Myrtha Desulme, Contributor
THE INTERNATIONAL community has finally got Haiti where it wants it: devastated, destitute and desperate.
The international press revels in the opportunity of showcasing squalor, abject poverty and desperate Haitians fighting for food. The voyeurism of suffering has been well served by the globalisation of the news media, or the "CNNisa-tion of the world", as Professor Nettleford has dubbed it, which enables anyone with cable television to see any war, famine, or outbreak of mad cow disease close up. The fiercely competitive international cameras, always hungry for images of "the most devastating ever", "the worst that one expert or another has ever seen", doubtless find comfort in the fact that, on any given slow news day, they can always rely on Haiti for ruin and disaster of surreal proportions.
But the humanitarian catas- trophe facing the Haitian people from Hurricane Jeanne, can only be understood within the context of the destruction of Haiti's economy through U.S. domination, and the political and social reality caused by U.S., IMF and World Bank neo-liberal policies. For decades, these entities have forced Haitian governments to follow dictates to lower tariff barriers and grow cash crops. These policies have destroyed Haitian agriculture, and ruined hundreds of thousands of farmers who have migrated to the cities. Peasants remaining on the land have turned to cutting down trees for charcoal to fuel the growing cities.
DEFORESTATION
The large-scale deforestation of Haiti, which contributed to the flood's severity, was the result of economic coercion from decades of sanctions, and of stripping of the forests for the mining of bauxite, the wartime exploitation of rubber, the processing of sisal, and other foreign commercial interests. Corrupt dictators like the Duvaliers, allowed foreign multinationals to wreak ecological havoc on the country. Prohibited by environmental laws in the U.S. and Europe, from stripping their own forests, they came in droves, and gang-raped Haiti.
Until the mid-1980s, Haiti was an agricultural society, in which people raised their own food, as well as for export. Rice was once a major food crop. Under pressure from the U.S., Aristide lowered import tariffs on rice. Haiti was flooded with American rice, which was cheaper, due to the government subsidies granted to U.S. farmers. This drove Haitian farmers out of rice production, and off the land. The sugar industry was destroyed in a similar way.
THE ECONOMY
Black pigs used to be the peasants' 'cash cow', and formed the backbone of their economy. In 1979, the U.S. carried out a programme of slaughtering all the pigs in Haiti, in the name of eradicating swine flu. They then sent over American pigs, which were supposedly better, but the American pigs were unable to survive. The peasants sank into deeper poverty. When Haiti's currency, the gourde, fell against the dollar, the price of food, which Haitians were now forced to import, remained pegged to the dollar. Inflation spun out of control. The price of rice, and everything else, for that matter, has more than doubled since February 29.
As long as the Haitian people are subject to political disasters, they will never escape the natural disasters.
REFUGEE STATUS
Many Haitians try to flee the desperate conditions, but find that having been preceded by centuries of media vilification, they encounter prejudice, ignorance, racism, and xenophobia. After a whole year of political instability, floods, earthquake, a bloody coup, and a hurricane compounded by an ecological disaster of cataclysmic proportions, which have all been widely documented, Jamaican Immigration has determined that the Haitian refugees in Montpellier do not qualify for refugee status.
Article I of the United Nations 1951 Convention relating to the status of refugees, states that a refugee is a person, who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country. Because the 1951 convention was drawn up in the context of the post-war years, to protect persons displaced within Europe, after the Second World War, it does not correspond to many of today's refugee situations. Due to the changing nature of refugee problems today, persons flee because of civil conflicts, massive violations of human rights, poverty, famine, ecological disasters, and a myriad of other reasons.
From a human rights perspective, a strict reading of the 1951 definition of the term refugee denotes a lack of discernment. There is little to distinguish a person facing death through starvation, and another threatened with arbitrary execution, because of his or her political beliefs. For that reason many countries have expanded the definition of the term "refugee".
Under international refugee law, an individual may be recognised as a refugee on the ground that he or she has a well-founded fear of persecution by a non-state actor, whether these be rebels or other armed groups. One of the most fundamental principles in international refugee law is Article 33, which is universally accepted, as a key obligation. It is the principle of non-refoulement, or the prohibition of expulsion or return.
This article states that: "No Contracting State shall expel or return a refugee in any manner whatsoever, to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, or where they have a credible fear of persecution."
This principle is binding even on states, which are not party to the UN Convention. All states are also bound to provide basic human rights to the refugees, during their stay in the country of asylum.
The local and international media, the UN Commission for Human Rights, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, (the human rights branch of the OAS), the National Coalition for Haitian Rights, Human Rights Watch, and the International Red Cross, are just a few of the organisations, which have amply documented the human rights situation in Haiti. The fact remains that regardless of whether a person is a refugee or an economic migrant, whether they are fleeing persecution, armed conflict, threats to their lives, or abject poverty, they are entitled to minimum standards of human rights. Human rights include not only civil and political rights, but also economic, social and cultural rights. These people are being returned to places where their lives, liberties and security are threatened. Places where violent political conflicts, human rights violations, arbitrary arrests, fear, economic hardship, and violence prevail.
HUMAN RIGHTS
This matter has now morphed from a migration problem to a human rights issue. We need to look at the humanitarian dimension of the crisis. The violation of human rights has been identified by the UN as the major cause of mass exoduses. The political, economic, social, and natural causes of mass exoduses are interrelated. Refugees are a recognisable indicator of the breakdown of the economic and political situation in an area. Would people flee en masse, at a moment's notice, leaving everything behind, risking their lives in rickety, overcrowded boats, in the dead of night, on the high seas, with children and pregnant women, with no idea where they are going to end up, if they did not have compelling, life-threatening reasons to do so?
Gilbert Scott, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of National Security, has stated that the refugees "provided no information to substantiate claims of persecution in Haiti." What kind of tangible proof could someone in that situation possibly provide? Does the Ministry expect the names, addresses and social security numbers of their potential persecutors?
The UN has determined that "group determination" of refugee status can be declared when there is a mass exodus, and it is not possible to carry out individual screenings, in order to determine the precise factors, which have led each person to flee. In other words, one is allowed to use one's discretion. After all, are these not CARICOM nationals in distress? Or, are they?
It is not that the Government did not fulfil its civic duty beautifully, when it took the refugees in, in the first place. It is that they were rescued when things were bad, and they are being returned when things are worse. Frankly, it would have been better for the Government to come right out and say: "We have just suffered our own disaster, and we do not want to set a precedent, because we cannot afford to offer asylum to anyone at this present time."
But to blandly regurgitate the same cynical and bureaucratic blanket excuse as the U.S., arguably the most racist immigration service in the world, that the Haitians do not qualify for refugee status, smacks of callousness. Contrary to the defamatory JLP ad, Senator Golding has proved that he does indeed have a heart, as the lone voice in the political wilderness, to protest the timing for the return of the refugees.
Send your comments to infocus@gleanerjm.com.
