IF THERE is anything in the Caribbean that could qualify for me as the Scandal of the Year, it would not be the revelation that phones were tapped and e-mails intercepted by the Security Intelligence Agency in Trinidad and Tobago.
That may pale in comparison with what I expect to be unveiled in Haiti one day coming soon; what I and many others across this planet believe to be nothing less than a well-orchestrated, merciless sabotage of the Haitian people; either in an attempt to annihilate these “free” people who are seen as the dregs of humanity in the New World Order, or to correct a suspected “earthquake weapons” experiment that went horribly wrong.
It is also clear that Haiti continues to be the victim of successive selfish and corrupt governments which have fawned, in recent years, over a dubious United States foreign policy.
In fact, the Rene Preval administration seems bent on following hook, line and sinker promises from the United States in the aftermath of the January earthquake, especially those made by the United Nations’ Special Envoy to Haiti, Bill Clinton, a former United States president – despite the obvious fact that nothing has improved for nearly three million Haitians living and dying in tents daily.
I was in Port-au-Prince two months ago when the priorities of the Haitian government appeared so skewed that I nearly fell out of my chair at a Press luncheon.
I was privileged, through an invitation of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), to be in the presence of a Haitian reporter who lives in Port-au-Prince and whose relatives were surviving under dirty tarpaulin and plastic tents exposed to sun, rain, vermin and violence. This reporter stood up and, in a voice cracking with emotion, asked the Minister of Public Health Alex Larsen “what is happening in Haiti ten months after the earthquake?”.
To someone relaxing on a beach or in some restaurant in any neighbouring Caribbean island, this question might not spark a flicker of emotion. In fact, one Barbadian told me recently “man, we aint got nutten in common wid Haiti! De language, see? We can’t understand dem and dem can’t understand we”.
Clearly, it might take a major natural disaster here to make him “understand”.
Anyway, the Haitian reporter was told by Larsen that there were other priorities for the government such as the planning of an underground sewerage system! I wanted to get out of the room and walk home: from Haiti to Barbados!
Here was a situation where people were still walking around having lost limbs and with other physical and mental scars of the earthquake; where people were living in unhealthy conditions with one pipe serving hundreds for cooking and washing.
The country was two days away from the start of a cholera epidemic, and its health minister – about to partake in a culinary feast while cozying up at the head table with suit-wearing UN officials – was concerned about laying underground pipes.
I’m no engineer, but couldn’t those US$5.7 billion pledged by myriad governments and donor organisations have gone into the building of proper homes with wells first?
This seemed not to be the plan, since one official source of pride and joy was a maternal facility at Croix des Bouquets which housed all of five beds! It was recently refurbished by the PanAmerican Health Organisation (PAHO) and the UNFPA.
Haiti’s health minister also voiced concern about people entering his country and behaving as if they were in a colonised land. But isn’t it colonised by the United States, whose UN “peacekeeping” fortress outside the capital contains heavily armed soldiers and armoured tanks imported from Jordan?
Doesn’t Haiti smack of a colonised country when – like the former Spanish, French and British “discoverers” whose diseases and weapons wiped out most of the original Caribbean people – its cholera epidemic is gradually being traced to the UN peacekeeping forces?
This is happening in the 21st century. More than 3 000 people have succumbed to cholera so far, and a government minister is posturing about sovereignty!
Larsen also related that the globally respected Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) had sought to build a hospital but his government had ordered them to stop since it was unwise to build in that area, but couldn’t alternative sites have been proffered?
This is not about officialdom and unnecessary red tape but about people who need help now: children begging for food and money from each passing car, women cooking alongside gutters, men looking up from the dusty street and holding out their hands to journalists on the balcony of the Plaza hotel.
I was equally saddened last weekend to watch outgoing CARICOM Secretary General
Sir Edwin Carrington lament the inability of his organisation to implement the aid plan for its Haitian brothers.
Sir?Edwin, shaking his head, could hardly articulate the situation – compounded by cholera – which now faces the CARICOM team that includes Dr Rudolph Cummings, programme manager, Health Sector Development of the CARICOM Secretariat, Dr Melody Ennis, of the Ministry of Health, Jamaica, and Major Kirk Johnson, of the Jamaica Defence Force.
What hurts most, though, is the aggressive controlling stance of the US and UN, whose takeover has frustrated most other meaningful attempts to rebuild and to give the people of Haiti some semblance of normal, modern living. The earthquake should have been the catalyst to finally create a new, prosperous Haiti, but this is not to be.
Meanwhile, platitudes and promises continue unabated, including envoy Clinton’s recent comment that “I share their frustration” while promising that “hundreds of thousands” would get new permanent housing next year.
Above all, too many questions remain unanswered as we go into 2011:
• Why has there been no concentrated effort at evacuation? Even keeping people away from the island’s capital has been left to chance.
• Where has the US$5.1 billion gone?
• Are any governments and/or organisations investigating the possibility that the earthquake of January 12 was man-made, and that large deposits of oil exist under Port-au-Prince? Reports of such suspicions are rife on the world wide web, so anyone with eyes to see can see.
• Was the timing of this quake so soon after the failed December UN climate summit in Copenhagen purely coincidental?
On my own, I can do nothing to remedy this heartless situation, but I will not enjoy lunch with officials who watch Haitians die in squalor under tents.
