Vol. 73/No. 33      August 31, 2009

The next day United Nations troops attacked demonstrators who were protesting a two-month electricity outage in Lascahobas, a rural town near Haiti’s border with the Dominican Republic.

“Seventy gourdes, that doesn’t do anything for me,” Banel Jeune told the Associated Press, referring to his current daily wage ($2.10). Jeune is a 29-year-old garment worker who sews sleeves on shirts. “I can’t feed my kids, and I can’t send them to school,” he said.

Following the August 4 protest, parliament voted 55-6 to raise the minimum wage from $1.75 to $3.75 a day, short of the $5-a-day wage demanded by the demonstrators.

Haiti with a population of 9 million people is the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation. Of those employed on the island most work on small farms or sell goods on the streets. Only 250,000 people have jobs covered by the minimum wage law, said Steven Benoit, who sponsored the bill.

UN troops said that at least three people were injured in Lascahobas. Port-au-Prince-based Radio Metropole reported that two people were killed.

This was one of numerous attacks by the UN military force against protesters in Haiti.

A force of 9,000 UN soldiers—operating under the authority of the Security Council’—established United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti—has been in the country since the 2004 overthrow of the elected government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. On February 29 of that year, as armed rightists prepared to lay siege to the capital, U.S. officials placed Aristide on an unmarked plane and forcibly flew him to the Central African Republic and forced him into exile.

An estimated 4.5 million Haitians live in countries outside of Haiti, said Bernier Lauredan, president of the Haitian League, which is headquartered in Irvington, New Jersey. The group organized a four-day Haitian Diaspora Unity Congress August 6-9, which took place at the Trump International Beach Resort in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida.

The conference was geared towards businesspeople and politicians, as shown by the $250 admission fee.

The money that Haitians outside the country wire back home accounts for one-third of the island’s gross domestic product. In 2007, remittances sent to Haiti totaled $1.83 billion, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.

On the last day of the conference former U.S. president William Clinton, who is the UN’s special envoy to Haiti, addressed the congress. Clinton lectured Haitian Americans “to do more” for Haiti. He shared the stage with Haitian prime minister Michele Pierre-Louis.

Sixty people, mostly Haitians from Miami, organized a protest outside the hotel to coincide with Clinton’s address. Organized by the Haitian rights organization Veye Yo, the demonstrators demanded freedom for all political prisoners in Haiti.
 
 
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