27834: (news) Chamberlain: Five facts about troubled Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     Feb 16 (Reuters) - Haiti, a Caribbean nation of about 8.5 million
people that shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, is
a former French colony and the world's oldest black republic.
     Here are five facts about Haiti:
        Founded by freed slaves following a revolt that led to independence
on Jan. 1, 1804, Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas with annual
per capita income of around $400. It is struggling to establish a stable
democracy following decades of dictatorship and military rule.
        Its first freely elected leader, former Roman Catholic priest
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was ousted from office in each of his two terms;
the first in 1991 by a military coup and the second on Feb. 29, 2004, by a
bloody rebellion by gangs and former soldiers.
        With 80 percent of its people living in poverty, Haiti has been
virtually stripped of trees, which are cut down for charcoal. Less than 2
percent of the forest cover remains, leaving a nation of subsistence
farmers vulnerable to erosion and devastating floods and mudslides.
        Used by South American drug traffickers as a way station serving
the huge U.S. cocaine market, Haiti ranks near the bottom of Transparency
International's Corruption Perceptions Index.
        Although 80 percent of Haitians are Catholic and 16 percent
Protestant, more than half the people are believed to practice voodoo, the
Afro-Caribbean religion whose roots may go back 6,000 years or more in
Africa.