12185: HAITIAN FARMERS PROTEST DUTY-FREE EXPORT ZONE (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

PORT-A U-PRINCE, May 27 (IPS) - Small-scale farmers in Haiti's northeast
are protesting construction of an export-processing zone on the border with
the Dominican Republic, saying the project will destroy arable land.
   The farmers, affiliated with the Frontier Solidarity Network, also say
Haitian and Dominican officials failed to consult them and other local
residents before deciding to build the duty-free industrial park.
   The idea was first presented to the Haitian government in December 2001
and is the brainchild of Dominican investors, who have secured financing
from Groupe M, SA, a Dominican financial group.
   Groupe M plans to invest enough to create 1,500 jobs during the
project's first three years and project sources anticipate raising that
number to 8,000 as textile factories set up production operations aimed at
the U.S. market.
   The farmers say the government-selected, 15,000-hectare construction
site sits on cultivable land in the Maribaroux region.
   President Jean Bertrand Aristide and his Dominican counterpart, Hypolito
Mejia, attended the Apr. 8 groundbreaking. Aristide said similar projects
are being planned elsewhere along the 360-kilometer border. Mejia added
that construction had begun in several Dominican border towns.
   Non-governmental human rights and environmental organizations also have
protested the project, saying it will have disastrous consequences for the
environment and for the quality of life of the local population.
   The Haitian Advocacy Platform for Alternative Development (PAPDA) and
the Refugee and Repatriates Support Group (GARR), in a statement, expressed
their "keenest concern and indignation regarding initiatives which will
effect Haiti's future, but which were undertaken in quasi-secrecy."
   "We want to know if the government has a plan for the northeast. What is
it that they want to accomplish? There are studies that have been done.
They talk about tourism and building hotels, but the whole thing seems
murky right now," one activist told IPS.
   A hotelkeeper wondered whether it made sense to build an industrial zone
next to an area where officials have announced plans to promote eco-tourism
and attract golfers.
   Earlier this month, the environment ministry asked government higher-ups
to pick another site; officials have not responded.
   In Haiti's northeast, farmers cross the border each day to work in the
rice fields and sugar plantations of the Dominican Republic.
   Because of drought and lack of training, the past 16 years have seen
rice fields disappear from the Maribaroux plain, some 340 kilometers north
of here.
   In this region, considered one of Haiti's poorest, the government and
non-governmental organizations have no presence. Farmers are forced to
accept loans at exorbitant interest rates, sometimes up to 85 percent, to
buy planting supplies. Crops sometimes fail because of extreme weather.
   On the other side of the border, there is work in the rice and cane
fields of Manzanillo and Monte Christi.
   Dominican small-scale farmers, attracted by jobs in the tourist
industry, leave agricultural work available to Haitians. The Haitians are
paid one-fifth what Dominicans were paid but for the border crossers,
earnings nevertheless amount to twice what they can earn at home in Haiti.
   However, the road to a job in the Dominican Republic is full of risks.
Growers and Dominican soldiers regularly hunt down Haitians and rob or kill
them, at times mistaking the farmers for the area's numerous cattle
thieves.
   Daily forced migration is more and more common, given the region's
growing impoverishment. Population density is such that there are only 0.3
hectares per person of arable land.
   The 15,000 hectares of land owned by the government and chosen for the
export-processing zone were abandoned in 1984 after being leased and farmed
by North American companies interested in cattle breeding and sisal
production.
   The government's decision to turn the land over to industrial
development has proven provocative: The Association of Small Planters of
the Northeast (APPNE) recently occupied some 2,500 hectares. The group's
2,000 members farm under makeshift conditions with no title to the land.
   In 1996, former President Rene Preval tried to revive rice production in
the region. The APPNE farmers have restored a small irrigation system on
the land and are now growing rice on more than 600 hectares.