22934: Esser: Haitians protest World Bank boondoggle (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

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.

Reprinted from the Aug. 12, 2004, issue of Workers World newspaper

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