Haiti cholera outrage: UN guilty!
2016Ernie Gotta 2016-09Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 4 →
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“The UN’s policy is morally unconscionable, legally indefensible, and politically self-defeating,” says a UN report on the unprecedented cholera epidemic that be gan Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. So far, cholera has claimed 10,000 lives—maybe more—and infected some 800,000. It is the worst cholera epidemic of modern times. UN policy in Haiti, orchestrated by US imperial ism and racism, amounts to murder.
The as yet unfinished UN report was made public on Protesters in San Juan, Puerto Rico, stood firm blocking the opening of a conference that would green light and deepen the imposed austerity on the island’s working class and oppressed.
Activists successfully stopped the first meeting to discuss the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Econom ic Stability Act (PROMESA). This bill was cooked up in the halls of the U.S.
Congress and is the most recent way Uncle Sam has found to exploit and ex tract wealth from Puerto Rico for the benefit of Wall Street.
Over 100 years ago, in 1898, Puerto Rico was invaded by the U.S. military during the Spanish-American War and took the island from its old Spanish co lonial rulers in the Treaty of Paris. By 1917 the new colonial masters passed the Jones Act, imposing U.S. citizenship on all Puerto Ricans.
Immediately following the passing of the Jones Act, nearly 20,000 Puerto Ricans were drafted into segregated units of the U.S. military during the First World War. This colonial arrange ment subjected Puerto Ricans to U.S. federal law without any real represen tation and included tax exemptions for corporations based in the States.
Furthermore, the island was involun tary transitioned from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy by Aug. 8 and was authored by UN “rapporteur” Philip Alston, a poverty and human rights expert. For years, the UN, including its Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and UN agencies, had stonewalled and denied all responsi bility for the catastrophe. Often, the UN cited Haitian “hygiene” to arrogantly deflect blame.
After the UN report was sent to Ban Ki-Moon, a spokes man for the Secretary General wrote, “Over the past year, the UN has become convinced that it needs to do much more regarding its own involvement in the initial outbreak and the suffering of those affected by cholera.”
business owners seizing the moment to make greater profits.
Today, 45% of Puerto Ricans live in poverty and there is massive unem ployment. In 2014, 80,000 left the is land because of economic conditions.
Forced into the diaspora, there has been a 9% drop in population. The PROMESA bill will be a continuation of past colonial policies and will guar antee a deepening of the economic crisis for millions of working and poor people. The bill will be implemented by a Washington-appointed financial control board and aims to lower the minimum wage for newly hired young workers from $7.25 to $4.25.
On Labor Day, protests were orga sic health kit for less than $2000.
The most recent UN sanitary review by the Office of Internal Oversight Services of the period between July 2012 and June 2014, long after the cholera outbreak, found so many sanitary problems at UN bases that it deemed them “unsatisfactory.” Cholera is once again on the increase since 2014.
“Victims are living in fear because the disease is still out there,” said Mario Joseph, a prominent Haitian hu man rights attorney who represents cholera victims, told protesters gathered in Port-au-Prince last month. Weekly sit-in protests demanding justice and reparation are ongoing in front of the US Embassy.
(continued on page 5, in “Labor Briefing”)
nized by workers and students at Walmart locations in Puerto Rico, where the company em ploys 14,000. About 55% of these workers are employed part-time for less than 30 hrs a week for $9 an hour. A statement advertising the pro tests read, “Our lives are worth more than their profits! May the crisis be paid by the rich ones!”
The AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFSCME, and oth ers representing more than 50,000 workers in Puerto Rico urged Congress to vote against PROMESA: “H.R. 5278 provides no economic stimulus, and in fact takes money out of the economy by reducing the minimum wage and overtime protections.”
Organizing efforts in solidarity with the struggle in Puerto Rico are picking (continued on page 9, in “Trade union report to the Socialist Action convention”)