From the February issue of The Respect PaperHaiti: this disaster is man-madeAndy Newman
There is nothing natural about the scale of the humanitarian disaster in Haiti. The scale of death and human misery has been caused by the poverty and appalling housing and lack of civil infrastructure.
As the earthquake struck, the mud and adobe shacks, and corrugated iron hovels of the slums fell like a house of cards, entombing the residents; the minimal public health and emergency services were overwhelmed; and people already weak and malnourished have less resilience to survive.Haiti is poor. Half the population rely upon money sent to them from relatives abroad for basic necessities; there is little industry, and the agricultural sector has been undermined by "free trade", unable to compete with the state supported and industrialised agricultural sector of the USA.
Over the last decades, tens of thousands of ruined farmers have left the countryside for the only slightly less precarious existence of the urban slums.
Yet there has been no government action to address the poverty and inequality, and to build the economy.
Since 2004 the country has been under United Nations occupation, yet the limited mandate of the UN is only to provide support to the Haitian police and assist public order; and the toothless government of President Rene Préval, himself a good man, can act only as a mere marionette manipulated by the wealthy Haitian elite, who are little more than mobsters.
The government has been paralysed by the weakness and poverty of the Haitian economy; by its physical dependency upon UN soldiers; by the necessity imposed upon it of opening Haiti's economy to international competition; but most of all by its lack of legitimacy in the eyes of the Haitian people.
For in 2004 the massively popular President of Haiti, Jean Bertrande Aristide a former Catholic priest, devoted to the serving the poor was overthrown by a dirty coup d'état; a plot hatched in the government corridors of Paris, Washington and Ottawa.
Since the invasion, living standards have collapsed, and the reforms of President Aristide aimed to help the poor have been reversed
The foreign occupation has done nothing to improve the lives of ordinary Haitians. Canada for example, poured more than $200 million into Haiti after the coup, but that money has gone into training police or propping up Haiti's prison and judicial system.
Little or no Western funding has gone to desperately-needed health care and education, transport or communication infrastructure.
The police and military occupation force has targeted supporters of the ousted government of President Aristide in a deadly campaign that has cost thousands of lives.
In 2007, a study published in the medical journal The Lancet estimated that in the capital, Port au Prince, eight thousand people died violent deaths in the two years following the coup.
Half of those died directly at the hands of foreign-trained and armed police, or death squads composed of members of the disbanded Haitian armed forces.
The UN occupation, and the security forces of the Haitian state see the civilian population of Haiti not as citizens to govern, but as a problem to be contained.
This explains the contempt with which Aristide's massively popular party, Fanmi Lavalas, is barred from participating in the electoral process.
A contempt that is reciprocated as the majority of the Haitian poor actively boycott the elections in which their party cannot stand.
During the international response to the hurricane it seems that maintaining public order has been a higher priority than delivering emergency humanitarian assistance.
All of the aid being delivered is welcome, but in the long term what is needed is to focus on building and rebuilding civil society and economic activity that is sustainable and dignified for the Haitians; a proud people who never did nor never shall lie at the feet of a conqueror.
That is why, for socialists and progressives, the best way of providing assistance is through the Haitian Emergency Relief Fund. Since March 2004, the fund has given concrete aid to Haiti's grassroots democratic movement as they attempted to survive the brutal coup and to rebuild shattered development projects.
They need help, not only for this immediate crisis, but in order to support the long-run development of human rights, sustainable agriculture and economic justice in Haiti.
Donations will be forwarded to HERF's partners on the ground to help them rebuild what has been destroyed.
Details of how to donate are here: http:/ / www.haitiaction.net/ About/ HERF/ HERF.html
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