[R-G] Anti-Hunger Protests Rock Haiti

[Anthony Fenton]

Anti-Hunger Protests Rock Haiti  	  	
Written by Nazaire St. Fort and Jeb Sprague
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1248/1/
Wednesday, 23 April 2008

ImageDemonstrations that started in Le Cayes on Thursday, April 3rd,  
against soaring food prices spread across Haiti to Petit-Goagve,  
Gonaïves, Aquin and, by April 7, to the capital, Port-au-Prince. Anger  
over rising prices has been building for many months with basic food  
stuffs increasingly out of reach for the poor.  Tires were set ablaze  
in the streets and thrown together to form barricades that paralyzed  
traffic for days.

Numerous businesses were vandalized and looted, especially those  
selling food, as crowds vented their anger at the perceived  
indifference to their plight by the nation's elite, including the René  
Préval /Jacques Edouard Alexis administration. Broken glass on the  
streets near targeted buildings and cars became a common sight.

Hunger now termed "Klorox" and "Battery Acid" by Haiti's poor, likens  
hunger to a chemical acid eating away at empty stomachs. These new  
slang terms to describe the mounting hunger have come into usage over  
the last few months. Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis resigned  
April 12, a move that was partly the work of sixteen senators who  
claimed they were responding to the huge demonstrations. Alexis  
appears to have sealed his fate by saying in a speech that many of the  
protesters were merely gangsters and drug dealers.

ImageSome early reports in Haitian media outlets, owned by some of the  
small elite families in the country, also took this line, but it  
quickly became clear that the demonstrations were a massive outpouring  
of anger and that it would be unwise to dismiss as just criminal  
activity.

Alexis correctly pointed out that Haiti is not the only country in the  
world that has been hit hard by rising food prices. One Haitian media  
outlet, Agence Haitienne de Presse, in an editorial criticized the  
senators who helped remove Alexis, explaining that Alexis was used as  
a convenient scapegoat for deep seated problems.

The online alternative news outlet HIP (Haiti Information Project)  
noted that many of the senators opposed to Alexis were part of the  
elite political opposition to Haiti's former president Aristide, and  
that "...the censure of Alexis' government also signals the end of a  
tenuous political compromise between those who supported Aristide's  
ouster in 2004 and co-opted renegades of his Lavalas movement.  
Preval's Lespwa party base was built upon the Lavalas movement who saw  
him as a means to end repression following Aristide's ouster. Alexis'  
government was representative of a temporary truce between supporters  
of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the opposition that  
worked with the international community to remove him from office."

They fear that with Alexis out a more reactionary replacement will  
further polarize political disputes between Haiti's rich and poor.

One woman interviewed, Jacqueline, a street vendor whose commercial  
activities are considered illegal by the state, explained her  
situation in buying power. She said that Haitians like herself  
typically earn 75 gourdes (roughly $2 USD) per day, but an individual  
serving of rice now costs upwards of 150 gourdes. Similarly an  
individual serving of corn or wheat is 135 gourdes, while a box of  
eggs has risen to 175 gourdes.

AT THE GATES OF THE NATIONAL PALACE

On April 7 large crowds demonstrated outside the National Palace,  
including men and women of all ages, demanding that the Prime Minister  
reduce the price of basic food stuffs. The national police alongside  
MINUSTAH (U.N. mission stationed in Haiti) dispersed the crowd. Some  
protesters pelted the troops and police with rocks, and a large palace  
gate was brought toppling down.

ImagePolice and soldiers tried in vain to put down the massive  
protests and protect private property that was being destroyed just  
blocks away from the palace.

MINUSTAH set up defensive ramparts around the National Palace.  
Undeterred, some demonstrators continued to throw stones that cracked  
loudly against the armor of UN personnel carriers.

In response, UN soldiers shot lachrymose bombs (gas to scatter the  
protesters) and fired guns at point blank range. Some deaths and many  
wounded were reported to have occurred in the melee.

Richardson, a demonstrator from Carrefour, said that he would rather  
be killed in the street by a MINUSTAH bullet than die passively of  
hunger in his house.

Some people shouted "We have our national police, we don't need  
MINUSTAH".  Others stated that the powers behind the U.N. were part of  
the coup that ousted former President Jean Betrand Aristide in 2004.

Protestors said that their situation has deteriorated horrendously  
since the 2004 coup d'etat and that the former Aristide  
administration, even under a near total aid embargo, had placed  
subsidized food banks in Haiti's poorest slums. Among protestors  
widespread support was apparent for Fanmi Lavalas, the political  
movement led by the exiled president.

ImageIn March, before the latest "food protests", student activists  
appeared to have made some ground in reversing the ruinous policies  
that have decimated Haitian agriculture since 1986.

At the time, in a response to the student protesters Haiti's Minister  
of Agriculture, Francois Severin, said he would adopt eleven specific  
recommendations that the students had put forward to revive Haiti's  
agricultural sector. But in a recent address Severin said that now the  
government will not be able to implement those recommendations.

Under pressure from transnational financial institutions such as the  
IMF and World Bank, Haitian agriculture has been liberalized. Rural  
incomes and production has plummeted. Haiti's food supply has been  
made vulnerable to international price fluctuations as cheap, highly  
subsidized imports of rice and other staples put Haitian farmers out  
of work.

RELIEF FOR NOW, MORE PROBLEMS ON THE HORIZON

Debt relief for Haiti continues to be a subject for debate despite the  
country's predicament. The U.S. House of Representatives recently  
passed the Jubilee Act, a bill which guarantees debt relief and  
additional benefits of debt relief for 67 impoverished countries. The  
legislation now moves to the U.S. Senate, where this Thursday there  
will be a hearing on the Jub Act.

Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center of Economic and Policy Research  
(CEPR), based in Washington D.C., said that Haiti's short term  
problems with spiraling food prices result largely from US policy.  "A  
big part of the story is biofuels. Land is being taken out of food  
production and used to grow crops for biofuels," he commented.

ImageDespite being the most impoverished country in the Western  
Hemisphere, Haiti lags behind many countries in the Americas in  
obtaining debt relief through a program run by the International  
Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. A hard-hitting paper published  
in December by CEPR argues that the IMF and World Bank should  
disregard the rules of their HIPC (Heavily Indebted Poor Country)  
program: "Haiti's debt should be cancelled without further delay,"  
said CEPR

By April 14, demonstrations had slowed but it is widely agreed that  
the problem of mounting food prices will continue to plague the island  
nation.

The Preval government appears to have realized it has no choice but to  
subsidize and negotiate price breaks for food for the poor, even  
though it has only put in place short term measures to offset the  
growing gap.

The government of Venezuela, viewed increasingly as a close friend and  
ally to Haiti, sent hundreds of tons in food stocks which were  
distributed in short order.  U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in  
recent days has also been vocal in calling for increased food aid to  
Haiti to avert a crisis; UNOPS is busy meanwhile increasing its  
distribution of donated food.