7 April, 2010 — HLLN

Recommended HLLN Link: Haiti: Women demand role in reconstruction bit.ly/bYw0fU

HLLN Delegation mobilizing Haiti-led Relief/Rebuilding bit.ly/cd8gOI

In this post

– Statement of Cuban Foreign Minister at UN Donors Meeting on Haiti bit.ly/b3ZHJa

– Ezili Danto’s Note: US/Euro pillage masking as humanitarian aid

Ezili Danto’s Note: US/Euro pillage masking as humanitarian aid

Here is an good example of what real helps looks like (Statement of Cuban Foreign Minister at UN Donors Meeting on Haiti bit.ly/b3ZHJa).

Below we post the Haiti-Cuba proposal for building health care in Haiti that considers the needs of the poorest of the poor in Haiti and is without the unseemly large budget of the cork-popping champagne fanfare of the UN/Papa-Mama Clinton March 31st media show and pledging session that just took place. It is worthy of all our support. If only this Haiti-Cuba health care proposal could be brought into application without the US/Euro policymakers’ interference and use of their egotistical NGOs and mercenary military contractors to block it. If only their inhumanity and vulgarity could be held in abeyance while heart sore human beings, living under water-logged tents, old cardboard and wet sheets, people with damaged and inflamed limbs, some also tear-gassed by the UN for protesting their conditions; if only their inhumanity and vulgarity could be held in abeyance as Haiti tried to recover from the ravages of the US/Euro neoliberalism and despotism that exacerbated a 7.0 earthquake so that it took the lives of over 300,000…

While the champagne bottles were popping at the UN for the pledging session’s success – $5billion, 10 billion pledged for the future. Whose future? Haitians in Haiti need a hoe, a tractor, some lifting equipment, so they might not have to use their bare hands to dig out the corpses still under the rubble almost three months after the earthquake. Just a hoe, a tractor – we’ll do the work. But no, the Internationals are going to give us $5 billion later, be happy. Wait for it as you die inside because your daughter, son, wife, mother, father, cousin and friends are still dead under the rubble and no one will help you lift up the cement blocks and steel cables so you might bury them. Yep, you have no food, no water, no medical treatment, no job to go to, no shelter today, but don’t worry, “The international community pledged $5.3 billion Wednesday for earthquake-shattered Haiti over the next two years, launching an ambitious effort not just to rebuild the hemisphere’s poorest nation but also to transform it into a modern state.” (bit.ly/97OTp6 – $5.3 billion pledged over 2 years at U.N. conference for Haiti reconstruction.)

So right now, at Fort National Haiti, the people are just walking over corpses and digging on the spot they find them to bury them. Others are burning the remains they find so that the stench and airborne disease won’t kill the living. But don’t worry, remember, papa and mama Clinton cares, the UN cares, Preval cares because at the Donor session the $5.3 billion amount “exceeded by more than $1 billion the goal set ahead of a conference co-sponsored by the United Nations and the U.S. government. In all, countries, development banks and nongovernmental groups pledged nearly $10 billion for Haiti in years to come.” (bit.ly/97OTp6)

In the years to come…

What is needed now is to finish extracting and burying the remaining dead, nurture the living, find a job to survive, get shelter from the elements and coming rains and hurricanes, medical treatment, food, water and get rid of the foreign experts who say their country is financing the Haitian government budget and therefore are the ones to represent the people of Haiti. Meanwhile Senator Dodd of Connecticut and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee are not going to these rulers of Haiti for the failure of the so-called Haitian government but asking for more foreigners like them to take charge despite the Internationals six-year dismal failures in Haiti.

Besides, what can the people under water-logged tarps and tents do with the abstract $5.3 billion pledged by these Internationals? A backhoe, tractor, some seeds to plant food and fruit trees, some electricity, in-Haiti production of all daily necessities, shelter, sanitation, a wheelchair, a prosthetic limb to replace the one cut off by the quakes ravages, a safe place to live, food, running water, antibiotics, some compassion and a living wage job to keep one from thinking about the lost of one’s everything, would be helpful. Like now, per chance? Using, not foreign resources, but Haiti’s gold, petrol, iridium, uranium, bauxite, limestone and the expertise of Haitians from the US, Canada, France, Latin America or the Caribbean who are willing to VOLUNTEER their time and transfer their skills to native Haitians for the nation’s good – to build Haitian capacity not NGO capacity in Haiti.

But alas, the West dreams of riding the world economic recession and political dangers for themselves on the backs of Haiti’s dead to the tune of $5.3, $10 billion do-gooder image they’ve siphoned off for themselves. Officialdom’s policymakers dream of doing more of what they’ve done in Haiti these last nightmarish six-years and of using the earthquake windfalls to build tourist enclaves and waterfront casinos in Site Soley, Fort National and throwing out the Black Haitian majority as was done in New Orleans.

So why bother against these dreams of the BlackBerry-smartphone contingent? Against the NGOs useless waste of money, their setting up projects where no Haitians participate, justifying their jobs by holding meetings upon meetings with the people in the camps but with no follow-up except their trophy reports/press releases and conferences to show direct connection to justify their existence.

Like always, we’re mostly on our own. Just different Haitians are dying, in jail and being abused and tear-gassed by the UN. Oceans of our blood have poured and watered the soil upon which Haiti stands.

“For whose entertainment shall we sing our agony? In what hopes? That the destroyers, aspiring to extinguish us, will suffer conciliatory remorse at the sight of their own fantastic success? The last imbecile to dream such dreams is dead, killed by the saviors of his dreams. (Ayi Kwei Armah, from the book Two Thousand Seasons.)

“And so it is an exercise in futility to go to the perpetrators and executioners of human rights crimes in Haiti in hopes of getting justice for our people. Those who ousted the constitutional government of Haiti the U.N., which acts as proxy to maintain this international crime, the Haitian lackeys and their State Department masters are dead inside and cannot hear the cries of the Haitian masses.

Its not their mission or mandate. For they dont represent life, liberty, democracy, development and decency, but its opposite.” (bit.ly/8Kx4zt – Another Haitian independence day under occupation by Ezili Dant)

Who in Haiti and in the Diaspora is not soul-tired of the US/Euro resource war on Haiti masking as humanitarian aid. False charity, false benevolence, false bringing security to Haiti barely veil Officialdoms market share and resource wars on independent Black Haiti? This Cuban proposal for health care ought to be brought into application. Really. And if Haitis majority had any say, if Haiti had any sovereignty, if the law, the good, the decent and moral had any teeth in these trying of times, there’s no doubt, it would be. But the foreigners and their Haitian Blan peyi making more than $500 a day in Haiti from donation funds pilfered from the pain they’ve caused, exacerbated and made worst through their rule in Haiti are not embarrassed at all. They make more than $500-a day in Haiti happily proclaiming it’s kosher for Haitians to make .38cents an hour. And through their self-serving defamation and denigration of Haitis Black people and always evil government or officials, these modern day slave-making Gran Blan, of all the classes and races, make Haitis suffering so ordinary, so natural, so-explainable, even they dont see their own vulgarity. The day these vampire in Haiti accept to level the social and economic hierarchies theyve imposed on Black Haiti, especially on Black Haitian women, and accept to come to help for the same .38 cents per hour salary their policymakers deem good enough for Haitians, is the day the majority in Haiti shall take any of them seriously. Until then, the Haitian Revolution shall continue. Liberty or Death. The souls gone shall add to our strength to continue until weve stopped or tied-up the Bafyti (black collaborator), Mundele (white colonist/imperialist) and all their Ndoki evil forces. E, e, Mbomba, e, e! Kanga Bafyti. Kanga Mundele. Kanga Ndki.

In the last six-years since Bushs bi-centennial regime change and since the tyrannical NGO industry and US/Euro market privateers took over Haiti, what has worked to assuage the vivid ills inflicted on the poor is the direct help Haitians have provided to each other and the Diaspora remittances. Other than that, with some small exceptions from a few small human rights organizations, Haitians may count on the Cuban doctors whose services do not strip of their sovereignty, equality, humanity and dignity.

Statement of Cuban Foreign Minister at UN Donors Meeting on Haiti bit.ly/b3ZHJa

Statement of Cuban Foreign Minister at UN Donors Meeting on Haiti Statement of H.E. Bruno Rodrguez Parilla, Minister of Foreign Affairs Republic of Cuba at the Haiti Donors Meeting United Nations Headquarters New York, 31 March, 2010

Mr. President,

The international community has a tremendous debt with Haiti where, after three centuries of colonialism, the first social revolution on the American continent took place, an act of boldness that the colonial powers punished with close to 200 years of military dictatorships and plunder. Its noble and hardworking people are now the poorest in the Western hemisphere.

We all have the moral obligation to contribute additional financial resources and greater cooperation to Haiti, not only for its reconstruction but, in particular, for its development.

In order to have an idea of the magnitude of the human tragedy in Haiti, suffice it to note that the death of 230,000 people in its small and high-density population, is equivalent to the death of more than 30 million people in a country such as China, whose population reaches a total of 1.3 billion inhabitants; an unimaginable tragedy.

In the wake of this devastating earthquake that shook the conscience of humanity, we trust that the numerous promises heard will be converted into action, that Haitis independence and sovereignty will be respected and ennobled, that the government of President Ren Prval and Prime Minister Jean Max Bellerive will be facilitated to exercise all its faculties, and that it will be able to benefit, not the whites and foreign companies, but the Haitian people, especially the poorest.

Generosity and political will is needed. Also needed is the unity of that country instead of its division into market plots and dubious charitable projects.

The program for the reconstruction and strengthening of the Haitian national healthcare system, drawn up by the Haitian government and Cuban governments, with the cooperation of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and other countries and humanitarian organizations, will guarantee wide health coverage for the population, in particular the low-income sector.

That program is based on 101 primary healthcare centers which are being created, at which an estimated 2.8 million patients will be treated, 1.3 million emergency operations performed, 168,000 babies delivered, and 3 million vaccinations administered every year.

These health centers will be supported by the services of 30 community reference hospitals distributed throughout the country and equipped with cutting-edge technology for secondary attention, which can treat 2.154 million people per year, perform 54,000 operations 1 million of these emergency surgery , 276,000 electro-cardiograms, 144,000 diagnostic ultrasounds, 43,000 endoscopies, 181,000 X-Rays, 107,000 dental examinations, and 487,000 laboratory tests.

Given the extraordinary number of poly-traumatized patients, 30 rehabilitation rooms are likewise being equipped which, within 12 months, will provide services for 520,000 patients and 2.4 million therapeutic treatments.

There will also be three electromedicine centers, a prosthesis laboratory and an integral hygiene and epidemiology program.

Also planned is a Haitian National Specialties Hospital at tertiary level, involving cooperation from other countries, directed by 80 high-level Cuban specialists responsible for services and clinical departments, research and teaching, and Haitian professionals who will be trained at the institution and progressively replace the Cuban medical professors.

The cost of the already mentioned services will amount to $690.5 million over 10 years, a total that includes the medical services provided, calculated at 50% of international prices; the sustainability of these services and the personnel providing them; and the training of a further 312 Haitian doctors in Cuba.

As can be deduced, the approximate cost is $170 million per year for a country of approximately 9.33 million inhabitants.

It is possible to do this. Our practical experience confirms it. In fact, this program is already underway and, post-quake, 23 of these primary care health centers, 15 community reference hospitals and 21 rehabilitation rooms are up and running.

From almost immediately after the earthquake, Cuban specialists have been dedicating their attention to the population affected. To date they have seen 260,000 patients, performed more than 7,000 operations, delivered close to 1,400 babies, and administered close to 100,000 vaccinations. More than 50,000 patients have undergone rehabilitation therapy and more than 75,000 children have received psychosocial therapy, in the presence of some of Cubas most eminent professionals.

A total of 783 Cuban and 481 Haitian doctors, plus 278 health professionals from 28 countries all of them graduated in Cuba are working on this program.

Last Saturday [March 27], as part of the program outlined, a memorandum of understanding for the strengthening of the healthcare and public services system and epidemiological prevention was signed in Port-au-Prince, thanks to the will of the Haitian government and a significant contribution from President Lula and Brazil, which will be decisive for the planned healthcare program.

During the 11 years of work prior to the earthquake, the Cuban medical brigade, which has a presence in 127 of the 137 Haitian communes, saved 223,442 lives, treated 14 million people, performed 225,000 operations and delivered 109,000 babies. Via the Operation Miracle program, 46,000 Haitians have had their sight restored or improved. During the same period, 165,000 Haitians have become literate in Creole.

If we evaluate the medical services provided in these 11 years and the training of medical personnel in Cuba, it would represent $400 million throughout the period.

The medical program that we are proposing, in its entirety, will benefit 75% of the poorest population of the country at a minimum expense.

We invite all governments, without exception, to contribute to this noble effort. For that reason, we attribute particular importance to this conference, and aspire to its success.

Thank you very much.

Translated by Granma International Posted by Overseas Review at 1:29 AM

Forwarded by Ezili’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network