Haitian human rights attorney Patrice Florvilus and his supporters announced on Aug. 16 that he had been asked to appear at the government prosecutor's office in Port-au-Prince on Aug. 19 in connection with a complaint from Reynold Georges, a lawyer for former "president for life" Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") Duvalier (1971-1986). Florvilus heads the legal aid organization Defenders of the Oppressed (DOP), which was formed to help people left homeless by the January 2010 earthquake that devastated much of southern Haiti. The complaint appears to be in retaliation for a complaint the DOP filed against agents of the national police suspected of having murdered Meris Civil, a porter they arrested on Apr. 15 at the Acra displaced persons' camp in the Delmas 33 section of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. According to Florvilus, fires were set on April 13 and April 15 at the camp, which occupies property claimed by Duvalier.

More than 1,000 Haitian religious people, ranging from Protestants to Muslims, marched in Port-au-Prince on July 19 to oppose homosexuality and any law that might be proposed in Parliament to allow same-sex marriage. The marchers chanted slogans calling for the "survival" of the traditional family; one slogan threatened that "Parliament will burn if this bill is passed." At the site of the National Palace they paused to warn President Michel Martelly not to support homosexuality; when he was the popular singer "Sweet Micky," the president sometimes cross-dressed to play a female character he called "Ti Simone." The protesters also harassed Amélie Baron, the correspondent for the French network Radio France Internationale (RFI), apparently because France recently passed a law allowing same-sex marriage. Baron said she received an "anthology of insults": "You're sick, an abomination, the devil come here to corrupt Haiti." (AlterPresse, Haiti, July 19, July 19; Miami Herald, July 19, from AP)

As many as 200 Dominicans of Haitian descent demonstrated in front of the National Palace in Santo Domingo on July 12 to demand that President Danilo Medina take a position on the refusal of the Central Electoral Council (JCE) to provide them with their birth certificates and other legal documents. According to the Reconoci.do youth movement, some 22,000 citizens of Haitian descent are unable to enter universities or even to get married because for the last seven years the Civil Registry, which is controlled by the JCE, has been denying them their legal documents--part of a series of anti-immigrant acts that included amending the Constitution in 2010 to limit citizenship to people with Dominican parents. Protesters denounced the denial of their papers as "a discriminatory policy directed against thousands of people from one group, the Dominican children of Haitians, and not the descendants…of Spanish, French, Italian or Chinese people."

Students from the State University of Haiti (UEH) took to the streets of Port-au-Prince on June 27 to protest an increase in their registration fees from 500 gourdes (about $11.53) to 1,000 gourdes. The administration also added a 500 gourde surcharge and changed the cut-off date for registration. The protesters reportedly threw rocks and bottles, set up barricades of burning tires and smashed the windshields of a dozen vehicles parked at the administrative building. Six students were arrested; they were released later in the day. UEH rector Jean-Vernet Henry quickly announced that the increase had been made without his knowledge; the old fees would be restored, university officials said, along with the old registration date. 

The Monsanto Company, the Missouri-based biotech giant, has been refusing to cooperate with efforts by Puerto Rico's legislature to regulate the development and sale of seeds on the island. The company chose not to testify at a hearing of Puerto Rico's Senate Agriculture Committee held on June 17 for a bill, PS624, that would create a seed board and a certification and licensing system to regulate seed development and sale. Monsanto representative Eric Torres-Collazo wrote to the committee that the company's activities are not subject to regulation by Puerto Rico's legislature. "Monsanto does not produce, sell [or] offer...basic or certified seed with the purpose of planting in Puerto Rico," Torres-Collazo explained. The company has used the same reasoning to claim that it is exempt from a constitutional ban on individual farms larger than 500 acres.

The Collective for the Compensation of Cholera Victims (Comodevic) and Moun Viktim Kolera ("People Who Are Cholera Victims," Movik) sponsored a march in Port-au-Prince on May 31 to mark nine years since the arrival of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). Marching from the Fort National neighborhood to the Justice Ministry and the Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP), the protesters demanded that the international military and police force leave Haiti and called on the government to join legal actions seeking compensation from the United Nations (UN) for people affected by cholera. At least 8,096 people have died in a cholera epidemic that was set off in October 2010 by poor sanitation at a MINUSTAH base in the Central Plateau where Nepalese soldiers carrying the disease were stationed.

Former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004) made a tentative reentry into politics with a press conference held on May 9 at his home in Tabarre, a well-to-do suburb northeast of Port-au-Prince. Aristide said his political party, the Lavalas Family (FL), "is evolving, is becoming stronger and more powerful," and he appeared confident that it would be able to field candidates in parliamentary and local elections to be held before the end of the year; electoral authorities kept FL off the ballot in 2009 partial senatorial elections and in the 2010-2011 presidential and legislative elections. He predicted that the party would win seats, but not that it would dominate as it did during his 2001-2004 presidential term. "One person alone," "one political party alone" or "one group in society" can't solve the problem of hunger, Aristide said. "We have an indispensable coming together to do in order for us to diminish hunger in our country."

Several hundred Haitian unionists and activists marched in Port-au-Prince on May 1 to celebrate International Workers Day and to demand reform of the country's labor code, respect for labor standards and application of a legally mandated 300 gourde (about US$7.12) daily minimum wage for piece workers in the assembly sector. The march began at the large industrial park run by the semi-public National Industrial Parks Company (Sonapi) in the north of the capital; the assembly plants there mainly produce apparel for sale in North America and are a focus of complaints over failure to pay the minimum wage. The unionists then moved on to the Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development Ministry (Marndr) to highlight the situation of agricultural workers. Police agents blocked the march for 20 minutes because Haitian president Michel Martelly and other officials were attending an event at the ministry.