6888: Re: 6869: This Week in Haiti 18:46 1/31/01 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Maxetluc@aol.com

I'd love to know where this newspaper comes up with some of its nonsence.  
(Probably the same place Raymond Joseph comes up with his for Haiti 
Observateur, only from the opposite end of the political spectrum.)

I went to Limbe lass than a week after the demonstrations and talked to Judge 
Desir and Magistrat Prevelus as well as others who witnessed the 
demonstrations.  According to witnesses inside the hospital compound.  The 
demonstrations consisted of forty to fifty guys from the local grassroots 
organization, and another 250 onlookers drawn by the Compas music playing 
from loudspeakers on the back of a truck the group brought.  Desir and 
Prevelus both claimed that the "population" spontaneoudly rose and demanded 
that the hospital be turned over to the Haitian Baptist Convention, but 
neither mentiuoned figures anywhere close to the 4,000 this rag claims.  The 
people "chose" this group because Limbe is overwhelmingly protestant.  (Why 
Limbe, with one tiny Baptist church, is so remarkably different in religious 
demographics than the rest of Haiti, neither Prevelus nor Desir bothered to 
say.)

For 4,000 people to show up, one in ever 7.5 residents of Limbe needed to 
come.  (Limbe has about 30,000 people.)  Leaving aside young children and old 
people - perhaps 40% if the World Factbook is accurate - that leaves 18,000 
available for duty.  So let's get this straight Nearly 25% of ablebodied men 
and women in a desperately poor area are so incensed about a situation that 
they leave their farm implements and marche stalls - where they might earn 
enough for a single meal - and march on the hospital.  The hospital has no 
armed guards, but this massive mob doesn't overrun the hospital.  Instead, 
they wait for at least the hour it takes for a twelve man HNP unit to drive 
from Cap Haitien to Limbe.  They then part like the red sea and let this tiny 
unit get between the hospital and their own raging hearts.  And then the 
crowd collapses in the face of this underwhelming show of force.

Moral of the story - Don't believe everything you read.

Maxetluc