“Missing, Deported or Uncounted – Who Matters After Dorian?”

 

Missing, Deported, or Uncounted – Who Matters After Dorian?

By Angelique V. Nixon

 

Published 6 January 2020, In The Diaspora Column, Stabroek News 

 

Will we ever know how many people lost their lives during Hurricane Dorian? Who is counted among the missing? How many Dorian survivors have been deported from The Bahamas to Haiti? What will happen to the survivors who are undocumented (or without documents) and living in shelters? Who gets to rebuild and how? These are the questions that haunt many three months after the storm in The Bahamas. While the official death toll remains at 69, given the reports from survivors of watching loved ones swept away in the storm to the stories of bodies still under rubble and unclaimed bodies, we know there is more here than the official numbers or reports can tell us.

 

In the past months since the devastating hurricane, the numbers of missing persons and confirmed deaths have remained woefully confusing, with officials reporting the difficulty of being able to give an accurate count. While the numbers went down after the first few weeks with rescue and evacuation efforts, officials suggested that many people were found with varying estimates of numbers still missing from week to week. After the storm, officials reported 2,500 missing persons but this dropped to 1,300 then to 600. On October 1, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA0 reported 424, then 346 two weeks later, even as The Tribune was reporting that  the Minister of National Security confirmed  282 persons missing. Through November and December, the numbers remained around 300 with questions lingering still of who is counted among the missing.

 

 President Stephanie St. Fleur of the Human Rights Organisation, Rights Bahamas,has raised this grave concern a number of times. In October, she called out the government and NEMA for not including the reports of missing persons from the Haitian migrant community that Rights Bahamas had collected and submitted. In November, St. Fleur asked where was the accountability on the missing persons list, especially for those families who were evacuated to shelters (from Abaco to Nassau).  

 

Bahamian Prime Minister Minnis said in early November that “It’s very difficult for us to have an exact count on the numbers of missing individuals, because you would recall that there are a lot of undocumented individuals. If they are undocumented, we won’t have records of them and therefore you may find that that number may fluctuate. But we are doing our best to keep count of and reporting to the nation at large as to the count, number of dead as well as number of missing” (qtd in “Lack of Accountability on Dorian Missing Persons List” Eyewitness News Bahamas, 26 November 2019). But as Rights Bahamas has asked, who is included in the numbers and have survivors of Haitian descent been asked by officials about their missing relatives or loved ones? While the Attorney General issued a statement in early December encouraging undocumented migrants to report missing persons (Jasper Ward, Nassau Guardian, 3 December 2019), there were no assurances that this reporting would not lead to deportation.

 

The Government of The Bahamas’ moratorium on deportations of those who survived Hurricane Dorian lasted only a few weeks. By early October, just one month after the most devastating hurricane ever to hit The Bahamas, several reports emerged of the government deporting Haitian migrant survivors to Haiti – who were deemed to be undocumented. The news reports of these deportations were seen in local Bahamian news media, regional news media, and international news media such as the Miami Herald 3 October 2019, NPR 5 October 2019, New York Times 10 October 2019 and other news sites such as Buzz Feed News (October 3 and November 9). Based on the news coverage and reports from the International Organisation of Migration 15 November 2019, 340 persons were repatriated to Haiti – most of them being survivors of Dorian who had lost everything. Those persons deported have been described by the International Organisation for Migration as “traumatized” and unable to make a living in Haiti.

 

This is all happening during a political and economic crisis that’s been going on in Haiti since September. Haiti is no stranger to political upheavals for decades and certainly since the earthquake, there has been an enduring crisis of slow and painful recovery. But the past few months of uprisings against the high cost of living, increased energy costs, corruption, and neoliberal policies have put the country in a near political and economic standstill. People have taken over the streets with daily protests that have shut down businesses and movements in Port Au Prince as well as other cities across Haiti. This is no time to deport people to Haiti. This is no time to send people who have been living in a place for years and decades to somewhere they don’t know, to somewhere they won’t be able to make a living. Where is our sense of solidarity, of empathy, of regional understanding or support? How do we make sense of our regional relationships, migration needs, post-disaster support in the wake of climate and migration crisis? How do we make sense of these deportations?

 

Some of these people have been sent to a country they don’t know very well or at all. Some were born in The Bahamas and therefore have a right to access or apply for citizenship at 18. Some are children and therefore have a right to an education under Bahamian law. Some had Bahamian documents but lost everything in the storm. Some are likely traumatised after their experiences of horrendous and unspeakable loss. Some spent weeks in shelters. Some are sole survivors and have not been able to grieve for their loved ones. Many of these persons deported lived in Abaco and contributed directly to the Bahamian economy through their labour and skills (working at resorts, wealthy homes, and in agriculture and construction). Some have been separated from families. And those left in the Bahamas (in shelters and elsewhere) continue to be the most vulnerable and subject to deportation and xenophobia.

 

In December, a Bahamian nationalist group (Operation Sovereign Bahamas) emerged in the front of one of the main shelters in Nassau at the Kendal Issacs Gym to protest the Haitian migrants still there and to call on the government to deport all of them. The irony that of all the problems going on in the Bahamas post-Dorian - from the slow process of recovery, the severe water problems in Grand Bahama to the land grabs and neoliberal development plans in Abaco that will likely not benefit the majority of Bahamians - this is what they choose to protest - a small group of survivors of the most devastating hurricane ever to hit the Bahamas. The stigma and discrimination against Haitians and persons of Haitian descent in the Bahamas has long been an issue but has been fueled post-Dorian. What is most disturbing here is the lack of empathy in the Bahamas towards Haitians who experienced the same horrendous loss and trauma of Hurricane Dorian and climate crisis, people who have had unspeakable loss and who have lost almost everything. How does this not bring us together but instead create even more divisions and fear?

 

Local news coverage has dwindled on the issue of deportations and missing persons. And it is even more difficult to find any reports or updates in this first week of the new year. As we usher in a new decade with more and more horrifying news about the climate crisis (from Australia to Indonesia), I ask us all in the Caribbean region to think seriously about our climate action, how we are moving into this new decade, and how we will demand justice for all.

“What Does It Mean to Survive After Dorian? On Caribbean Disasters, Development and Climate Crisis.”

 

What Does It Mean To Survive After Dorian?

On Caribbean Disasters, Development and Climate Crisis

by

Angelique V. Nixon

 

Published 30 September 2019 -- In The Diaspora Column, Stabroek News

 

Angelique V. Nixon is a Bahamas-born, Trinidad-based writer, artist, and scholar-activist.
She is a Lecturer at the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago.

 

 

The stories of rescue and relief in The Bahamas since Hurricane Dorian have left me and so many in heartbreak and reflecting on what it means to survive – from the man who rode out the entire storm hunkered in the mangroves of Abaco, to the people who held onto trees during the storm surge, to the sick baby found in The Mudd with a father who didn’t leave for fear of being deported. The injured survivors (Bahamians and Haitians) at the Princess Margaret Hospital in New Providence telling doctors that they don’t want treatment, they don’t want to live, because they have lost everyone – sole survivors of families drowned or swept away in the storm. The Haitian migrants (now twice displaced) calling for the bodies of their loved ones to be found and buried with respect and dignity. Haitian migrants living in fear of deportation and hiding even with the promise of the Bahamian government that deportations are supposedly on pause. Bahamians trying to enter the United States to visit family and get away in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian and being denied entry. The explicit xenophobia and framing of our people as ‘very very bad’, ‘drug dealers’ and ‘gang members’. Haitian children being deported by the Bahamian government. These stories are hard to hold or imagine, yet we must.

 

Entire lives are on hold across The Bahamas – from those evacuated and displaced at shelters across New Providence to those in Grand Bahama cleaning up and clearing out what is left of their homes. Imagine being a poor or working class Bahamian family. Imagine being a family or sole survivor, having lost everything or almost everything, and trying to pick up the pieces. Imagine the grief and suffering, the psychological trauma, of survivors. Imagine being the most scorned in this country, the ones blamed and scapegoated for almost every social problem. Imagine being a Haitian migrant right now living in The Bahamas, or living elsewhere across the region. Some of us don’t have to imagine any of these – either we know people experiencing this or we are experiencing it – the proximity to disasters, the trauma, of being treated as other, less than, not equal to, expendable or deportable.

 

And so I ask all of us in the Caribbean – where is our collective outrage, our climate action movement, our migrant rights movement, where is our action against unsustainable development and neoliberal agendas, where is our intersectional politics and action?

 

As the Global Climate Strike erupted around the world on 20^th September, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of hopelessness across our region. To be sure, there were a few important actions, most notably the successful protest against mining in rural Jamaica to save Cockpit Country. In Trinidad, young people planned and led a march with 150 people around the Queen’s Park Savannah. Representing the region at the UN Climate Summit, we had 11 Caribbean youth attending the first ever Youth Climate Summit; and Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley demanding climate action and justice for all small island nations, warning that there will be mass migration if climate crisis continues. Compared to thousands who marched in strike events and actions across the globe, there was mostly silence in our region, especially from leaders. Where was our regional climate action, our regional uprising?

 

Perhaps it is being in the midst of relief and recovery from Hurricane Dorian just a few weeks ago, still in recovery from Hurricane Maria just two years ago, from Hurricane Matthew three years ago, from the earthquake in Haiti a decade ago, and on and on. But perhaps the disasters we don’t talk about enough or even at all are the most dangerous – the disaster of tourism development, over reliance and dependence on foreign investment, continued exploitation of migrant labour, and the failures of our post-neo-colonial states. Maybe we are too afraid to speak or act. Maybe we haven’t done enough to educate the public about climate change or social and environmental justice as one connected struggle. Maybe we spend too much time blaming individual consumers instead of placing more blame and accountability on private sector, industries, and governments. Maybe the environmental movement in the Caribbean has failed with its middle and upper class politics. Maybe other movements have failed to show the connections between social inequalities and climate change. Maybe it’s easier to blame ‘immigrants’, ‘gays’, and all those scary ‘others’ for our social problems.

 

Maybe we have no plan B for economic development, and so we continue to build a tourism industry that does not care about our sustainability or future outside the usual recipe of sun, sand, sea and festivals. Maybe we fear calling out the ways tourism dependent small islands rely on the bits of income from cruise ships which pollute our waters and leave their garbage. Maybe we have not learned lessons from the disasters of structural adjustment policies that leave our countries in debt and too many of our people in poverty and despair. Maybe those of us with oil and other natural resources still believe that will save us. Maybe we still believe the lies of globalization, development and progress in the pursuit of a place in the global capitalist market. Maybe we believe that our (post-neo)colonial masters will save us. Maybe it’s all too overwhelming and unimaginable as we live in the apocalypse of climate crisis now.

 

After Tropical Storm Karen, which affected us in Trinidad and Tobago just a week ago with mass flooding across both islands, I write this in fear and panic about our future, in deep anxiety about our silence and complacency, in solidarity across our precarious Caribbean region, especially with the most vulnerable of our people. We know we are in crisis. We feel it with each hurricane and rainy season and rising temperatures and seas. We see it as we drive along our coastlines with erosion and destruction of our mangroves; we experience it with dry season and forest fires, with clearcutting for tourism and other development projects. We hear it with each report of coral reefs bleaching, fish disappearing, record-setting heat waves and storms, mass extinctions, and rain forests on fire across the Amazon and Sub-Saharan Africa. We smell it with the pollution and garbage burning in our landfills, across our small islands – where we produce less than we import, where on the smallest islands we import way more than we need for tourists and migrants with status and money, who consume more than we do. We touch it in one way or another through the reliance on migrant labour needed to fuel our externally dependent economies, to do work that nationals don’t want to do, and to rebuild in the aftermath of disasters. We know it when we hear of yet another deal on a development project, a new cruise ship port, a set of condos, a new hotel, or more exploration for oil and gas. We understand it in the aftermath of hurricanes when new development deals are signed before recovery has even started for locals who have lost their homes. This is happening now in Abaco and Grand Bahama just four weeks after Hurricane Dorian. Bodies are still buried under rubble, islands completely devastated and there are already plans to sell land to the highest bidders.

 

We are complicit when we don’t call out all the ways our small islands are made more vulnerable and marginalized in these unnatural disasters, the ways we are exploited and then exploit others. 

 

Our Caribbean region is one of the most tourism dependent regions in the world. And so when I read the Forbes article by Daphne Ewing-Chow on 20^th September 2019, titled “Caribbean Islands Are The Biggest Plastic Polluters Per Capita In The World,” with no mention of the almost 40 million tourists per year who visit (mostly on cruise ships), I was furious. It’s not that the article is completely wrong – indeed we do have a serious problem with plastic consumption and waste per capita that is outrageous – but rather it’s that the author fails to include a huge part of the problem, which is tourism and neo-liberal development. It’s no coincidence that most of the top ten Caribbean polluters are also the most dependent on tourism --Antigua & Barbuda, St. Kitts & Nevis, Barbados, St. Lucia, The Bahamas, Grenada, Anguilla and Aruba.

 

This article was circulated on Global Climate Strike day. Perhaps the goal of the author was to name our small island nations as also being major contributors to marine waste. While the author does identify “inadequate waste management” as a root cause of the problem, the landscape is complex and wrapped up in quite literally not having enough space or resources to manage the waste of our own residents, much less millions of tourists. Recent climate change research has identified serious concerns about the “carbon footprint of global tourism,” especially for the Caribbean. The true cost of tourism is one not usually included in popular media conversations about climate change and pollution – with few exceptions such as the 2018 article in Grist by Justine Calma, “The Caribbean on your vacation but suffers from its carbon footprint”. These are the global relations of power, pollution and unsustainable development not many are willing to face – because we are overly reliant and dependent with no plan B. Meanwhile, visitors from the Global North flock to our shores, consume and exploit because that is the promise of paradise.

 

But no one in paradise is supposed to talk about the ugly truths of exploitation, environmental destruction for development, competition over scarce resources, the limited supply of fresh water, or the diversion of resources (water and electricity) to hotels and foreign-owned wealthy homes. Nor are we supposed to talk about the ways limited jobs in “development projects” turn us against each other, or the horrifying untold stories of migrants fleeing one set of unlivable conditions only to find themselves abused and exploited. We see this with many Haitian migrants living in The Bahamas and Dominican Republic, as many Venezuelan migrants seeking asylum right now in Trinidad and Tobago, as many Guyanese migrants experience hardships in Barbados, as too many. We can keep this going all the way back to all the ways our Caribbean people have had to move and relocate in search of something better. Isn’t that what we all want? Something better?

 

We need these harsh truths and untold stories to be spoken, analysed, and understood, in the face of the many unnatural disasters we are living. We are in this together, our survival depends on it – our region, our people, our vulnerable islands of complex, unique and shared histories. We need honest reflections, sustainable solutions, tangible empathy and reasonings, regional actions and uprisings and revolutionary decolonial justice-visioning in our Caribbean to survive.