------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Aug. 12, 2004 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
HAITIANS PROTEST WORLD BANK BOONDOGGLE
By G. Dunkel
"We are determined to maintain our course because we are convinced that the final victory goes to people who struggle." Those were the words of an anonymous speaker at a birthday mass for exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, held July 15 at the church of Saint Joseph in Port au Prince, according to Haiti Progress newspaper. (July 27)
Aristide, who won re-election in 2000 with overwhelming support from Haiti's poor, was deposed in a U.S./French-backed coup on Feb. 29. He maintains that U.S. Marines removed him from the country against his will.
When the mass was over, more than 5,000 people took to the streets to demand the liberation of members of Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party, including Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, Minister of the Interior Jocelerme Prevert and singer Annette "Sò Anne" Auguste, who were thrown into the National Penitentiary without hearings or formal charges.
A group of women banging empty pots and pans joined the march to demand an end to the hunger stalking their families thanks to rocketing prices and scarce jobs.
Fanmi Lavalas had held a sit-in in front of the French embassy on July 14, Bastille Day. The holiday commemorates the fall of a notorious prison at the start of the French Revolution in 1789.
Claudy Sidney, a spokesperson for the group, explained that the policies of the French government in Haiti are working against the interests of the Haitian people and democracy.
Lesly Fadeau, another spokesperson, also raised the violation of human rights in Haiti that occurred after the U.S. kidnapping of Aristide and the creation of a de facto government.
Similar demonstrations were held in Cap-Haïtien, Haiti's second largest city, on July 13-14.
Just a week later, the U.S.-selected prime minister of Haiti, Gérard LaTortue, was "rewarded" for those repressive policies by the World Bank in Washington with $1.2 billion in loans and grants pledged over the next two years.
The deal was secured at a conference that included the International Monetary Fund, USAID, Inter-American Bank for Development, the European Union and others.
Haiti's external debt totals more than $1.2 billion, almost five times the value of its annual exports. The new loan package would double that debt.
LaTortue claimed the money would ensure "the creation of 44,000 jobs; the col lection and disposal of 50 percent of gar bage in urban areas; the upgrading of 500 slum dwellings; and the doubling of electricity service, to 12 hours per day, in Port-au-Prince." (Washington Post, July 20)
The whole thrust of this World Bank program is to create the infrastructure--such as roads and electricity--to allow the transnational corporations and their local subcontractors to more efficiently exploit Haiti's extremely low-paid workers.
Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen, the Union of Haitian Peasants, held a meeting July 23 in Port-de-Paix, a small city in northwest Haiti. This is the poorest part of the poorest country in the Western Hemi sphere. The meeting denounced the World Bank program as a "neoliberal assault" on the people of Haiti.
The peasant's union pointed out that only 15 percent of the money in the plan was designated to go to agriculture and that it was very likely much of that money would evaporate before it arrived, as in the past.
July 23 was the 17th anniversary of the Jean Rabel massacre, when the big landowners killed 137 peasants demanding justice and land in northwest Haiti.
July 28th, the anniversary of the first U.S. military occupation in 1916, saw another 5,000 people march from the poor neighborhoods of Port- au-Prince to the presidential palace. A heavy police cordon turned them back when they tried to march on the National Penitentiary.
The people of Haiti have indeed set their course--to struggle until the occupation is ended, their president is returned, and social justice is established.
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