Harkening Back to Dark Days in Haiti

[Jefferson23]

WASHINGTON, Mar 12 2014 (IPS) -

On Oct. 16, 1993, Alerte Belance was abducted from her home and taken to Titanyen, a small seaside village used by Haiti’s rulers as a mass grave for political opponents. There she received machete chops to her face, neck, and extremities. Despite her grave injuries, Belance was able to save herself by dragging her mutilated body onto the street and asking for help.


Belance’s survival was extraordinary, but not all were so lucky.

On Jan. 18, 1994, Wilner Elie, a member of the Papaye Peasant Movement, was knifed to death by a group of masked men in his own home. His 12 children were handcuffed by the assailants and forced to watch helplessly as their father was brutally murdered.

Elie and Belance’s tragic stories were not anomalies. Not long ago in Port-au-Prince, decapitated bodies littered the streets, warnings to would-be dissidents. Violent men sexually abused young women seemingly for sport.

Solving the wrong problems

http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/03/harkening-back-dark-days-haiti/

[marble falls]

1. All days harkened back to on Haiti are dark. People don't realize that Hait bought back all....

Haitians back from their French owners. These payments went on till the 1940's taking up as much as 90% of Haiti's revenues each year. Yet the Haitians I've met are some of the most genuinely kind, ambitious and hard working people I know. How do these people only get the unremitting hard life that is Haiti? I'd risk the Gulf Stream in a jury rigged boat made trees that I swear don't seem to exist in any photo I've ever seen if I were Haitian.

[Jefferson23]

2. Of course they are, yet the brutality they have endured from within and now yet

another military in the works..seems ominous, at best.

Again, where is the investment in their people?

Although Haiti is well within its rights to establish an army, the purpose of a military is not to provide internal security, but to combat external threats. A Haitian official claims that it’s embarrassing to have the United Nations providing security in Haiti.

But although its mission in Haiti has been marred by scandal, the U.N. is training a national police force to provide security and keep order once the peacekeepers finally leave. It’s unclear why a military would be preferable in this regard to a civilian security force.

And it’s similarly unclear why Martelly thinks he needs to build a military to create jobs or invest in infrastructure. Haiti is in desperate need of construction workers – even before the 2010 earthquake leveled buildings and destroyed homes, Haiti’s infrastructure was already in a precarious position.