Haiti's Efforts to Save Trees Falters
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A call to halt deportations
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Families Furious Over School Collapse
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Girl, 8, recalls 12-hour Haitian school collapse ordeal
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Haiti: storm victims starve
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US sends search and rescue teams to Haiti school collapse

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Haitian president slams building sector
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No more victims found in collapsed Haitian school

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Turning Haiti into a (Penal) Colony:
Criminalization of Haiti's Children

The systemic criminalization of black males in Haiti by the Haiti's US-imposed Miami government parallels U.S. habits

"...For, in Haiti, the imperialists have also found the formula for outsourcing wars so that the blood of their sons and daughters are maintly not on the line.

The UN forces in Haiti, are made up of troops from the developing countries. These poor Black and Brown soldiers are now fighting the imperialists' wars for him in Haiti. Even the African Union's rejection of the re-colonization of Haiti is reported to have been neutralized with the sending, to Haiti, of African soldiers from the Francophone countries. Not surprising considering France's investment in Haiti's bicentennial coup d'etat. It was, after all, Francophone Africa that was used to stop the spread of Pan-Africanism after the independence movement, mainly through French expatriates like Houphouet Boigny and Leopold Cedar Senghor.

The Haitian comparison with Miami's Latortue, or US-citizen Andre Apaid or to Marc Bazin are inescapable. (The comparison also applied to Texas' Simeus when he was attempting to negate the Haitian Constitution, illegally profit by the coup detat and unconstitutionally become a candidate in the Feb. 7, 2006 elections. Simeus was even indirectly endorsed by a Condoleezza Rice visit to Haiti.) Houphouet Boigny and Leopold Sedar Senghor were seen by many as the main destroyers of Pan Africanism and African unity in Africa. They were both President of their countries, held in power by the foreign interference of France, as well as being French citizen, and were, even for a time, French National assembly members. Boigny even initially opposed independence outside the French community. These Eurocentric Africans, like US/Euro-centric- Latortue, Apaid, Bazin, et al, share many similarities. For instance, both Latortue and Bazin played pivotal roles, as middlemen, in coup d'etats in Haiti (1991 for Bazin and 2004 for Latortue and Bazin) intended to destroy Haiti's pro-democratic Lavalas Movement and to legalize the re-colonization of Haiti. Boigny and Senghor helped to destroy the institutionalization of Patrice Lumumba and Krame NKrumah's Pan-Africanism and the democratic initiatives of their own countrymen, effectively keeping their African countries as French colonies with themselves as France's handpicked overseers to run their countries as a plantation for the French. (Simply...A history Pan-Africanism - http://www.newint.org/issue326/simply.htm )

Like the Ivory Coat's Boigny and Senegal's Senghor, Latortue, Bazin, Apaid, et al, are the Haitian middlemen who forged international careers on the premise that economic development in Haiti will only come when the white men and his IMF-World bank structures dominate Haiti and, thus, they represent these international structures, UN, World Bank, are the "subcontractors" for sweatshops conglomerates and transnational corporations, ultimately helping to give a "black" face to the re-colonization of Haiti through the bi-centennial coup d'etat that is a cover for implementing the Washington consensus, financial colonialism and UN de facto protectorate. HLLN, November 4, 2005.

Turning Haiti into a (Penal) Colony: The systematic criminalization of young Black males in Haiti, parallels their criminalization in the U.S. by Marguerite Laurent

They say people do what they know how to do. Our habits control us. It's a white habit to put Black males in prison "for their and their own communities' good". A racists, colonial habit. Not to mention it's a very profitable habit that feeds white bellies, psyches and self-esteem. Absolute win-win.*

The Criminalization of Haiti's Children

Prisons are in the US a new form of slavery. And we know how profitable that enterprise was for the white settlers in the Western Hemisphere. Today, in the U.S., the successors to the East Indian Company, the multinational corporations, benefit by having "legal" and "morally acceptable" access to a cheap, free and captive labor force.

Thus, while everyone seems purposely distracted by the upcoming sham elections in Haiti, the systematic criminalization of young Black males moves forward unimpeded in Haiti. (See below October 31, 2005 AHP report on an USAID financed prison for children in Haiti.)

The hard part these days at HLLN is not the thousand deaths, physical and emotional pains associated with facing the coup d'etat countries, their insulated powers, their Haitian agents and their massacres, imprisonments, but also simultaneously dealing with what the accumulated desperation of 21-straight months of internationally sanctioned acts of terror in Haiti, diets of daily fear and the massive coup d'etat beatdowns suffered by the poor majority of Haiti, at home and abroad, has wrought.

No human being is talented enough to express the depth and breath of the horrors of Bush and Carney in Haiti today. But the fear and terror has made some headway against Haiti's freedom fighters; has pushed some otherwise well-intentioned people to irrationally reach for these elections-under-occupation as something that could give HOPE to Haiti.

But at HLLN, standing on truth, disappointed by what we've experienced these last 21-months, in terms of racism, illustrated by the disrespect and personal agendas of our "progressive" white allies variously using Haiti's pains; disapointed by the silence of Black progressives on Haiti's sufferings or, alternatively by the disservice of Black "progressive," like the Ron Daniels of this world, acting as self-annointed "honest" brokers while gleefully turning the US candidate and IMF/World Bank-boy, Marc Bazin, into a "Lavalas candidate;" terrified by the enormity of the new phase of this fight for Haitian dignity and liberty, we work everyday to live without fear.

That is, to articulate and face the fears.

We face that Haiti Democracy Project runs Haiti now with Timothy M. Carney as U.S. Ambassador Foley's replacement. We face that UN troops have killed and abused, with impunity, in Haiti and continue to do so with no consistent public denouncement, except from HLLN and Kevin Pina at HIP.

We face so-called "peacemakers" threading lightly, racism making them afraid of the possible "Haitian stain" on their resumes if their organizations fight too hard a fight that seems like it cannot be won.

We grapple with and absorb that the grassroots for development, justice and equality in Haiti, are facing daily occupation-repression, virtually alone; facing alone the Damocles Sword of more July 6, 2005 UN iron fist operations to slaughter more unarmed Haitians; facing alone the uncertainty, improbability that they will EVER hear authentically from President Aristide, who is himself, facing the State Department's own Damocles Sword, that Aristide may, as the coup d'etat powers keep threatening, be summarily thrown into a Miami jail by the US, for corruption and drug dealing, at the drop of a hat, if he indeed breaks his silence. An act that would also place his and his family's hard fought refuge and asylum in South Africa at risk and put South Africa under greater pressures and troubles from US powers, their global bases, political and military allies.

The repression against Haitians at home and in exile, is varied but total. It is exercised with the full repressive political, economic and judicial (indefinite-detention) force of the world's most powerful countries and armies, thus with the full force of shock and awe. That is why, it is not surprising, and somewhat not totally incomprehensible, giving human frailties and survival instincts, for some in the grassroots in Haiti, some bought off, others terrorized, to find themselves moving to support the candidacy of Rene Preval as a way, a reluctant "strategy" to put the coup d'etat resources to "positive use", they falsely think, and pull victory out of hopelessness - to keep, that is, the Lavalas democracy movement against being totally dismantled and decimated.

They're looking for a way out and grasping at straws. It's ludicrous, but they actually believe they will somehow hoodwink the imperialst with a Preval win, when its the Washington Imperialist who wooed Rene Preval out of retirement and into running to falsely give Lavalas a decoy, a false straw, this bait that ensares.

In addition to the terrorized grassroots in Haiti, many very beaten down and desperate Haitian men in exile also feel a Rene Preval candidacy is the ONLY way they may have an immediate HOPE of returning to their homes in Haiti or even perhaps to get a job with his government if he's selected!!!

It's all very desperate, demoralizing, dehumanizing, disappointing and undignified.

But when you are a tiny Black island, located within a hostile American Mediterranean; a Black country that still OWNS SOMETHING the powerful imperialists haven't yet privatized (colonized), but surely feel racistly entitled to take from you as a divine right! and you have no great military allies, the choices for survival are fairly untenable.

Meanwhile, the scariest thing to happen to Haiti and Haitians this month, has gone unnoticed with these election terrors of the imperialists and their Haitian sycophants morbidly drawing attention away from the colonial realities of the matter.

USAID has started its FIRST prison for children in Haiti.

Yes, the systematic criminalization of young Black males in Haiti, parallels their criminalization in the U.S. There are some white towns in the US where the townspeople's sole income comes from the incarceration of young Black and brown men who make up the bulk of the prisoners. The imperialists' game plan for Haitian boys and men, is moving along well. By the time a puppet Haitian president, like Preval, Simeus or Bazin, is installed in Haiti on February, 2006, more prison centers will have to be built to contain the Haitian "criminal elements," right?

Haiti doesn't have capital punishment. But not for long, if the Texans are pulling the strings, as surely they will be with UN troops having to be permanently stationed to "uphold the newly elected" collaborating Haitian president and government, right?.


France's role in Haiti provides the formula to destroy Desaline's vision of Black-ruled independent nation

In Haitian history, Toussaint Louverture stood for Black ruled French colony and
Desaline stood for Black ruled independent nation.

After Desalines death, with the 1825 French debt, France established, through endless debt that institutionalized poverty, ecclesiastical colonialism and French pèpe schooling, a Black ruled French colony until the US took over to forge Haiti into a Black ruled US-colony from 1915 on until the 1990's election of Aristide re-ignited the people's hopes for Dessalines' vision of a Black-ruled independent nation.

Today, France's role in Haiti appears to provide the formula to destroy Desaline's vision of Black independence, by destroying Haitian rule and helping the re-colonize Haiti. The formula this time is through the mechanism of third world troops and the rule of Haitians who have more ties to Washington and the UN then they do to Haiti.

It's a formula the French, with Boigny and Senghor having more ties and allegiances to Paris than to Abidjan or Dakar, perfected into a colonial blueprint in Africa.

It won't cost the US, Canada, or France many lives to re-colonize Haiti. For, in Haiti, the imperialists have also found the formula for outsourcing wars so that the blood of their sons and daughters are maintly not on the line.

The UN forces in Haiti, are made up of troops from the developing countries. These poor Black and Brown soldiers are now fighting the imperialists' wars for him in Haiti. Even the African Union's rejection of the re-colonization of Haiti is reported to have been neutralized with the sending, to Haiti, of African soldiers from the Francophone countries. Not surprising considering France's investment in Haiti's bicentennial coup d'etat. It was, after all, Francophone Africa that was used to stop the spread of Pan-Africanism after the independence movement, mainly through French expatriates like Houphouet Boigny and Leopold Cedar Senghor.

The Haitian comparison with Miami's Latortue, or US-citizen Andre Apaid or to Marc Bazin are inescapable. (The comparison also applied to Texas' Simeus when he was attempting to negate the Haitian Constitution, illegally profit by the coup detat and unconstitutionally become a candidate in the Feb. 7, 2006 elections. Simeus was even indirectly endorsed by a Condoleezza Rice visit to Haiti.) Houphouet Boigny and Leopold Sedar Senghor were seen by many as the main destroyers of Pan Africanism and African unity in Africa. They were both President of their countries, held in power by the foreign interference of France, as well as being French citizens, and were, even for a time, French National assembly members. Boigny even initially opposed independence outside the French community. These Eurocentric Africans, like US/Euro-centric- Latortue, Apaid, Bazin, et al, share many similarities. For instance, both Latortue and Bazin played pivotal roles, as middlemen, in coup d'etats in Haiti (1991 for Bazin and 2004 for Latortue and Bazin) intended to destroy Haiti's pro-democratic Lavalas Movement and to legalize the re-colonization of Haiti. Boigny and Senghor helped to destroy the institutionalization of Patrice Lumumba and Krame NKrumah's Pan-Africanism and the democratic initiatives of their own countrymen, effectively keeping their African countries as French colonies with themselves as France's handpicked overseers to run their countries as a plantation for the French. (Simply...A history Pan-Africanism - http://www.newint.org/issue326/simply.htm )

Like the Ivory Coat's Boigny and Senegal's Senghor, Latortue, Bazin, Apaid, et al, are the Haitian middlemen who forged international careers on the premise that economic development in Haiti will only come when the white men and his IMF-World bank structures dominate Haiti and, thus, they represent these international structures, UN, World Bank, are the "subcontractors" for sweatshops conglomerates and transnational corporations, ultimately helping to give a "black" face to the re-colonization of Haiti through the bi-centennial coup d'etat that is a cover for implementing the Washington consensus, financial colonialism and UN de facto protectorate.

Bait and Switch: Turning Haiti into a US colony through sham elections

The white "friends" of Haiti are rapidly turning Haiti into a Black penal colony. If these rigged elections go unchallenged, there may be no stopping them. Our Black children in Haiti will be living in chains, subject to arbitrary arrest, summary executions, repression and all that the bloodbath the Bush administration has brought so far to Haiti. And, whoever becomes their puppet president, following these rigged elections, will be there solely to legitimize their colonial rule further, protract Haiti's misery and struggle for liberty. If said puppet president should ever try to rebel, well then, Condi Rice may well be sent to Haiti, for a day, to set him straight, as she did to Latortue recently when he tried to refuse the candidacy of Dumarsais Simeus. And if political pressure from Condi doesn't work, well then, the UN soldiers are readily available to cover-up US stealth military actions and participations in summary executions. No problem. Timothy M Carney knows how to turn the truth into a lie and lies into truth. Isn't that what the Haiti Democracy Project he ran did to sell the public "Aristide's corruption and dictatorship" and bring forth the 2004 bicentennial coup d'etat in the first place?

Father Jean Juste is in prison, So Ann is in prison, Yvon Neptune is in prison, along with a thousand more political prisoners. Yet, under this climate and through fear and institutionalized coup d'etat terror from the courts, prisons and police run by Canada, the Bush Administration and France, with the OAS and UN, are promoting sham democracy through new digitalized balloting, to be counted and ratified, of course, by these said same foreigners. These, the very countries which destroyed Haiti's authentically elected government. (See HLLN's position on these selections at: Standing on Truth, Living Without Fear
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/withoutfear.html )

Yes, indeed, Haitians have more horrors to look forward to at the hands of these white "friends of Haiti," well versed in the bait and switch game.

The bait that has some in the grassroots compromising. The dangling carrot holds that these elections will restore the validity of the Haitian vote. These digitalized Ohio-type elections is to establish "democracy, stability and security" in Haiti. But just as the Feb. 29, 2004 "humanitarian intervention" was suddenly switched into a hunt for "gang members" and a mission to run and "provide security for elections", unless successfully transformed, these elections will legitimized the current dictatorship and foreign occupation in Haiti. And, be the pretexts for initiatives taken to improve Haiti's "prison conditions" whereby schools will no longer be necessary for Blacks in Haiti, literacy won't be an important national goal, so won't clean water, good roads or sewage systems. Living wages and decent jobs in Haiti shall become forever deferred dreams. Instead, Haitians will suddenly see how completely hopeless they and their Black children are; how the best thing to do with their life-force is pay off IMF and World Bank debts, being the backdrops (as maids, cooks, housekeepers and butlers) to foreign tourists like the areas other IMF "developed countries", such as Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, which no longer own any of their country resources, are annexed to debt and have a greater crime and violence problem than Haiti EVER had under its democratically elected Lavalas Presidents (1990, 1995, 2000) And, whatever energies are left over from the strain of staying "good Haitians" who pay "their debt", will perhaps be put into begging the imperialist and reigning Miami or Texas bureaucrats/middlemen/overseers to replace their intake and prison centers in Haiti with "readjustment, rehabilitation and re-education centers for minors." (See, "Inauguration of a reception center for minors" -AHP, October 31, 2005)

We would have abandoned our hearts desires. No one will notice the contraction and downsizing of Haitian hopes and dreams and the penal colony that Haiti has become. We won't focus on how Haiti survived for two hundred years without the prison industrial complex. No.! We'll be too busy being grateful for the nice prison conditions being brought to us by white experts and prison scholars! Too grateful for the silence of the cemetery brought to Haiti by Bush and company.

Any Haitian who claims to represent the hopes of the masses, but who forgets Haitian history, forgets moral suasion didn't bring Haiti its independence and is idealistically giving credibility to the promises of the white men, men like Haiti Democracy Project's Timothy M. Carney, who brought coup d'etat, the rule of lies instead of laws and the rule of the bullet instead of the ballot to Haiti in the first place, is too desperate, too traumatized to lead themselves, much less Desalines' people.

Marguerite (Ezili Danto) Laurent
Li led li la
November 4, 2005
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(Last updated April 6, 2006), see also Children's prison reflects Haiti's woes (March, 2007)

*Slavery on the New Plantation, American Torture Chamber: A Report on Today's Prisons and Jails, Part 2 of 2 by Kiilu Nyasha, Guest commentator, The Black Commentator, Feb. 15, 2007;Record 7 million Americans in Justice System, - Incarcerating dissent by criminalizing the dissenters and victims of Imperialism's death and destruction policies: Haitian Nights, Again: Haiti's
Children Suffer More under the Bushes' policies and Colonial Regime changes and, What White People Feed on is not so eye opening, just typically parasitic, fearful, self-serving, narcissistic and delusional: Ezili Dantò Responding to two racest articles on Haiti
************************************************************

- HLLN's position of the sham elections
Standing on Truth, Living without Fear: HLLN's position on foreign-sponsored
elections under coup d'etat, dictatorship and occupation | Haitian
Perspectives by Marguerite Laurent, October 31, 2005

- HLLN's responds regarding position taken on sham elections,Windowsonhaiti
There are no free rides
http://www.haitiforever.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=12214#12214

- “We’re Not Participating In Selections!” Says Haitians in Haiti
(May 27, 2005) Ezili Danto Witness Project

- NY Fanmi Lavalas denounces Marc Bazin and his renegade Fanmi Lavalas acolytes

- Condemn Sham Elections in Haiti
**********************************************

Inauguration of a reception center for minors in conflict with the law: the director of CARLI welcomes the initiative but would prefer readaptation centers

Port-au-Prince, October 31, 2005- (AHP)- The director general of the Haitian National Police, Mario Andrésol, opened a center at the police station of Delmas 33 on Saturday to receive minors who are having problems with the law.

The center was opened in connection with International Prisoner Days on
October 31.

Mr. Andrésol said he was pleased with this initiative and urged parents and other sectors of national life to support this experience, which the prison authorities expect to repeat in other parts of the country.

Construction of the Center to receive minors was financed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

For her part, the administrator of this intake center, Mme. Erna Kens, considered that this project marks an important step in Haitian-American collaboration with respect to reinforcement of the law pertaining to the system of detention in Haiti.

This funding, said Ms. Erna Kens, should enable the Haitian National Police to improve security in the prisons and provide onsite training of detainees. The director of the human rights organization CARLI reacted to the opening of the center, praising all the initiatives taken to improve prison conditions but he said he would prefer to see the creation of centers of readjustment, rehabilitation and re-education for minors.

It is important, said CARLI director Renan Hédouville, to focus on conditions of detention, but it is just as important to focus on the ineffectiveness of the judicial system and on cases of prolonged preventive detention, because, he continued, many detainees are kept in prison without reason and without being brought before a judge. AHP October 31, 2005 11:30 AM
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“Be true to the highest within your soul and then allow yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionalities or arbitrary man-made rules that are not founded on principle.” Ralph Waldo Trine

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5-Points From the Democratic Base In Haiti speaking for self (since Haiti's Democratic Party Leaders are in Jail or in Exile)

5-points from the grassroots Lavalas Movement and party-base in Haiti in order for the majority and forces of peoples in Haiti they represent
to go to elections:


1. Liberation of all political prisoners including Father Gerald Jean-Juste who the Fanmi Lavalas grassroots-base in Haiti has chosen as their candidate for the presidency of Haiti.

2. The Latortue government must go.

3. The repression and killings in the popular neighborhoods must stop

4. Disarmament. Arms must be gone. There cannot be elections with all these arms on the streets (even those in the hands of the
"no-nationality" Haitian bourgeoisie, their "anti-poor" thug enforcers and former
military).

5. President Aristide and all those in exile must be allowed to return to Haiti
************

Haiti's Efforts to Save Trees Falters
By JONATHAN M. KATZ

GRAND COLLINE, Haiti (AP) — Far from the spreading slums of the Haitian capital, past barren dirt mountains and hillsides stripped to a chalky white core, two woodcutters bring down a towering oak tree in one of the few forested valleys left in the Caribbean country.

Fanel Cantave, 36, says he has little choice but to make his living in a way that is causing environmental disaster in Haiti. And these days, he and his 15-year-old son, Phillipe, must travel ever farther from their village to find trees to cut.

"There is no other way to get money," the father said, pushing his saw through splintering wood that will earn him as much as $12.50, depending on how many planks it produces.

Such raw economics explain the disappearance of Haiti's forests, a process that has led to erosion that has reduced scarce farm land and left the island vulnerable to deadly flooding.

U.N. experts say just 2 to 4 percent of forest cover remains in Haiti, down from 7 to 9 percent in 1981. And despite millions invested in reforestation, such efforts have mostly failed because of economic pressures and political turmoil.

For example, the U.S. Agency for International Development embarked on an ambitious $22.8 million project in the 1980s to plant some 30 million trees that could provide income for peasants. But the project focused on trees that can be made into charcoal for cooking, and nearly all were eventually cut down.

Environmental Minister Jean-Marie Claude Germain said reforestation projects and efforts to preserve trees in three protected zones were set back by the violent rebellion that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004 and prompted the U.N. to send in thousands of peacekeepers to restore order.

"Even though there were agricultural laws, the laws were not respected," Germain said. "We are trying to create order now."

Stability returned with the 2006 election of President Rene Preval and U.N. military action against Port-au-Prince's powerful gangs. But in a nation where 80 percent of the 8.7 million people live on less than $2 a day, trees mean income for those lucky enough to have access to them.

Some groups say they've found success on a limited scale by planting fruit trees and protecting hardwoods through micro-loans and agricultural assistance. Floresta USA, based in San Diego, has been working in Haiti for the last decade and is now planting about 33,000 fruit and hardwood trees a year. The Organization for the Rehabilitation of the Environment, based in southern Haiti, has produced more than a million fruit trees since it began work in 1985.

Compared to the USAID's failed plan, smaller programs have had more luck by focusing on fruit trees, which farmers are more likely to preserve to sell the fruit. And smaller organizations are able to work with individual farmers and tailor planting to the needs of specific areas.

"People aren't excited about, 'Hey let's go plant trees.' They're excited about, 'How can I feed my family? How can I make ends meet?'" said Scott Sabin, executive director of Floresta.

But many who are dedicated to restoring Haiti's forests have grown pessimistic. Despite small successes, prospects are grim for implementing such programs on a grand scale.

"Everything has been studied and all the solutions are already known," said Mousson Finnigan, the head of the Organization for the Rehabilitation of the Environment. "But when it comes to implementation, it becomes a place where everybody's fighting for the money. They're not fighting for results."

Christopher Columbus found dense tropical forests in 1492 when he arrived on the island colonizers named Hispaniola, now shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

But the trees began falling quickly, first as the Spanish and French cleared forests for plantations and later as hardwoods were logged for U.S. and European markets. Peasants then burned and cut down what was left in desperate search of farmland.

While the Dominican Republic still has some of the most impressive forests in the Caribbean, parts of Haiti now resemble a moonscape of denuded mountains billowing dust. Hillsides are blasted away to make bricks for the capital of Port-au-Prince.

Without trees to anchor the soil, erosion has reduced Haiti's agricultural land, making the island more vulnerable to floods each hurricane season. More than 100 Haitians died in last year's floods, including dozens killed when a river jumped its banks during a gentle but steady rain unrelated to any tropical system. And in 2004, Tropical Storm Jeanne killed some 3,000 people in the coastal city of Gonaives alone.

And yet the trees keep falling. Orange fires can still be seen in the hills above the capital as farmers clear land at night. At the La Saline market, charcoal vendors arrive each day with mountains of bags, their faces coated with black dust.

"In Haiti we destroy instead of produce," acknowledges LeClaire Bocage, 38, who sells 110-pound sacks for $6.25. "They're going to tell the poor to stop cutting down trees. But what will we do to make a living?"

It may be too late to restore Haiti's lost forests, said John Horton, an environmental specialist who has overseen Haiti projects for the Washington-based Inter-American Development Bank. He suggested planting crops that can stabilize the soil and be sold or used for bio-fuels. Others promote raising money through carbon credits from overseas firms emitting greenhouse gases elsewhere.

"They need cash crops, they need food, they need energy immediately," Horton said.

Associated Press researcher Barbara Sambriski contributed to this story.

A call to halt deportations
Haiti's President René Préval asked the U.S. government to stop deporting undocumented Haitians and instead grant them temporary protected status.

By JACQUELINE CHARLES, Miami Herald, Feb. 15, 2008


After refusing for two years to ask for a U.S. halt in deportations of undocumented Haitians, Haiti's President René Préval has asked President Bush to grant them temporary protected status.

In a two-page letter to Bush dated Feb. 7, Préval wrote that while he had apprehensions about seeking the TPS designation in the past, the devastation caused by Tropical Storm Noel in October has changed his mind.

`LIMITED RESOURCES'
''It will take years for our fellow citizens . . . to recover from the consequences of that storm and of other other natural disasters that preceded it,'' Préval wrote.

``The extension of the TPS to Haitians would protect the children born on U.S. soil as well as their parents, and would enable my government to concentrate its limited resources upon economic and political reconstruction instead of having to provide social services to [deportees].''

Veronica Nur Valdez, a spokeswoman with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said the agency is processing the request.

The decision on TPS is made by the president, but the U.S. Department of Homeland Security can make a recommendation on whether to grant it. DHS did not act on a similar request by former Prime Minister Gérard Latortue in 2004 following devastating storms that killed thousands.

Local immigration advocates and South Florida elected officials have long advocated TPS for the 20,000 Haitians they believe are living in the United States illegally. TPS would entitle them to temporary residency and work permits for up to 18 months.

In Miami, those advocates applauded Préval's request and urged Bush to approve it.

''This is a significant development which again strongly raises the need for Haitians in the United States to receive equal treatment and protection under the law,'' Steve Forester, senior policy advocate for Haitian Women of Miami, said in an e-mail.

''There is a great strain being put on his government having to absorb people who are being deported from the United States,'' added Miami Democrat Rep. Kendrick Meek.

''We are putting Haitians in a situation where roads are washed out, areas of the country are experiencing hard economic times and they are not going to serve a purpose to the families they leave behind,'' he said.

But Meek, like others, said he doubted Bush would approve the request because of the president's failure to approve it in the past, the electoral campaigns and the fact that immigration reform remains a divisive battleground.

''I would love to be proven wrong,'' Meek said.

Dan Erikson, a Caribbean analyst with the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington, said Haiti faces an uphill struggle.

`SUCCESS STORY'
''The Bush administration recently has been touting Haiti as somewhat of a success story. The argument becomes that if the U.S. is spending all of this money helping to stabilize Haiti and yet its citizens still require TPS, then things are not going as well as has been advertised,'' he said.

A spokesman for Rep. Alcee Hastings, a Miramar Democrat who unsuccessfully championed a TPS bill in the last three sessions, welcomed Préval's request but questioned its timing.

''The concern we have is what message is the president trying to send to the U.S.: That the instability in Haiti is so great that he thinks we ought to keep people here?'' said the spokesman, David Goldenberg.

Boycott Disney and the ABC Network
(Support HLLN's Campaign 5)

(in 1990)"...Haitians, through the ballot box, rebelled against their neocolonial status. They rebelled against a racist world economy that locked them into the role of producers instead of consumers. Under Aristide, they wanted to complete what they began in 1803 – joining the world community as equals. If Haiti, as the hemisphere’s poorest nation, was successful in escaping from their international debt and seizing control of their own destiny, it could prove to be as devastating to the global sweatshop economy as Haiti’s first revolution was to the slave trade.......

"...the new (US-imposed Miami) government also, as one of its first acts in office, cut Haiti’s minimum wage by 50%, from about $3.60 for a 12 hour day, down to $1.60. This is a big perk for Haitian-American Andre Apaid, owner of numerous Haitian garment manufacturing plants making cheap wares for American companies such as Disney, owner of the ABC network. ABC joined the US corporate media in selling this American citizen as a legitimate leader of Haiti’s “civil resistance” to the popular Aristide Government. "Our nasty little racist war in Haiti by Michaeli, NimN, June 7, 2004 | Source: http://coldtype.net/Grip.04.html
(Scroll down to 7 June 2004)

"When you make a choice, you mobilize vast human energies and resources which otherwise go untapped...........If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want and all that is left is a compromise." Robert Fritz