Mural in Baghdad
Mural in San Francisco
Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times
Pool photo by Michael Schwartz (appeared in The New York Times)
Photo by Chris Keane for The New York Times
Public Mural in Cayes, Haiti: Yes to Life, No to the Debt! (Photo by Peter Kondrat, June 2007)
Economic Terrorism: Ignoring the Debt Issue in Haiti. Michelle Karshan, the former Foreign Press Liaison for former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, blogs her perspective on how Haiti's struggle with debt and economic recovery was ignored by the international press.
Blog the Debt: ‘Economic Terrorism’: Ignoring the Debt Issue in Haiti Part 1
by Michelle Karshan
In May 2007, while in Haiti, friends told me of the rising cost of living. As I spent what seemed like a lot of money purchasing food to cook three meals a day, I wondered how folks were feeding their families even one meal a day at those exorbitant prices.
Michelet, a young man, considerably thinner since 2004, pointed out that he had personally seen a rise in TB in his own neighborhood. He explained that with the increase in the cost of living people could not nourish themselves enough to fend off disease.
Dr. Paul Farmer has so eloquently drawn this connection between infectious disease and poverty, yet the international financial institutions have yet to re-prioritize their economic plans.
Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide often referred to structural adjustment and the debt as “Economic Terrorism”, because globalization and the way it revolves around creating and keeping impoverished countries impoverished results in starvation, disease, illiteracy and death. And, in the end millions of dollars spent on poverty reduction cannot turn a country around without debt reduction and forgiveness.
Last week, while Haiti and each Haitian there still suffers from the backbreaking debt inherited from the Duvalier regime, former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier was heard on the airways apologizing for the atrocities and corruption during his administration.
Not coincidentally, his plea for forgiveness came immediately following Switzerland’s announcement that they would extend the Haitian government’s period of time to wage their legal battle to recover the millions of dollars in Duvalier’s Swiss bank accounts.
Haitian President René Préval rightly responded to Duvalier’s maneuvers, stating that while forgiveness is good, justice must prevail. Préval made it clear that his government would continue its pursuit of the monies, and that if Duvalier chooses to return to Haiti he will certainly be brought to justice.
It was extremely frustrating working as the Foreign Press Liaison to presidents Aristide, Préval and Aristide again. All the while, the international press ignored the debt that shackled any efforts towards recovery, ignored the U.S.-led embargo against Haiti’s government, and the economic “death plan” Aristide tried to resist. The U.S. Embassy waged a campaign denying that there was any financial embargo and they harassed press who dared to call the embargo an embargo!
The international press, distracting its readers from the real talking points, lay all blame at Aristide’s door, and characterized Haiti as: “spiraling downward;” “a basket case;” “a failed state;” and “a people unable to govern themselves.”
Yet inside the storm, at the eye of the storm, was globalization, the endless debt, the imposed impoverishment of a country up against a proud nation that believes that justice — economic justice — means accessible, universal health care, schools, literacy programs, and the right to work and farm.
It will not be hard for me to begin my fast today. What has been hard is to eat, knowing that more than 8 million people in Haiti cannot eat one meal a day.
Michelle Karshan is the former Foreign Press Liaison for President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
Mother and Children, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Photo by Evens Sanon, Copyright 2003Economic Terrorism: Ignoring the Debt Issue in Haiti.
Michelle Karshan, the former Foreign Press Liaison for former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, blogs her perspective on how Haiti's struggle with debt and economic recovery was ignored by the international press.
Blog the Debt: ‘Economic Terrorism’: Ignoring the Debt Issue in Haiti Part 2
By Michelle Karshan laughingmaze.blogspot.com
In Part One of my blog I said it would not be difficult to begin my fast but by 9:30 a.m. I had already started experiencing actual hunger pains.
At first I reflected on why I was feeling so intensely hungry after such a short period of time. I thought perhaps it was because I was starting to feel deprived, but then also realized that I had eaten very little the day before — very similar to how most Haitians actually live.
I thought of the homeless children who hang out in downtown Port-au-Prince or hide behind tombstones at the main cemetery while keeping an iron grip on plastic bottles filled with glue which they keep at their noses all day.
Apparently, glue sniffing not only gives one a dangerous buzz, but more importantly it eases the pains of hunger.
And there are the street children, boys and girls, forced to sell their bodies, risk contracting HIV/AIDS, and are subjected to brutality, just to buy a meal to eat. Other children, live in domestic servitude — as slaves — serve hefty meals to their masters, and pray that a few scraps will be made available to them.
And what of those who wear their hunger like a billboard?! The children with orange hair and distended stomachs , the prisoners with swollen bodies dying from Beri Beri, a fatal and painful illness from B vitamin deficiency, children with stunted growth, or even the average Haitian so thin that the bones in their faces protrude and many people collapse in the street from weakness and dehydration.
Why is there still hunger in Haiti if millions of dollars are pouring into the country, as the press would have us believe? In fact, contrary to press releases issued by various donors, and press stories to back them up, much of the funds we read about don’t actually get to Haiti when they say, if ever.
And, as a USAID representative testified before Congress some years ago, 84 cents on every dollar of USAID monies to developing countries actually goes to U.S. workers, consultants, companies, or materials. That means only 16 cents on every dollar actually goes to the receiving country.
Written in the early 1990s, but still relevant today, this extraordinary breakdown and analysis by the Washington Office on Haiti entitled Where Did the Money Go? “AID” Received by Haiti: October 94 – October 1995, explains:
It is not difficult to see how the large infusion of foreign “aid” had relatively little impact on most people’s lives. The economy did recover from the severe negative growth of the embargo years to a positive 4.5 percent real growth rate, but this is still quite slow a rebound from such a deep slump. The influx of foreign exchange has helped to stabilize the currency and therefore inflation. But there was very little in the way of investment in infrastructure, agriculture, soil conservation, education, credit to small farmers and employment creation – the most pressing needs that might improve the economic opportunities of the vast majority. And this is primarily because the money has not been allocated for these purposes.
Also, to understand the extent of the theft of monies and the creation of the debt accumulated by the Duvalier regime, which Haiti is still struggling to pay back today, please see the story of Duvalier, Haiti’s former dictator, and the monies he stole from the Haitian people.
The best piece for an overview and analysis on the imposition of structural adjustment on Haiti, as well as an in depth look at Haiti’s debt, is Democracy Undermined, Economic Justice Denied: Structural Adjustment and The Aid Juggernaut in Haiti by Lisa McGowan for The Development Gap.
Michelle Karshan is the former Foreign Press Liaison for President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s president in 1991, then from 1994 to 1996 and from 2001 to 2004. Aristide was the second elected leader of Haiti.
From Commondreams.org NewsCenter
Photo from http://www.medicineworld.org/
Kesler Pierre, a stained-glass artisan, is shown in today's New York Times article, Synagogue Window Returns for Rosh Hashana, about the restoration of a stained glass window at the Eldridge Street Synagogue in Manhattan. 
Photos by Michelle Karshan of items displayed at this year's Femmes en Democratie exhibit in Haiti (images not connected to below article)
Weekly demonstration for justice for the victims of the September 30, 1991 coup d'etat, 
World AIDS Day 2006 in Nairobi
Father Gerard Jean-Juste in detention. Photo by Evens Sanon (copyright)
"The dimension of the archive is truly gigantic," Alberto Fuentes, assistant project director, told National Public Radio in the U.S. "They say there are 80 million pages of documents here. So in every possible space, in every alcove, there are just stacks and stacks and stacks of these police records."
