a1799: Haiti - repression of orange plantation workers, threat of massacre (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Tttnhm@aol.com

Press release: Workers under a wave of repression in St. Raphael, north
Haiti, with Batay Ouvriye warning of danger of a massacre.

Iissued by the Haiti Support Group - 26 April, 2002


In a statement issued on 24 April, the Haitian workers' organisation, Batay
Ouvriye, denounces a month-long wave of violent repression endured by workers
and peasants at the Guacimal orange plantation at St. Raphael in northern
Haiti. The violence perpetrated by police, acting in collusion with the local
landowners and agents of the Guacimal company, has forced workers in the area
to go into hiding.

Two peasant farmers have been imprisoned without trial for over a month,
while another was arbitrarily arrested last week. One worker was brutally
beaten up on 22 March but when he tried to file a legal complaint, the judge
at the St. Raphael court refused to hear him and made it clear he was not
concerned with the fate of the Guacimal workers.

The main targets of the repression are members of the St. Raphael orange
workers' union and a local association of peasant farmers, both of which have
been involved in a long and bitter dispute with the Cap-Haitien-based,
Guacimal company.

The Haitian state authorities have refused to back the workers' legitimate
struggle for union rights and collective bargaining, and the judiciary has
openly sided with the ruling class in land disputes. Batay Ouvriye says that
these factors have created the context where the local bosses and landowners
have decided to get rid of, to eliminate, all those who work and cultivate
the plantation land.

Batay Ouvriye is warning that the situation is now so dire that there may be
a repeat of the massacres seen in earlier times, such as those at Piatre and
Gervais. Batay Ouvriye is calling on all organised workers and all
progressive forces to mobilise themselves to support the St. Raphael workers,
and to force the state and the ruling class to respect workers' rights.


Background

The St. Raphael workers, who grow and harvest oranges that provide orange
extract for European companies such as Remy Cointreau, formed a union in late
2000 in the hope of negotiating improved pay and conditions. However, the
Guacimal management refused to even recognise the union's existence, and used
every trick in the book to try and crush it.

An international solidarity campaign attempted to press Guacimal share-holder
and principal client, the Paris-based drinks giant Remy Cointreau, to take
action in support of the workers' legitimate rights. For months, Remy
Cointreau said it was doing what it could to make its junior partner in Haiti
play fair, then suddenly, at the beginning of this year, Remy Cointreau
announced that it had only ever been a client, and that the problems at
Guacimal obliged it to end its involvement in Haiti and buy its orange
extract for the Cointreau liqueur elsewhere. However, weeks after this
announcement, Guacimal boss, Nonce Zephir, told a reporter from the British
newspaper, The Observer, that he had not heard of any changes in Guacimal's
relationship with Remy Cointreau.

Meanwhile, the peasant farmers of the area, many of whom are related to the
orange plantation workers, have grown increasingly angry with the Guacimal
company's failure to carry out the improvements to local infrastructure that
formed part of the leasing agreement when the plantation land was acquired by
Guacimal over forty years ago. Their frustration boiled over when guards at
the Guacimal orange plantation began discriminating against peasant farmers
connected to the workers' union by preventing them from cultivating plots of
land between the orange trees during the summer.

In early March some peasants began cutting down orange trees in protest. A
short time later, Myrtho Julien, the departmental delegate of President
Aristide (there is one for each of the country's nine departments and they
act as a link between the executive and the local government), visited the
St. Raphael fields. He met with various officials, including the police, and
declared his opposition to the tree-cutting. Immediately after this, the wave
of repression of workers and peasants began in earnest.

The situation has been further aggravated by the installation of a new mayor
of St. Raphael in place of Fernand Sévère who was shot dead in December 2001.
(The elected representative of the region - the member of Parliament or
Deputy -  was arrested and charged with involvement in the murder, and
remains jailed to date.) Whereas the Deputy had sympathised with the Guacimal
workers, the murdered Mayor had clearly opposed them, and in February 2001
had personally intervened to break a workers' strike at the plantation.
Consequently, the decision, taken in late March 2002, to install the brother
of the murdered Fernand Sévère as the new Mayor, has clearly impacted
negatively on the workers' struggle.

for more background see the Batay Ouvriye web site:
http://www.ifrance.com/syndicats-bo-haiti

and the Haiti Support Group web site:
http://www.gn.apc.org/haitisupport
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