PORT-AU-PRINCE, (Reuters) – Haitians marked the second anniversary of the earthquake that ravaged their impoverished Caribbean nation yesterday, mourning the dead as their president held out hope for a better future.
Many women wore white dresses, and men turned out in dark suits, as they attended church services and held solemn ceremonies at mass grave sites across the deeply religious country.
The 7 magnitude quake on Jan. 12, 2010, which lasted only 10 to 20 seconds, was one of the world’s worst natural disasters. It toppled buildings and homes, killing roughly 300,000 people and making more than 1.5 million homeless.
President Michel Martelly has vowed to redouble government efforts to help people rebuild their lives and reverse a painfully slow recovery marked by squalid tent camps that are still home to more than a half a million people in the capital, Port-au-Prince.
“This year is a year when we will really start rebuilding physically but also rebuilding the hope and the future of the Haitian people,” the shaven-headed former Carnival music star known as “Sweet Micky” said on Wednesday.
In one of the main events of Thursday’s remembrance, Martelly and former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who has promoted job creation to lift Haiti out of decades of misery and corruption, paid homage to the dead at Titanyen, a mass burial ground north of Port-au-Prince.
Tens of thousands of quake victims are thought to have been buried in unmarked graves at the site. Laid out across a vast open field, it had been a dumping ground for victims of dreaded death squads during the Duvalier family dictatorship.
‘WHIMS OF NATURE’
Speaking at the site, Martelly said the quake was one of many catastrophes in a country run by ruthless despots for most of the 200 years since a slave revolt freed it from French rule.
Misery stems from more than just the “deadly and disastrous whims of nature,” he said.