HAITIANS Storm Presidential Palace Demanding Resignation of Prez

[magbana]

Hungry Haitians storm presidential palace in expanding food riots that threaten stability
JONATHAN M. KATZ, Associated Press Writer
April 8, 2008 2:24 PM

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - Hungry Haitians stormed the presidential palace Tuesday to demand the resignation of President Rene Preval over soaring food prices, and U.N. peacekeepers chased them away with rubber bullets and tear gas.

Food prices, which have risen 40 percent on average since mid-2007, are causing unrest around the world. But nowhere do they pose a greater threat to democracy than in Haiti, one of the world's poorest countries where in the best of times most people struggle to fill their bellies.

''I think we have made progress in stabilizing the country, but that progress is extremely fragile, highly reversible, and made even more fragile by the current socio-economic environment,'' U.N. envoy Hedi Annabi said Tuesday after briefing the Security Council.

For months, Haitians have compared their hunger pains to ''eating Clorox'' because of the burning feeling in their stomachs. The most desperate have come to depend on a traditional hunger palliative of cookies made of dirt, vegetable oil and salt.

Riots broke out in the normally placid southern port of Les Cayes last week, quickly escalating as protesters tried to burn down a U.N. compound and leaving five people dead. The protests spread to other cities, and on Monday tens of thousands took to the streets of Port-au-Prince.

On Tuesday, demonstrators in the capital set fires, barricaded streets and looted stores, and a crowd tried to break down the gates of the presidential palace, demanding Preval's resignation.

''We are hungry!'' the crowd shouted. ''He must go!''

Preval, a soft-spoken leader backed by Washington, was at work in the palace during the protests, aides said. He has made no public statements since the riots began.

''I compare this situation to having a bucket full of gasoline and having some people around with a box of matches,'' said Preval adviser Patrick Elie. ''As long as the two have a possibility to meet, you're going to have trouble.''

The protesters also are demanding the departure of the 9,000 U.N. peacekeepers, whom they blame in part for rising food prices. The peacekeepers came to Haiti in 2004 to quell the chaos that followed the ouster of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

They helped usher in a democratic transition, but critics say both Preval and the international community have focused too much on political stability without helping to alleviate poverty. That could spell trouble not only for Preval, but for Haiti's fragile democracy as well.

''We voted Preval for a change. Nothing happened,'' said Joel Elie, 31, who like many Haitians is unemployed. ''We're tired of it and we can't wait anymore.''

While the peacekeepers spend more than US$500 million (euro320 million) a year in Haiti, the World Food Program has collected less than 15 percent of the US$96 million (euro61 million) it says Haiti needs in donations this year. The WFP issued an emergency appeal Monday for more.

Meanwhile, new customs procedures aimed at collecting revenues and stopping the flow of drugs has left tons of food rotting in ports, especially in the country's north. In a country where almost all food is imported, cargo traffic from Miami ground nearly to a halt, though shippers say intervention by Preval last month has improved the situation somewhat.

Government officials say the riots are being manipulated by outside forces, specifically drug smugglers who can operate more easily amid chaos and supporters of Guy Philippe, a fugitive rebel leader wanted in U.S. federal court in connection with a drug indictment.

Annabi, the U.N. envoy, said ''people with political motivations'' were exploiting the demonstrations, but didn't say who he was referring to.

Many in the crowds are demanding the return of the exiled Aristide, and thousands showed up Monday for a rally by a key Aristide ally, the Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste, in the oceanside slum of Cite Soleil.

But the anger among everyday Haitians over food prices is real.

''The government of America sees that the kids of America are eating and going to school - and that we Haitians are not,'' said protester Frantz Pascal, 45. ''For Haiti to move on, the high cost of living must go down.''

AP-WS-04-08-08 1703EDT


http://www.newspress.com/Top/Article/printArticle.jsp?ID=565276885366736662&Section=WORLD&Subsection=

http://snipurl.com/23ulh

[Judi Lynn]

1. God help them. They must wonder if anyone knows they are there at all.....

You noticed how swiftly our right-wingers moved to get rid of the people's beloved President, but can't be bothered to clean up the mess left by their meddling.

Meanwhile, another person killed:

Fifth person dies in Haitian food price protests
Published on Tuesday, April 8, 2008

By Joseph Guyler Delva

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters): A man was killed by gunfire as demonstrators took to the streets in the southern Haitian city of Les Cayes on Monday, raising the death toll to five in protests against rising food prices, officials and radio reports said.

Protesters also marched outside the National Palace in Port-au-Prince, the capital of the impoverished Caribbean nation of nearly 9 million people, expressing anger at the higher cost of food.

Four people were killed and 20 others were hurt in a riot in Les Cayes last week. UN vehicles were burned, peacekeepers were attacked and a food warehouse was looted by angry mobs on Thursday and Friday.

In response to the unrest, Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis announced a multimillion-dollar investment program aimed at lowering the cost of living.

http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/news-7061--2-2--.html

[struggle4progress]

2. "I was hungry -- and you gave me rubber bullets"

[Judi Lynn]

3. They were hungry before, and George H. W. and George W. gave them death squads,

and also protected and supported the death squad leaders financially when they weren't busy slaughtering their countrymen/women.

Both _Bushes have Haitians' blood all over their hands, and the nightmare continues. Serious starvation has been added to the living hell.

Haiti needs a miracle.

[panAmerican]

4. Please K&R! People in Haiti are virtually under siege, unable to venture out unless critical

All the news in the press about Haiti are corroborated by my sources in Haiti. In fact, this had been building for more than 6 months, but the pain has reached a new threshhold. The food riots are in direct response to food aid languishing and rotting in the ports for months on end while people are starving.

[magbana]

5. Update: Mid-day Wed., April 9

From Monsters and Critics.com

Americas News
Haiti in crisis, Ban appeals for calm
By DPA
Apr 9, 2008, 17:33 GMT

Port-au-Prince/New York - Haiti's public transport, offices, businesses, schools and embassies remained closed Wednesday in the wake of nearly a week of violent protests against rising food prices.

The country was waiting for a speech by President Rene Preval, after critics have called for him to step down.

A week of protests and resulting government crackdown have claimed five lives, and there was fear the violence would continue Wednesday if the government does not step in, a resident of Port-au-Prince said.

By midday Wednesday, the Haitian police as well as the UN's stabilization troops had not taken steps against renewed demonstrations.

In New York, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon deplored the wave of violence against the UN mission in Haiti and against government and private facilities by crowds protesting high food prices in the impoverished nation.

Ban expressed concern at the situation and loss of life. He appealed for calm and restraint from the demonstrators.

'The secretary general expresses his sympathy for the suffering that the Haitian people are enduring as a result of rising food and fuel prices,' he said in a statement read by spokeswoman Marie Okabe.

'The secretary emphasizes that the UN mission and system in Haiti will continue to support the Haitian authorities to bring emergency relief assistance to the Haitian people and to maintain public order,' the statement said.

The UN mission in Haiti, with more than 1,000 peacekeeping troops, has been assisting the government to restore order and security since 2004, and to build democratic institutions.

The UN Security Council on Tuesday gave support to Haiti's proposed international conference aimed at improving its political, social and economic conditions, which are described as improving under difficult conditions.

The international conference on April 25 in Port-au-Prince is sought by the government to tackle the challenges of development. Ban was also preparing a plan to assist Haiti with benchmarks to measures progress.

On Tuesday, the protestors had built street barricades, forced their way into banks and stores, broke windows, plundered supermarkets and set fire to hundreds of autos.

The unrest began last Thursday in Les Cayes in southern Haiti, one of the world's poorest countries. The government has blamed organize drug gangs for provoking the unrest.

Haiti has suffered decades of coups, counter-coups and dictatorships which have pushed the country into political and economic ruin.

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/americas/news/printer_1399173.php

http://snipurl.com/23xvl

[Judi Lynn]

6. There's a map at this blog I can't copy and paste, showing where the food riots are:

Food riots
A map of where there have been food riots.
April 9, 2008 12:34 PM

Today, the flash point is Egypt (where the cost of food has doubled in a year) but last year Italians marched in protest at the cost of pasta and Moroccans over the price of bread.

The more recent protests include riots in Haiti last week that killed four people; violent protests in Ivory Coast; price riots in Cameroon in February that left 40 people dead; demonstrations in Mauritania, Mozambique, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Bolivia and Indonesia.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/2008/04/food_riots.html

(You note it also mentions some countries we've not been informed are having food shortages. This is unbelievable.)

The original post is hard to read. How many Americans have ever experienced that "Clorox" effect in their entire lives?

[struggle4progress]

7. Despite endless wingnut yammering, Venezuela doesn't seem to be on that map

[Judi Lynn]

8. You'd surely expect to see it there, if you believed the freepers infesting LBN. n/t

[Judi Lynn]

9. I'm afraid to hope the food coming from Brazil will actually get to the population:

Source: Government of Brazil

Date: 10 Apr 2008
Print E-mail Save Brazil donates 14 tons of food to Haiti
BRASILIA - The Brazilian government has been following the recent developments in Haiti with great concern. In response to a humanitarian assistance request from the Haitian government, Brazil will donate 6950 Kg of beans, 4050 kg of sugar and 3000 liters of oil, which adds up to a total of 14 tons of products. The donation will be transported by a Brazilian Air Force Boeing KC-137/707 military plane tomorrow, April 11th. The Permanent Representation of Brazil to FAO, in Rome, is organising the rapid deployment of the humanitarian aid to Haiti in coordination with the World Food Programme (WFP). The Permanent Representative of Brazil to FAO, Ambassador José Antônio Marcondes de Carvalho, who should have travelled to Brasilia to attend the 30th FAO Regional Conference to Latin America and the Caribbean, has been instructed by the Brazilian Minister of External Relations, Celso Amorim, to stay in Rome in order to coordinate the humanitarian aid to Haiti with the WFP.

The Brazilian government considers fundamental that the international community, in the terms of the applicable UN Security Council resolutions, keeps its commitment to promoting the effective improvement of the standards of life and the stability of Haiti. Brazil shall continue contributing to these international efforts and goals.

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/EDIS-7DKM7R?OpenDocument

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If through a miracle real people are helped this will be a start, hoping other countries will follow {if it will only be given to the ones who need it).

[magbana]

10. Finally, the BBC Found a Haitian to Inteview . . .

about the food crisis in Haiti. This article is ON TARGET. Haiti was growing much of its own food until the US flooded the Haitian market with its own rice driving Haitian rice farmers out of business.

View from Haiti: Aid worker

Prospery Raymond, Christian Aid's representative in Haiti, reports on the food riots that have plunged this troubled nation into crisis.

It is getting very serious now. The stores are all closed and my family is running out of food.

Even my six-year-old daughter knows that people are being killed on the streets. She has heard the shots and the rioters breaking windows.

Now the schools are closed, the markets are closed, and yesterday the airport closed for international flights - everyone is shut up at home.

People are hungry and angry. There are food stocks in the dock but the importers cannot get them out.

Looters are everywhere. They have even stormed a UN warehouse that was stockpiling emergency food rations in preparation for this year's hurricane season.

The staple foods in Haiti are rice and beans.

We used to grow enough to feed ourselves, but most of our rice is imported from the US now and prices have shot beyond people's reach.

A cup of rice costs about 50 gourdes. For those who are earning - and most are not - the average daily wage is only about 35 gourdes.

We still grow beans ourselves but last year's disasters, Hurricane Dean and Tropical Storm Noel, destroyed a lot of the harvest.

It is raining now in the north-west, and farmers should be planting their beans.

But because there is no food, they have already eaten the grain and beans that they would have used as seed.

If our farmers cannot plant now, they will harvest nothing and the crisis will simply roll on for another year. They need seeds urgently.

Christian Aid's local partner is monitoring the situation in the north-west, and is hoping to provide corn, beans, sorghum and pistachio seeds to about 2,000 farmers here.

If they plant now, they will have food again in a few months' time.

Rice does not grow well in the north-west, but in the areas where it does, the government too should be distributing seeds.

It is not good for a country as poor as ours to be so wholly reliant on buying in food, because when international prices rise, or disease strikes, people cannot eat

Supporting our rice farmers is vital, both immediately and in the longer term.

So far, the government has done little to address the problem.

They urgently need to import food and start subsidising rice and beans. Lowering the price of petrol, as an emergency measure, would also help.

Ultimately, Haiti needs to do more to support its own producers.

We import 30 million eggs a month from the Dominican Republic, and only produce one million ourselves.

This year there was an outbreak of bird flu in the DR, and our government banned all chicken and egg imports.

It is not good for a country as poor as ours to be so wholly reliant on buying in food, because when international prices rise, or disease strikes, people cannot eat.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/7341467.stm

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7341467.stm

http://snipurl.com/242q3