcomed, earlier action could have saved thousands of lives."
The genocide determination by the US Secretary of State "reaffirms the daily reality of millions of Sudanese living through hell on Earth due to the brutality unleashed by the RSF and SAF," she wrote, but "it must be accompanied by stronger policies that match the severity of the worst humanitarian crisis the world has ever seen, as well as the severe protection crisis which worsens by the day."
The group called for the long overdue sanctions against Hemedti to be coordinated and truly effective.
"The United Nations should lead this effort and issue sanctions against senior RSF leadership", the statement added.
Sanctions must also be designated against external backers of the war, including the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Russia, Turkiye, and Serbia for reported violations of the Darfur arms embargo.
Defining genocide
The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted after World War II, defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."
But a genocide designation by the US State Department is rare. This determination against the RSF by the US is the ninth time it has made, including the Holocaust.
But legal experts started to question the ability of Secretary Blinken to determining genocide, especially as the UN, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have declared an ongoing genocide in Gaza, which the US refuses to recognise let alone address.
"Blinken finds genocide in Sudan but not in Gaza," Mark Seddon, director of the Center for United Nations Studies wrote on social media. "Really, you can't make this crap up"
Both the mass killing of civilians in Sudan and Palestinians in Gaza "should be recognised and stopped," wrote Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch.
Brutal armed conflict
Sudan has been torn apart and pushed towards famine by this war that erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the RSF.
War in Sudan leaves 13 million people displaced and more than half the population malnourished
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than eight million internally displaced, making Sudan the scene of the world's largest internal displacement crisis.
The United Nations says that more than 30 million people -- over half of them children -- are in need of aid in Sudan after 20 months of war.
"Sudan remains in the grip of a humanitarian crisis of staggering proportions," Edem Wosornu, from the UN's humanitarian agency OCHA, told the Security Council at the UN headquarters in New York earlier this week.
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The Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko condemned Macron's remarks as "entirely incorrect", while the Chadian Foreign Minister Abderaman Koulamallah denounced a "contemptuous attitude".
They both reacted on Monday night to the French President's speech to his foreign Ambassadors.
The annual conference of ambassadors is held this year on 6 and 7 January in Paris.
President Emmanuel Macron stated that the announced departure of French military bases had been negotiated between the African countries that decided on it and France, and claimed that it was purely for convenience and politeness that France allowed these African countries to make the announcement first.
Chad's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abderaman Koulamallah, expressed his disapproval of the French president's remarks in a statement read on national television.
"The government of the Republic of Chad expresses its deep concern following recent comments by the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, which reflect a disdainful attitude towards Africa and Africans," Koulamallah said.
Chad’s Foreign Minister also stated that in 60 years of presence in Chad, French contributions have often been "limited to serving their own strategic interests, without any genuine lasting impact on the development of the Chadian people.”
He concluded by urging Macron to focus on “addressing the issues concerning the French people.”
Sonko strongly dismissed Macron's claims as well, on Monday night.
"I must emphasise that, in the case of Senegal, this assertion is entirely incorrect," he wrote on social media.
"No discussion or negotiation has taken place to date, and the decision made by Senegal stems solely from its own will, as a free, independent, and sovereign country."
Both Chad and Senegal repeated that their decisions to ask French troops to leave were unilateral.
Lack of gratitude?
Macron also criticised the "ingratitude" of certain leaders on the African continent—suggesting hey would not be heading sovereign nations today if the French army had not been deployed there, referring most probably to Mali and Niger, plagued with islamist violence for over a decade.
He declared that "no African country would be sovereign today if France had not intervened," Sonko underlined in his statement.
"Let us observe that France neither has the capacity nor the legitimacy to ensure Africa’s security and sovereignty," Sonko replied.
"On the contrary, it has often contributed to destabilising certain African countries, such as Libya, with disastrous consequences for the stability and security of the Sahel."
A staunch critic of the French presence in his country before coming to power last year, Sonko insisted on reminding President Macron that "if African soldiers—sometimes forcibly conscripted, mistreated, and ultimately betrayed—had not been deployed during the Second World War to defend France, the country might still be German today."
In his own response to Macron's speech, Koulamallah also highlighted the "crucial role" played by Africa and Chad "in the liberation of France during the two world wars."
The minister emphasised that their "immense sacrifices" had been "minimised" without receiving a "meaningful expression of gratitude."
He went on to call on "French leaders to learn to respect the African people and to acknowledge the value of their sacrifices."
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, on 8 May 1945, in which African troops from the former French empire were heavily involved and played a key role in France's resistance to nazism.
The African soldiers were however often dismissed with no pension or excluded from celebrations.
"I intend to resign as party leader, as prime minister," Trudeau, told reporters in Ottawa following a protracted political crisis that saw top Liberal allies urge him to quit.
He started addressing the media at 10:45 am local time (1545 GMT).
Trudeau, who has been in power since 2015, has been facing his worst political crisis since becoming premier in 2015.
Internal crisis, international worry
Parliament was due to resume on 27 January in Canada and opposition parties had vowed to bring down the government as soon as they could, most likely at the end of March or before the end of May.
Trudeau confirmed that he had received permission from Canada's governor general to suspend all parliamentary business until March 24.
He said the Liberal leadership race will be "a robust, nationwide competitive process."
Trudeau's Liberals are trailing badly in the polls to the opposition Conservatives and narrowly survived three non-confidence votes in parliament late last year.
His minority government had been held up by a deal with the left-wing New Democratic Party but in December the NDP said they would vote to topple Trudeau at the next opportunity.
That could give the Liberals time to choose a new leader while restricting the opposition chances to bring a vote of non-confidence.
His party, the Liberals, are trailing badly in the polls to the opposition Conservatives, and narrowly survived three non-confidence votes in parliament late last year.
He now trails his main rival, Conservative Pierre Poilievre, by 20 points in public opinion polls, who described himself as a "true conservative", often presented as libertarian and populist. He could be tempted to align Canada's policy with the one of the new US president, Donald Trump.
This is also bad news for France and Western Europe, as President Emmanuel Macron has joined the Norwegian and British prime ministers as well a German government spokesperson on Monday in responding to a barrage of hostile posts by Trump's key ally Elon Musk, who has been backing far-right political parties and attacking leftwing politicians in Europe.
Canada - US tensions
Trudeau's political fortunes plunged to new depths following the surprise resignation in December of his former finance minister and deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland.
In a scathing resignation letter, Freeland accused Trudeau of focusing on political gimmicks to appease voters, including a costly Christmas tax holiday, instead of steadying Canada's finances ahead of a possible trade war with the United States.
Incoming US president Donald Trump has promised to impose a 25 percent tariff on all Canadian imports, a measure that could prove devastating to Canada's economy, and Trudeau has vowed to retaliate.
Today's resignation means that Trudeau will continue to lead Canada when Trump takes office later this month and will be tasked with leading the country's initial response to the new US administration, including a possible trade war.
Trump also stirred controversy by suggesting Canada's merge with the US, only a few hours after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced resignation.
"Many people in Canada LOVE being the 51st State. The United States can no longer suffer the massive Trade Deficits and Subsidies that Canada needs to stay afloat. Justin Trudeau knew this, and resigned," Trump wrote on his own network Truth Social on Monday.
Echoing the fears of many Canadians, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May recently said the country should not go into a federal election with a second Trump administration about to take office in Washington, as Trump recently threatened to impose punishing tariffs on Canadian goods entering the United States.
Nicolas Sarkozy is present in the Paris court as the trial gets underway from 1230 GMT this Monday. He plans to attend the initial phase of hearings, as a source close to him told AFP, asking not to be named.
Did the former French president receive money from the then Libyan leader Muammar Khadafi to finance the campaign that brought him to the Élysée in 2007? This question is at the heart of this trial, where he and eleven other defendants stand trial, including three former ministers - Claude Guéant, Brice Hortefeux et Éric Woerth.
Vincent Brengarth, lawyer for the Sherpa association, a civil party, told RFI that he hopes that despite the longevity and complexity of the case, the public's interest will match the stakes of this trial.
"This case might seem, in some respects, completely fictional if it were not supported by years of thorough investigations," he said.
The first accusations against them came from Libya in 2011, just before the fall of Khadafi. The Libyan leader had then been cornered by a popular uprising, supported by a Western intervention, particularly France and President Sarkozy himself. A Libyan news agency announced in March 2011 that the Libyan regime would soon reveal a "secret capable of jeopardizing the political career of the French head of state."
Khadafi's son, Saif al-Islam, soon demanded in an interview that Sarkozy "return the money to the Libyan people." Muammar Khadafi himself soon after stated in an interview with the French daily Le Figaro that it was thanks to them that Sarkozy "became president; it is we who provided him with the funds."
The French news site Mediapart later published a document, presented as a note written in Arabic and dated 10 December 2006, in which the former head of Libya's external intelligence services, Moussa Koussa, reportedly mentions a "preliminary agreement" to "support the electoral campaign of candidate" Sarkozy "for an amount worth 50 million euros."
Sarkozy, then a candidate for re-election in the 2012 presidential race, denounces the following day an infamy and later files a lawsuit against Mediapart, accusing it of producing a forgery.
A long investigation followed, and several judicial decisions. Finally, the Court of Cassation definitively upheld the dismissal ordered in favour of Mediapart and, without confirming that it is a genuine document, dismissed the accusation of forgery repeatedly made by Nicolas Sarkozy.
However, the investigating judges explained that the disputes regarding the authenticity of this note led them not to consider it a central element of the case, even though Koussa confirmed the content of the document.
After ten years of investigation, the magistrates decided in August 2023 that there were sufficient charges to refer 12 men to trial, including Sarkozy and former ministers Guéant, Hortefeux, and Woerth.
If convicted, Sarkozy faces up to 10 years in prison under the charges of concealing embezzlement of public funds and illegal campaign financing.
The trial is due to last until April 10.
According to the magistrates, the case actually began almost 20 years ago: At the end of 2005, Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior in Dominique de Villepin's government but aiming for the 2007 presidential election, met Khadafi in Tripoli. Officially, the two men met to discuss immigration, but they are accused of signing a "corruption pact" then.
Sarkozy is said to have obtained a financial contribution for his presidential campaign, according to the accusation, which relies on the statements of seven former Libyan dignitaries, on the discrete movements of Guéant and Hortefeux before and after, as well as on the notebooks of the former Libyan Minister of Petroleum, Choukri Ghanem, who was found drowned in the Danube in 2012.
Khadafi supposedly hoped to obtain international rehabilitation this way.
Sarkozy has always denounced it as a fable, even a conspiracy aimed at harming him, rejecting the accusations entirely.
This new trial is starting barely half a month after France's top appeals court on 18 December rejected Sarozy's appeal against a one-year prison sentence for influence peddling, which he is to serve by wearing an electronic tag rather than in jail.
Sarkozy's career has been shadowed by legal troubles since he lost the 2012 presidential election but he is an influential figure and also known to regularly meet President Emmanuel Macron.
For Libyans, the question of corruption does not arise. Familiar with the practices of Khadafi's regime, which provided funds to foreign heads of state, the Libyans are convinced that their country did indeed finance Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign.
"For the Libyans, it's as if it belongs to a bygone era," researcher Jalal Harchaoui, a Libya specialist at the Royal United Services Institute, told RFI's Africa service.
"They are well aware that Sarkozy played an important role in Libya's fate in 2011. But people are not really hanging on to this particular case. They tend to think that there is not much suspense regarding the final outcome. They are rather disillusioned by this story."
Many in Libya, on the other hand, are surprised that Sarkozy is only being judged for a corruption case, while in their country, he is mostly seen as the one who destroyed the Libyan state and plunged it into despair since France's military intervention in 2011.
Since then, their living conditions have continued to deteriorate in Libya, where people face corruption, instability, and the devastation caused by militias and constant foreign interventions.
Some voices have been raised, calling for the former occupant of the Élysée to be brought before the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes committed against the Libyan people.
