- Jogesh
Haitians dying by the thousands as US escalates military intervention By Bill Van Auken 22 January 2010 Thousands of Haitians are dying every day for lack of medical care and supplies, according to a leading humanitarian aid group. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has announced that it is expanding the US military presence in the country, maintaining Washington’s priority of troops over humanitarian aid. The US-based medical aid group Partners in Health has warned that as many as 20,000 Haitians may be dying daily due to infections such as gangrene and sepsis that have set in, as the majority of the injured receive no medical care or are treated in facilities that lack the most basic supplies. “Tens of thousands of earthquake victims need emergency surgical care now!!!,” the organization said in a statement posted on its web site. “The death toll and the incidence of gangrene and other deadly infections will continue to rise unless a massive effort is made to open and staff more operating rooms and to deliver essential equipment and supplies.” Partners in Health has worked in Haiti for more than 20 years. Its co-founder, Dr. Paul Farmer, is the deputy United Nations envoy to Haiti and a senior professor of public health at Harvard University. While Haitian officials and other organizations have claimed the Partners in Health figure is too high, it is indisputable that Haiti confronts a disaster that could equal or even eclipse that of the quake itself because of the delays in the provision of health care to hundreds of thousands of sick and injured people. The *New York Times* Thursday quoted Dr. Eduardo de Marchena, a University of Miami cardiologist overseeing one field hospital in Haiti, who provided a similarly grim prognosis. “There are still thousands of patients with major fractures, major wounds, that have not been treated yet,” he said. “There are people, many people, who are going to die unless they’re treated.” As the *Times* reported, “In the squatter camps now scattered across this capital, there are still people writhing in pain, their injuries bound up by relatives but not yet seen by a doctor eight days after the quake struck. On top of that, the many bodies still in the wreckage increase the risk of diseases spreading, especially, experts say, if there is rain.” The *Wall Street Journal *reported that the Port-au-Prince General Hospital is continuously besieged by more than 1,000 patients waiting for surgery. “Armed guards in tanks kept out mobs,” the newspaper reported. It added, “At any given moment, thousands of injured, some grievously, wait outside virtually any hospital or clinic, pleading for treatment.” CNN’s Karl Penhaul reported from Port-au-Prince General Hospital, where US paratroopers have taken up positions. He said that Haitians questioned why so many US troops were pouring into the country. “They say they need more food and water and fewer guys with guns,” he reported. He also indicated that American doctors at the hospital seemed mystified by the military presence. “They say there has never been a security problem here at the hospital, but there is a problem of getting supplies in.” He added, “They can get nine helicopters of troops in, but some of the doctors here say if they can do that, then why can’t they also bring with them IV fluids and other much needed supplies.” The Spanish daily *El País* quoted one of these American doctors, Jim Warsinguer: “We lack a lot of things, too many for so much time having passed since the earthquake: betadine, bandages, gloves. And, above all, morphine. We have to do amputations without anesthesia. You see them suffer, and it is terrible. The Haitians are very brave, but they are suffering a lot.” The desperate conditions and lack of sanitation for the estimated 2 million Haitians left homeless by the earthquake threaten to trigger a public health disaster. “The next health risk could include outbreaks of diarrhea, respiratory tract infections and other diseases among hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in overcrowded camps with poor or non-existent sanitation,” said Doctors Without Borders deputy operations manager Greg Elder. While media reports claim that ever-growing amounts of material aid are coming into the country, reporters on the ground have said that there is still no sign that it is getting into the hands of the overwhelming majority of those who need it. The British Broadcasting Corporation reported Thursday, “Correspondents say the aid that has thus far arrived at the port is being driven for 45 minutes across the city to the airport, where it is piling up and not being distributed to those who need it.” The BBC continued, “The US and UN World Food Programme insist the distribution of food and water is well under way, but the BBC’s Adam Mynott in Port-au-Prince says many people have still seen no international relief at all.” Aid organizations have charged that since establishing its unilateral control over the Port-au-Prince airport and the city’s port facilities, and assuming essential governmental powers in Haiti, the US military has given the beefing up of its presence in the country priority over the provision of aid. Doctors Without Borders, for example, has protested that military air traffic controllers have since January 14 refused permission to land to five of its planes carrying 85 tons of medical supplies. With the Haitian catastrophe now in its 10th day, it is becoming increasingly clear that the response of the Obama administration and the Pentagon, which have made military occupation of the Caribbean nation its first objective, has deepened the immense suffering of millions of injured, homeless and hungry people. The Pentagon has announced that it is sending 4,000 more troops to Haiti, which will boost the US military occupation force to 16,000. For the first time, a unit that had been slated for deployment by the US Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is being diverted to the Caribbean nation. Meanwhile, a naval encirclement of Haiti’s coastline is growing. The *Miami Herald *reported Thursday that the US military has also prepared a detention camp at the Guantánamo Bay Navy Base in Cuba—site of the infamous prison where detainees were tortured—to hold up to 1,000 Haitians should they manage to elude the US warships. By using Guantánamo as a holding pen for refugees fleeing the horrific conditions of Haiti, the US government will insist that they have no legal rights and cannot appeal their deportation back to their homeland. This same procedure was used in 1991, when thousands of Haitians fled the country following a violent military coup. The claim that this military “surge” into Haiti is an indispensable prerequisite for delivering aid to the Haitian people is a lie. Relief agencies operating in the country insist that they have not been threatened by the Haitian people, but rather hindered by the attempt to impose war zone-style security over their efforts. The US media never so much as hints that there could be anything but the sincerest humanitarian motives behind Washington’s assertion of control over Haiti. It makes no reference to the country’s history, which includes a two-decade US occupation at the beginning of the twentieth century, the deployment of US troops twice in the last 20 years, and Washington’s orchestration of a 2004 coup that ousted and exiled Haiti’s elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In publications reflecting the views of the military-intelligence apparatus, however, there are franker assessments of Washington’s objectives and the real mission. The American Enterprise Institute’s Center for Defense Studies issued a “crisis update” on Haiti, warning: “Conducting a ‘humanitarian relief’ mission in a poor country stricken by a natural disaster can quickly embroil the United States in local politics. And desperate people can easily become violent people.” The statement continued by affirming, “Beyond delivering relief, US soldiers and Marines will inevitably find themselves securing the peace.” Part of this mission, it added, would be “to ensure that Haiti’s gangs—particularly those loyal to ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide—are suppressed.” Similarly, William Kristol and Thomas Donnelly, writing in the *Weekly Standard*, argued that beyond the humanitarian pretext for intervening in Haiti, “the strategic case is also compelling.” “With a transition looming in Cuba and challenges in Central America among others, there is a political reason to be—and to be seen to be—a good and strong neighbor.” In other words, Washington is exploiting the tragedy that has been inflicted upon the people of Haiti to assert colonial-style control over the country. Its aim is to reaffirm US imperialist hegemony in the broader region and to suppress any social revolt by the Haitian masses. It is only a matter of time before the horrendous death toll caused by the January 12 earthquake will be augmented by victims shot to death by US occupation forces. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/hait-j22.shtml As US prepares long-term occupation, Haiti’s quake victims still without aid By Bill Van Auken 23 January 2010 With the US military “surge” into Haiti expected to include some 20,000 troops on land and on ships parked offshore by this weekend, a US official indicated that Washington is preparing for a protracted occupation of the impoverished and earthquake-devastated Caribbean nation. “We are there for the long term, this is not something that will be resolved quickly and easily,” said Ambassador Alejandro Wolff, the US deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, on Haiti following a meeting on aid to the battered country. In addition to the US, representatives from Brazil, Canada, France, Haiti and Uruguay participated in the discussions. Canada and France are major donors to Haiti, while Brazil and Uruguay each have over 1,000 troops participating in the United Nations peace-keeping mission, which constituted the main occupying force before the earthquake. Speaking earlier in the UN, Wolff denounced the governments of Nicaragua, Bolivia and Venezuela for accusing Washington of exploiting the tragedy in Haiti to impose a military occupation of the country. He charged the three Latin American governments with attempting “to politicize the matter with ill informed tendentious statements” and having “ridiculously alleged conspiracy and occupation.” In Haiti itself, however, anger and protests are building over the US militarization of the response to a disaster that has claimed an estimated 200,000 lives, while leaving another quarter of a million injured and millions homeless. Humanitarian aid and medical teams have accused the US military—which has asserted unilateral control over the country’s airport and port facilities—of making the deployment of troops and the evacuation of US citizens from Haiti its first priorities. The delivery of desperately needed medical supplies and equipment were relegated to second place. Medical relief agencies have warned that tens of thousands more are dying from injuries sustained in the earthquake because of the lack of basic supplies and medicines. While aid has now reportedly begun flowing into the country, fully 11 days after the earthquake, it is reportedly still not reaching those who desperately need it. “Large quantities of medications, baby formula and other relief supplies are sitting on the tarmac and in warehouses at the Port-au-Prince airport, but no one is moving it out,” CNN cable news reported Thursday. The network’s medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta visited the warehouse and spoke with military officers in charge of operations there. The military “gave Gupta a trash bag full of supplies to take back to a hospital he had visited earlier but couldn't explain why there seemed to be no organized system for distribution,” CNN reported. Phillippe Bolopion, a correspondent for FRANCE24 television, reported from a makeshift camp of earthquake victims just outside the airport, where supplies are piling up. “You’d think these people would be helped, but they are not,” he reported. “There are four toilets for 3,500 people; they were clogged, obviously. They had no food, very little water. The only international organization present was the Spanish Red Cross. People couldn’t understand why the generosity of the world isn’t getting to them. It’s really hard to comprehend.” Similarly, Fran Sevilla, a correspondent for Radio Televisión Española (RTVE), reported, “There continues to be no distribution of humanitarian aid, of food and water. I ask myself how all of these human beings survive. I ask if anyone is helping them, if they are receiving anything, and the answer is always no. They survive thanks to the solidarity between them, sharing between families and groups of friends what little they have, what little they can get.” Clearly displeased with the reporting by the foreign media, the US military expelled them from the airport on Thursday, leaving them to scramble to find somewhere to go in the demolished Haitian capital. Meanwhile, the United Nations reported Thursday that up to 700,000 people in Port-au-Prince are homeless, many living in some 500 camps set up in parks and empty lots, with little more than sheets to protect people from the sun. UN representatives together with humanitarian aid workers visited 350 of these camps by late Thursday, reporting that only six of them had access to drinking water. According to the UN, 45 percent of those affected by the earthquake are children under the age of 18, and 18 percent are younger than five. Conditions are expected to worsen, with health officials warning that infectious diseases could spread through these makeshift camps like wildfire. Rain is expected early next week, which would flood these camps, creating ideal conditions for the spread of dengue, typhus and malaria. What little remains of a Haitian government—with Washington’s puppet President Réne Préval having ceded all real power to the Pentagon and practically disappeared—has responded to this crisis by proposing that 400,000 homeless people be removed from Port-au-Prince, with 100,000 of them relocated to camps near the city of Croix-des-Bouguets, north of the capital. There are, however, no camps there, and thus far, the government has made only 34 buses available to transport this mass of people. In another indication of the criminal inadequacy of the rescue operation, the UN and US authorities announced that attempts to rescue those trapped beneath the rubble of fallen buildings in Port-au-Prince was drawning to a close, on the grounds that there were no likely survivors. All but 10 of 43 international rescue teams that had come to Haiti have left. This effort—which was woefully under-resourced and uncoordinated from the start—is being ended even as two more people were brought out alive from the ruins of buildings on Thursday. No doubt, many more will be left to die. It can be predicted that with the end of these dramatic live-saving efforts, the corporate-controlled media will also begin their exodus from Haiti, reducing coverage of the continuing tragedy of the Haitian people and the many more deaths that are still to come. It is also likely that little attention will be given to the activities of the US military and its auxiliaries in the UN peace-keeping force and the Haitian police as they undertake the repression of popular unrest. There are indications that this has already begun. Haitian police shot to death a 20-year-old carpenter, Gentile Cherie, Wednesday, after he was seen carrying sacks of rice. Another man with him was seriously wounded. Both were shot in the back. The police claimed the men had stolen the rice, but the wounded man said that a truck driver had given the sacks to them. Local residents and shopkeepers said that neither man was a thief. CNN reported that the Haitian police refused to say whether they have been given “shoot-on-sight” orders for dealing with alleged looters. Meanwhile, a Cuban television team filmed scenes of UN troops firing rubber bullets and tear gas grenades at crowds of Haitians who had approached the US-occupied airport seeking food and work. As anger over the criminal negligence that has characterized the US response to the Haitian disaster and resentment over yet another US military occupation of Haiti grow, American troops will inevitably be used to suppress protests and resistance. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/hait-j23.shtml
