100 Years of Occupation – 100 Years of Resistance in Haiti

By Ezili Dantò

Global Research, December 17, 2014

Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/100-years-of-occupation-100-years-of-resistance-in-haiti/5420411

December 17, 2014 marks one hundred years since the United States invaded Haiti, stayed for 19 years, virtually re-enslaved Haiti with its white supremacist ideology, physical tyranny and at the point of guns carried out Haiti’s gold reserves. One hundred years later, Haiti continues the resistance. (See, 100 Years of Occupation – 100 Years of Resistance : Regional networks and organizations manifest solidarity with Haiti http://bit.ly/1A9cHLa )

Haiti continues its protest against foreign occupation and their puppet government. Calls for real elections are taking down the fake Martelly-Lamothe regime. But, Haiti freedom fighters are also keeping in mind that US-style electoral politics is false hope for the masses everywhere, including the United States.

This post is centered on the unseen powers in Haiti. The Mundele (Category One - the stranger/colonist/white nations/Mundele) that the Martelly-Lamothe regime (Category Zero/Bafyòti) serve as well as the deep politics Haiti citizens must confront regarding the global profit-over-people system.

The Bill Clinton/ NGOs, USAID and the UN are tools of empire (Ndòki) that will nullify the gains of the Haiti protestors after Martelly-Lamothe are gone. If there is to be a lasting change in Haiti, and in the living standards of the masses, Haiti must make plans beyond electoral politics.

To do this means facing not only Category Zero, the Black collaborators (Bafyòti) represented by the surface power of Martelly-Lamothe. But the deeper, economic power of an even bigger group of collaborators, the multibillionare Haiti oligarchs (Bafyòti) as well as the Ndòki- meaning the institutional forces of empire as represented by the NGOs, the (pèpè) educational system, the media, foreign religions, neoliberal economics, unfair trade, destruction of Haiti local economy, the world money changers/Banksters and plutocrats, et al…

See the video clip: The Beautiful Butchers of Haiti: Mrs. Clinton, Susan Rice, Cheryl Mills & The Arabs – http://on.fb.me/1wE3M3e .

In this clip, human rights attorney, Ezili Dantò discuss two slides from “The Quiet Genocide in Haiti” presentation.

Slide one: Is on the Clinton-nites in Haiti – Mundele Hillary Clinton, Bafyòti Susan Rice and Bafyòti Cheryl Mills – http://on.fb.me/1wE3M3e

Slide two: Is about the subcontracted Haitians who are middlemen for empire. They’re Haiti’s mercenary families.

The Haiti oligarchs – .05% own 98% of Haiti wealth through monopolies orchestrated and supported by foreign interests in Haiti http://on.fb.me/1wE3M3e

Haiti oligarchs are the wealthiest billionaires in the Caribbean. Make their living exploiting the poor in Haiti – their land, labor, resources, institutional underdevelopment. These Christian or Jewish “Arabs” (i.e. the families of Acra, Apaid, Bigio, Boulos, Baussan, Brandt, Mevs) are the middlemen for empire and require as much scrutiny and protests as the Laurent-Lamothe regime who serve them and Western imperialism. This – clip http://on.fb.me/1wE3M3e – was taken by cell phone by an audience member at a recent Ezili Dantò, university presentation, on Haiti.

One Hundred Years of Resistance

One hundred years ago on December 17, 1914 Citigroup (Citibank) stole Haiti’s gold reserves.

The US sent the Marines to Haiti to take Haiti’s gold reserves and transport it to the Wall Street vaults of what is now known as Citigroup.

On December 17, 2014 Haitians mark this theft of Haiti monies by the wealthy United States, demanding the US make reparations for that crime as well as the continued crimes of occupation and taking of Haiti assets under Bill Clinton
and his Wall Street cronies.

I post this video of US Senator Elizabeth Warren statements on Citigroup not as an approval of her bid for the US presidency in 2016 or an endorsement of the US politicos’ simplistic villain/hero pathology – their hypocritical Democrat/Republican duopoly, but simply to help explain how powerful Citigroup/Citibank is today…and how it continues its traditional colonial thievery. The US public still do not realize they’re the colonized subjects of
the US corporatocracy and their feudal lord lobbyists. (See video: Remarks by Senator Warren on Citigroup and its bailout provision. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJpTxONxvoo)

Unfettered capitalism doesn’t work, it must constantly steal. The new term for theft and Wall Street parasitic behavior is “bailout.”

The info shared in the Warren video reveal how the City bank boys operate worldwide, including being a good part of the reason why Haiti and the global South are kept contained in poverty.

These thieves and “money changers” are the same ilks digging up Haiti’s mountains to extract what’s left of its gold, copper, uranium, iridium. Strategically positioning to take its oil, coastal lands, deep water ports, offshore islands.

Warren speaks to the current situation with Citigroup. Its massive power, lobby and influence within the US government. It fleeces not Haiti gold now but gets half a trillion dollars in taxpayer bailout as 80% of the American people grind away beneath endless debts to these powerful banksters and the plutocrats with never a Main Street bailout.

Haiti’s central bank is currently OWNED by these banksters. Our border customs, port receipts are privatized into these same hands. The NGOs are spread out over the total Haiti landscape with concentrated power in every Haitian ministry. These are some of the issues Haiti must face after the fall of Martelly-Lamothe. Electoral politics can only do so much. Those who control Haiti’s economy must let go of Haiti as their cash cow. Desalin cannot be assassinated, once again. The Haiti revolution is not fulfilled until the assets of the country shall be equitably divided.

Two thousand years ago, a Hebrew named Jesus spoke of the “money changers” and how they must be thrown out of the temple. Well it’s not only the temple they must be thrown out of, but everywhere if humanity is to start fresh from greed
or placing profit over people.

Identifying the real obstacle, naming the enemy is a first step to winning any war.
(See the History of the “Money Changers” - http://www.iamthewitness.com/books/Andrew.Carrington.Hitchcock/The.History.of.the.Money.Changers.htm)

Haiti is today the recipient of the banksters’ altruism through the NGOs. The Robber Barons of the 20th century are the “philanthropists” of the 21st century.

Bill Clinton landed on Haiti’s back to “built Haiti back better!” Better for whom, the Haiti peasant ask? Why is Haiti the republic of NGOs. Why?

It’s not as if thinking Haitians do not know that Haiti soil is used as the epicenter for the CIA/UN/USAID drug trade that funds America’s eternal wars, the State Department’s weapon trafficking, and the banksters and plutocrats’ wealth these days.

The US Congress funds “port projects” in Haiti for drug transshipment, infrastructure and US/UN military planes are the means for flying in and out these contraband.

As Sibel Edmonds says (at 1:03:40 of this video): The number one place the United States puts its spies, its intelligence gathering officers and informants is through the NGOs.

The NGOs are the best operation base for the CIA. “US entices terror, US funds terror through the NGOs.” (45:06 – ) — Sibel Edmonds (Sibel Edmonds on Gladio B – Part 4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOCYMU3zYH0)

There’s no need to dissolve Haiti parliament. Bill and Hillary Clinton simply put Martelly-Lamothe as their subcontractors in charge through the false hope of electoral politics. They use their federal power and UN proxy military cover to nullify the protesting parliamentary members, while having the corporate media sing the altruism of the NGOs and Dr. Paul Farmer to fool the gullible US-Euro public.

The world can see what’s happening. Saw it in Bosnia. See the role of the NGOs since the fall of the Berlin Wall. But no one sees. The colonial narrative on Haiti comforts the stranger (Mundele) and his collaborators. The quiet genocide in Haiti unfurls in plain site (http://on.fb.me/1ul19BX) just as does for Black America, for Africa.

Haitians scream. Africa screams. The poor of all the constructed races scream in terror and abuse. In Haiti, our insides are burning from Clorox hunger, from years of psych ops warfare, from inhaling expired tear gas and 2002
expired chemical agents thrown at us for years and years and years by the UN/PMSC mercenaries and US militarized Haiti police.

On this one hundred year anniversary of the European colonist’s attempt to re-take Haiti by taking away our gold reserves, Haitians fight on. Die from the fight back, from the material deprivations, the psychic injuries. Or UN cholera or the basic denial of human rights. (See our the Ezili archives at https://www.ezilidanto.com and December 16, 2014 – Clashes in Haiti as anti-government protest turns violent. Video – operation Burkina Faso

http://youtu.be/kcwv6gLTiBI.)

From the womb to the tomb, our lives is about this David vs. Goliath struggle. But there is a life beyond Black oppression that Africans connected to the womb live that’s so rich in soul, our oppressors want to take climb into it too but without letting go of white supremacy! The Ancestors’ legacy: Liberty or death, keeps us sane and free. The Ancestors left us the template for beating white supremacy. It’s the Bwa Kayiman call that began the Haiti revolution centuries ago. It’s “Kanga Mundele, Kanga Bafyòti, Kanga Ndòki, Kango yo”. We must stop the white nations/settlers, the Black collaborators/opportunists and all their evil forces (Ndòki). We must tie up, stop, excise, marginalize all three to win lasting change for ourselves, for humanity.

No. We’ve not forgotten the Citibank boys theft one hundred years ago, carried out at the point of US Marine guns (Ndòki). Neither shall we forget the blood of the last Haiti demonstrator staining Desalin’s land to opposed despots, tyrants, enslavers – US occupation behind UN guns.

When we’re dust, the next Haiti generation will carry forth and avenge the injustices for the Starlights we’ll be and that same sacred Earthlight our generation gives voice to.

Moonlight’s great sun heralds Desalin worldwide. Pierre Sully lives on in every Haiti protestor facing Napoleon’s newest reincarnated colonial army, abroad and at home. Kapwa Lamò does not have the luxury to grieve what’s been lost. Think of the dignity his glory shines upon the awaken heart. Charlemagne Peralte, Haiti reMEMBERs itself in you.

Alaso Ayisyen, sa ki mouri nap vanje yo.

Ezili Dantò, HLLN

Copyright © 2015 Global Research

Haiti: Time for Clinton and Co to Pack and Go

By Dady Chery

Global Research, December 20, 2014

Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/haiti-time-for-clinton-and-co-to-pack-and-go/5420902

Once more, we have tasted salt. We have mourned our dead from the earthquake and the cholera epidemic. The collective depression, the temporary zombification has lifted. It is time to evict the occupier and pursue the traitors and enemies of our independence. No exception.

This is not the first time the United States has occupied Haiti and been evicted from it. The first occupation began during the administration of the questionable Nobel Peace Prize laureate President Woodrow Wilson in 1915. It was countered by an armed insurrection that grew to include over 40,000 Haitian fighters who regularly engaged the US marines. Although this insurrection was ultimately crushed, it was followed by numerous popular strikes in Haiti as well as calls in the US by women’s groups and Black Americans to end the occupation. The return to sovereignty was relatively simple: a committee was assembled to organize legislative and presidential elections. The occupation formally ended in 1934, near the start of the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who personally came for a flag-raising ceremony in Haiti to recognize its independence.

Back in 1915, the Monroe Doctrine needed no cover of legitimacy or humanitarianism. The cowardly Sudre Dartiguenave was picked as Haiti’s President while US marines waited with bayonets at the ready for the correct choice to be made by the legislature. Two years later, the legislature was dissolved outright by Major General Smedley Butler when the Haitian parliament refused to ratify a US-drafted constitution.

A treaty was forced on Haiti that created the post of US High Commissioner, to run the country alongside its hand-picked “Haitian” president. General John H. Russell was appointed to that post. The US flag was raised in Haiti. Control of the country’s finances, public works, and public health services were transferred to southern US Democrats who had supported Wilson’s campaign, in much the same way that these are transferred today to USAID and non-governmental organizations (NGO). The idea then was the same as now: all Haiti’s economy should serve the US, and nearly all US dollars paid as wages in Haiti should return to the US. For more than three decades, the occupier also collected taxes from Haitians that amounted to 40 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP).

Clinton saw in the earthquake of 2010 his opportunity to become the new US High Commissioner of Haiti. Hardly anything in his approach was novel, except for his recruitment of Latin Americans to support his project. Argentina, Brazil and Chile were offered the chance to get prestige on the world scene and assemble a repressive force away from the prying eyes of their nationals by training and modernizing their armies on Haitians as their unsuspecting victims. Thus these countries became the “ABC” core of the United Nations (de)Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH): the only UN “peacekeeping” force in a country that is not at war. MINUSTAH began its career by killing thousands of Lavalas partisans so as to suppress the popular rebellion against the coup that removed Haiti’s elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide. Currently Bolivia, Canada, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Jordan, Nepal, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, the Republic of Korea, Sri Lanka, the United States and Uruguay also participate in an expanded MINUSTAH.

Once Clinton’s repressive army was in place, he set out to wrest economic control of Haiti. Within four months of the earthquake, he formed the Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti (CIRH): a strictly pay-to-play group of officials/rich businessmen from the MINUSTAH countries and others who agreed to contribute armed personnel from their countries or money (at least $100 million in a two-year period, or erasure of over $200 million in debt) in return for a piece of the action in Haiti. After some arm twisting and bribery, the Haitian parliament was forced to declare a state of emergency for 18 months during which Clinton and his CIRH gang could do as they pleased with regard to reconstruction, without risk of liability. One year and a half came and went, and when the Haitian Senate observed that nothing much had been accomplished, the state of emergency was not renewed, and the CIRH was alleged to be fraudulent.

By then, Clinton and his cronies had began to search for another way to continue their economic stranglehold on the country, and this would include a suitable Haitian President: specifically, one who would be popular with the young but lack patriotism. They found their man in the vulgar musician Michel Martelly. His election became a mere formality after an electoral commission excluded from participation the Fanmi Lavalas party, which commanded 80 percent of the electorate. Observers from Caricom and the Organization of American States (OAS) legitimized the results despite countless irregularities and ballots from only about 20 percent of the electorate. Such are the conditions under which Michel Martelly was (s)elected President of Haiti.

Simultaneously with the assembly of the new parliament in Spring 2011, Clinton tried to push on Haiti a series of constitutional amendments, nearly all of which aimed to centralize the government so that the country would be more easily controlled via its executive branch. In particular, the Haitian Supreme Court, normally appointed with the input of communal assemblies, would be replaced by a Constitutional Council of Martelly appointees. All local judges, mayors, and departmental governors would also be replaced by Martelly appointees. Finally, the president would be allowed to serve consecutive terms instead of being limited to non-consecutive ones of five years. After the parliament refused to ratify those changes, it was not dissolved. Such things are no longer done in this era of humanitarian imperialism. The constitutional amendments were simply imposed on the country by presidential decree, and the parliament was allowed to atrophy from a neglect to hold legislative elections.

Clinton picked Laurent Lamothe as Haiti’s Prime Minister. He did not have to look far: Lamothe was a rich businessman and CIRH member. Haiti is not exceptional in having men like Martelly or Lamothe who would eagerly serve as the Vichy administration to an occupier. It is hardly surprising that the first allegiance of such individuals is to money. Soon after the installment of the Martelly-Lamothe regime, the electrical grid and running water services began to be dismantled in Haiti’s major cities. This had the effect of depressing land prices in areas coveted by government officials as well as creating a reason to solicit aid funds. Worse, Martelly appointees – some with criminal records – began to ransack and even destroy Haiti’s city halls and local courts. Peaceful protests against these insults met with violent attacks, initially from MINUSTAH and later, from a rapidly growing and increasingly militarized Haitian police force.

Yet more egregious recent actions by the Martelly-Lamothe regime have included: the appropriation of Haiti’s offshore islands by the tourism ministry by decree, followed by the imprisonment and suspicious death of activists who had opposed the land grabs; an agreement to grant the collection of Haiti’s customs taxes to a private Swiss company for 10 years, without discussion with the parliament; the acceptance of reparation funds from Uruguay by the executive branch, also without consultation with the parliament; the suspicious death of a judge who had been investigating a case of usurpation and money laundering brought against the president’s wife and son. There was never an inquest; the plaintiffs in the case, Enold and Josue Florestal, have been incarcerated since August 2013 in what are generally regarded as being politically motivated imprisonments.

Protests throughout Haiti have reached fever pitch. Some municipalities, like Petit Goave and Port-au-Prince have held over 20 days of actions to express their disgust with the incompetent and corrupt occupation regime.  Despite public support from Bill Clinton, his protégé Laurent Lamothe was forced to resign his post as Prime Minister on December 13, 2014. Michel Martelly, who is also supported by Bill and Hillary Clinton, will probably go the same way. The international community, which had been content to parasitize Haiti in its worst moment, recently began to cry that the country is entering a crisis, because the failure to hold elections will cause the dissolution of the parliament on the second Monday of January 2015. Coincidentally, Monday, January 12, 2015 will also be the fifth anniversary of the earthquake: a day for stocktaking, for sure. Clinton’s paltry achievements in reconstruction will not fare well.

Haiti is not entering a crisis, it is emerging from one. If the international community wishes to conduct legitimate business with Haiti, then Clinton’s damages must first be mended. Elections must be held at the earliest possible date for all local officials (mayors, judges), the legislature, and a new president. A prime minister must be appointed, and a supreme court must be seated. With regard to Haiti, the expressions “constitutional crisis” and “political chaos” from the international community have usually been threats to declare a failed state and propose governance by the UN or receivership by the US. Such threats are hardly worth anyone’s notice. It is quite unwise for the UN and US to presume that they would fare better than Napoleon in an attempt to take Haiti by force.

There is no other choice for the Clintons but to leave Haiti, together with their international cohort of parasites, including MINUSTAH, the NGOs and USAID. If Bill Clinton has peddled to his rich friends parts of Haiti that never belonged to him, then let this be his personal quandary. A series of legal actions relating to embezzlement, corruption and money laundering are already being taken against Martelly’s family and Lamothe; Clinton might well get caught in the same net. Contracts entered into during the period of runaway larceny by the Clinton-appointed Martelly-Lamothe regime deserve no more respect than the purchase of one’s stolen watch on a street corner. Haiti is not for sale: not in bulk, not in retail.

 Editor’s Notes: Photographs one, nine, ten, twelve, thirteen and fourteen from UN Photo archive; photographs two, four, six, eight and eleven from the archive of Ansel; photograph seven from the archive of UN Development Program.

Copyright © 2015 Global Research

Haiti’s Promised Rebuil

Haiti’s Promised Rebuilding is Unfulfilled as Haitians Challenge Authoritarian Rule

By Travis Ross and Roger Annis

Global Research, January 09, 2015

Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/haitis-promised-rebuilding-is-unfulfilled-as-haitians-challenge-authoritarian-rule/5423665

Five years after the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake that struck Haiti’s capital region, the loudly-trumpeted reconstruction of the country is still an unrealized dream.

2015 finds Haitians fighting tooth and nail in renewed political mobilizations to create the nation-building project that big governments and aid agencies pledged but then cruelly betrayed.

North American and European powers rushed planeloads and shiploads of soldiers and bottled water to Haiti in the days and weeks following the disaster, saying they would help Haiti “build back better.” The world was aghast at the rare glimpse of Haiti’s poverty provided by earthquake coverage. Leaders like Bill Clinton even acknowledged that the failed economic policies they had imposed over decades had impoverished Haiti and, indeed, are the source of its economic underdevelopment.

But the promises of the multi-billion dollar international relief effort and aid which will reach the grassroots have proven largely illusory.

A key admission in the months following the earthquake was that democratic governance and national sovereignty were essential tools for building Haiti on a new and progressive foundation. Today, the lack of democracy and sovereignty is at the epicenter of the political firestorm sweeping the country.

For many months, the Haitian people have carried out a sustained political mobilization demanding President Michel Martelly’s resignation. They want elections, now postponed for over three years, to bring a new government and parliament that is not afraid to take up the unfinished tasks of post-earthquake reconstruction.

The protest movement calls itself “Operation Burkina Faso,” inspired by events in that west African nation. In October, the people of Burkina Faso overthrew an unpopular president, Blaise Compaoré, and his government. Haitians draw inspiration from that event and, crucially, are aware that it is inspired by the socialist, egalitarian and anti-imperialist ideas of former president Thomas Sankara, killed and overthrown by Compaoré’s forces in 1987.

Haiti’s movement scored an important victory on Dec. 13 when Martelly’s prime minister, Laurent Lamothe, resigned. But Oxygène David, a leader of the Dessalines Coordination (KOD), one of the parties leading the protests, told Haiti Liberté weekly, “Lamothe was just the smallest part of a trinity holding Haiti down. The other two elements are Martelly and MINUSTAH. They also must go for Haiti to have democracy and sovereignty.”

MINUSTAH is the UN Security Council military occupation regime that deployed in Haiti in June 2004 to consolidate the Feb. 29, 2004 coup against Haiti’s progressive and elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The next wave of large protests is planned to take place in cities across Haiti on Jan. 12, the earthquake’s fifth anniversary.

Foreign occupation and the slide to authoritarian rule

Three factors are driving the protest movement — Martelly’s march towards authoritarian rule since coming to power in May 2011, the ongoing MINUSTAH occupation, and the failed record of earthquake reconstruction.

Although two presidential elections have been held in the years following the 2004 coup against Aristide, both Presidents René Préval and Michel Martelly have been dominated by and essentially subservient to imperialist powers. This weak state was dramatically symbolized by the partial collapse of Haiti’s iconic century-old presidential palace in the earthquake. It could not be salvaged and has been razed.

Right after the quake, the U.S., Canada, and Europe rushed Haiti into a election which they brazenly meddled in to establish even stronger neo-colonial rule. A two-round presidential election in November 2010 and March 2011 brought Martelly to the presidency, but only after the Organization of American States (OAS) intervened and illegally changed the outcome. The largest political party in the country — Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas — was excluded, producing the lowest voter turnout of any polling in the Western Hemisphere’s history. The election was entirely financed from abroad.

President Michel Martelly finally managed to get his long-time business partner Laurent Lamothe named as prime minister, and the two declared Haiti “open for business,” meaning that foreign, sweatshop factory investment was to be Haiti’s economic salvation, complemented by foreign aid and charity. Public sector intervention to tackle housing, healthcare, education, and other emergency needs was eschewed.

Martelly was a close ally of the extreme right-wing that twice overthrew Aristide in 1991 and 2004. He honored former tyrant Jean-Claude Duvalier, who was driven out of Haiti by a popular uprising in 1986 and was content (and permitted) to live in France until his embezzled funds ran out and he returned to Haiti in January 2011.

Martelly’s family faces widespread allegations of corruption, including abuse of authority, money laundering, and the squandering public funds. But the Haitian people are also alarmed by Martelly’s steady march toward authoritarian rule. Martelly and Lamothe found excuses not to hold parliamentary and municipal elections, allowing electoral mandates expire. Rather than bargain in good faith with his political opposition to create a provisional electoral commission (CEP) to oversee democratic elections, Martelly sought to create a “permanent” CEP, stacking it with his partisans.

On Jan. 12, 2015, the mandates of most Parliamentarians expire, effectively dissolving the legislative branch. Martelly says he is then prepared to rule by decree.

In the past week, Martelly has nominated a controversial prime minister and concocted a political accord that would extend parliamentary terms and guarantee his own survival until May 14, 2016, but as we go to press, six vanguard senators have refused to vote, saying the prime minister and political map forward should come from the opposition and parliament, not Martelly’s back rooms.

Haiti Liberté‘s Thomas Péralte reported on Dec. 31 that large political protests (for Martelly’s resignation) took place for the first time ever in Haiti on Christmas Eve. Protesters said there is nothing to negotiate with the doomed regime, some saying they would prefer “civil war.”

 Cholera and public health care

Tens of thousands of people died in the earthquake, and half the houses in Port-au-Prince, with a population of nearly three million, were destroyed or seriously damaged. Acute needs were intensified – for health care, sanitation, housing, public education, and economic development (including agriculture).

Early gains in earthquake relief were achieved with the public health initiatives taken by Haiti’s Public Health Ministry in cooperation with international missions, particularly those of  Cuba (working in Haiti since 1999), Partners In Health (present since the 1980s) and many smaller, vital health care projects.

Cuban personnel and hundreds of students and graduates from other countries of the Latin American School of Medicine in Haiti fanned out into some of Haiti’s remotest parts to meet new and existing medical needs.[1] Other Latin American countries made substantial contributions to the Cuban-led health care effort. Cuba proposed a plan to the UN to create a comprehensive, public health care program for the country.

The Boston-based Partners In Health (PIH) expanded its work substantially, including building a second training hospital, opened in Mirebalais in 2012. PIH, too, voiced support and hope for a public health plan.

Tragically, the advances in building medical infrastructure suffered a huge blow in the autumn of 2010. The culprit was Haiti’s familiar old nemesis — foreign political intervention. MINUSTAH soldiers recklessly and criminally introduced cholera into the country when a Nepalese contingent allowed their cholera-infected sewage to flow into Haiti’s largest river system in October 2010. Over four years later, cholera has killed 8,500 people and sickened nearly 800,000, the world’s worst epidemic. The number of reported cases monthly was averaging 2,000 in 2014 but jumped in the latter months of the year.

Although UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has promised money and resources to combat and eventually eradicate cholera, a report one year ago by the Washington DC-based Center for Economic Policy Alternatives noted, “The UN itself has pledged just one per cent of the funding needed for cholera treatment [estimated $2.2 billion], even as the UN’s mostly military and police mission in Haiti costs over $572 million a year”.

A recent report by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) blames those in authority in Haiti for persistent “shortages of funding, human resources, and drugs” in Haiti’s health care system, including for cholera. The UN as well as the major governments participating in MINUSTAH are denying any culpability for introducing cholera to Haiti and then failing to assist in its prevention. Cholera is easy to treat and prevent if there is the will and funds. It just requires potable water delivery and sanitary sewage disposal. That’s why people in New York or Toronto don’t get or die from cholera.

The cholera disaster only deepened the festering wound on Haiti’s body politic known as MINUSTAH. The continued presence of the force is an affront to the dignity and sovereignty of the Haitian people. [2]

 The Housing Crisis

Housing was another of the most immediate needs in Haiti following the earthquake. International aid provided short-term shelters to protect from the elements. A reported 110,000 plywood shelters and tens of thousands of tent shelters were provided. Beginning in 2011, one-year rental subsidies were provided to families as an incentive for them to leave tent camps. The camps were an eyesore as well as visible testimony to the absence of substantial programs to build housing.

After mountains of studies highlighting the need for a massive home-building program in Haiti, the gains are few. According to arecent fact sheet on housing prepared by Church World Service and the Mennonite Central Committee (drawing on figures reported to UN agencies), some 85,000 earthquake victims still live in 123 camps of internally displaced persons within Port-au-Prince’s city limits.

Many tens of thousands more live in the new, sprawling informal suburban shantytowns of Canaan, Onaville, and Jerusalem, located beyond the pre-earthquake northern limits of the city. By a stroke of a pen, these communities are not considered as earthquake survivor settlements. That also means they don’t qualify for formal assistance.

Thirty four per cent of the families that left survivor camps were forced out by people claiming land ownership or by government officials. Twenty two of the remaining camps face eviction.

The aforementioned fact sheet reports that in the past five years, 27,353 houses have been repaired and 9,053 have been built, at a cost of $215 million. That amount compares to $500 million spent on the plywood shelters, most of which have long since deteriorated in the tropical weather or have been dismantled to build more permanent structures.

The UN-sponsored housing coordination body said in 2013: “Haiti needs to meet the challenge of constructing 500,000 new homes in order to meet the current housing deficit between now and 2020.”

The key instrument of Martelly’s housing “policy,” in keeping with the “Open for business” mantra, has been promises of financing for house construction. No housing agency of the government was created. But Haiti does not have networks of personal banking where people could obtain loans, and in any event, the proposal was laughable because most Haitians don’t have incomes to speak of. According to the updated country report on Haiti by the World Bank, more than six million out of Haiti’s population of 10.4 million live under the national poverty line of $2.44 per day. Over 2.5 million Haitians live under the national extreme poverty line of $1.24 per day. How are they to obtain loans to build houses?

In reality, the most active area of housing policy has been the clearing of survivor camps by force or by short-term economic lures. The latter has been facilitated by the Canada-funded, $20 million program of providing one-year rental subsidies.

 Education

Public education was another key social need identified after the earthquake. Before the disaster, half of Haitian children did not attend school. The number reaching secondary school was much less. In 2011, the Martelly regime created a national education fund whose goal was said to get every Haitian child into school. It was to be financed by taxes on international phone calls and money transfers, which were never ratified or overseen by Parliament as constitutionally dictated. The plan has been plagued by a lack of transparency, and its achievements are very slim.

School administrators say that promised funding under the plan does not get delivered. Or it arrives months late. This year, the opening of the school year in September was delayed by a month because parents said they couldn’t afford to buy the textbooks and other supplies that schools were not supplying.

One of the outcomes of the fund, according to a lengthy investigation by Haiti Grassroots Watch published (in French) last July is that private schools have been favored over public schools. About 80% of Haiti’s primary and secondary schools are private, typically operated by churches and other charities from abroad.

Teacher unions in Haiti opposed the fund because it had no legislative authority and therefore operates outside of public oversight. Teachers have battled for years to establish a public education system and to pay teachers living wages. Last spring, strike action won salary increases of 30% to 60%, but salaries are still woefully inadequate.

Misguided economic development

Economic development was cited as key to Haiti’s future following the earthquake, including for agriculture. Most Haitians still live in the countryside, and those forced to move to the cities by economic circumstance have not done so freely. But international aid and governments never came close to fundamental change in this sphere. They rehabilitated the failed dogma that posits Haiti’s low-wage, factory labor force as an economic asset to be built upon. And they perpetuated the neglect of Haiti’s all–important agricultural production, including environmental decline prompted by deforestation.

A centerpiece of the sweatshop labor strategy promoted by former U.S. President Bill Clinton and current presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton is the Caracol Industrial Park, located far from the earthquake zone in Haiti’s north. It was touted to create tens of thousands of jobs when its idea was launched in 2010. But a 2013 investigation by reporter Jonathan Katz revealed that “fewer than 1,500 jobs have been created — paying too little, the locals say, and offering no job security.”

Katz reports, “Hundreds of smallholder farmers were coaxed into giving up more than 600 acres of land for the [industrial park] complex, yet nearly 95% of that land remains unused. A much-needed power plant was completed on the site, supplying the town with more electricity than ever, but locals say surges of wastewater have caused floods and spoiled crops.”

Assembly factories in the new park routinely pay below the meager US$4.76 average daily minimum wage. A report by the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the International Finance Cooperation (IFC) in 2013, which monitor and enforce factories’ compliance with national and international standards, found that all 24 of the factories it monitored in Haiti were “non-compliant”. All violate occupational safety and health standards. All violate minimum wage laws, and 11 violate overtime standards. None provide adequate health and first aid services, and 22 were in violation of  worker protection standards.

And what has become of the billions of dollars of aid promised to Haiti” A report by CEPR in 2013 said that much of the aid earmarked for Haiti was not spent in Haiti at all; it went to foreign contractors. “67.1% of USAID contracts has gone to Beltway-based firms, while just 1.3% has gone to Haitian companies”, it wrote. And “of the $6.43 billion do-gooders by bilateral and multilateral donors to Haiti from 2010-2012, just nine percent went through the Haitian government.”

Writing in July of 2014, the CEPR reported that of the $1.38 billion awarded by USAID to projects in Haiti, just $12.36 million has gone to Haitian organizations. Of the Haitian amount, 57% went to Cemex Haiti, a local cement mixing outlet and subsidiary of the Mexican Cemex, the Mexican company that is one of the largest cement producers in the world. (Cemex purchased the former state-owned cement producer in Haiti some 15 years ago.)

A lot of celebrities and other prominent people have come and gone from Haiti over the past five years. Careers have been created or polished up by charitable works. The Clintons come to mind. Many Hollywood actors. Canada’s former governor-general (titular head of state), Michaëlle Jean,  was a mouthpiece for the 2004 coup while she was governor general, then she became a Special Ambassador to Haiti for UNESCO following the earthquake. Recently, she rode rough over the objections of African countries to become the head of the Francophonie organization of French-speaking countries. What all these people as well as many other foreign do-gooders shared in common was their support for the political project keeping MINUSTAH and local clients (Martelly or some other derivative of him) in charge of the country, at the expense of the Haitian people.

CEPR Director Mark Weisbrot wrote one year ago that the lasting legacy of the earthquake “is the international community’s profound failure to set aside its own interests and respond to the most pressing needs of the Haitian people.”

But then there is the Haitian people – their mounting political actions and their unrelenting determination to build a country based on sovereignty and social justice. And their true and faithful international allies. Like the countries and healthcare projects mentioned earlier in this article. Like the lawyers of Bureau des avocats internationaux (BAI) and Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) who are suing the UN on behalf of the victims of cholera. Like the SOIL sanitation project and the organizations of peasants and farmers of Latin America who are working in the Haitian countryside. Like many school support projects which are an important form of the struggle for public education in Haiti.

These are the organizations which are working together with the Haitian people to help shape Haiti’s future.

Notes

[1] For an early 2010 report of these efforts see ‘Field Notes from Haiti: After the Earthquake’, by MEDICC (Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba).

[2] Read an eight page essay on the history of foreign intervention in Haiti: ‘ Haiti’s humanitarian crisis: Rooted in history of military coups and occupations ’, by Roger Annis and Kim Ives, May 2011.

 Here are places to go for information:
CHAN website, Haiti Liberté, IJDH

Copyright © 2015 Global Researchding is Unfulfilled as Haitians Challenge Authoritarian Rule

Five Years Ago: A Haiti Disaster Relief Scenario Tested by US Military One Day Before the Earthquake

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, January 13, 2015

Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/a-haiti-disaster-relief-scenario-was-envisaged-by-the-us-military-one-day-before-the-earthquake/17122

A Haiti disaster relief scenario had been envisaged at the headquarters of US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) in Miami one day prior to the earthquake.

The holding of pre-disaster simulations pertained to the impacts of a hurricane in Haiti. They were held on January 11. (Bob Brewin,  Defense launches online system to coordinate Haiti relief efforts (1/15/10) — GovExec.com, complete text of article is contained in Annex)

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), which is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense (DoD), was involved in organizing these scenarios on behalf of US Southern Command.(SOUTHCOM).

Defined as a “Combat Support Agency”, DISA has a mandate to provide IT and telecommunications, systems, logistics services in support of the US military. (See DISA website: Defense Information Systems Agency).

On the day prior to the earthquake, “on Monday [January 11, 2010], Jean Demay, DISA’s technical manager for the agency’s Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, happened to be at the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami preparing for a test of the system in a scenario that involved providing relief to Haiti in the wake of a hurricane.” (Bob Brewin, op cit, emphasis added)

The Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project (TISC) is a communications-information tool which  “links non-government organizations with the United States [government and military] and other nations for tracking, coordinating and organizing relief efforts”.(Government IT Scrambles To Help Haiti, TECHWEB January 15, 2010).

The TISC is an essential component of the militarization of emergency relief. The US military through DISA oversees the information – communications system used by participating aid agencies. Essentially, it is a communications sharing system controlled by the US military, which is made available to approved non-governmental partner organizations. The Defense Information Systems Agency also “provides bandwidth to aid organizations involved in Haiti relief efforts.”

There are no details on the nature of the tests conducted on January 11 at SOUTHCOM headquarters.

DISA’s Jean Demay was in charge of coordinating the tests. There are no reports on the participants involved in the disaster relief scenarios.

One would expect, given DISA’s mandate, that the tests pertained to simulating communications. logistics and information systems in the case of a major emergency relief program in Haiti.

The fundamental concept underlying DISA’s Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project (TISC) is  to “Achieve Interoperability With Warfighters, Coalition Partners And NGOs” (Defense Daily, December 19, 2008)

Upon completing the tests and disaster scenarios on January 11, TISC was considered to be, in relation to Haiti, in “an advanced stage of readiness”. On January 13, the day following the earthquake, SOUTHCOM took the decision to implement the TISC system, which had been rehearsed in Miami two days earlier:

“After the earthquake hit on Tuesday [January 12, 2010], Demay said SOUTHCOM decided to go live with the system. On [the following day] Wednesday [January 13, 2010], DISA opened up its All Partners Access Network, supported by the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, to any organization supporting Haiti relief efforts.

The information sharing project, developed with backing from both SOUTHCOM and the Defense Department’s European Command, has been in development for three years.It is designed to facilitate multilateral collaboration between federal and nongovernmental agencies.

Demay said that since DISA set up a Haiti Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Community of Interest on APAN on Wednesday [the day following the earthquake], almost 500 organizations and individuals have joined, including a range of Defense units and various nongovernmental organizations and relief groups. (Bob Brewin, Defense launches online system to coordinate Haiti relief efforts (1/15/10) — GovExec.com emphasis added)

DISA has a Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) Field Office in Miami. Under the Haiti Disaster Emergency Program initiated on January 12, DISA’s mandate is described as part of a carefully planned military operation:

“DISA is providing US Southern Command with information capabilities which will support our nation in quickly responding to the critical situation in Haiti,” said Larry K. Huffman, DISA’s Principal Director of Global Information Grid Operations. “Our experience in providing support to contingency operations around the world postures us to be responsive in meeting USSOUTHCOM’s requirements.”

DISA, a Combat Support Agency, engineers and [sic] provides command and control capabilities and enterprise infrastructure to continuously operate and assure a global net-centric enterprise in direct support to joint warfighters, National level leaders, and other mission and coalition partners across the full spectrum of operations. As DoD’s satellite communications leader, DISA is using the Defense Satellite Communications System to provide frequency and bandwidth support to all organizations in the Haitian relief effort. This includes Super High Frequency missions that are providing bandwidth for US Navy ships and one Marine Expeditionary Unit that will arrive shortly on station to provide medical help, security, and helicopters among other support. This also includes all satellite communications for the US Air Force handling round-the-clock air traffic control and air freight operations at the extremely busy Port-Au-Prince Airport. DISA is also providing military Ultra High Frequency channels and contracting for additional commercial SATCOM missions that greatly increase this capability for relief efforts. (DISA -Press Release, January 2010, undated, emphasis added)

In the immediate wake of the earthquake, DISA played a key supportive role to SOUTHCOM, which was designated by the Obama administration as the de facto “lead agency” in the US Haitian relief program. The underlying system consists in integrating civilian aid agencies into the orbit of an advanced communications information system controlled by the US military.

“DISA is also leveraging a new technology in Haiti that is already linking NGOs, other nations and US forces together to track, coordinate and better organize relief efforts” (Ibid)

Related article

The Militarization of Emergency Aid to Haiti: Is it a Humanitarian Operation or an Invasion? 
- by Michel Chossudovsky – 2010-01-15

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) (Montreal), which hosts the award-winning website: www.globalresearch.ca. He is the author of the international best-seller The Globalisation of Poverty and The New World Order and contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He is member of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission and recipient of the Human Rights Prize of the Society for the Protection of Civil Rights and Human Dignity (GBM), Berlin, Germany. His writings have been published into more than twenty languages.

Michel Chossudovsky’s books can be ordered directly from Global Research

ANNEX

Defense launches online system to coordinate Haiti relief efforts

By Bob Brewin, Govexec.com 01/15/2010

http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=44407&dcn=e_gvetwww

As personnel representing hundreds of government and nongovernmental agencies from around the world rush to the aid of earthquake-devastated Haiti, the Defense Information Systems Agency has launched a Web portal with multiple social networking tools to aid in coordinating their efforts.

On Monday [January 11, 2010, a day before the earthquake], Jean Demay, DISA’s technical manager for the agency’s Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, happened to be at the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami preparing for a test of the system in a scenario that involved providing relief to Haiti in the wake of a hurricane. After the earthquake hit on Tuesday [January 12, 2010], Demay said SOUTHCOM decided to go live with the system. On Wednesday [January 13, 2010], DISA opened up its All Partners Access Network, supported by the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, to any organization supporting Haiti relief efforts.

The information sharing project, developed with backing from both SOUTHCOM and the Defense Department’s European Command, has been in development for three years. It is designed to facilitate multilateral collaboration between federal and nongovernmental agencies.

Demay said that since DISA set up a Haiti Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Community of Interest on APAN on Wednesday, almost 500 organizations and individuals have joined, including a range of Defense units and various nongovernmental organizations and relief groups.

APAN provides a series of collaboration tools, including geographical information systems, wikis, YouTube and MySpace-like pages and multilingual chat rooms.

Meanwhile, other organizations are tackling different technological challenges. Gianluca Bruni, the Dubai-based information technology chief for emergency preparedness and response for the World Food Programme, is setting up networks and systems to support United Nations and nongovernmental organizations in Haiti. WFP already has dispatched two communications kits to Haiti, with satellite systems that operate at 1 megabit per second and can support up to 100 users. It also has sent laptop computers, Wi-Fi access points and long-range point-to-point wireless systems to connect remote users to the satellite terminals. Bruni said eventually WFP plans to set up cyber cafés in Haiti for use all relief workers in the country.

Jon Anderson, a DISA spokesman, said the agency is supplying 10 megabits of satellite capacity to Navy, Marine and Air Force units engaged in the Haiti relief operation.

Many of the relief organizations and agencies in Haiti are bringing their own radio systems to the country. DISA has deployed a three-person team from its Joint Spectrum Management Element to help manage radio frequency spectrum.

The Joint Forces Command’s Joint Communications Support Element deployed two teams equipped with satellite systems and VoIP phones to support SOUTCOM in Port-au-Prince late Wednesday. Those systems were operational “in a matter of hours,” said JCSE Chief of Staff Chris Wilson. The organization will send another team to Haiti in the next few days.

Wilson said JCSE was able to get its gear into Haiti quickly because the systems already were loaded on pallets in Miami in preparation for an exercise that has been canceled.

So many governments and agencies from around the world have responded to the crisis in Haiti that they have overwhelmed the ability of the Port-au-Prince airport to handle incoming relief flights. The Federal Aviation Administration has had a ground-stop on aircraft headed for Haiti for much of the past two days.

FAA warned in an advisory Friday that “due to limited ramp space at Port-au-Prince airport,” with the exception of international cargo flights, “the Haitians are not accepting any aircraft into their airspace.”

The advisory added that domestic U.S. military and civilian flights to Haiti must be first be cleared by its command center. Exemptions will be based solely on the basis of ramp space. The agency also starkly warned “there is no available fuel” at the Port-au-Prince airport.

Copyright Bob Brewin, Govexec.com, 2010.

AMERICA’S “WAR ON TERRORISM”

by Michel Chossudovsky

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In this new and expanded edition of Michel Chossudovsky’s 2002 best seller, the author blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on America by “Islamic terrorists”.  Through meticulous research, the author uncovers a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and the cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration.

The expanded edition, which includes twelve new chapters focuses on the use of 9/11 as a pretext for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq, the militarisation of justice and law enforcement and the repeal of democracy.

According to Chossudovsky, the  “war on terrorism” is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The “war on terrorism” is a war of conquest. Globalisation is the final march to the “New World Order”, dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex.

September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington’s agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State.

Chossudovsky peels back layers of rhetoric to reveal a complex web of deceit aimed at luring the American people and the rest of the world into accepting a military solution which threatens the future of humanity.

The last chapter includes an analysis of the London  7/7 Bomb Attacks.

CLICK TO ORDER (mail order or online order)
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Copyright © 2015 Global Research

Haiti “Reconstruction”: Luxury Hotels, Sweat Shops and Deregulation for the Foreign Corporate Elite

By Julie Lévesque

Global Research, January 12, 2015

Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/haiti-reconstruction-luxury-hotels-sweat-shops-and-deregulation-for-the-foreign-corporate-elite/5344546

This article was first published on August 16, 2013. Today Haiti commemorates the 5th anniversary of the devastating earthquake.

Picture: Girl in a displacement camp, January 2013. REUTERS, Swoan Parker

“The international community is so screwed up they’re letting Haitians run Haiti.” –Luigi R. Einaudi, US career diplomat, member of the Council on Foreign Relations and former Assistant Secretary General at the Organization of American States

Haitian author and human rights attorney Ezili Dantò heard Luigi R. Einaudi make this shocking comment in 2004, as Haiti was about to celebrate its 200 years of independence with its first democratically elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Apart from his efforts to raise the minimum wage and other social measures for the majority of Haitians living in extreme poverty, Aristide planned to nationalize his country’s resources, a move which meant more money for Haitians and less for multinationals. One month later, in the name of the “international community”, Aristide was overthrown in a coup d’état orchestrated by the U.S., France and Canada.

Today, the “international community” is running Haiti again, colonial style.

One can easily tell by comparing the very slow construction of shelters and basic infrastructure for the Haitian majority with the rapid rise of luxury hotels for foreigners, sometimes with the help of aid funds which, we were told, were going to provide Haitians with basic necessities.

Most of the aid money went to donor countries’ businesses, government agencies and NGOs, as usual. International “aid” is a well-known capitalist scheme aimed at developing markets in the global south for businesses from the North. Of course this “aid” will benefit Haitians. But only the very few elite ones: those in power and the rich corporate elite. “Haiti’s open for business” and deluxe hotels will be welcoming businessmen so they can set up their sweat shops in a cool and luxurious environment.

Picture (left): Original caption “Back in 2011, the U.N. and Oxfam promised that a new system of cisterns and kiosks would soon provide residents with water from the state water agency. Two years later, the faucets remain dry [see photo]. Residents buy water at 5 gourdes (about US$0.12 cents) a bucket from private vendors or from the committees that manage the few still-functioning water “bladders” left over from the camp’s early days when water and food were free and when agencies provided “cash for work” jobs and start-up funds for would-be entrepreneurs.” (Reconstruction’s Massive Slum Will Cost “Hundreds Of Millions” Reconstruction’s Massive Slum Will Cost “Hundreds Of Millions” Haiti Grassroots Watch, June 17, 2013)

“Several new luxury hotels in Haiti”

A year ago the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund invested humanitarian aid money in a five star hotel, as some 500,000 Haitians were still in displaced camps:

Picture (right): Oasis Hotel, Petionville Haiti

As part of the country’s “Reconstruction”, The Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund recently invested $2 million in the Royal Oasis Hotel, a deluxe structure to be built in a poverty-stricken metropolitan area “filled with displaced-persons camps housing hundreds of thousands”. (Julie Lévesque, HAITI: Humanitarian Aid for Earthquake Victims Used to Build Five Star Hotels, Global Research, June 28, 2012)

Now, as 300,000 Haitians are still living in camps, a “new Marriott hotel rising from the rubble in Haiti is getting a $26.5 million financial boost” from the International Financial Corporation (IFC), member of the World Bank Group:

Marriott International and telecom giant Digicel broke ground on the hotel last year, and it is expected to open in 2015. It will be among several new luxury hotels in Haiti after the devastating Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake. Spain’s Occidental Hotels & Resort and U.S.-based Best Western have both opened hotels in the last six months in Petionville, a Port-au-Prince suburb. Spanish hotel chain NH Hotels also will open a new El Rancho in Petionville over the next few months.

IFC officials say the Marriott’s construction is expected to create about 300 jobs. The hotel itself will offer 200 permanent jobs. Marriott Hotels & Resorts will operate the hotel under a long-term management agreement.

The IFC currently has about $78.5 million worth of investments in Haiti, which continues to limp toward recovery more than three years after the quake nearly wiped out its economy. The investments are aimed at creating jobs, access to basic infrastructure, and income opportunities for Haitians, the IFC said.

“Haiti has the fundamental conditions for sustainable economic growth, including a competitive workforce, proximity to major markets, and unique cultural and tourist attractions,” said Ary Naim, IFC Representative for Haiti. “With our long-term financing support for this new and important piece of business infrastructure, we are confirming our commitment and confidence in Haiti’s future.” (Jacqueline Charles New Marriott under construction in Haiti getting financial boost, Miami Herald, July 3, 2013)

Picture: Best Western Petionville, Haiti.

How a luxury hotel in a rich suburban area helps give the 300,000 displaced and most impoverished Haitians “access to basic infrastructure” has yet to be demonstrated. Moreover, it won’t create jobs for those who need it the most. It is very unlikely that a deluxe hotel in the plush suburb of Petionville will hire many poor, needy, often illiterate Haitians who only speak Creole to work for rich foreigners. These people are the “competitive work force” and end up in sweat shops and mines. What “competitive workforce” and “proximity to major markets” actually mean is “cheap labor for the U.S.”

On its web site the IFC says its investments are “focused on helping rebuild Haiti and reactivate growth through investment and advisory services, in priority sectors such as garment, infrastructure, telecom, tourism, and finance.” In addition to the $26.5 million for the Marriott, the IFC has invested $7.7 million to the aforementioned Oasis hotel, also located in Petionville. (IFC Investment Generation in Haiti)

In total, almost half of IFC investments have helped the construction of deluxe hotels in a rich suburb, home to the Haitian elite.

The World Bank: An Imperial Tool

The IFC is part of the World Bank Group. The World Bank has been criticized for previous initiatives like the Project for Participatory Community Development (PRODEP). An eight month investigation by Haiti Grassroots Watch found that PRODEP “helped undermine an already weak state, damaged Haiti’s ‘social tissue,’ carried out what could be called ‘social and political reengineering,’… raised questions of waste and corruption… contributed to Haiti’s growing status as an ‘NGO Republic’… damaged traditional solidarity systems and in some cases even strengthened the power of local elites.” (World Bank “success” undermines Haitian democracy, Haiti Grassroots Watch, December 20, 2012)

Recently, in May 2013, Alexandre Abrantes, the World Bank special envoy to Haiti announced that the “World Bank is supporting the Haitian government in improving the frameworks for mining, including legal provisions which are largely considered inadequate for current requirements,” Daniel Trenton, (World Bank says its helping Haiti draft mining legislation, The Gazette, May 17, 2013)

For Ezili Dantò, the U.S. and the World Bank are simply rewriting Haiti’s constitution to benefit mining companies:

Oxfam, [the] World Bank and the other fake philanthropic folks [are] involved in protecting the interests of the one percenters, re-writing Haiti mining laws…

ARTICLE 36-5 of the Haitian Constitution, states:

“The right to own property does not extend to the coasts, springs, rivers, water courses, mines and quarries. They are part of the State’s public domain.”

Haiti’s current law doesn’t allow drilling without a signed mining convention. But US Newmont mining got a “waiver” to the current Haiti law without the approval of even the puppet Haiti legislature. Martelly signed it in violation of the Haiti Constitution. (Ezili Dantò, Haiti: US to Re-Write Haiti Constitution to Better Service the One Percent, Black Agenda Report July 2, 2013)

Haitian mineral resources alone have been estimated at $20 billion. “U.S. and Canadian investors have spent more than $30 million in recent years on exploratory drilling and other mining-related activities in Haiti.” (Trenton, op. cit.)

Slow Reconstruction, Slave Labor and the International Aid Deception

Picture left: Jean-Marie Vincent camp, January 2013. AP/Dieu Nalio Chery

Unlike the fast-growing luxury hotel industry, the reconstruction efforts face many delays and various financial hurdles. Last June, a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report criticised USAID for its lack of transparency, multiple delays, cost overruns and reduced goals. The report points to a striking paradox: although the sums allocated to sheltering have almost doubled, the number of houses to be built has been reduced by an astonishing 80 percent:

In 2010, just months after Haiti was struck by a devastating earthquake, the United States passed legislation allocating $651 million to USAID to support relief and reconstruction efforts. Three years later, just 31 percent of these funds have been spent as delays mount and goals are scaled back… The report also criticizes USAID for a lack of transparency…

The GAO found that inaccurate cost estimates and delays led to an increase in the amount dedicated to providing shelter from $59 million to $97 million while at the same time “decreased the projected number of houses to be built by over 80 percent, from 15,000 to 2,649.” Originally estimated to cost less than $10,000 for a completed house, actual costs have been greater than $33,000. USAID has awarded over $46 million to contractors for housing. Meanwhile, some 300,000 people remain in camps over three years after the earthquake. Overall, the humanitarian community has constructed just 7,000 new homes, about 40 percent of what is currently planned…

Further, the GAO report is critical of U.S. investments supporting the Caracol Industrial Park.  Randal C. Archibold of the New York Times reports:

A big portion of Agency for International Development money, $170.3 million, went toward a power plant and port for an industrial park in northern Haiti that was the centerpiece of United States reconstruction efforts and had been heavily promoted by the State Department and former President Bill Clinton…

Although the aid agency completed the power plant under budget, the port, crucial to the industrial park’s long-term success, is two years behind schedule “due in part to a lack of U.S.A.I.D. expertise in port planning in Haiti,” the report said, and is now vulnerable to cost overruns. (GAO Report Critical of USAID in Haiti, Bolsters Calls for Increased Oversight, Center for Economic and Policy Research, June 26, 2013)

The delays and potential cost overruns related to the construction of Caracol’s essential port are easily explained by the fact that USAID received $72 million for its planning and construction, despite its cruel lack of expertise. Indeed USAID has not built such a structure in the past 40 years:

Despite having “not constructed a port anywhere in the world since the 1970s”, USAID allocated $72 million dollars to build one, according to [the] GAO report released last week. The port is meant to help support the Caracol Industrial Park (CIP) which was constructed with funding from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and $170 million in funding from the U.S. for related infrastructure.  The CIP has been held up as the flagship reconstruction project undertaken by the international community in Haiti. Even after putting aside criticisms of the location, types of jobs and the environmental impact of the CIP, the “success” of the entire project hinges on the new port…

Without any in-house expertise in port construction at USAID, the mission turned to private contractors. HRRW reported in January 2012 that MWH Americas was awarded a “$2.8 million contract to conduct a feasibility study for port infrastructure in northern Haiti.” The expected completion date was May 2012. MWH Americas had previously been criticized for their work in New Orleans, with the Times-Picayune reporting that MWH had “been operating for more than two years under a dubiously awarded contract that has allowed it to overbill the city repeatedly even as the bricks-and-mortar recovery work it oversees has lagged.” (USAID’s Lack of Expertise, Reliance on Contractors Puts Sustainability of Caracol in Doubt, Center for Economic and Policy Research, July 2, 2013)

These examples illustrate perfectly what “international aid” is all about. Ezili Dantò explains:

The NGOs carry out US imperial policies in Haiti in exchange for “charity funding” – which means, they money launder US tax payer and donor dollars and put it in their pockets. US imperial policies is about destroying Haiti manufacturing and local economy, expropriating Haiti natural resources and making a larger Haiti market for their subsidized Wall Street monopolies.

The economic elites made billions upon billions before the $9-billion the US “big-hearted humanitarians” would add to their coffers from laundering earthquake relief dollars largely back to US groups.

But the NGOs and their Hollywood, media and academic cohorts play firemen to the US government’s arsonist role in Haiti and the global south. The professional posers – the white industrial charitable complex – play an underhanded game. For instance “The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) analyzed the $1.15 billion pledged after the January 2010 quake to Haiti and found that the “vast majority” of the money it could follow went straight to U.S. companies or organizations, more than half in the Washington area alone.” (Ezili Dantò, op. cit.).

“Haitians earn less today than they did under the Duvalier dictatorship”

The giant Caracol Industrial Park was inaugurated in March 2013 in the presence of President Martelly, as well as “Haitian and foreign diplomats, the Clinton power couple, millionaires and actors, all present to celebrate the government’s clarion call: ‘Haiti is open for business.’” (The Caracol Industrial Park: Worth the risk? Haiti Grassroots Watch, March 7, 2013)

Caracol was promoted as a way to decentralize the country and potentially create between 20,000 and 65,000 jobs. The results one year later are far from expectations:

One year after it started operations, only 1,388 people work in the park… Also, HGW research amongst a sampling of workers found that at the end of the day, most have only 57 gourdes, or US$1.36, in hand after paying for transportation and food out of their minimum wage 200-gourde (US$4.75) salary.

HGW also learned that most of the farmers kicked off their plots to make way for the park are still without land.

“Before, Caracol was the breadbasket of the Northeast department,” said Breüs Wilcien, one of the farmers expelled from the 250-hectare zone. “Right now there is a shortage of some products in the local markets. We are just sitting here in misery.” (Ibid.)

Destroying food sovereignty in the global south is a common practice used by the global north through international bodies like the World Bank and the IMF. The goal is to keep the South dependent on the North and create a market for exportation, deceptively labelled “food aid” for photo ops and to conceal the real intent: dumping.

Clearly, in addition to providing slave labor for U.S. and other foreign garment companies, the Caracol Industrial Park has contributed to reduce even more what remains of the local farming in Haiti, eradicated over the years by a barbaric U.S. foreign policy. A 2010 report from the Council on Hemispheric Affairs found that Haiti’s “savior” “President Clinton and other recent White House tenants [condemned] Haiti to a future of endemic poverty through a self-serving U.S. rice export policy.” (Leah Chavla, Bill Clinton’s heavy hand on Haiti’s vulnerable agricultural economy: The American rice scandal, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, April 13, 2010)

Picture: Notice workers who earn less than $5 a day do not smile. Clinton is the only one smiling. Original caption: “Former U.S. President and U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti, Bill Clinton, smiles as he is greeted by garment workers at the Caracol Industrial Park Monday, Oct. 22, 2012, in Caracol, Haiti. The industrial park in northern Haiti is expected to create up to 65, 000 new jobs. It is a $300 million initiative by the governments of Haiti, the U.S. and the Inter-American Development Bank.” (Clintons visit Haiti to inaugurate new industrial park, The Bee. Picture: Carl Juste, Miami Herald) 

Haiti expert Isabeau Doucet notes:

In the 1950s, agriculture made up 90 per cent of Haiti’s exports; today, 90 per cent of exports are from the apparel sector, while more than half the country’s food is imported…

Preferential free-trade deals signed between Haiti and the United States—named HOPE (Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act, 2006), HOPE II (2008) and HELP (Haiti Economic Lift Program, 2008)—have been part of a push to expand Haiti’s apparel industry by branding “Made in Haiti” garments as somehow humanitarian, socially responsible, and good for Haiti’s “development,” while also giving duty-free access to US markets.

According to a 2011 study by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the estimated cost of living in Port-au-Prince is $29 a day. Two hundred gourdes for an eight-hour work shift is one-sixth the AFL-CIO’s estimated living wage. Transport to and from work and a modest lunch could easily cost a worker 120 gourdes. Indeed, Haitians earn less today than they did under the Duvalier dictatorship; wages have barely increased and are worth half their 1984 purchasing power. (Isabeau Doucet, Made in Haiti, Dumped in Haiti: Slave Labor and the Garment Industry, The Dominion 10 July 2013)

Displaced people dumped on a wasteland

While the tourism industry is rapidly growing, people have been evicted from the city and dumped on a wasteland in a camp called Corail-Cesselesse, also known as “Canaan,” “Jerusalem” and “ONAville”. The camp on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince could “become the country’s most expansive – and most expensive – slum” where there are no jobs and water is hard to find.

Picture: City Hall annex in Croix-des-Bouquets, Canaan.

Today, all of the big agencies have abandoned the Corail camp and its 10,000 residents. Trumpeting their success and claiming to have prepared a “transition” to the local authorities, [International Organization of Migration] IOM, [American Refugee Committee] ARC and World Vision all pulled out (although World Vision still supports the Corail School, which it built). (Reconstruction’s Massive Slum Will Cost “Hundreds Of Millions” Reconstruction’s Massive Slum Will Cost “Hundreds Of Millions” Haiti Grassroots Watch, June 17, 2013)

The international community is not helping rebuild Haiti. It is improving colonialism in Haiti with its companies, using the country’s population as slave labor to boost profits. The startling difference between the slow reconstruction efforts for Haitians as opposed to the rapid rise of the luxury hotel industry shows that in Haiti, the foreigners come first. Sadly white supremacy and slavery are still alive and well in the “pearl of the Antilles”.

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