12332: U.S. denies crucial funds to help Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Sun, Jun. 16, 2002

CARL HIAASEN
U.S. denies crucial funds to help Haiti

Children lie sick and dying this morning on Haiti's central plateau, which
will surprise no one familiar with the wretched conditions there.

What's shocking, though, is that they're suffering in increasing numbers
because the U.S. government has deliberately blocked millions in
international loans to the hemisphere's poorest nation.

A vital chunk of that money was earmarked for Haiti's health-care system,
strapped in the best of times but now on the brink of collapse.

''I have worked for almost 20 years in Haiti and have seen U.S. aid flow
smoothly and generously during the years of the Duvalier dictatorship and
the military juntas that followed,'' wrote Dr. Paul Farmer, an American who
directs the Zanmi Lasante clinic.

``As a U.S. physician, I believe it is shameful that the current embargo has
been enforced during the tenure of a democratically elected government. Such
policies are both unjust and a cause of great harm to the Haitian
population, particularly to those living in poverty.''

Farmer's organization, Partners in Health, is funded mostly from private
donations and doesn't depend on aid from the U.S. or Haitian governments.
But in recent months, as Haitian-run clinics have been forced to close or
cut back operations, the caseload at Farmer's ambulatory clinic has
exploded. Staffed to handle 25,000 visits annually, the facility will this
year see more than 120,000 patients, Farmer says. Another 200,000 will be
treated in the field by community health workers.

No one knows how many Hatians elsewhere in the country can no longer get
medical care. Among the rampaging diseases are tuberculosis, malaria, HIV,
meningitis and polio, which had once been thought to have been eliminated
from the Western Hemisphere.

SHORT-SIGHTED POLICY

These outbreaks, so devastating in Haiti, also pose a direct threat to
countries where Haitians immigrate. Destination No. 1 is the United States.

That's why it's impossible to understate the stupefying short-sightedness of
the Bush administration, or to overstate the brutal human consequences of
its actions against Haiti. Almost $150 million in loans from the
Inter-American Development Bank have been bottled up by the United States.
Included in these funds are $22.5 million for medical supplies and clinics
and $54 million to improve the potability of the water supply, a source of
deadly epidemics.

Ostensibly, the loans are being held back to force Haitian President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide to clean up the chaotic and sometimes violent
electoral process. The country has been in political gridlock since the 2000
parliamentary elections, which many believe were fixed.

U.S. officials stiffly deny that the aid cutoff is an embargo, and like to
brag that the United States has spent $300 million on humanitarian aid to
Haiti over the last four years -- about $10 a year per person. Secretary of
State Colin Powell has defended withholding the money: ``We do not believe
enough has been done yet to move the political process forward to assure
ourselves that additional aid will be used in the most effective way. . .
.''

It's perfectly right to seek an end to thuggery and election fraud, but it's
unconscionable for our government to punish the sickest and neediest
Haitians to make its point.

The hypocrisy is literally sickening. Haiti wouldn't be as abysmal as it is
today if the United States hadn't looked the other way for 28 years while
the Duvaliers looted the national treasury, pocketed foreign aid and
assassinated their critics. When it comes to demanding democracy and human
rights abroad, though, the United States has extremely flexible standards.
Powell chastises Haiti's elected president at the same time that the Bush
administration is snuggling up to a Chinese regime that imprisons dissidents
in mental asylums.

More ironically, it was an American invasion that crushed a Haitian military
junta and triumphantly reinstalled Aristide in 1994. Still, he has always
been distrusted by conservatives in Washington, D.C., and the aid cutoff
seems meant as a scolding.

RESISTING PLEAS

Four months ago, the 14 Caricom nations in the Caribbean begged the United
States and Europe to release international aid to Haiti, before the crisis
there spurs a new exodus of refugees. The request was denied.

In April, a resolution by the Congressional Black Caucus urged President
Bush to free up funds for Haitian medical clinics, drinking water and
education. ''The difference between life and death,'' said Rep. Barbara Lee
of California.

The White House didn't budge. In May, U.S. Ambassador Lino Gutierrez
declared that access to aid loans ``will remain limited because the
government of Haiti refuses to adhere to the most basic principles of good
governance.''

As is often true with our embargoes, the people we're trying to chasten
aren't the ones being made to suffer. ''I find this morally repugnant,''
Farmer wrote to a friend. ``I know we can do better and continue to pray
that we do.''

Meanwhile, the lines at his rural clinic grow longer and longer. So, too,
does the sad list of the dead.



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