23108:( Hermantin) Miami-Herald- Conditions for most in Haiti remain grim, dangerous (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>


Posted on Sun, Sep. 05, 2004


Conditions for most in Haiti remain grim, dangerous


Your otherwise balanced Aug. 29 article Despite poverty, violence, Haiti is
limping back makes the perhaps sardonic suggestion that the night life of
Haiti's tiny, self-serving elite is reflective of somewhat improved living
conditions among Haitians.

The vast majority of the populace historically has been excluded by an
authoritarian political system controlled by those who tend to frequent
Port-au-Prince's hot spots. An overwhelming number of Haitians will continue
their desperate efforts to survive on less than a dollar a day, an
increasingly challenging task given the recent doubling of the price of
rice. While they may welcome the absence of trash in the gutters, the almost
hermetic absence of education, healthcare and other basic social services
are a much more pressing matter.

Most important to Haiti's ignored majority is the forced exile of President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

That the Haitian elite has landed on its feet with cocktails in hand is
hardly a surprise. For the upper class, the extreme level of poverty most
Haitians experience is hardly worth mentioning.

JESSICA LEIGHT, research fellow, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Washington,
D.C.





Haiti is not ''limping back'' and cannot start down the road to wholesome
recovery without constitutional rule and an end to the current foreign
occupation propping up an imported regime and its armed thugs. The United
Nations' international forces who did nothing to assist the constitutional
government six months ago now stand by idly, allowing the former bloody
Haitian military and paramilitaries to reconstitute themselves and position
heavily armed units throughout Haiti, meting out ``justice.''

Haitians keep resisting and dying. More than 3,000 -- not 300 -- have been
killed; thousands are in hiding and being hunted down while countless more
fill Haiti's prison cells for political reasons.

Michael Ottey's article obfuscates the issue of authoritarian rule, lack of
liberty and the negative role of the U.N. forces but calls the persecution
of Lavalas ''alleged'' while crediting the views of well-to-do Haitians
plucked right out of South Beach.

MARGUERITE LAURENT, founder/chair, Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network,
Stamford, Conn.




One thing in the Haiti article was not correct: The piles of garbage remain.
My partner and I maintain an orphanage in Anse Rouge and do medical clinics
in that village and also Jean Rabel. I just returned from Haiti last week.
For sure, no help has gone any farther than St. Marc. The people of the
northern mountains continue to suffer.

PAT MOORE, director, Harvest of Haiti, Fort Gratiot, Mich.

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