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Kirsty Wark My critics are ‘anti-Scottish’
Interview G2 Page 10
£1.00 Monday 18.01.10 Published in London and Manchester guardian.co.uk

Charlie Brooker Reality has been augmented
G2 Page 9

No room in Haiti’s cemeteries but cruise ships still find a berth
• Relatives charged hundreds • Looters lynched, burned of dollars to avoid mass
graves and shot as security strains • Tourists land 60 miles away on a private
pleasure beach

Bodies wait to be dealt with at the Grande Cimetière, Port-au-Prince. Just a few
dozen miles from the quake zone, cruise ships continue to visit Haiti’s Labadee
beach Photographs: David Levene, Daniel Morel/AP

Ed Pilkington Port-au-Prince
Even in death, there is no dignity for the abandoned people of Haiti. The Grand Cimetière,
the last home of the country’s most famous families, has in five days turned from
a place of respect and mourning into an installation of horror. It begins just a
few feet into the cemetery. Pass the elegant arched entrance and walk along the central
path that snakes through the tombs lined on either side like miniature suburban houses.
First you are assailed by the smell, an acrid odour of death that wrenches the stomach
and sticks to you like glue. The smell is bad, but the sights are worse. Far worse.
Bodies are piled up along the path, dumped one upon the other. A couple of chickens
are pecking at them like corn. One of them, a woman with braided hair perhaps in
her 30s, has her hands in a rigor mortis embrace, as though she had been trying to
cling on to life and never let it go. A few feet further in, we come across a hand-wagon.
It is old and rustic, like

something out of an Antonioni movie. Inside about six bodies are stacked in jumbled
postures. The wagon sits there, with its cargo, under the crosses of the tombs, making
some twisted comment about God’s will be done. One of the bodies has its hand outstretched
and when a car passes by, bringing into the cemetery yet another corpse, it hits
the arm and makes it swing like a creaking door. Every five minutes a new body is
brought in, most in simple coffins, fashioned out of rough bits of salvaged wood;
one has been made out of old cupboard doors. Suddenly, six men rush by, carrying
on their shoulders a fancy lacquered coffin, heading for one of the tombs of a wealthy
family. Poor Haitian families don’t enjoy such luxury of mourning. A tomb on the
right side of the walkway has been opened to allow the body of a 14-year-old girl,
swaddled in white cloth and laid out in a pickup truck, to be added beside the remains
of her parents. Above the opening, the word “réparation” has been scrawled.
We ask the cemetery workers standing nearby what that signifies. “It means the

family has no money,” one worker tells us in broken French. “They cannot pay.”
A truck with the young girl on board later drove off, her body unburied. How much
money are we talking about, we ask, what are you charged to lay a teenaged girl to
rest? A hundred dollars, the workers say. Officials from the city council in charge
of the cemetery tell us that the bodies dumped along the path were all brought by
families who couldn’t afford to pay. Outside the cemetery, a man is sitting on
a car looking busy. He is keeping a registry of the new arrivals. He already has
210 names on his list, some identified by just their first name. An elderly man
walks out of the cemetery, looking weary and clutching a handkerchief to his face.
He has just put his sister and niece into the family tomb. Marie Eve Alcindor, 63,
and Sarah, 32, died when the roof of the family clothes shop fell on them. Marie
Eve had arrived in Port-au-Prince one week

Robert Booth
Sixty miles from Haiti’s devastated earthquake zone, luxury liners dock at private
beaches where passengers enjoy jet ski rides, parasailing and rum cocktails delivered
to their hammocks. The 4,370-berth Independence of the Seas, owned by Royal Caribbean
International, disembarked at the heavily guarded resort of Labadee on the north
coast on Friday; a second cruise ship, the 3,100-passenger Navigator of the Seas
is due to dock today. The Florida cruise company leases a picturesque wooded peninsula
and its five pristine beaches from the government for passengers to “cut loose”
with watersports, barbecues, and shopping for trinkets at a craft market before returning
on board before dusk. Safety is guaranteed by armed guards at the gate. The decision
to go ahead with the visit has divided passengers. The ships carry some food aid,
and the cruise line has pledged to donate all proceeds from the visit to help stricken
Haitians. But many


passengers will stay aboard when they dock; one said he was “sickened”. “I
just can’t see myself sunning on the beach, playing in the water, eating a barbecue,
and enjoying a cocktail while [in Portau-Prince] there are tens of thousands of dead
people being piled up on the streets, with the survivors stunned and looking for
food and water,” one passenger, due to arrive today, wrote on the Cruise Critic
internet forum. “It was hard enough to sit and eat a picnic lunch at Labadee before
the quake, knowing how many Haitians were starving,” said another. “I can’t
imagine having to choke down a burger there now.’’ Some booked on ships scheduled
to stop at Labadee are afraid that desperate people might breach the resort’s 12ft
high fences to get food and drink, but others seemed determined to enjoy their holiday.“I’ll
be there on Tuesday and I plan on enjoying my zip line excursion as well as the time
on the beach,” said one. The company said the question of whether to “deliver
a vacation experience Continued on page 2 ≥

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Doctors demand total ban on ‘damaging’ trans fats in food
Denis Campbell Health correspondent
Leading doctors are demanding a ban on the use of man-made fats found in thousands
of foodstuffs such as biscuits, ready meals and margarine because they can damage
health. The UK Faculty of Public Health is urging ministers to eradicate artificial
trans fatty acids, known as trans fats, from the British diet. The move is needed
to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes, says the faculty, which represents
3,300 doctors and health specialists in the NHS, local government and research. Trans
fats, found in many cakes, pastries, pies, chips and fast foods, are chemically altered
vegetable oils used to bulk up foods and increase their shelf life. They have no
nutritional value and boost levels of “bad” cholesterol, thereby increasing the
chances of a heart attack. Trans fats also occur naturally in meat and dairy products,
but these pose no risk. The World Health Organisation believes artificial trans
fats are harmful to health and wants them to be minimised or elimTrans fats are found
in biscuits, ready meals and fast foods, and can occur naturally in meat and dairy
products inated altogether. They have also been blamed for causing fertility problems
in women. The UK should follow the example of Denmark, New York, California, Switzerland
and Austria in banning trans fats, said Professor Alan Maryon-Davis, the faculty’s
president. Other countries and regions are planning to take similar action. “Trans
fats are much less well-known than saturated fats but are much more damaging. They
are very bad for the heart, play a key role in the UK’s very high levels of heart
disease and contribute to a large number of the excess coronary deaths we have in
this country,” Maryon-Davis said. “Foods can be made perfectly well without trans
fats. The government should move to ban them as soon as possible because eliminating
them completely would help save many lives.” The call to legislate is backed by
the Royal Society for Public Health, which has produced a joint manifesto with the
faculty suggesting such a measure among a series of policy changes to tackle obesity,
alcohol problems, sexual infections and food quality. Every year some 141,000 Britons
suffer a heart attack and 86,000 die as a result, while another 111,000 have a stroke,
of whom 53,000 die. Professor Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of General
Practitioners, said: “The evidence is indisputable that trans fats raise your risk
of having heart disease and so they can ultimately kill Continued on page 2 ≥