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Washington and International Donors Have Failed Haiti
The "international community" is in charge of rebuilding Haiti, and one thing has become clear: they are not interested in any kind of democracy there, not even the low level of "democracy" that they have committed to in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Haiti's provisional electoral commission (CEP) has now decided once again that the country's largest political party, Fanmi Lavalas, will not be allowed to participate in parliamentary elections scheduled for November.
This is the equivalent of excluding the Democratic Party (actually something quite a bit larger) from U.S. Congressional elections in November.
So far there are no indications that the Obama administration, which has - to put it mildly - enormous influence over the government of Haiti, has any objections. They had supported the last elections in April 2009 which also excluded Fanmi Lavalas, even though the exclusion led to a boycott of some 90 percent of voters.
To follow the historical thread, Fanmi Lavalas is headed by Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who became Haiti's first democratically elected president in 1990. He was overthrown by the military seven months later, in a violent coup that had a lot of Washington's fingerprints on it. President Clinton restored Aristide three years later, but Aristide offended Washington by, among other things, getting rid of Haiti's brutal army - which was not so much a military force as an instrument of political violence on behalf of Haiti's ruling elite.
Paul Farmer of Harvard Medical School is Bill Clinton's Deputy Special Envoy at the UN. His "Partners in Health" has nearly 5,000 people in Haiti. Testifying recently at a Congressional briefing, he described what happened after Aristide and his party were elected for a second time, in 2000:
"Beginning in 2000, the U.S. administration sought . . . to block bilateral and multilateral aid to Haiti, having an objection to the policies and views of the administration of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, elected by over 90% of the vote . . . Choking off assistance for development and for the provision of basic services also choked off oxygen to the government, which was the intention all along: to dislodge the Aristide administration."
It was the second Bush administration that finally overthrew Aristide for the second time - in the coup of March 2004. But as Farmer notes, the process was initiated under the Clinton administration in 2000. And the Obama administration is currently silent on Aristide's forced exile from Haiti, a violation of Haiti's constitution.
If only Washington were a tenth as good at rebuilding Haiti as it was at destroying the country before the earthquake. But six months after the catastrophe, less than 2 percent of the 1.6 million homeless have homes. Hundreds of thousands have nothing at all; and 80 percent of the homeless that do have shelter are living under tarps where the ground under them turns to mud when it rains. And less than 2.9 percent of all aid money has gone to the Haitian government, which makes reconstruction nearly impossible. With a hundred thousand children wounded from the earthquake, public hospitals are closing.
The land that is needed for shelter is owned by rich Haitians, who have other plans. The Haitian government has the authority to take this land, with compensation. The international community can make this happen.
It's time for members of the U.S. Congress to step up to the plate and change our foreign policy toward Haiti, as they did after the 1991 military coup. Congress can make sure that the aid flows to where it is needed, that land and shelter are available, and that Haitians are allowed to elect their own government. After all that Washington has done to punish Haiti, this is the least they can do.
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16 Comments so far
Show AllDon't think so.
We don't care about New Zealand or Belize so much either.
Not because they are black and poor, but because they have
little value to the U.S. Prime reason U.S. cares about Haiti
at all is because of proximity.
If we have screwed with Haiti we should make amends. But
methinks half their problems are cause by overpopulation,
similar to other Catholic countries.
If you think we have to take so much care of Haiti then donate
your money there. Fair enough?
Such an authority! Did you not hear about the earthquake? So you blame Haiti because the pop is Catholic? Not because the colonial powers, imperialist powers have stripped the country of every last speck of resources, material and social? Not because the whole country was a slave plantation from the git-go, and is a slave-factory now, for global corporations? Not because of endless interference by predator orgs such as WB, IMF, US, etc.?
Haiti is interesting to the US because of the cheap labour and neglect/violations of human rights, because it's closer to Cuba, and because it's a lesson to other Caribbean countries to come to heel under the US corporate MIC.
You like what's happening in Haiti? Chinese factory slavery has recently become too expensive for the corporates - they are outsourcing their work to India, where desperate people will work for even less. What religion do you blame for Chinese poverty?
Look out - Haiti's where the corporates are taking all of us. In the end, the corporates will begrudge you your last mud cookies.
A lot of us donated generously to Haiti, and our money has been stolen. Not an exaggeration. Not only Haiti has been betrayed, but we donors also.
We're much too busy bombing villages and waging "war" in the middle east to worry about a little out-of-the-way place like Haiti which is only a homeland for the poor!
Trillions for the war in the Middle East; nothing more for Haiti. Sure says something about U.S. priorities, doesn't it???
Aristide's larger "crime" was the white paper his party released which made an inventory of all that countries resources and potential resources and outlined how these would be taken over by "The State" wherein the proceeds of such wealth went to the people , rather then the Foreign Corporations that controlled them.
There was no way The USA could handle another "Cuba" or "Venezuela" and so Aristide had to go.
The current government in Haiti is a corrupt one, filled with people who get a "cut" from the profits made by those same foreign firms.
The delays in "rebuilding Haiti" are intended to make the people of Haiti so desperate and so poor, they will sign away their Children in order to put food on the table. There is no conceivable way they would want these people able to stand on their own and then order the Foreign Corporations out.
Obama is as silent on the exile of Aristide as he is on the exile of Zelaya from Honduras. Because he approves of it. Because he is a right-wing criminal of the pseudo-reformist right-wing of the US oligarchy.
George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, the Red Cross and Verizon...Poor Haiti.
"Nobody gives a shit about Haiti because its people are, in the great majority, black and poor."
Not quite, there's always the Cubans, even though they've been blockaded for 40 plus years and consequently have no money, just their goodwill
See:
http://www.counterpunch.org/kirk04012010.html
Makes interesting reading. What we got in the UK was plenty of pictures of "Israeli" doctors delivering babies.
Well - they are the Yanks best mates aren't they?
Unlike those terrible Cubans who send doctors rather than bombs to their neighbours
With Haiti's government safely in the hands of its ten richest and most powerful families (which probably happened before Zelaya's election), the Ten were able, with the help of the military, to:
--Sell Haiti's food-processing factory/factories to a foreign corporation, which promptly closed it, fired all the employees and removed a domestic market for many of Haiti's farmers. Haiti is no longer self-sufficient in food but must import much of its requirements.
--Sell Haiti's concrete-manufacturing plant to a foreign corporation, which promptly closed it and fired all the employees. Haiti is no longer self-sufficient in concrete but now must import enough to cover all the rebuilding necessary because of the earthquake.
--Sell the state-owned communication system to a foreign group of cell-phone and other companies who will no doubt appreciably raise prices to Haitians.
--Many Haitians who formerly made decent money in the closed industries now earn 50 cents an hour sewing t-shirts for Disney. These are the kinds of jobs the commission led by Bill Clinton are talking about establishing (although some believe Clinton is being used as a front by those who hope his good reputation -- and good heart -- can be used to cover their greed).
When Haitians were asked by American visitors in footage shown on Democracy Now what would best help their country, they said the very best thing would be to let President Aristide return and assume the presidency.
Barack Obama actually does understand Haiti because he called the military coup against President Zelaya "illegal" for a day or two. He is the person who could actually insist that Aristide be allowed to return and receive approval and help from the U.N. and Latin American countries. Who shut him up??
He shut himself up. He is a well-educated grown-up occupying the most prominent bully pulpit in the world. Of course there are powerful people pulling strings; in the case of Zelaya, the Clintons were speaking for them, Chiquita Banana and other companies. Still, Obama is a man is personally responsible for what he does.
Harry Truman said "The buck stops here". What does Obama say?
Joe
He says, "Buck? What buck?"
have no fear Wyclef is here.
For over two hundred years the West has been punishing Haiti for the slave uprising that very briefly freed it from their grasp. That slaves had broken their chains was what bothered the U.S. back then, since this might give its own African slaves bad ideas. Today what bothers the U.S. government is that the spirit of Haiti's slave rebellion remains strong within the hearts of its people. That's why the overwhelming majority of Haitians still support Fanmi Lavalas and President Jean-Bertand Aristide, still in exile after having been deposed six years ago by American troops - for expressing the spirit of a people who do not bow down, never have, never will. No surprise, this. After all they are the children of Toussaint L'ouverture.
If the US cared nothing for Haiti, its response would have been more benign.
The US commandeered the airport to make sure that other help did not enter but under their aegis, to make sure that they themselves were left in control of the island.
Of course, that's as much as they did for New Orleans.
Little wonder Chile turned down their help - though I suppose Pinochet had been a long and expensive lesson.