16945: Lemieux: Miami Herald editorial: Our hard-line policy on Haiti punishes the innocent (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>

Our hard-line policy on Haiti punishes the innocent
13 Oct 2003
Carl Hiaasen Miami Herald
A vigilante gang known as the Cannibal Army has been
burning government buildings in Haiti.

The group is protesting the murder of its leader, Amiot
Metayer, and calling for the resignation of President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Gang members who once supported the
embattled Aristide now claim that he had a hand in
Metayer’s killing.

It’s another confusing, murky drama in a country that
remains hostage to chaos and violence. Every time I see
such disturbing headlines, I think of Dr. Paul Farmer, a
Harvard physician and anthropologist who practices medicine
deep in the Haitian countryside, near the town of Cange.

Farmer is ferociously obsessed with the idea that decent
health care should be available to the world’s poorest and
neediest people, and for two decades he has focused on the
poorest and neediest place in the Western Hemisphere.

And he’s done some astounding things. His public clinic,
Zanmi Lasante, treats hundreds of thousands of peasants who
might otherwise never encounter a doctor; curing
tuberculosis, managing HIV, vaccinating against smallpox,
polio and other diseases that were long ago eliminated from
our fortunate lives.

The breadth of Farmer’s heroics, and those of his
co-workers, is detailed in a moving new book, “Mountains
Beyond Mountains,” by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy
Kidder.

I mention Farmer because the good work he’s trying to do
has been directly, and sometimes tragically, impacted by
the hard-line U.S. policy toward Haiti.

It’s not exaggerating to say that untold numbers of
innocent Haitians, including many children, have suffered
and died because of severe cuts in international aid
orchestrated by the Bush administration. The stated purpose
of blocking those funds was to pressure Aristide into
initiating electoral reforms. Hawks in Congress and the
White House have never trusted the Haitian president, who
was democratically elected in 1991, overthrown by a
military junta and then reinstalled after the Clinton
administration sent troops in 1994.

That Haiti is not yet a model of modern democracy is no
surprise to anyone familiar with its bloody political
history, or the choke-hold of indescribable poverty that
grips most of its more than 8 million people.

Aristide surely is no saint, but U.S.-led efforts to
chasten him have — just like the Cuban embargo — punished
those who least deserve it.

The cuts in grants and aid to Haiti caused some rural
medical facilities to cut back services or to close,
resulting in huge numbers of sick and elderly patients
going untreated and, in many cases, dying. Farmer’s clinic
in Cange was virtually stampeded by those desperate to save
their children and loved ones.

Last year he sent me an e-mail describing the situation and
in July testified with remarkable restraint before a U.S.
Senate committee.

“Blocking development and humanitarian assistance is a
terrible tactic and moral error,” Farmer said. “It is also
a medical and epidemiological error.”

A short time later, the United States restored a relative
trickle of funds to Haiti, but not before dunning its
paltry national treasury for past debts.

PARTNERS IN HEALTH

In recent years, Farmer’s Boston-based charity, Partners in
Health (to which he donated his MacArthur “genius” grant,
as well as his Harvard paychecks) has expanded its
disease-eradication campaign to the slums of Peru and the
prisons of Russia.

Haiti, though, remains first in Farmer’s heart. Having
first visited as a medical student in the early 1980s, he
has spent far more time there than anyone now making policy
decisions in Washington, D.C.

The doctor holds strong opinions about America’s role in
Haiti’s plight, and in its future. If we can spend $1
billion a week rebuilding Iraq, he asks, can’t we spend a
fraction as much to rebuild a starving neighbor and ally?

His e-mails are occasionally tinged with frustration and
anger, but I’d probably react the same way after watching a
baby die for lack of clean drinking water or a simple
antibiotic. But, far from being depressed by the seemingly
endless misery that he sees, Farmer is energized with the
hope and determination that comes from saving lives, which
he does every day.

THEY HELP EVERYBODY

So far, the medical complex in Cange has been relatively
unbothered by the civil unrest afflicting some of Haiti’s
cities. It helps that Farmer and his staff are known to
offer medical help to anyone who needs it, from the
Cannibal Army to the Haitian Army.

Reading Kidder’s book, it’s easy to feel guilty for doing
so little while “Dokte Paul” is doing so much. “I’m not a
candidate for canonization,” he protested in an e-mail last
week.

He has no interest in fame, except to the extent that it
brings attention to the execrable conditions in Haiti.

He would cringe if he knew that he has figured so
prominently in this column, but it seemed the best way to
tell the story.

Farmer is the most reliable witness I know to the human
damage inflicted by dogmatic politicians — and to the
incredible achievements that are possible when common sense
and compassion prevail.

Carl Hiaasen is a columnist for the Miami Herald. Readers
may write to him at: 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132, or
by e-mail at HeraldEd@aol.com.



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