15243: Blanchet: Fw: MPP Congress opens (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Max Blanchet <MaxBlanchet@worldnet.att.net>


> Papaye - (Alterpresse) 18 March, 2003 - At the opening of its thirtieth
> anniversary congress outside the town of Hinche, the Papaye Peasant
Movement
> (MPP) has appealed for national solidarity against globalisation and in
> favour of local agricultural products. The congress has been dubbed
"Thirty
> years of resistance to the Death Plan".
>
> Addressing the more than one thousand people gathered at the MPP training
> centre in the hamlet of Papaye, MPP leader, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, said,
> "Because of globalisation a minority of people are getting hold of all the
> world's riches that in reality belong to the whole of humanity. We must
fight
> to build another world based on respect for life and human dignity. We
must
> raise our voices against the unacceptable so that Haiti will be green
again
> and can feed all of its children."
>
> Congress participants joined Jean-Baptiste in denouncing the high cost of
> living that is effecting all sectors of Haitian society. Jean-Baptiste
blamed
> the "irresponsibility" of the State which, "two hundred years since the
> creation of the flag of independent Haiti, is spreading death, imposing a
> peace of the cemetary, and hijacking public funds, not to build roads, but
to
> finance gangsters known as 'chimeres', and to suppress all dissent."
>
> Members of the MPP opened the congress by exhibiting a variety of
> agricultural products, such as plantains, papayas, and sugar cane, grown
in
> the organisation's agro-production programmes. The exhibition was, the MPP
> said, a way of demonstrating their continuing demands for a genuine
agrarian
> reform, the granting of land to peasant farmers, and the provision of
> technical assistance and credit, and the struggle against Western modes of
> consumption.
>
> The MPP leader said,  "More than 40 million human beings are dying of
hunger
> while there is a food surplus and sufficient finances to avert it, however
> the money is used instead to make war such as the one about to be
unleashed
> on Iraq by US President George W. Bush."
>
>
> Translated from French by Charles Arthur for the Haiti Support Group.
>
> www.haitisupport.gn.apc.org
>