[Peace-discuss] Another disaster in Haiti: we name the guilty parties

[Ricky Baldwin]

Yes, the US-trained Dominican military and Haitian
paramilitary attacks on Haitian workers continue; and,
yes, the US is still pushing to make the situation
even worse by expanding Clinton's IMF "free trade
zones" to cover the whole country (or by extending
NAFTA to include Haiti, whichever way you want to look
at it): the amazingly named HERO Act.

Now comes a hurricane, right through Gonaives, a
shockingly poor area in a desperately poor country. 
And the devastation and misery there are more than
simply natural phenomena, as Charles Arthur points
out...  


> 
> Another disaster in Haiti: we name the guilty
> parties - Haiti Support Group 
> press release, 21 September 2004
> 
> So far the total number of fatalities caused by the
> recent heavy rains and 
> flash-floods in north-west Haiti stands at around
> 600, but the final tally is 
> sure to be far higher.
> 
> This is the second major disaster this year, in
> addition to numerous other 
> deadly but less well-reported floods. The news is
> terrible, but it is not enough 
> to wring our hands and say 'poor Haiti'. Nor is it
> sufficient to call on the 
> international community to provide more and better
> humanitarian relief. We 
> must look at the reasons why Haiti is prone to these
> catastrophes.
> 
> Both the flash-floods in the south-east in May, and
> now these in the 
> north-west, are a direct consequence of the
> over-farming and deforestation of the 
> country's hills and mountainsides. When heavy rain
> falls, the water cannot be 
> absorbed, and instead cascades down valleys and
> ravines, sweeping away anything 
> and anybody it its path. 
> 
> The problems of soil-erosion and deforestation are
> well-known, and so is the 
> only possible remedy - land reform. Yet over the
> course of almost three 
> decades, the country's economic policy has been
> dictated by international finance 
> institutions, such as the World Bank, the IMF and
> the Inter-American Development 
> Bank, and not only has land reform never appeared on
> their agenda, but no 
> national government that has proposed it has
> received any encouragement to carry 
> it out.
> 
> Instead, successive governments have been obliged to
> carry out neo-liberal 
> economic policies which give no priority to the
> countryside whatsoever, even 
> though some two-thirds of the population live there.
> 
> 
> Billions and billions in international aid has been
> lent to Haitian 
> governments, but the focus has remained on
> governance, security, elections and support 
> for the private sector. Next to nothing has been
> done to support the 
> agricultural sector - no land reform, no subsidies
> for fertilisers or storage 
> facilities, no reforestation campaign, 
> no irrigation projects, no protection from cheaper
> imports, etc. etc.
> 
> Is it any wonder that Haiti's peasant farmers
> overwork their small plots, and 
> cut down trees to raise cash from charcoal
> production?
> 
> Even now, after neo-liberal economic policies in
> Haiti have been shown to 
> have failed over and over again, the current
> government - with the support of the 
> international finance institutions and the European
> Commission - is 
> continuing to ignore the needs of the rural
> population. At the international donors' 
> conference in Washington DC. in July, yet again the
> focus was on support for the 
> urban private sector. Local industrialists - the
> government's main source of 
> domestic support - are pushing ahead with their
> plans to build more and more 
> sweatshop assembly plants. 
> 
> Indeed, the attitude of the current interim
> government was summed up when, 
> shortly after the May 2004 flood disaster, Prime
> Minister Gerald Latortue said 
> perhaps the solution would be to employ former
> soldiers to shoot peasants found 
> cutting down trees.
> 
> By, once more, doing everything to preserve the
> dominance of the country's 
> immensely rich elite, and nothing to support the
> poverty-stricken peasantry, the 
> international community is complicit in the loss of
> life and misery caused by 
> this, and the inevitable future, natural disasters
> in Haiti.
> 
> 
> Contact:: Charles Arthur - haitisupport at gn.apc.org
> 
> ______________________________________________
> 
> 
> This email is forwarded as a service of the Haiti
> Support Group. 
> 
> See the Haiti Support Group web site:
> www.haitisupport.gn.apc.org
> 
> Solidarity with the Haitian people's struggle for
> justice, participatory 
> democracy and equitable development, since 1992.
> ____________________________________________
> 



		
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