HLLN 8 April 2008

News and opinions on situation in Haiti

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The Zakafest in Miami (from May 1 to May 4, 2008), will honor the art and science of Haitian culture and pay special tribute to Racine/Roots music. Those who attend will get to meet some of the original and legendary Sanba Yo (Azaka and Zao) and Foula Jazz musicians. Go to this website for more information: www.thebackyardshow.net/main/zaka.html and www.thebackyardshow.net/main/zakafest/

Foula on Youtube www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHRlZPq8XA0

The Minimum Wage Struggle in Haiti: Let’s support the Haitian workers’ struggle for a minimum wage adjustment and the struggle to lower the cost of living, a two-pronged struggle \ www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=8552

In this post

– Haiti reels from food protests UN peacekeepers have called for calm as protesters burn tyres and vehicles across Haiti [AFP], April 7, 2008 english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/EF148E23-958B-45A1-956D-FEDAC8847D05.htm

– Video: Deadly Food Riots in Haiti www.reuters.com/article/americasCrisis/idUS12075580124

– Haiti: protesters demand food | Weekly News Update on the Americas, April 6, 2008 | weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/

– The Minimum Wage Struggle in Haiti by Kopa, April 6, 2008, Anarkismo www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=8552

– Krangou Klorox (Clorox Hunger) by Ezili Danto, March 29, 2008

Haiti reels from food protests UN peacekeepers have called for calm as protesters burn tyres and vehicles across Haiti [AFP] | April 7, 2008

english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/EF148E23-958B-45A1-956D-FEDAC8847D05.htm

One person has been shot dead in the southern Haitian city of Les Cayes during continuing protests across the country against food prices, officials and media reports say.

Thousands of people also gathered on Monday outside the parliament and palace in the capital, Port-au-Prince, some blaming UN peacekeepers for the crisis. Businesses and schools closed in the capital while barricades of burning tyres were laid down the city, witnesses said.

“We are hungry,’’ some protesters shouted, while others carried posters saying: “Down with the expensive life.”

Four people died and about 15 people were injured in similar protests last Thursday in Les Cayes.

The protests began last Wednesday.

Rising food prices

Prices of staples foods such as rice, beans, fruit and condensed milk have gone up 50 per cent in the past year in Haiti.

A UN spokeswoman appealed for calm as peacekeepers defended government buildings, calling on protesters to “reject violence”.

“Why don’t they eliminate taxes on food products and give the population a break?”

Resident of Les Cayes Witnesses told the Reuters news agency that Monday’s death occurred in Les Cayes after protesters attempted to storm a senator’s home.

Gunfire erupted and two men were wounded with one dying later in hospital, city officials said.

However, other reports said the man was killed during an incident with hotel security guards in the city.

“The government is solely responsible for what is happening today because it has failed to properly address the problems,” one resident told Reuters.

“Why don’t they eliminate taxes on food products and give the population a break?”

‘Under control’

Haitian security forces said they had reinforced their numbers and brought in a new battalion of Brazilian UN peacekeepers.

“We have the situation under control,” Henriot Toussaint, police chief for the southern region, said.

In response to the unrest, Jacques Edouard Alexis, Haiti’s prime minister, announced a multimillion-dollar investment programme aimed at lowering the cost of living.

Haiti, with a population of around 8.5 million, is the poorest country in the Americas, with 80 per cent of its population earning less than two dollars a day, below the UN-established poverty rate.

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Video: Deadly Food Riots in Haiti, Reuters

April 5, 2008 – The prime minister appeals for calm after protests over the high cost of living flare into riots, leaving four dead.

Officials in southern Haiti report at least four deaths after demonstrations against rising food prices turned into riots. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this week called on the international community and Haiti’s leaders to keep up their efforts to bring stability to the country.

Susan Flory reports. www.reuters.com/article/americasCrisis/idUS12075580124

– Weekly News Update on the Americas |Issue #942, April 6, 2008 1. Haiti: Protesters Demand Food 2. Haiti: Protesters Blame UN for Death weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/

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Haiti: protesters demand food weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/

*1. Haiti: Protesters Demand Food

Some 5,000 protesters shut down the southern Haitian city of Les Cayes on Apr. 3 in a dramatic demonstration against President René Préval’s government for failing to slow the rising cost of food and other staple products; they also protested the local administration’s failure to maintain roads. From early in the morning people barricaded streets with burning tires, forcing stores, banks and schools to close down in the city, the country’s third largest. While many people demonstrated peacefully, others looted food and containers of cement from trucks and warehouses. Some protesters raided the offices of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) in the Breset neighborhood, carrying away computers and other office equipment. Two MINUSTAH vehicles were set on fire.

Official sources said on Apr. 3 that there were no major injuries in the Les Cayes protests, and MINUSTAH spokesperson Fred Blaise claimed that crowds were under control by the end of the day. Sources in Les Cayes gave a different story, reporting that the disturbances continued into Apr. 4 and that two people were shot dead and 18 were injured, 12 of them by bullets, during the 48 hours of demonstrations. Some people put the number of the dead at four; one of those killed was said to be named Jean Baptiste Zary. There were conflicting reports on who was responsible for the shooting, although some people in Les Cayes blamed soldiers trying to drive back the demonstrators. On Apr. 4 Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis confirmed one death.

Demonstrations against the high cost of living—lavichè (”expensive life”) in Creole—broke out in other areas. Hundreds protested on Apr. 3 in Gonaïves on the northwest coast. The protests there were largely peaceful, but United Nations workers were evacuated to a police base, and five people were injured with rocks as protesters tired to force the Frabre Geffrard high school’s administration to let the students join the demonstrations. Gonaïves is Haiti’s fourth largest city. Protests started in the southern city of Petit-Goâve on Apr. 4 as demonstrators tried to close schools and bring out students. Students marched in downtown Port-au-Prince the same day to protest the cost of living.

As in other parts of the world, food prices have been rising sharply in Haiti, where 80% of the population lives on less than $2 a day. In Port-au-Prince the cost of rice, beans, condensed milk and fruit has gone up some 50% from a year ago, while the cost of spaghetti has doubled.

After initially blaming the protests in Les Cayes on drug dealers and smugglers, on Apr. 4 Prime Minister Alexis announced that “the government is in solidarity with the population, which is proving to be worried about the high cost of living.” He said the government would immediately disburse 400 million gourdes (about $10.43 million) for soup kitchens and a program providing jobs in maintaining the sanitation system. For the longer term he promised a package of programs to reduce the cost of living, including 65 million gourdes ($1.51 million) for sanitation, 400 million gourdes ($10.43 million) for micro-credit through the National Bank and local lenders, 90 million gourdes ($2.34 million) in agricultural production, and 44 million gourdes ($1.14 million) for food programs in schools and universities. (Globe and Mail (Toronto) 4/4/08 from AP; Haiti Support Network News Briefs 4/4/08 from AP; AlterPresse 4/3/08, 4/4/08, 4/4/08, 4/5/08; Agence Haïtienne de Presse (AHP) 4/4/08)

In March unnamed sources reported that the government was planning to ask Parliament to raise the minimum wage to 150 gourdes ($3.90) a day, about double the current level. The leftist labor movement Batay Ouvriye (”Workers’ Struggle”) charges that the plan shows the “antipopular and corrupt character of the current government.” The group had called for a minimum wage of 350-450 gourdes in 2003, during the government of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide. According to the Haitian internet news service AlterPresse, unnamed “other labor organizations” support the government’s plan for 150 gourdes. (AlterPresse 3/25/08) [The minimum wage only directly impacts the relatively small number of Haitians employed in the formal sector.]

2. Haiti: Protesters Blame UN for Death On Apr. 2 some 400 people demonstrated in Ouanaminthe, a city in eastern Haiti that shares the border with the Dominican city of Dajabón, to press demands for justice from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and the Haitian judicial system in the death of 20-year-old student Emanne Saintilmont a month earlier. The Committee for Justice for Emanne blamed MINUSTAH soldiers for the young man’s death and accused local officials and judges of corruption. Agents of the National Police of Haiti intervened to keep the crowd from approaching the local MINUSTAH office, although the demonstrators succeeded in delivering a letter of protest to officials there. (AlterPresse 4/3/08 from Solidarite Fwontalye/Service Jésuite aux Réfugiés et Migrants press release 4/2/08)

Source: weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/

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The Minimum Wage Struggle in Haiti by Kopa, April 6, 2008, Anarkismo www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=8552

Let’s support the Haitian workers’ struggle for a minimum wage adjustment and the struggle to lower the cost of living, a two-pronged struggle.

The Haitian popular masses, on many occasions, have taken to the streets in order to stop the degradation of their social condition. Workers, laborers, the poor and dispossessed, landless peasants, agricultural workers and the petty-bourgeoisie, the whole people’s camp, fought for their demands, even their most minimal ones, their most basic ones, such as the right to feed their family, to have decent living conditions, and for their daughters and sons to receive a decent education. But the aspirations of the masses are becoming a nightmare in a society dominated by bankrupt bourgeois politics, under occupation and totally dependent and dominated by imperialism. Under the domination of the anti-national, anti-popular ruling classes, with the state’s neo-liberal policies mandated by imperialism, no solution seems to be in the interest of the popular masses. In fact the tendency for the situation to worsen is far greater than for any short-term improvement. The probability for the conditions to worsen is rapidly growing.

Since 1986, through all the Lavalas regimes, the demands of the popular masses have never been objectively addressed. Different sectors of the dominant classes, relying on the petty-bourgeoisie, used the popular masses to achieve their own objectives. Inside Haitian society there are two distinct types of struggle being waged. One is among the dominant classes and the other between the masses and the dominant classes. The struggle among the dominant classes is mostly and fundamentally a struggle for hegemony, restructuration of bourgeois democracy and how to best administer a decaying feudalism and a totally dependent and dominated form of capitalism. There are no stable structures within the social formation capable of negotiating the struggles emanating from the contradictions within the ruling classes. These situations have created very volatile conditions and a never-ending series of crises between the dominant classes and the state apparatus. No fraction and no class in the dominant classes seem to be able to put forth a viable alternative. The internal contradictions of the ruling classes can’t be resolved thru simple reforms. The incapacity and opportunism of the petty-bourgeoisie doesn’t allow them to carry on a form of struggle that will be beneficial to the bourgeoisie’s potent need to restructure, as we have seen in Nicaragua or in South Africa. Even their good intentions are short lived. As soon as petty-bourgeois elements start heading the government and the state apparatus, they are digested by the existing structure and they quickly drop all their popular aspirations and they themselves become bourgeois, engaging in the primitive accumulation of capital thru the state apparatus. We witnessed such social practices under Duvalier and under the different Lavalas regimes. There is a total incapacity for the dominant classes, primarily the bourgeoisie, to resolve the actual situation in Haiti, even with the occupation. THEY HAVE THEIR HANDS TIED UP AND THEY ARE STUCK IN REVERSE.

There are two types of struggle being waged. All classes in the popular masses have been mostly fighting under the leadership of one or the other section of the dominant classes. A protracted ideological and political warfare is being waged to steer the masses away from their own interests. After the fall of Duvalier, the demands of the masses were very clear. We wanted TOTAL AND RADICAL CHANGE. In fact we did not want elections. Even Aristide at the time was saying that election was a method the dominant classes use to resolve the problems in their midst.

On the other hand, there is another alternative, still in minority, that is accumulating strength under great hardship and difficulties. There is a growing struggle for the popular masses to radically break away from the influence of either the bourgeoisie or its representatives, even the populists, and build their own autonomous combative organizations, in particular the working class, agricultural workers, dominated and exploited peasants, so that they can wage their own struggles. Struggles that are totally independent from the interests of any class or fraction in the dominant classes. THEIR OWN AUTONOMOUS STRUGGLES!

These battles are being waged on two fronts and are very difficult. They are difficult because all the disadvantages are against the people’s camp. These disadvantages are as arduous as can be: the general state of misery affecting the masses to the point they are forced to eat dirt patties to calm their hunger, the generalized terror either by the occupation forces, the paramilitary forces, the armed gangs under the leadership and influence of the dominant classes, including different fractions of Lavalas, the lack of organization, etc,. All these are hurdles facing the masses in their daily struggle for survival. An incontrovertible fact, however, is their determination to find a viable solution to their misery and to seek a better future. Slowly but surely, life’s struggles are teaching them the lesson that only their struggle, based on their own interests, will open the door to a better life.

They fought Duvalier, only to see their aspirations taken away from them, and they fell in an even worse situation. They took the streets, forced their will on the dominant classes, gave a mandate to Lavalas, only to witness the bourgeoisie recuperate what they fought for. They voted for a new constitution, only to find out that any amendments in their favor are not being respected and no measures are taken to implement them. The constitution guarantees an adjustment of the minimum wage based on inflation plus 4%. Neither the Lavalas administrations nor the de facto regimes have ever enforced this law.

The two Aristide administrations issued decrees raising the minimum wage, but each time the adjustment was only worth half of the real value of the previous minimum wage. The last adjustment to 70 gourdes per day was worth one-fifth the minimum wage under Duvalier. Even so, the bourgeoisie openly defied these decrees. They even put up bulletin boards inside their factories stating that wages are based strictly on piece rates and quotas. No state institution ever took any measures to enforce these decrees nor to make sure workers were getting paid the meager minimum wage. Under the quota system workers sometime have to work more than 12 hours a day without making the minimum wage and without earning overtime pay.

But yet, bourgeois politicians try to lean on theses same popular masses to achieve their own reactionary political objectives. The Haitian masses resisted the coup d’état, supported the anti-national anti-popular embargo only to see that at the end of the day they were being short-changed, they were left holding nothing, even what was duly theirs. And now they are being asked to make even more sacrifices “to promote investments”, while the bourgeoisie is accumulating even more capital.

In 2004, the Haitian masses again took to the streets, thwarted the imperialist plan and elected Lespwa (Prèval’s Hope party), another Lavalas tendency, at the head of the state apparatus. Again, they are being told that their demands would need miracles to be met, while it is still the good life as usual for the dominant classes. The popular masses voted for Préval and Lespwa, not the bourgeoisie. THEY NEED RESULTS NOW.

Under the initiative of Batay Ouvriye a battle is now being waged on the ground for an adjustment and increase of the minimum wage and also against the high cost of living. These two battles are linked and all progressives, progressive immigrants, immigrant workers and all workers need to support them. In fact, for workers, it is an internationalist responsibility to give this support as part of our battle against our common enemy, global capitalism. We need to limit the capacity of capital to cross borders without any resistance. The struggle for a minimum wage increase in Haiti is also linked to the struggle around immigrants’ rights and a living wage in the US or any capitalist country.

The actual minimum wage in Haiti is about 70 gourdes a day; 25¢ an hour, while the cost of living in Haiti is comparable to that of the US. There is a recent proposed adjustement of 150 gourdes a day, a mere pittance, still a slave wage. Only a wage adjustment of 300 gourdes could relatively meet the minimum needs of workers. We know it is going to be a fight. The workers are the ones selling their labor power; they are the only ones capable of defining a just minimum wage. We know the bourgeoisie and their intellectuals will come up with theories showing the negative impact of a minimum wage adjustment. At the same time, they are living in luxury; they know nothing of the effects of the high cost of living. When the Group of 184 was fighting Lavalas, they made an appeal for a “social contract”. Now is the time for that social contract, unless it was just a ploy to bring the masses on their side. In order to have a social contract, the ones living in abject poverty are the ones that need to benefit. The call for a social contract clearly proves that the bourgeoisie is well aware of the abject poverty that the masses are living under. A MINIMUM WAGE ADJUSTEMENT OF 300 GOURDES IS A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION.

The high cost of living is the consequence of failed economic policies and a bankrupt political line. It stems from the failure of capitalism in Haiti, a capitalism totally dominated by the interests of imperialism and totally dependent upon it. There are no policies to develop the national economy. Instead, our governments are conceding arable lands to build Free Trade Zones. The Haitian popular masses, in particular the working class, not only need to engage in the fight for their autonomous democratic rights but also to put forth their own alternative for an emancipated Haiti.

Support the struggles to raise the minimum wage!

No to the military occupation!

No to imperialist aggression!

LONG LIVE THE AUTONOMUS STRUGGLE OF THE HAITIAN WORKERS AND THE POPULAR MASSES!

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Grangou Klorox and Children Prostitution in Haiti, 2008 by Ezili Danto, March 29, 2008

Ezili Danto’s Note: Grangou Klorox

Post Bush-Jr’s Haiti regime change:

After Bush, the Lesser’s 2004 regime change, street children in Haiti went from Lafanmi Selavi sorts of shelters for homeless children started by President Aristide when he was a parish priest (www.posthoc.com/lafanmi.htm ), went from running a radio station for homeless children called “Radyo Timoun”; went from running a television station, to what? after the 2004 US-orchestrated-2004-coup-detat?

Homeless Haitian children have, after the US/McCain-IRI-created-Group-184 finished with Haiti, after they replaced Aristide with Latortue’s Boca Raton technocrats, US Marines and then MINUSTHA… went from misery to hell. And today, in 2008, there’s an epidemic of children prostitution in UN occupied Haiti with the figurehead Preval Administration to keep the masses in check.

Haiti has more foreign soldiers permanently on its soil than since the first US occupation in 1915. And, while the UN makes millions upon millions to pay these soldiers and implement their “reforms” and “stability” programs; while the World Health Organization is paying itself almost ten million dollars to dubiously “vaccinate” starving Haitians with almost no veins to find; while, NGO aid monies flows to foreign “experts” and missionaries enjoying Haiti’s beaches and tropical breeze, the almost nine million poor Haitian masses in Haiti are silently suffering from a hunger so excruciation, so painful, they call it: Grangou klorox. “Grangou klorox” is a hunger so horrifying, so cutting and painful that every breath you take cuts inside your belly’s organs as if you’ve just swallowed battery acid (”asid bateri”) or imbibed pure Clorox bleach.

Haiti went from 1994 to 2000's Haitian-centered social, civic and Literacy programs that helped the poorest of the poor and especially the street children who were living in the gutters, to a killing field in 2004. And, now its simply a large brothel, where children as young as 6 years old service US-imported foreigners, NGO workers and tourists and all comers with a half-dollar.

Unlike the former homeless children who found welcome to visit the national palace under President Aristide, today’s Haitian children have no hope, and no willing public ear that will listen to their plight and conditions. (See: Children Prostitution in Haiti, 2008|www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bXZEJjkt4g )

In an article entitled the “Killers of Haiti ‘s Street children”, we are reminded that, Bush, Sr. sponsored the first coup d’etat against Aristide in 1990 and Haiti then became a killing field where homeless children were targeted and murdered en mass:

“When Titid became president he told the world that we street children were people, we had value, that we were human beings.

Many adults didn’t like this message. They said we were dirty and should be thrown out like the trash that we are. But Titid loved us and when I met him, he kissed me and put his hand on my face and told me he loved me. And they were not the empty words of a politician.

During the first coup in 1991 the street kids were attacked and (President Aristide’s) Lafanmi Selavi (homeless shelter) was burned. Aristide came back from exile in October 1994 and it was a new world for the children. Three years of horror were over….” www.blackcommentator.com/81/81_reprint_haiti_street_kids.html

With Bush, the Lesser’s regime change in Haiti on February 29, 2004, the horror started again for Haiti ‘s children, except many, like Emmanuel “Dred” Wilme, formerly of Lafanmi Selavi, had grown up fighting for their lives and again took up arms to defend the children who they knew had no protectors.

But the guns of the wealthiest and most educated; of first, the US Marines, then of UN’s MINUSTHA and the Guy Philippe paramilitaries and their corresponding Haitian economic elites ( the morally repugnant elites – “MREs,”) destroyed them. Urged and carried out their extra-judicial execution. Many of Haiti’s young were rounded up when the US Marines got to Haiti in 2004 and put in indefinite preventive detention, some for “associating” with the wrong folks, others arbitrarily arrested because they wore dreadlocks and were considered dangerous.

Many who were thus thrown in prison back in 2004, without charges, have still not seen a judge, and are still incarcerated today, four years on. The Haitian economic elite, urge their extermination and disappearance. The U.S. and internationals have handedly complied.

From 2004 to 2006, almost 20,000 Haitians were murdered or disappeared. The abuse of Haitian children and women by the UN peacekeeping “saviors” and their affiliates in Haiti was unprecedented. (www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/festival.html#sexexploitation )

Haiti’s current homeless children fend for themselves, their destruction has not yet stopped. There seems no hope at all for these children as all the world’s charities and do-gooders are all already in Haiti, making their Western salaries and military millions…. ..The children though, prostitute themselves to stop the pains of a hunger so painful, its stings like drinking Clorox. Sell their childhood and chunks of their soul to starve off and stop “grangou klorox.” This, is what Bush, Sr. and Jr’s regime changes “develops” in Haiti.

The world’s well-known peace and justice activists talk and write tons of articles, books and films about the Bush misadventures in Iraq, Afghanistan even the attempt in 2000 to unseat Chavez. Very few to none speak about Bush’s 2004 Haiti regime change and its horrific destruction of Haiti and its fledging democracy or, the agony poor Haitians bear in carrying, all alone, on their backs, Bush’s people and policies in Haiti today.

Ezili Danto March 29, 2008

Forwarded by the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network

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