Haitian children sold as cheap labourers and prostitutes for (approx) £50

[Up2Late]

(Sorry, the full headline wouldn't fit, so I had to edit it, the full headline is below. This is so bad, I'm sure this is debatable, but I blame * for this one too, because of the 2004 U.S. removal of their democratically elected President. BTW, £54.22 is about $30 dollars)

Haitian children sold as cheap labourers and prostitutes for little more than £50

Dominican Republic accused of turning a blind eye to thriving trade in youngsters

Gary Younge in Santo Domingo
Thursday September 22, 2005
The Guardian

On market day in Dajabón, a bustling Dominican town on the Haitian border, you can pick up many bargains if you know where to look. You can haggle the price of a live chicken down to 40 pesos (72p); wrestle 10lb of macaroni from 60 to 50 pesos; and, with some discreet inquiries, buy a Haitian child for the equivalent of £54.22 (about $30 dollars).

"You just ask around town," says Hilda Pe-a, who monitors border crossings for the Jesuit Refugee Service. "People know who the scouts are. You just tell them what kind of child you are looking for and they can bring across whatever it is that you want."

There is a thriving trade in Haitian children in the Dominican Republic, where they are mostly used for domestic service, agricultural work or prostitution. Eight-year-old Jesus Josef was one of them. Numbed by a mixture of trauma and shyness, this small boy with huge eyes cannot recall how he left his three brothers and mother in Haiti and ended up doing domestic work for a Dominican family in Barahona, 120 miles from the capital, Santo Domingo.

Torture

Jesus sits quietly as Father Pedro Ruquoy, who runs a refuge near Barahona, tells how he escaped from the family and ran away to a local hospice. When he arrived his neck was twisted from carrying heavy loads on his shoulder and the marks on his slender torso suggested ill-treatment. The Dominican family found out where he was and came to the hospice demanding either his return or 10,000 pesos for the loss. "They used him as a slave," says Mr Ruquoy. "And they tortured him."

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1575268,00.html?gusrc=rss>
(more at link above)

[renate]

1. I think maybe the reason this isn't getting replies

is that the title is SO HEARTBREAKINGLY SAD that there's just nothing that can be said.

[Up2Late]

2. I know what you mean, it just seems like an un-ending string of outrage.

I can almost here the Fox "news" spinners interviewing The Guardian, "Why don't you ever report on the countries who DON'T sell their children into slavery for $30 Dollars?"

[struggle4progress]

3. I wonder what the ambassador, Hans Hertell, old supporter of ..

Poppy Bush, fundraising "pioneer" for W, and former chairman of American Builders Corporation, says about this this "Ownership Society" idea in practice ...

[Up2Late]

4. I found this excellent Time-line of rise and fall of J-B. Aristide

I'm not sure if all the links still work, but it does give a good rundown of this troubled country.

<http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=the_2004_removal_of_jean-bertrand_aristide>

[Kelvin Mace]

5. OK, I'm quibbling

but £50 is about $90.

But, I'm sure that BushCo will file a complaint with the WTO that the price should be $30 and arrange for sanctions against greedy children who sell themselves at outrageous prices.

[Up2Late]

6. Oh you are right! I'm terrible with math and keep getting those

mixed up. I did the math backward.

Sorry.

[Kelvin Mace]

16. S'OK

:)

[Judi Lynn]

7. People watched with horror and dread as we saw Bush's plan for Haiti

coming to life. Many were praying the rest of the world would somehow intervene, but by then, almost everyone was too terrified, wondering just how much power _Bush had gathered for himself, and how much hell he was capable of inflicting on a suffering world. No one dared come forward to speak in Haiti's defense, while EVERYONE knew what lay ahead. No one outside the CBC:

Shortly after Bush made his remarks, Black Caucus members rushed to the White House to express concern at what they say is Bush's refusal to preserve the democratically elected government in Haiti. They first met US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and ultimately demanded to meet with Bush. Secretary of State Colin Powell and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card were there as well. This comes a day after Ira Kurzban, the lawyer for the Haitian government, said on this program that the US is arming and training the paramilitaries currently fighting to topple Aristide's government.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/26/1612207&mode=thread&tid=25

To make matters worse, he surrounded Haiti with an armada to make sure not one of the desperate Haitians trying to escape the bloodbath would be able to make it off the island to get to Cuba, Jamaica, Bahamas, or the U.S. They were fed right back into the island as if into a tree shredder. You know how _George hates cruelty.

Haiti has feared _Bushes as they know what the FIRST _Bush did to Aristide, their elected leader. They knew that after Clinton had returned Aristide to office after the first _Bush took him out, that the son of a _Bush would be driven to reinforce his father's act.

And look at how much good it has done. Just read it and weep. We have only to turn to _{George W. Bush,} to find the one to thank: _Bush and the Republicans. They've managed to make life so much more hellish for Haitians than it was after the first _Bush got through with them.



God help these children. Maybe help will come when enough countries have petitioned the U.N., although American right-wingers will raise holy hell if anyone lifts a finger to help these brutalized, sad, abused young people.

[Megahurtz]

15. Horrible!

This is all horrible.:cry:

[Mairead]

8. What'll you bet that the people who enslaved that little boy are

the Dominican social equivalents of the Bushes. It seems as though the wealthy elites in every country believe they should have unbounded privilege.

[buzzsaw_23]

9. slave trade is alive and well

on Earth Inc.

This is a direct legacy of colonialism.
This is as appalling as it gets.


Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism... Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all others.

-- Emma Goldman

[Xithras]

14. The slave trade is as old as humanity.

We'd like to think that we've evolved past it, but the reality is that we've simply developed a skill for ignoring it. We overlook the things we do not like, and pretend they're not there.

And we don't even need to look past our own borders to find it.

[seemslikeadream]

10. My 15,000 post "WEEP BELOVED HAITI"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4810982


Haiti's Dark Secret: The Restavecs
Servitude Crosses the Line Between Chores and Child Slavery



Weekend Edition - Saturday, March 27, 2004 · Haiti, a nation of only eight million people, is home to some 300,000 restavecs -– young children who are frequently trafficked from the rural countryside to work as domestic servants in the poverty-stricken nation's urban areas.

Parents send their children away, often to wealthy looking strangers, hoping that they will be fed and educated in exchange for performing domestic work.

As poverty and political turmoil in Haiti increases, human rights observers report that the number of restavecs continues to rise dramatically.

Documentary photographer Gigi Cohen spent a month in Haiti photographing Josiméne, a 10-year-old restavec. Cohen's is one of 11 stories that are part of Child Labor and the Global Village: Photography for Social Change, a project of The Tides Center and Julia Dean & Associates.

Cohen's month with Josiméne evolved into more than a simple assignment –- the two forged a close relationship. Freelance producer Rachel Leventhal asked Cohen if, in addition to her photographic assignment, she would also make recordings for the radio. Using Cohen’s recordings, she tells Josiméne's story.

Josiméne lives in a two-room cinderblock house outside of Port-au-Prince. Her parents, who have seven other children, are small farmers in Haiti's remote and mountainous heartland.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1779562

[emad]

11. MISSED IT Seems! Megagrats on your 15,000. Must have been

asleep or dozing or buried in the sand when that milestone passed by.......

Looking forward to the next 15,000.
xxx

[emad]

12. Is it UK sterling £50? or local currency? Because at UK rates

£1 = $1.80969?

[Up2Late]

13. £50 was the conversion from the local currencey, done by The Guardian

I'm the one who did the math wrong, it was getting a little late and I multiplied £54.22 by 0.5581 when it should have been 1.7917.

I've never been very good at math. <http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/fds/hi/business/market_data/currency/11/12/default.stm>

Sorry about that

[barb162]

17. Parents?

"Some are kidnapped but most often their parents not only know, but actually pay "busones" or scouts to ensure their safe passage in the hope that they will have a better life."

That this kind of stuff is still happening in this day and age....
Use birth control instead of trading their kids? It makes me want to scream reading this

[Dark]

18. What happened to "No child left behind". Let me guess. The kids are black.

and Bush doesn't care.

surprise.

[barb162]

20. Wait a minute; sounds to me FROM THE STORY

this is about Haitian parents and Dominican buyers. Bush is about as responsible for this at Putin, for pete's sake. The sugar plantations using these kids are owned by Guatamalens, etc.

[drduffy]

19. what goes around

comes around and I hope I live to see BushCo receive a little karma. I imagine his daughters would bring a few bucks. Or maybe not.

[barb162]

21. Haiti is just about the most poverty- stricken country on this planet

I know people who have done charity work there and those kids are desperate for things like their own pencils, that is, if they are lucky enough for their parent to have the money to send them to school. That country has been denuded of its forest by people burning it for firewood. Then hurricanes come through and everything gets washed away. The country is basically a big mess and environmental nightmare. They need international aid, they need to regrow forests, they need to lower their birth rate until they get their footing (a manageable birthrate for that island and its resources), hell,they need just about everything. It has been this way for years there.

Back when AIDS first started, Americans and people from other countries went there for extremely cheap sex because those people would sell their bodies dirt cheap to feed their families. They had no money for condoms, didn't know what AIDS was back in those days, etc. A lot of people from that country died of AIDS. Horrible things have been happening in that country for decades if not centuries