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Also via Millennia 2015.org
Myriam Merlet was one of three leading activists in the Haitian women's movement who died, a victim of the earthquake.
By Jessica Ravitz, CNN
January 20, 2010
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
(CNN) -- One returned to
her Haitian roots, to give voice to women, honor their stories and shape their
futures.
Another
urged women to pack a courtroom in Haiti, where she succeeded in getting a
guilty verdict against a man who battered his wife.
A third
joined the others and helped change the law to make rape, long a political
weapon in Haiti, a punishable crime.
Myriam
Merlet, Magalie Marcelin and Anne Marie Coriolan, founders of three of the
country's most important advocacy organizations working on behalf of women and
girls, are confirmed dead -- victims of last week's 7.0 earthquake.
Remembering the victims of the
Haiti earthquake
And their
deaths have left members of the women's movement, Haitian and otherwise,
reeling.
"Words
are missing for me. I lost a large chunk of my personal, political and social
life," Carolle Charles wrote in an e-mail to colleagues. The Haitian-born
sociology professor at Baruch College in New York is chair of Dwa
Fanm (meaning "Women's Rights" in Creole), a
Brooklyn-based advocacy group. These women "were my friends, my colleagues
and my associates. I cannot envision going to Haiti without seeing them."
Myriam
Merlet was until recently the chief of staff of Haiti's Ministry for Gender and
the Rights of Women, established in 1995, and still served as a top adviser.
She died after being trapped beneath her collapsed Port-au-Prince home, Charles said. She was 53.
Merlet, an
author as well as an activist, fled Haiti in the 1970s. She
studied in Canada, steeping herself in economics, women's issues, feminist
theory and political sociology.
In the
mid-1980s, she returned to her homeland. In "Walking on Fire: Haitian
Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance," published in 2001, she
contributed an essay, "The More People Dream," in which she described
what brought her back.
"While
I was abroad I felt the need to find out who I was and where my soul was. I
chose to be a Haitian woman," she wrote. "We're a country in which
three-fourths of the people can't read and don't eat properly. I'm an integral
part of the situation. I am not in Canada in a black ghetto, or an
extraterrestrial from outer space. I am a Haitian woman. I don't mean to say
that I am responsible for the problems. But still, as a Haitian woman, I must
make an effort so that all together we can extricate ourselves from them."
She was a
founder of Enfofamn, an organization that raises awareness about women through
media, collects stories and works to honor their names. Among her efforts, she
set out to get streets named after Haitian women who came before her, Charles said.
Dubbed a
"Vagina Warrior," she was remembered Tuesday by her friend Eve
Ensler, the award-winning playwright and force behind V-Day,
a global movement to end violence against women and girls.
"She
was very bold," said Ensler, who at Merlet's insistence brought her play
"The Vagina Monologues" to Haiti and helped establish safe houses for
women in Port-au-Prince and Cap Haitien. "She had an incredible vision of
what was possible for Haitian women, and she lifted their spirits. ... And we
had such a wonderful time. I remember her dancing in the streets of New Orleans
and just being so alive."
Magalie
Marcelin, a lawyer and actress who appeared in films and on stage, established
Kay Fanm, a women's rights organization that deals with domestic violence,
offers services and shelter to women and makes microcredits, or loans,
available to women working in markets, said Charles, the chair of Dwa Fanm.
Charles
remembered a visit to Haiti about two years ago when Marcelin,believed to be in
her mid-50s, called seeking help. Hoping to deflect the political clout of a
defendant in court, she asked for women to come out in droves and pack the
courtroom. Charles watched as the man on trial was convicted for battering his
wife.
Her death
has been reported through various media outlets, and was confirmed to CNN by
Carribbean Radio Television based in Port-au-Prince. Her own daughter helped
dig her body out from rubble in the aftermath of the quake, Charles said she
learned when she got the call from Marcelin's cousin.
In an
interview last year with the Haitian Times, Marcelin spoke of the image of a
drum that adorned public awareness stickers.
"It's
very symbolic in the Haitian cultural imagination," Marcelin said,
according to the Haitian Times report. "The sound of the drum is the sound
of freedom, it's the sound of slaves breaking with slavery."
With Merlet,
Anne Marie Coriolan, 53, served as a top adviser to the women's rights
ministry.
Coriolan,
who died when her boyfriend's home collapsed, was the founder of Solidarite
Fanm Ayisyen (Solidarity with Haitian Women, or SOFA), which Charles described
as an advocacy and services organization.
Her
daughter, Wani Thelusmon Coriolan, said in Haiti children bear only their
father's surname, but her mother insisted on keeping her maiden name and making
sure her two children shared it, too.
"She
said my dad was not the only one who created me. She was involved, too,"
her 24-year-old daughter, who lives and is studying in Montreal, Quebec, said
with a laugh.
Even though
Wani and her brother no longer live in Haiti (he is in Paris, France), she said
her mother was determined to make sure they were proud of their homeland.
"She
loved her country. She never stopped believing in Haiti. She said that when you
have a dream you have to fight for it," Wani said. "She wanted women
to have equal rights. She wanted women to hold their heads high."
Coriolan was
a political organizer who helped bring rape -- "an instrument of terror
and war," Charles said -- to the forefront of Haitian courts.
Before 2005,
rapes in Haiti were treated as nothing more than "crimes of passion,"
Charles explained. That changed because of the collective efforts of these
women activists -- and others they inspired.
With the
three leaders gone, there is concern about the future of Haiti's women and
girls. Even with all that's been achieved, the struggle for equality and
against violence remains enormous.
The chaos
that's taken over the devastated nation heightens those worries, said Taina
Bien-Aimé, the executive director of Equality Now, a human
rights organization dedicated to women.
Before the
disaster struck last week, a survey of Haitian women and girls showed an estimated
72 percent had been raped, according to study done by Kay Fanm. And at least 40
percent of the women surveyed were victims of domestic violence, Bien-Aimé
said.
And
humanitarian emergencies have been linked to increased violence and
exploitation in the past, she said.
"From
where we stand," Bien-Aimé wrote in an e-mail, "the most critical and
urgent issue is what, if any, contingencies the relief/humanitarian agencies
are putting in place not only to ensure that women have easy access to food,
water and medical care, but to guarantee their protection."
Concerned
women in the New York area plan to gather Wednesday to strategize their next
steps, Ensler said.
And
while they will certainly keep mourning, she and the others are hopeful that
Haitian women, inspired by these fallen heros and leaders, will forge ahead --
keeping their fight and legacies alive.
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