Haiti: * Debt * Aristide * Letting Haitians Stay

MELINDA ST. LOUIS
Melinda St. Louis is deputy director of the Jubilee USA Network, an alliance of more than 75 religious denominations, human rights organizations and development agencies. The group just released a statement, "Debt for Disaster? Jubilee USA Dismayed by IMF Proposal for $100 Million Loan to Haiti."

The group is calling for cancellation of Haiti's debt and an infusion of aid, not loans.

Also see: "Our Role in Haiti's Plight: If we are serious about assisting this devastated land we must stop trying to control and exploit it."

KEVIN PINA
Founder of the Haiti Information Project, Pina was in Haiti last week, shortly before the earthquake, and met with scores of groups. He reports that "many people were complaining of the [Rene] Preval government and how it was using aid in a political manner." He also reports witnessing growing malnutrition and accounts of wrong doing by the UN forces. Pina recently wrote the piece "Allow Aristide to return to Haiti now."

Also see ousted Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide's recent statement as well as commentary by Randall Robinson, author of "An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President," at Democracy Now.

See recent interviews with Pina at Flashpoints.

FRITZ GUTWEIN
Gutwein is co-director of the Quixote Center and coordinator of Haiti Reborn. He said today: "With a stroke of a pen, Obama could give Haitians in the U.S. temporary protective status so they could continue to work in the U.S., pay taxes here -- and send remittances back home that are estimated to account for 20 to 30 percent of Haiti's GDP."