Déjà vu: Earthquake in Haiti Echoes in Chinese Hearts

By staff reporter LIU QIONG

The CISAR medical team treating wounded victims.                                                 Cnsphoto

EVERY street we walked down, the locals would greet us by chanting “China, China” in the Creole dialect,” wrote Zhong Jianqin in his diary. “We are here to help, but also helping to deepen the Haitian people’s understanding of the Chinese.” This was the second time that the 35-year-old police officer had served in Haitian peacekeeping missions since December 2007.

The diary was returned to his mother country along with the author’s body on January 19, 2010. The remains of seven of Zhong’s fellow peacekeepers, tragic victims of the recent earthquake in Haiti, were on the same flight.

On January 12, Haiti was struck with an earthquake that registered at 7.3 on the Richter Scale. The epicenter was only 16 kilometers away from Port-au-Prince, the country’s capital with its population of two million. This was this small west Indian island’s worst earthquake in the last two centuries, killing hundreds of thousands of people, including the chief of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (UNMIH), and eight Chinese peacekeepers.

A Race Against Time

The sudden earthquake upended life in this relatively peaceful tropical island. Now under its blue skies millions of homeless roamed with little or no potable water, food or medical supplies.

Only 36 hours after the disaster, Huang Jianfa and his Chinese International Search and Rescue Team (CISAR) stood facing the ruins of the UNMIH headquarters. They were one of the first international rescue teams to arrive in Haiti. Despite the 19-hour flight, the rescuers lost no time getting started.

“My first sight of the UNMIH building brought tears to my eyes,” Liu Gang recalled in his rescue log. “It was very clear that with destruction like this, the possibility of survival was almost zero.” At 2pm local time on January 16, they excavated the remains of two UN high officials, and handed them over to the UN. Then they found the remains of the eight Chinese peacekeepers, including Zhong Jianqin, as well as another five UN staff members.

“We decided to set up operations in the UNMIH headquarters knowing its significance. Hedi Annabi, head of the UNMIH, and his deputy Luiz Carlos da Costa were buried under here and we had obtained detailed information about their locations,” says Huang Jianfa, leader of the CISAR team. “We made an assessment of the on-site disaster situation and decided finding and rescuing survivors to be the primary focus initially.”

Despite the blazing temperatures and unbearable stench, CISAR members did their best to endure the long hours of non-stop work. On January 17, Huang and his team rushed for Carrefour, one of the hardest hit neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince, and other regions that were most affected. “CISAR performed their rescue operations regardless of nationality. Our guiding principle was to mobilize the most resources in the shortest possible time to the most needy areas.”

In addition to rescuing survivors, CISAR also set up rescue points at the Presidential Palace and the Prime Minister’s residence, providing medical services for the Haitian people.

“The wounded flooded into rescue points; many had been seriously injured and infected. But what shocked me most was the loss and numbness of their eyes,” said Han Wei. He had experienced hundreds of rescue operations in his career, but was still unprepared for what he saw in Haiti, especially the injured children.

CISAR’s medical team also handed out French-language leaflets with important tips on post-disaster epidemic prevention, and announced pertinent health information over loudspeakers. On January 18, it started spraying disinfectant across Port-au-Prince.

Many members of the international media have reported positively on CISAR. The AFP aired an article entitled “China Leads in Haiti Rescue” with a large photo of the team’s departure from Beijing. The article said the plane carrying the Chinese rescue team arrived in Haiti on Thursday, just two days after the earthquake, leading the international response.

International Rescue Underway

At 5 pm, January 17, Beijing time, a plane loaded with 86 tons of relief supplies landed in Haiti. This was the second chartered relief flight from the Chinese government; on January 15, it offered to provide RMB 30 million (approx. US $4.4 million) in relief goods, including medicines, tents, portable water supplies, emergency lamps and clothing.

The tragedy in Haiti has strongly echoed in the minds of the Chinese who painfully recall the magnitude 8 earthquake that flattened China’s Sichuan Province in May 2008. As of press time, the Chinese Red Cross had already received RMB five million in donations from the general public. When the Haitian government announced that the death toll had risen to over 200,000, Liu Zhenmin, deputy permanent representative of China to the United Nations, declared that the Chinese government would increase relief aid to Haiti, including US $2.6 million in cash.

At the same time, flights carrying other international relief personnel and supplies arrived in Port-au-Prince. Three Spanish aircrafts transported relief workers along with 100 tons of tents, blankets, kitchen utensils and other materials. France sent six sniffer dogs and 65 professionals to take care of debris removal. South Korean medical and post-earthquake rescue teams rushed to Haiti on January 15. The USS Carl Vinson nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was directed to Haiti on January 15 to administer relief work and maintain social order.

Help even arrived from space, when over 20 international satellites were redeployed to aid in the relief work, collecting image data of stricken areas for rescuers on the ground. Andre Husson, an official from the French Space Agency, said on January 15 that the action was based on the “International Charter on Space and Major Disasters,” a global disaster relief mechanism signed by at least 10 countries, including the U.S., Britain, China, France, Japan and India.

“This is a closely coordinated international operation much like after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005,” said Husson. He explained that the Charter has been a part of 260 international disaster relief actions, each lasting eight to ten days, since it was first established in November 2000.

The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) has set up a logistics operations center in Haiti’s island neighbor, the Dominican Republic. This group obtained logistics equipment, including vessels, to help the organization go about delivering food supplies. In addition, the WFP’s temporary offices and rescue bases are now also under construction, in order to coordinate helicopter deliveries to the needy. It also assigned the United Nations Humanitarian Response Depot in Panama as a staging area for Haitian relief. The agency’s first aircraft loaded with humanitarian supplies arrived in Port-au-Prince on January 15.

The whole world prays for the island’s recovery. On January 15 the United Nations declared that the international community had committed to providing as much as US $269 million in aid.

Peacekeeping Continues

The loss of eight Chinese peacekeepers will not stop China from continuing its important mission.

“The situation in Haiti is extremely complex. Anything can happen,” said Hu Yunwang, director of the Political Department, Guangdong Provincial Public Security Border Defense Corps. The 44-year-old was sent to Haiti with three other men immediately following the earthquake, to reinforce the Chinese peacekeeping police team stationed there. “Completing their unfinished work is the best way to honor the memories of our fallen comrades,” he says. Within a few days of his arrival, Hu managed to lift himself and his troops out of grief, as they prepared for “the hardest challenges yet to come.”

Hu led the sixth Chinese peacekeeping police through around 200 high-risk emergency tasks. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon once praised the anti-riot force as “an envoy safeguarding world peace and the pride of China.” This time, Hu took over the post of late Li Qin – political commissar of China’s eighth peacekeeping police anti-riot force to Haiti. When the earthquake occurred, Li Qin and three of his peacekeepers as well as four other Chinese staff from the delegation were meeting with UN officials at the UNMIH headquarters.

The eighth team that Li Qin formally commanded comprised 142 soldiers sent to Haiti in June 2009 to implement an eight-month-long peacekeeping task. After the earthquake, the remaining men dedicated themselves to the rescue work regardless of their own safety. Wang Xueyan dug out five survivors with her bare hands.

At the Haitian government’s request, the UN Security Council passed a resolution to send over the UNMIH in April 2004 to contain social unrest. At the appeal of the UN, China dispatched its first peacekeeping police anti-riot force to Haiti on October 17, 2004. This 125 member force complemented and supported the other international peacekeepers and local police agencies to enforce the law, deal with security emergencies, participate in major public events, and assist in the formation of a local anti-riot force.

The statistics released by the Peacekeeping Affairs Office of the Ministry of Defense show that over the last 20 years, China has participated in 18 UN peacekeeping operations, with over 14,000 people involved. Thus far, there are 2,100 Chinese peacekeepers stationed in the Congo (DRC), East Timor, and Haiti. Since 1990, when China first began its international peacekeeping duties, a total of 16 Chinese have been killed in the line of duty.

Chinese Peacekeepers Who Lost Their Lives in the Haitian Earthquake

Zhu Xiaoping, director of the Equipment and Finance Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, aged 48.

Guo Baoshan, deputy director of the International Cooperation Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, aged 60.

Wang Shulin, consultant of the Equipment and Finance Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, aged 58.

Li Xiaoming, staff member of the International Cooperation Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, aged 35.

Zhao Huayu, captain of China’s Civil Police in Haiti, aged 38.

Li Qin, political commissar of China’s Peacekeeping Police Anti-riot Force in Haiti, aged 47.

Zhong Jianqin, press officer for China’s Peacekeeping Police Anti-riot Force in Haiti, aged 35.

He Zhihong, liaison officer of China’s Peacekeeping Police Anti-riot Force in Haiti, aged 35.