[R-G] Haiti: Thousands protest over growing hunger

[Anthony Fenton]

Haiti: Thousands protest over growing hunger
By Bill Van Auken
5 April 2008
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/apr2008/hait-a05.shtml
Thousands of Haitians took to the streets Thursday to protest against  
soaring food prices and growing hunger in the Western Hemisphere’s  
poorest country.

In Les Cayes, Haiti’s third-largest city, over 5,000 people  
demonstrated, chanting slogans denouncing President Rene Preval and  
shouting “Down with the high cost of living!”

According to local reports from the southern peninsula city, the  
protesters stormed and attempted to burn the local offices of the UN  
Mission for the Stabilization of Haiti (MINUSTAH). This United Nations  
“peacekeeping” force occupied the country after Washington  
orchestrated the violent overthrow of Haiti’s elected President Jean- 
Bertrand Aristide and sent in US Marines four years ago.

Some of the demonstrators barricaded the streets with burning tires  
and sacked food supplies. According to one source, eight people were  
wounded when soldiers opened fire on the crowd. Schools, stores and  
banks in Les Cayes were forced to shut down because of the clashes.

Demonstrations against the soaring cost of living were also reported  
in other parts of southern Haiti and in the northern city of Gonaives,  
Haiti’s fourth largest. These protests have been building steadily.  
According to statistics kept by the UN mission, there were 164 such  
demonstrations in the six months leading up to last August and 258 in  
the subsequent six months.

MINUSTAH issued a statement condemning the recent demonstration in Les  
Cayes. “Acts of violence, whatever they may be,” the UN occupation  
force warned, “can only hinder efforts of the Haitian authorities in  
their struggle to improve living conditions of the population.”

The statement continued by vowing that MINUSTAH “will continue to  
support the Haitian National Police throughout the country and  
particularly in its efforts to restore calm in Les Cayes” and that  
those responsible for attacking the Les Cayes headquarters would be  
prosecuted. The UN force sent an additional 100 troops to the city to  
suppress any continuing upheavals.

Fully 80 percent of Haitians survive on $2 or less a day, while half  
of the country’s 8.5 million people subsist on the edge of starvation  
with less than a dollar a day. One out of every four children in Haiti  
is malnourished.

As was widely reported in the media earlier this year, things have  
become so difficult for the masses of poor that many Haitians in  
impoverished areas like the massive Cité Soleil slum of Port au Prince  
have resorted to eating “dirt cookies,” made from salt, oil and clay  
and baked in the sun.

The minimum wage in Haiti—which applies only to the fraction of the  
population that is employed in the formal economy—stands at 70 gourdes  
($1.90) a day. While the country’s unions called for an increase to  
200 gourdes ($5.50), the government of President Preval has sought a  
“compromise” with the Haitian ruling elite and foreign multinationals  
by proposing a 100 gourdes ($2.75) daily minimum wage. Critics have  
warned that this amount is totally inadequate to meet minimal  
requirements of life.

Even sections of the Haitian bourgeoisie have voiced fears that the  
desperate conditions of live prevailing in the country will make the  
population ungovernable. “Poverty, unemployment, hunger are part of  
everyday life for Haitians, while private and public elites of the  
country continue to show irresponsibility,” said Pierre Leger, the  
president of the Chamber of Commerce of southern Haiti, who believes  
that the increase is insufficient. “Hunger ... breeds rebellion,” the  
businessman warned.

Two years after his election to the presidency, Preval has faced  
increasing opposition from Haitian workers and the poor because of his  
failure to adopt measures to alleviate hunger and plummeting living  
standards. Speaking to the Haitian Chamber of Deputies in February,  
Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis insisted that there was no  
“quick fix” to Haiti’s food crisis, which he said was driven by global  
forces, including the high cost of oil.

Instead, the government has pursued policies of privatization, and  
free trade that have enriched a small elite, while continuing to pay  
off the massive foreign debts—to the tune of $1 million a week— 
incurred during three decades of rule by the US-backed dictatorship of  
Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier.

Presiding over the immense social tensions created by these policies  
and the prevailing conditions of life is the 9,000-strong UN military  
and police force, under the command of the Brazilian military, with  
other units drawn mainly from Uruguay, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Jordan,  
Argentina and Chile.

The MINUSTAH forces, which are heavily armed and backed by tanks,  
helicopters and armored cars, have launched a new anti-crime  
crackdown, ostensibly prompted by a recent sharp increase in the  
number of kidnappings. This has meant increased roadblocks and  
checkpoints as well as raids within the slums inhabited by Haiti’s poor.

The UN admitted in a statement issued late last month that its efforts  
have been “stifled by an increasingly dissident population.” It  
appealed for “the population’s support so that its blue helmets can  
help ensure public safety and security.”

Increasingly, however, the UN troops have been seen as an occupation  
force, whose mission is to protect Haiti’s few “haves” from the masses  
of “have-nots.” The raids that they conduct together with Haitian  
police have sent thousands of young Haitians into overcrowded and  
miserable prisons, where they are held without trials or even charges.

The events in Haiti are part of a wave of protests and upheavals that  
have swept the globe in response to rising food prices and shortages.  
Food protests and riots have been reported in the past few months in  
Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Guinea, Indonesia, Mauritania, Mexico,  
Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

As of last December, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)  
listed 37 countries facing food crises and found that 20 had imposed  
food-price controls. Many countries producing rice and other  
commodities have imposed export restrictions to avoid domestic  
shortages, driving up prices on the world market even further.

According to the FAO, food costs worldwide soared by 23 percent  
between 2006 and 2007, with grains going up 42 percent, oils 50  
percent and dairy 80 percent. In addition to the skyrocketing price of  
oil, the crisis is driven by increasing speculation in basic  
foodstuffs on the global market and the universal instability created  
by the deepening crisis of finance capital in the US.

Together, these international economic forces driving the growth of  
hunger are making it increasingly impossible for masses of working  
people in country after country to tolerate the existing social order.