NY awards gala mocks misery of Haitians

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On June 19, a quickly called protest was organized against a glitzy awards gala in Manhattan that featured a “Leadership in Education” award for the corrupt and repressive Haitian president, Michel “Sweet Mickey” Martelly. On the same program, a “Lifetime Achieve­ ment Award” went to Martelly’s political patron, for­ mer U.S. President Bill Clinton, a prominent so-called “friend of Haiti.” Since the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake, which killed as many as 230,000 and made 1.5 million homeless, Clinton has played a high profile role in the scandalously mismanaged international relief effort in Haiti.

Ray Laforest, a New York-based Haitian activist and member of the International Haiti Support Network, told the weekly Haiti Liberté, “Teachers are strik­ ing and students are marching to denounce how the Martelly government is strangling education in Haiti. Now the clueless glitterati are going to toast him for supposedly supporting education. It’s an outrage and a disgrace.” Protesters also called for the US/UN mili­ tary occupation, begun under Bill Clinton in 1994, to “Get out of Haiti!”

Sponsors of the protest included Dessalines Coor­ dination (KOD), Haiti Liberté newspaper, the Interna­ tional Support Haiti Network, the International Action Center, Socialist Action, and the Party of Socialism and Liberation.

The ruling-class shindig was sponsored by super­ model Petra Nemacova’s “Happy Hearts Fund” at the Cipriani Restaurant. Nemacova had narrowly escaped death in the Indian Ocean tsunami of 10 years ago. She is the girlfriend of Haitian Premier Laurent Lamonthe, who also attended, and is a long-time business part­ ner of Martelly. The “non-profit” raised over $2.5 mil­ lion through ticket sales and auction objects.

The egoistic strutting and posing for cameras by Manhattan’s power couples and the fashionista elite made a surreal contrast with the $2 a day average in­ come of Haitians—who are shackled with an 80% un­ employment rate, according to the World Bank.

The several dozen Haitian and other protesters hit Martelly’s corruption, which includes a $20,000 a day Haitian Premier Martelly (left) at table with Clinton and other notables at lavish awards event.

spending allowance and financial perks for his fam­ ily. Martelly is well known for his close relations with former supporters of ex-dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier and has increased arrests, harassment, and spying in Haiti. Frequent protests there have called for Martel­ ly’s resignation.

Wikileaks documents revealed crude U.S. govern­ ment and corporate interference in the 2011 Haitian presidential election, which excluded the Fanmi La­ valas Party of the former elected president, Jean-Ber­ trand Aristide. An interview with Brazilian OAS insid­ er Ricardo Seintenfus, published by Dissent magazine (Feb. 24, 2014), reveals how Jude Celestin, a leading run-off candidate of the governing party of President Rene Preval, was eliminated by intense international, mostly U.S., pressure. Martelly was elected—Haitians say “selected”—with less than a 17% eligible voter turnout.

Martelly’s real education policies merit no award— except for arrogance. A Feb. 13, 2013, report by Haiti Grassroots Watch, a non-profit research organization in Haiti, found that Martelly’s promise to “educate a million students a year” for five years was a sham. ard housing construction. The U.S. Agency for In­ ternational Development (USAID) estimated in the summer of 2011 that over a million Haitians lived in damaged homes, and nearly half of them in “buildings that might collapse at any moment.” Yet by September 2013, only 7500 units had been built, despite billions in aid.

It is estimated that 60 percent of the $1.3 billion in USAID funds in Haiti goes to U.S. corporations, ac­ cording to a February 2014 report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C., a liberal think tank. Seven out of the 10 largest USAIDfunded projects went to Chemonics, a big U.S. Wash­ ington Beltway corporation. The report noted, howev­ er, that it is impossible to know exactly how the mon­ ey was spent because of the lack of detailed reporting.

A mere 1 percent of international aid went to the Haitians themselves—that is, to the Haitian govern­ ment, and Haitian businesses and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Most of the aid went to inter­ national corporations and NGOs—often with lucrative salaries and little transparency.

Four and one-half years after the earthquake, 170,000 Haitians are still in “temporary” tents or shelters in miserable, unsanitary, and dangerous con­ ditions in and around the Port au Prince capital.

Mary O’Grady, writing in The Wall Street Journal of May 18, said, “Four years after a magnitude 7.0 earth­ quake toppled the capital city of Port au Prince and heavily damaged other parts of the country, hundreds of millions of dollars from the State Department’s U.S. Agency for International Development (US-AID), al­ located to the IRHC, are gone. Hundreds of millions more to the IRHC from international donors have also been spent. Left behind is a mish-mash of low qual­ ity, poorly thought out development experiments and half-finished projects.”

A revealing new film by Raoul Peck entitled “Fatal Assistance” exposes the betrayal of promises made to the Haitian people by the imperialist governments, which includes a blatant racist disregard for Haitian initiative and input (see www.velvet-film.com).

The US/UN military occupation of Haiti, scientific studies have shown, was responsible for a cholera epidemic that has killed over 8500 Haitians. Cholera, a preventable disease, is expected to take 2000 more lives in 2014. The UN has, once again, arrogantly re­ fused responsibility after two amicus curiae briefs were filed on May 15 by international law scholars and practitioners from Europe and North America. Sweatshop bill backed by occupation In Haiti today, textile sweatshop workers earn a mere $4.89 a day, in violation of Haiti’s own minimum