[Onthebarricades] Miscellaneous global protest analysis, Apr-Aug 2008
Andy
ldxar1 at tesco.net
Sat Aug 30 01:30:35 PDT 2008
ON THE BARRICADES: Global Resistance Roundup, April-August 2008
https://lists.resist.ca/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/onthebarricades
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/globalresistance/
* INDIA: Protests sweep the country
* EGYPT: Protest groups make a mark
* FRANCE: May 1968 still fascinates, divides
* INDIA: Local protests, global problems (warning, barf alert)
* MEXICO: Daily protests, and threat of repression
* CHINA: Ahead of Olympics, global protests spread
* UGANDA: Market redevelopment excludes poor traders
* GLOBAL: "Food riots", famine and warped priorities
* GLOBAL: The structural roots of hunger
* GLOBAL: Speculation is "massacre of the world's poor"
* HAITI: Food unrest "unnerving but not surprising"
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/29/asia/india.php
Members of Bajrang Dal, a Hindu group, in the northern Indian city of
Chandigarh burned on Saturday an effigy of Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, Jammu and
Kashmir's former chief minister, who opposed a government decision to
transfer forest land to a Hindu shrine trust. (Ajay Verma/Reuters)
Discontented Indians protest across the country
By Heather Timmons
Published: June 29, 2008
NEW DELHI: Discontent is sweeping through India in the form of widespread
protests over land use, food, fuel and jobs.
Indian citizens have long embraced their constitutional right to assemble,
and they have done so with fervor this month in large protests over a
variety of issues throughout the country.
Some speculate that India's weak central government, which is run by an
uneasy coalition between the Congress Party and the Left Front, could be
contributing to the unrest. Others attribute the upheaval to rapid changes
in Indian society.
On Saturday, the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir in the north was
roiled for a seventh consecutive day by demonstrations, the region's largest
in nearly 20 years. The protest was over what demonstrators say is a plan to
build a settlement for Hindu pilgrims on forest land.
Three people have been killed and more than two dozen injured, local
officials said. On Saturday, the police tried to disperse the crowds by
using tear gas and firing live ammunition into the air, The Associated Press
reported.
Two weeks ago, in Darjeeling, Nepali-speaking separatists went on strike,
shutting businesses and schools. Tens of thousands of tourists were asked to
leave the area, in West Bengal in India's northeast. The protesters, led by
a separatist movement, the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha, are demanding a new
state for people of Nepalese origin.
Although Indian residents with roots in Nepal have been seeking
quasi-independence for decades, a new social mobility may have heightened
the aspiration. Such people are now "going all over India, from Bangalore to
Delhi; they are more educated, they are part of the mainstream," said Ravi
Thakuri, a Nepali-speaking lawyer from Darjeeling who works in New Delhi.
In another part of the country, Rajasthan State in the northwest, thousands
of nomadic shepherds, known as Gujjars, shut down trains and roads leading
to the city of Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, during the last two months. The
Gujjars were demanding that the government award them a special caste status
that would make them eligible for more benefits and jobs.
Weeks of protests ended June 18 after the government promised more jobs.
More than 30 people were killed when the police fired into crowds.
Nationwide protests also occurred in response to a 10 percent increase in
the price of fuel on June 4. Trains were disrupted, and schools were closed.
Rising prices for food and other essentials also led to scattered
demonstrations in pockets of India.
The most recent protests, in Jammu and Kashmir, touch on a particularly
delicate subject: the status of Muslims in the state, the only one in India
with a Muslim majority. Tens of thousands took to the streets Friday night
in Srinagar, the state's main city, demanding independence.
The crowds were much smaller on Saturday, witnesses said, in part because
the police used tear gas and bamboo sticks against them.
Protesters burned effigies of a former minister and set barricades and cars
on fire. Srinagar businesses remained closed, and no vehicles were running
on India's only road into the Kashmir Valley.
Supplies in the valley, including food, are running out, residents said, and
thousands of tourists have fled.
Jammu and Kashmir, in the Himalayas, is a summer destination for Indians
because of the temperate weather, despite its history of unrest between
Hindus and Muslims. Recently, the state began to attract international
tourists.
Protests and terrorist attacks in India have seldom been aimed at foreign
visitors. But in late May the United States issued a warning about the
Gujjar protests, noting that roads and trains could be affected and urging
Americans to keep low profiles.
Yusef Jameel contributed reporting from Srinagar, Kashmir.
http://www.gulfnews.com/region/Egypt/10220938.html
Egypt's protest groups make a mark
By Ramadan Al Sherbini, Correspondent
Published: June 14, 2008, 00:01
Cairo: Protest groups are all the rage in Egypt. Four years ago, the
anti-government group Kefaya ("Enough") broke political taboos in this
Middle Eastern country of nearly 79 million by vociferously criticising the
policies of long-serving President Hosni Mubarak.
Soon more protest movements emerged in virtually all categories. They
include Intellectuals for Change, Artists for Change, Youth for Change,
Citizens against Price Hikes, and most recently Citizens against Stupidity.
"Ours is a group presenting a new brand of opposition to all ill-conceived
and mistaken decisions," said Khalid Abdul Fateh, the founder of Citizens
against Stupidity. "We are keen to draw the attention of everybody, the
government, politicians and even the average citizen, to the wrong decisions
they make and encourage them to correct them," Abdul Fateh, 44, told Gulf
News.
According to him, the nascent movement has drawn members from political
activists and ordinary people. "We assume that the wrong decisions made by
the government are based on good intentions, not the result of a conspiracy.
Therefore, we just call them stupid decisions."
In Abdul Fateh's opinion, one of the "dumbest" decisions taken by the
Egyptian government was the recent increases in prices of fuel and vehicle
license fees. "These outrageous increases were declared a few days after
President [Hosni] Mubarak ordered a 30 per cent pay rise for public sector
employees to help them cope with the mad price increases," he said.
"These new, stupid price hikes have not only gobbled up the pay rise, but
also dented the credibility of the whole regime."
Over recent years, Egyptians have been hit by a successive spate of rising
prices, which have triggered protests against price hikes and low wages. The
most violent protests erupted on April 6 and 7 in the industrial Nile Delta
of Al Mahalla Al Kobra where 3 people were killed and more than 100 injured
in clashes with police.
Around 40 per cent of Egypt's population of nearly 79 million is believed to
live below the poverty line.
"Street democracy is at work in Egypt and has brought about some changes,"
said Abdul Fateh, who had earlier campaigned against "stupid" decisions at
the international level such as "the disastrous invasion of Iraq" in 2003.
He recalls that his shift of focus to the home scene was prompted by a
problem he had as a member of the parent-teacher association at his
children's school.
"We, the parents, had joined hands to give the school a face-lift and make
it greener, without costing the public treasury a penny," he said.
"But much to our surprise, we found the education authorities unleashing a
bulldozer on a fountain and other amenities we had built inside the school.
They claimed that we should have got a permit from the Education Directorate
before embarking on this effort. How stupid!"
Enough: Kefaya at a glance
Created in late 2004, Kefaya ("Enough"), credited with opening the door to
non-traditional opposition in Egypt, is a loose umbrella movement of
liberals, leftists, secularists and Islamists.
Since its emergence, Kefaya has staged protests against the policies of
President Hosni Mubarak, who has been in power for almost 27 years. The
group is also vehemently opposed to the notion of handing over power from
the 79-year-old Mubarak to his 44-year-old son Jamal.
The Mubaraks have repeatedly denied claims of hereditary succession.
The influence of Kefaya has, however, dwindled after Mubarak made a clean
sweep in Egypt's first competitive presidential election in September 2005.
The group's founders say they plan to rejuvenate Kefaya and rebuild its
street clout.
http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?from=rss_World&set_id=1&click_id=3&art_id=nw20080430145834421C274095
May '68 riots still fascinate French
April 30 2008 at 03:19PM
By James Mackenzie
Paris - Forty years after May 1968, France is enjoying a wave of nostalgia
for the student revolt that rocked the streets of the Latin Quarter in
Paris, fuelled by a never-ending debate about what it all achieved.
Countless magazine supplements have shown the fashionably dressed student
stone-throwers confronting phalanxes of helmeted police, and radio stations
have replayed the breathless live reports that brought the riots directly
into French homes.
Television debates have pitted supporters who say the 1968 protests helped
free up a hidebound society against critics who say they undermined vital
institutions and opened the way to social breakdown.
For some it has all been too much. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the undisputed hero
of the movement, called a recent book of interviews on the subject "Forget
68".
"All commemoration is stupid," Andre Glucksmann, another leading member of
the 1968 generation said, "Either you glorify May 1968 or you vituperate
against it."
Sparked by a dispute concerning visiting rights to a female students'
dormitory, the protests for university reforms and wider personal liberties
led to three weeks of riots and sit-ins in the streets around the main Paris
university, the Sorbonne.
The crisis, which blew up into a general strike that paralysed the country,
was so serious that President Charles de Gaulle made checks to ensure the
army would be ready to intervene if necessary.
Kept alive by the perennial French fascination with revolution and street
protests, the events have divided the country ever since.
'We can count society lucky that we never got the chance to seize power'
Behind the confrontation, the surreal humour and idealism of the students,
summed up in slogans such as "Sous les paves, la plage" ('Under the paving
stones, the beach') and "Never work", remain the strongest image of the 1968
protests.
Opposed equally to the conservatism of de Gaulle and a communist party they
attacked as "Stalinist", the students were looking for something traditional
politics did not offer, Glucksmann said.
"It was very happy, very cheerful," he said. "But for me, it wasn't about
enjoyment, it was above all, a search for truth and when you discover truth,
it's astonishing, it's joyous."
But many conservatives say the carefree picture of youthful protest hid a
malign disrespect for social institutions that has spawned ills ranging from
high divorce rates to the violent riots that hit France's poor multiethnic
suburbs in 2005.
President Nicolas Sarkozy has been the most prominent recent critic,
pledging during last year's election campaign to "liquidate the heritage of
May 1968" and restore respect for traditional values.
Sarkozy's attack has been derided by many who point out that he himself -
thrice married, most recently to an Italian fashion model - could never have
become president in the conservative world before 1968, when a woman still
needed her husband's permission to open a bank account.
But many veterans of the movement also acknowledge that the utopian vision
behind the protests, while enormously powerful in many ways, was politically
impractical.
"It marked society profoundly. Society has taken up all the good things
about 1968," said Peter Schneider, a German writer who was a prominent
activist at the time. "But politically, thank God, it was a failure. We can
count society lucky that we never got the chance to seize power," he said.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2008/05/19/stories/2008051950290800.htm
Global problems and local protests
S. VENKITARAMANAN
The current food imbroglio has not arisen due to excessive consumption by
India or China. What is obvious is that it is a global problem calling for a
global solution and not for protest actions holding up Government offices,
Parliament and the Legislature, points out S. VENKITARAMANAN.
Indian political activists are staging Canute-like protest games against the
alleged failure of the Government of India to control food prices. But the
UN Secretary-General, who should know better, has, on his part, set up a
Global Task Force under a former British diplomat to assess the global
problem of rising food prices and suggest solutions.
This will include a rethink on subsidies, bio-fuels and export restrictions.
It is a pity that a global problem acknowledged as such by the international
statesman is being attempted to be blown up as a political failure on the
part of the Government of India. The UN Task Force is expected to come up
with some solutions and present the same at a meeting of the UN in June or
July. Whether the global problem can be fixed in keeping with the diverse
interests of the producers and consumers is, of course, doubtful. In a
characteristically flat-footed fashion, the US President, Mr George Bush,
had started a controversy on this subject.
He stated that the food price inflation is due to excessive consumption by
India and China. Unfortunately for the President, the Food and Agricultural
Organisation of the UN came up with figures very soon thereafter, which
showed that the consumption of food-grains in the US has increased far more
sharply in the recent period than in India and China.
President Bush was wrong on basic facts and blaming the developing countries
for what is primarily increasing consumption by the richer countries, such
as the US. Be this as it may, the fact remains that the prices of wheat and
rice, as well as corn, have risen very sharply in the recent period. This is
partly due to adverse weather conditions and partly due to rise in the price
of crude, which feeds into the prices of fertilisers and pesticides.
As a result of all these, prices have risen to astronomically high levels
leading to food riots in countries such as the Philippines. One country,
Haiti, even had a change of Prime Minister.
These have not solved problems. The situation is, indeed, grave. While our
protesters are crying hoarse about local Government’s failures, global
statesmen are bothered about what is to be done at an international level.
Grappling with famine
This brings to mind memories of the 1960s when, following the onset of
famine conditions in Bihar and Northern India, India was forced to request
the US for PL-480 shipments in a larger measure than before.
If I recall right, we wanted 10 million tonnes of wheat and that too in a
short period of time. I was then working with C. Subramaniam, former Food
Minister, who made a special visit to the US to persuade the US Government
under President Lyndon Johnson to expedite its shipment.
It must be remembered that the US had then a large wheat surplus and Public
Law 480 was a means of using that surplus for giving free food aid to
distressed countries.
I also recall that at that time the Communists of India were vociferous in
their protest against obtaining the grant-in-aid.
They had, however, no alternative to offer since Russian agriculture was at
that time not robust enough to meet Russian needs, let alone supply India’s
needs. The then US Secretary for Agriculture, Mr Orvelle Freeman, played an
important role for utilising the food aid as a means of encouraging
necessary policy changes in India.
There was admittedly a need for liberalising markets for Indian agriculture
and I recall that C. Subramaniam introduced a number of measures at that
time, including the policy of remunerative prices for farmers and setting up
an Agricultural Prices Commission.
Second Green Revolution
He also set up a Food Corporation of India for obtaining and storing a
buffer stock. It was at that time that the seeds of the Green Revolution
were planted, thanks to the pioneering efforts of Agricultural Scientist Dr
M.S. Swaminathan and B. Sivaraman, who was then Union Secretary for
Agriculture.
The Green Revolution thus started in India and became a model for the rest
of the world. India was able to overcome the ignominy of dependence on
external sources of cereals for a long time.The reasons why India has had to
import food-grains in recent years may perhaps be traced to the comparative
neglect of agriculture and related investments. But that is a problem that
can be solved.
The solution will, indeed, take time and in the meantime, India will have to
rely on imports. These being at high prices naturally leads to increase in
demands for higher support prices by Indian farmers.
What is more relevant is to formulate policies for encouraging and ensuring
food self-sufficiency because that is perhaps the best recipe for ensuring
rural prosperity.
This will also mean a second Green Revolution, perhaps including genetic
modification of important cereal crops.
China has shown the way for introducing and popularising hybrid rice
variety. India should not lag behind. There has been, of course, a movement
towards encouraging organic agriculture, including use of bio-mass
fertilisers and better use of soil and water. The two methods are not
contradictory. We should try organic farming to attain increased yields.
To obtain faster growth in food production, genetic modification seems to be
unavoidable.
Resistance to GM
India has to overcome the resistance to the introduction of GM crops in
order to attain food security in the shortest possible time.
Various measures have been contemplated by global statesmen, including Mr
Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of Britain, and Mr Robert Zoellick, President
of the World Bank, for tackling the slow growth of food production in the
world.
They are thinking of special programmes to assist the rural countries to
increase food production. These measures will also take time. But I think
the concept of a World Food Bank, which has been propounded by the
economist, Jeffrey Sachs, Professor of Columbia University, is definitely
worth considering. One aspect in the current food imbroglio is interesting.
Japan has been keeping millions of tonnes of rice in its godowns in order to
prevent a fall in rice prices. Japan’s domestic producers fear competition
from imports.
It is obvious that in the present context persuading Japan to release a part
of its rice stock in the international market will be a useful measure to
reduce prices. This is a measure that requires persuasion at global level.
All this is a far cry from the days of PL-480 when the US was consciously
promoting wheat consumption in countries such as India. The present
situation has not obviously arisen due to excessive consumption by India or
China, as alleged by Mr George Bush.
What is obvious is that it is a global problem calling for a global solution
and not for protest actions holding up Government offices, Parliament and
the Legislature.
Global problems have to be handled by a series of concerted measures, both
local and global. Protests that stop the functioning of Parliament and
Government cannot be effective in the context of global efforts.
When will our politicians learn that economics is too important to be dealt
with by polities alone?
http://www.securitycornermexico.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=824&Itemid=1090
Protest Fatigue in Mexico City, A Daily Mess of Demonstrations
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 15, 2008; A13
At a Mexico City demonstration against human rights abuses in China, candles
spell out the word "justice" in Spanish. (By Gregory Bull -- Associated
Press)
MEXICO CITY -- On any given day, there are six or seven or eight
demonstrations taking place in the Mexican capital. The city government
keeps a running list of them on its Web site.
Teachers who want more money. State-employed oil workers who want to stop
privatization. Campesinos who say the government stole their land.
There are naked protesters. Protesters in Aztec costumes. Protesters dressed
like vampires.
And they are almost always in the way.
Blocking roads during a demonstration is considered by some Mexicans to be a
kind of inalienable right. But a few politicians have begun to say --
gently, lest they become targets of protests themselves -- that enough is
enough.
"Sometimes you end up sitting half your day waiting for the roads to
clear -- it's irrational, it's unjust!" Mariana Gómez del Campo, a member of
Mexico City's legislative assembly, said in an interview. "I don't think
there's another city like this in the world."
Gómez, who once missed a college exam because of gridlock caused by a
protest, has been trying for months to pass legislation that will establish
"rules of the game" for protests, which numbered 2,000 last year alone and
drew more than 9 million people.
Restricting protests could go a long way toward keeping the roads clear.
Traffic has worsened here as the city has swelled from merely huge to one of
the three or four biggest in the world, a sprawling, horizonless metropolis
of more than 20 million. Everyone, it seems, is trying to get somewhere at
the same time.
Roads are perpetually clogged, and don't even ask what happens when it
rains. Streets turn into lakes, alleys turn into rivers. Construction is
everywhere.
But protests are the great traffic menaces, and there are all kinds.
There are "bloqueos," or blockades, for instance, a lightning-strike sort of
demonstration that often pops up in residential neighborhoods, trapping
residents who want to get out and impeding those who want to get in. There
are "plantons," or sit-ins, which tend to be more permanent, complete with
forests of folding chairs, supply tents, mattresses and latrines. The
greatest planton of all was staged after the disputed 2006 presidential
election, when supporters of failed candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador
camped for weeks on Avenida Reforma, one of the city's main thoroughfares.
Congressman Ricardo Cantú Garza called the huge tent city "a necessary
evil."
But it is the daily, run-of-the-mill protests that seem to most infuriate
commuters. Gómez calculates that the protests cost 1,056 man-hours and the
equivalent of $8 million a day. She'd like to lessen that impact by
corralling demonstrators and setting aside areas of the city where they can
have their say without creating automobile logjams.
"Good luck," said Francisco Ramírez, a vendor who sells fresh fruit juices
near Mexico's Interior Ministry. "People here like to protest -- a lot."
Ramírez, like many dwellers of the capital, has become an expert on
protests. His stand is inside a fenced perimeter that has grown to several
blocks around the ministry building, one of many protest hot spots. Inside
the perimeter, there are businesses and houses -- a kind of protest-free
"green zone." But even though protesters are kept on the outside, it doesn't
mean matters haven't been complicated for residents and workers inside.
Demonstrators have simply shifted to blocking the streets around the
perimeter. In some ways, things have gotten harder. Ramírez parks farther
and farther away. Sometimes he's so far away that he doesn't even bother to
break down his stand because he can't imagine hauling it for blocks.
Instead, before leaving for the night, he chains the industrial blender that
is his livelihood to a post and hopes for the best.
Nelly Rodríguez, who works in the Interior Ministry, has found herself
trapped inside the safety zone by the hordes. Sometimes she sneaks out a
secret exit and wobbles for blocks on high heels to reach her car.
One recent afternoon, she was plotting her exit strategy.
"I don't know what they're protesting about today," she said wearily. "But I
know they're coming. They're always coming."
© 2008 The Washington Post Company
http://en.epochtimes.com/news/8-7-9/73177.html
Ahead of Olympics, Massive Arrests Spark Intensified Protests
By Mimi Li, Shaoshao Chen and Ally Wang
Epoch Times StaffJul 09, 2008
Reporters Without Borders displays a banner calling for boycott of the 2008
Olympic Games in Beijing during a European Summit at European Council
headquarters in Brussels. (Dominique Faget/AFP/Getty Images)
NEW YORK�In less than 30 days, Beijing will kick off its opening ceremonies
for the 2008 Olympics. But while China prepares for its appearance on the
world's center stage, the Tibetans, Uighurs, Falun Gong practitioners, and
political dissidents of China fear they will suffer 30 days of persecution
and oppression.
These groups who are denied rights by the Chinese regime cannot speak out in
China, but protests and calls for human rights in the U.S. are gaining steam
as the start of Beijing Olympics draws closer.
The Unlucky Eight
Eight is generally considered a lucky number in Chinese culture, but members
of the "POC 8"�eight select prisoners of conscience in China�likely don't
consider themselves lucky.
According to Reporters Without Borders, the POC 8 includes Huang Qi, Sun
Lin, Qi Chonghuai, Hu Jia, Yang Chunlin, Chen Guangcheng, Shi Tao and Yang
Zili. The prisoners were the highlight of a July 8 global appeal for their
release that saw representatives from Reporters Without Borders, Initiatives
for China, and New York officials gathering at New York's City Hall to speak
out for the POC 8 and to call for their release.
"They are innocent," said Lucie Morillon from Reporters Without Borders.
"They didn't do anything wrong. The only thing they wanted to do was to
peacefully speak their mind. Their ultimate goal was to improve the status
of human rights and the status of people in China."
According to Baiqiao Tang, a Tiananmen survivor and director of the China
Peace and Democracy Federation, there are 732 documented political prisoners
in China today. But that number is said to be a low estimate.
Prominent Tiananmen Square activist Jianli Yang experienced first-hand being
arrested and held in a Chinese prison, and was only released last year.
"Since my release, I cannot forget for one second the thousands and
thousands of political prisoners I have left behind," he said at the July 8
appeal with sorrow in his voice.
Yang told the story of Bingjiang Wang, another political prisoner who is the
founder of the overseas Chinese democracy movement. Yang was abducted in
2006 and was held for six months before his arrest was even announced. He
was later sentenced to life in prison.
While Chinese officials are keeping detained political dissidents in jail,
Chinese police are busy rounding up Falun Gong practitioners and
transporting them to labor camps, sometimes without trial, according to the
Falun Dafa Information Center (FDIC). The FDIC also says that more than 200
Falun Gong adherents have been arrested in Beijing alone, and more than 30
have already been sentenced to "re-education through labor" camps without
trial. Labor camp sentences are lasting up to two and a half years.
"The fact that these people are being sentenced to such long terms shows
that these arrests are not about ensuring a 'harmonious Olympics' as Party
officials may try to claim," said FDIC spokesman Erping Zhang. "Although
Falun Gong adherents pose no threat whatsoever to the games, the Olympics
are being taken as an excuse to put them behind bars for years."
Chinese police are conducting not only warrant-less, door-to-door arrests,
but are also targeting areas where Olympic events are being held, such as in
Beijing's Chaoyang District, which hosts soccer and swimming events, and
Haidian District, which hosts basketball and volleyball events. The arrested
are then often sentenced in "sham trials," and families are notified months
after the sentence.
"Given the large percentage of people who have already been sent to labor
camps, the dozens currently filling Beijing's detention centers are at grave
risk of wrongful sentencing," said Zhang. "It is now imperative that the
international community leverage real pressure and stop these deplorable
actions, lest the legacy of the 2008 Olympics be hundreds of Beijing
residents languishing in labor camps."
Terror in Tibet
The crackdown on Tibet by China's government has also intensified recently
when more than 1,000 Tibetan monks were arrested and detained to suppress
potential protests during the Olympics.
The organization Students for a Free Tibet and its "sources in eastern
Tibet" confirmed that three central monasteries around Lhasa, the capital of
Tibet, were emptied and the monks sent either 600 miles away to Gormo or
even further to Xining on the Eastern Tibetan border.
The British newspaper The Times reported that the monks that were taken into
custody will be released after the Beijing Olympic Games. "The Chinese
government has locked up over a thousand Buddhist monks in Tibet to crush
any sign of dissent during the Olympics," affirmed Lhadon Tethong, Executive
Director of Students for a Free Tibet, adding, "This is the latest in a
series of Beijing's despicable acts that use the Olympics as an excuse to
crack down on Tibetan cries for human rights and freedom."
"The Chinese authorities are planning to perpetrate a massive fraud during
the Olympics, attempting to convince the world that all is well while
Tibetans continue to suffer under China's brutal occupation," said Tenzin
Dorjee, Deputy Director of Students for a Free Tibet.
The arrests of Tibetan monks followed the slew of recent events involving
the Chinese government clamping down on the autonomous region. In March,
Tibetan protests turned violent and dozens of deaths were reported after the
Chinese military brought Lhasa and parts of Tibet under martial law. The
tactic was repeated two weeks ago when Chinese troops inundated the streets
of Lhasa when the Olympic torch was scheduled to be paraded through Tibet.
The New York press conference at City Hall featured Tibetan activists,
including Phurdu Dorjee. Dorjee is a native Tibetan who has seen China
constantly tyrannize his homeland and his people.
"The Panchen Lama, the second highest religious figure of Tibet, was
imprisoned when he was just a six year old boy," said Dorjee. "Is this not a
violation of human rights. Since 1949, we have lost 1.2 million Tibetans. Is
this not the clear cut truth that China is guilty of genocide in Tibet? And
has this genocide stopped? No!"
The group says that calls for the Bush administration and the international
community to condemn these actions have largely been ignored.
"We are extremely disappointed that President Bush and other world leaders
are turning a blind eye to the suffering of the Tibetan people and are
attending the Olympics opening ceremonies," said Han Shan, Olympics Campaign
Coordinator for Students for a Free Tibet.
Changing China
When Beijing won the rights to host the 2008 Olympics in 2001, the Chinese
government made a promise to the International Olympic Committee and
international community to concretely improve human rights. But those
promises have been empty for the most part.
"We've been waiting for the improvement of human rights we've been promised.
We've been waiting for the complete freedom of the press we've been
promised," said Morillon.
Yang added that, "There are two Chinas in China: one China is the China the
Chinese government is trying to showcase to the outside world and its
citizens; the other China is the China that the government does not want us
to see."
According to Jeremy Taylor, host of a local cable show, it is for that
reason that the outside world must look through the mask that China has put
on and preserve in demanding rights.
"Stop supporting a government that commits genocide against its own people,"
said Taylor. "Stop supporting a government that commits genocide against
Tibet and against Burma. Stop supporting a government that protects the
world's worst perpetrators, including Kim Jong-Il and Robert Mugabe."
http://allafrica.com/stories/200805200114.html
Uganda: Shauriyako Market - From Ugly Riots to Business Bliss
The Monitor (Kampala)
COLUMN
20 May 2008
Posted to the web 20 May 2008
Al-Mahdi Ssenkabirwa & David Musiimaami
Kampala
Anyone who has not been in Kampala in the last two years or so would not
believe that where a magnificent shopping mall stands today used to be the
stage for scene of ugly riots.
This is the Original Shauriyako Plaza, whose construction has swallowed
billions of vendors' savings. The new mall is located on Plot 39A Nakivubo
Road between Nakivubo Trade Centre and Gaggawala Plaza, overlooking the new
taxi park. Even before its completion, traders are swarming it to book
space.
The fresh new look of the complex has reshaped the skyline to the lower
eastern part of Kampala city, thanks to vendors who saved their earnings to
realise such a dream.
Mr Salongo Katende, one of the beneficiaries says owning a shop at the new
complex is his life achievement.
"I am very happy to witness the completion of our complex," Mr Katende said.
"I feel as though I own a building by just owning a shop in the heart of the
city."
He says if he is to rent out his shop, he will be able to bag $1,000 (about
shs1.6million) monthly. Although every vendor admires the splendid building
now, the sailing hasn't been smooth.
In 2006, when plans to develop the market were hatched, many people
vehemently opposed it claiming that it would be a miracle to get the needed
funds for the project, Mr Rock Luzze the brain behind the redevelopment
says.
According to Mr Luzze, some vendors feared that the redevelopment could
deprive them of their ownership rights on the stalls.
This consequently sparked violent riots at the market which led to some
vendors to get injured and lose property.
But Mr Luzze, who is also the chairman of the vendors, says today many
vendors who protested against the redevelopment of the area are happy about
the achievement.
Before the idea of redeveloping the market came up, city businessman, Hassan
Basajjabalaba who also had a claim on the market land threw the vendors in
panic after threatening them with eviction.
Mr Basajjabalaba's agents sealed off the market for several weeks leaving
hundreds of traders jobless. The closure of the market then set another
stage for a clash between Local Government Minister, Maj. Gen. Kahinda
Otafiire Mayor Nasser Sebaggala with the former urging the latter to offer
the market to the highest bidder (Bassajjabalaba) .
But Mr Ssebagala stood his ground saying he couldnt betray his people. "It
is really a dream come true. We wanted Shauriyako Market to match with the
international standards and here we are," Mr Luzze says.
To qualify for a shop at the new mall, each vendor was obliged to pay
Shs9million. He says each vendor paid Shs1 million for the lease and Shs8
million to facilitate the construction works.
The four-storied complex has 150 shops on each floor totalling 600 shops.
According to Mr Luzze, the vendors who paid for the shops would be the first
to benefit but other willing traders would be considered at a later stage.
"We are now on final touches and once this is done, we shall first allocate
the shops to our members who paid their money and if more space is l
available we shall bring others on board," he says. However, Mr Luzze
remained tightlipped on the amount of money they have spent on the project.
Shauriyako Market was set up in the 1950s for vendors dealing in cooked food
which was perceived to be unhygienic.
It is derived from the Swahili words, Shauri yako, to mean it's up to you.
After seeing the impressive results at Shauriyako, vendors in St
Balikuddembe Market (Owino), located just metres away have jumped on the
bandwagon with a massive strategy to raise money also to redevelop the
market themselves. About 20,000 vendors operating in the Market have up to
next month to collect shs20billion required to kick start the project.
Mr Erias Lukwago (DP, Kampala Central) describes the new face of Shauriyako
Market as a ray of hope to city dwellers who have for long been searching
for space where to do business.
"Completing the market complex [Shauriyako] is a major breakthrough for my
people in Shauriyako and I hope when it officially opens the beneficiaries
will really start to enjoy what they have longed for."
He said with its new look, the market will be one of the busiest shopping
centres downtown. However, Ms Juliet Nalujja, who used to own a stall in the
old market, is pessimistic that low income earners will not afford the new
rental fees at the shopping mall.
"I used to operate in the old market with my meager capital of Shs350,000,"
she says. "But in the new shopping complex even my capital is not enough to
cover rent for one month."
http://www.counterpunch.com/schulte05242008.html
Weekend Edition
May 24 / 25, 2008
Starvation, Food Riots and Warped Priorities
Can the Whole World be Fed?
By ELIZABETH SCHULTE
The depth of the global food crisis is best expressed by what poor people
are eating to survive.
In Burundi, it is farine noir, a mixture of black flour and moldy cassava.
In Somalia, a thin gruel made from mashed thorn-tree branches called jerrin.
In Haiti, it is a biscuit made of yellow dirt. Food inflation has sparked
protests in Egypt, Haiti, Mexico and elsewhere. Tens of thousands protested
earlier this month in Mogadishu, as the price of a corn meal rose twofold in
four months.
And while the crisis seemed to come out of nowhere, the reality of hunger is
a regular feature of life for millions of people. The United Nations' Food
and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 854 million people
worldwide are undernourished.
Hunger isn't simply the result of unpredictable incidents like the cyclone
that struck Myanmar. In most cases, millions teeter on the edge of survival
long before the natural disasters hit. According to UN Millennium Project
Web site, of the 300 million children who go to bed hungry every day, only
"8 percent are victims of famine or other emergency situations. More than 90
percent are suffering long-term malnourishment and micronutrient
deficiency."
The technology and know-how exist to make our capacity to produce food even
greater--if this were made a priority. As part of a recent series on the
global food crisis, the Washington Post described the damage being done by
gnat-sized insects called "brown plant hoppers." Billions them are
destroying rice crops in East Asia and putting millions of poor people at
risk of going hungry.
The threat could easily be eliminated with the creation of rice strains
resistant to this pest, but that hasn't happened--because funding for
research projects has been cut. The International Rice Research Institute
used to have five entomologists, or insect experts, overseeing a staff of
200 in the 1980s. Now it has one entomologist, with a staff of eight.
The world's wealthiest countries and their international loan organizations,
like the World Bank, have cut money for agricultural research programs.
According to the Post, "Adjusting for inflation and exchange rates, the
wealthy countries, as a group, cut such donations roughly in half from 1980
to 2006, to $2.8 billion a year from $6 billion. The United States cut its
support for agriculture in poor countries to $624 million from $2.3 billion
in that period."
* * *
SEARCHING FOR answers to the crisis, some people argue that "there simply
isn't enough to go around," or that there are "too many" people to feed in a
world of limited resources. This argument has been around for many decades.
In effect, it tries to blame starvation on the starving themselves. And it
simply isn't true.
"The food crisis appeared to explode overnight, reinforcing fears that there
are just too many people in the world," wrote Eric Holt-Giménez and Loren
Peabody of Food First. "But according to the FAO, with record grain harvests
in 2007, there is more than enough food in the world to feed everyone--at
least 1.5 times current demand. In fact, over the last 20 years, food
production has risen steadily at over 2.0 percent a year, while the rate of
population growth has dropped to 1.14 percent a year. Population is not
outstripping food supply."
The problem isn't that there isn't enough food. The problem is that the
people who need it are too poor to buy it. This is the case around the
globe, including some of the wealthiest countries in the world.
In the U.S., food pantries report being stretched to the breaking point
because more working people are turning to them when their paycheck doesn't
make it. Demand is up 15 to 20 percent over last year, and the pantries are
serving "folks who get up and go to work every day," Bill Bolling, founder
of the Atlanta Community Food Bank, told USA Today. "That's remarkably
different than the profile of who we've served through the years."
This flies in the face of the commonly held idea that average Americans and
a culture of overconsumption and waste are eating up the world's resources.
Of course, examples abound of people who get much more than their fill, in
elite hotels and restaurants around the globe--but they are a small fraction
of the population. And when these parasites gorge themselves, they steal
from the mouths of poor people everywhere--in less developed countries, but
also in wealthy nations like the U.S.
* * *
THE POTENTIAL exists to eliminate hunger and malnutrition anywhere in the
world. What stands in the way of our ability to feed each and every person
is really the system we live under--capitalism.
The drive for profit at the heart of the system--where things like food,
which should be viewed as a fundamental right, are seen as commodities to be
bought and sold--is really the source of the problem. No amount of
technology can overcome this fundamental fact.
Thus, during the Great Depression, while millions of poor and unemployed
Americans went hungry, U.S. farmers were facing the exact opposite problem:
They were producing too much food to keep prices from falling. So at the
same time that millions of poor and unemployed people stood in breadlines
for food assistance, food crops were being destroyed, because no profit
could be made from giving it away.
As the author John Steinbeck wrote in the Grapes of Wrath:
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep
up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of
oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit,
but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at 20 cents a dozen if
they could drive out and pick them up?...A million people hungry, needing
the fruit–and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains...
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here
that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our
success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks and
the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit
cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the
certificate--died of malnutrition--because the food must rot, must be forced
to rot.
Capitalism is a chaotic system, where starvation can exist amid plenty, and
where a disaster seems to loom around every corner. In Mexico, for example,
the price of tortillas went up 60 percent last year. Increased demand for
American farmers to divert corn for use in ethanol as opposed to corn for
food was largely to blame for the skyrocketing prices of this Mexican
staple.
But Walden Bello of Focus on the Global South asked an important question in
a recent article: "How on earth did Mexicans, who live in the land where
corn was domesticated, become dependent on U.S. imports in the first place?"
During the 1980s, in return for bailouts from the IMF and World Bank, Mexico
was forced "liberalize" its trade policies, and this accelerated under the
North American Free Trade Agreement. U.S. farm products flooded the Mexican
market, and agribusiness giants like Cargill reaped huge profits. Mexican
farmers couldn't possibly compete.
International "aid" is organized around the principle not of solving poverty
but of making profits--and in the process, it usually leads to more
suffering. In Ethiopia, the poverty "experts" at the World Bank forced the
country to devote good land not to food crops, but to export crops to sell
on the world market. As a result, the famine of the 1980s were made even
worse.
These crises aren't aberrations, but are built into the system. A recent
Time magazine article grudgingly commented, "The social theories of Karl
Marx were long ago discarded as of little value, even to revolutionaries.
But he did warn that capitalism had a tendency to generate its own crises."
The Time article was titled "How Hunger Could Topple Regimes."
The current system and its warped priorities can't possibly accomplish
something as important as feeding the world's people. It will take a society
organized on a completely different basis to achieve this. If we could
harness the resources wasted on the pursuit of profit--including the wars
that our government funds around the globe--we could feed the world many
times over.
Elizabeth Schulte is a reporter for the Socialist Worker.
http://www.activistmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=914&Itemid=143
The Structural Roots of Hunger, Food Crises and Riots
Written by Canadian Dimension magazine
Thursday, 07 August 2008
In recent months major international banks, financial newspapers and mass
media have been forced to recognize that there is a major food crisis and
that hundreds of millions of people face hunger, malnutrition and outright
starvation. World conferences have been convoked and national emergencies
have been declared, as millions riot in nearly fifty countries, threatening
to overthrow regimes. In North America and Europe, skyrocketing food prices,
combined with stagnant wages, home evictions and debt payments threaten
incumbent regimes and increase pressures on all governments to take urgent
action.
Mainstream responses are predictably inadequate, and their explanations for
the crisis range from inadequate and self-serving to silly. The World Bank
repeats the call for emergency food aid and several hundred-million-dollar
grants to the "most needy," which usually turn out to be regimes who have
been model pupils of the World Bank and IMF policies.
Academics and policy advisers blame China, "for eating too much meat."
Others point to the diversion of production to biofuels like "ethanol" and
"bio-diesel." But they fail to ask which classes fashioned the economic
policies that enabled this "diversion" to take place. In any case, as Bruce
Burnett, director of market analysis with the Canadian Wheat Board, has
said, ethanol’s impact has been greatly exaggerated: "the tightness in wheat
supplies was not driven by ethanol; it was driven by our tight wheat stocks
globally. Perhaps ethanol got us into this situation more quickly."
It’s true that there is a supply problem, but from where does it really
stem? While food shortages and food inflation have taken on crisis
proportions in recent months, it’s a crisis whose roots can be traced to
decades-old policies.
Heavy private and state borrowing in the 1970s owing itself to the
availability of cheap credit led to a growth of indebtedness in the
so-called Third World. Indebted private banks, businesses, manufacturers and
real-estate developers foisted their private debts onto the state. The
state, faced with mounting debt obligations, turned to the IMF and World
Bank to secure loans and, more important, to gain their certification for
jumbo loans from commercial banks.
The IMF and World Bank demanded fundamental structural changes from states
to grant loans. These conditional loans involved a comprehensive
transformation in investment, trade, consumption and income policies,
including the elimination of protective trade barriers in agriculture and
manufacturing. As a result, there were massive inflows of subsidized
agricultural commodities from the U.S. and the European Union, which
destroyed small- and medium-sized family-farm producers of basic foodstuffs.
Bankruptcy of food producers led to massive displacement of farmers and farm
workers to the cities, and the concentration of land in the hands of
agro-business plantations owners who concentrated on growing crops for
export.
IMF and World Bank demands included the re-allocation of state credit, loans
and technical assistance toward big agro-exporters in single commodities
because such crops earned hard currency needed to pay back loans and
for-profit remittances of the multinational corporations back to their stock
holders, directors and owners.
The middle-term consequences of these policies manifested themselves after a
little more than a decade. Family farmers were bankrupted, their land bought
up by real-estate speculators (self-styled "developers") for commercial
uses, golf courses, resorts, gated luxury communities and export staples.
Rice fields were turned into country clubs. This restructuring has produced
the absurd and tragic result that millions of people are starving in
countries that export large amounts of food.
Between constrained food supplies, increased food-import demands from China
and India, diversion of crops from foods to fuels, rising farm-input costs
of oil-derivative imports like fertilizers, rising transportation costs and,
finally, the actions of huge investment funds in buying up enormous amounts
of grain — bringing the story up to the present, this combination of factors
was bound to drive up prices.
So, it was not simply that "demand" was up, as the orthodox pundits would
have it. Under conditions of markets tightly controlled by big agribusiness,
grain stocks fell to their lowest levels in 35 years relative to demand,
largely because big agro-capital sought to limit the supply of food,
increase production of biofuels and divert capital to commodity speculation.
As a result of the ascendancy of giant agro-capitalist rule and their
investment and land-use policies, average food prices rose by 45 per cent
between July, 2007, and April, 2008, and are projected to rise by an
additional fifteen per cent by July.
Frightened more by mass protests toppling compliant client regimes than by
mass hunger and rising mortality among the poor, leaders from around the
world met in Washington earlier this spring. They whined about the food
riots and moaned over the "loss of a decade’s progress [sic] in Africa," and
even called for "action." As might be expected, a few hundred million
dollars in emergency food aid was promised.
Some countries were frightened into blocking exports of basic food items in
order to prevent food riots turning into mass insurrections. Yet these
actions and food handouts have had little positive effect at home, and have
exacerbated scarcities for food importers.
None of the world leaders meeting in Washington "concerned" about hunger
proposed agrarian reforms — redistributing land to peasants and farmers to
produce food. None of them even proposed reforms like price and profit
controls, or the re-conversion of land use to agricultural production, or
outlawing speculation in commodity futures in the world bourses. It is no
wonder that the IMF predicts food prices will continue rising until 2010.
The bankruptcy of export-product specialization at the expense of food
security is abundantly clear. What was once the demand of a radical minority
is now at the top of the agenda for a multi-billion-person movement: a
return to policies of food self-sufficiency.
Food Sovereignty
La Via Campesina (The Peasant Way) is an umbrella body that encompasses more
than 120 small farmers’ and peasants’ organizations in 56 countries, ranging
from the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil to the National
Farmers Union in Canada.
Simple access to food is not enough, La Via Campesina argues. What’s needed
is food sovereignty: access to land, water and resources. The people
affected must have the right to know and to decide about food policies. Food
is too important to be left to the global market and the manipulations of
agribusiness.
The central demand of the food-sovereignty movement is that food should be
treated primarily as a source of nutrition for the communities and countries
where it is grown. In opposition to free-trade, agro-export policies, it
urges a focus on domestic consumption and food self-sufficiency.
La Via Campesina’s demand for food sovereignty constitutes a powerful
agrarian program for the 21st Century. Labour and left movements worldwide
should give full support to it and to the campaigns of working farmers and
peasants for land reform and against the industrialization and globalization
of food and farming.
We in the Global North can and must demand that our governments stop all
activities that weaken or damage Third World farming. In particular: stop
using food for fuel; cancel the debts of developing nations (ending that
cash drain would provide essential resources to feed the hungry now and
rebuild domestic farming over time); get the WTO out of agriculture; and
self-determination for the Global South.
Current attempts by the U.S. to destabilize and overthrow the
anti-imperialist governments of the ALBA group — Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba,
Nicaragua and Grenada — continue a long history of actions by northern
countries to prevent developing countries from asserting control over their
own destinies. Organizing against such interventions "in the belly of the
monster" is a key component of the fight to win food sovereignty around the
world.
Orignally published as an editorial in the July/August 2008 issue of
Canadian Dimension magazine.
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney04262008.html
"A Massacre of the World's Poor"
Food Riots and Speculators
By MIKE WHITNEY
Food riots have broken out across the globe destabilizing large parts of
the developing world. China is experiencing double-digit inflation.
Indonesia, Vietnam and India have imposed controls over rice exports. Wheat,
corn and soy beans are at record highs and threatening to go higher still.
Commodities are up across the board. The World Food Program is warning of
widespread famine if the West doesn't provide emergency humanitarian relief.
The situation is dire. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez summed it up like
this, "It is a massacre of the world's poor. The problem is not the
production of food. It is the economic, social and political model of the
world. The capitalist model is in crisis."
Right on, Hugo. There is no shortage of food; it's just the prices that are
making food unaffordable. Bernanke's "weak dollar" policy has ignited a wave
of speculation in commodities which is pushing prices into the stratosphere.
The UN is calling the global food crisis a "silent tsunami", but its more
like a flood; the world is awash in increasingly worthless dollars that are
making food and raw materials more expensive. Foreign central banks and
investors presently hold $6 trillion in dollars and dollar-backed assets, so
when the dollar starts to slide, the pain radiates through entire economies.
This is especially true in countries where the currency is pegged to the
dollar. That's why most of the Gulf States are experiencing runaway
inflation.
The US is exporting its inflation by cheapening its currency. Now a field
worker in Haiti who earns $2 a day, and spends all of that to feed his
family, has to earn twice that amount or eat half as much. That's not a
choice a parent wants to make. Its no wonder that six people were killed
Port au Prince in the recent food riots. People go crazy when they can't
feed their kids.
Food and energy prices are sucking the life out of the global economy.
Foreign banks and pension funds are trying to protect their investments by
diverting dollars into things that will retain their value. That's why oil
is nudging $120 per barrel when it should be in the $70 to $80 range.
According to Tim Evans, energy analyst at Citigroup in New York, “There’s no
supply-demand deficit". None. In fact suppliers are expecting an oil surplus
by the end of this year.
"The case for lower oil prices is straightforward: The prospect of a deep
U.S. recession or even a marked period of slower economic growth in the
world’s top energy consumer making a dent in energy consumption. Year to
date, oil demand in the U.S. is down 1.9% compared with the same period in
2007, and high prices and a weak economy should knock down U.S. oil
consumption by 90,000 barrels a day this year, according to the federal
Energy Information Administration." ("Bears Baffled by Oil Highs" gregory
Meyer, Wall Street Journal)
There's no oil shortage; that's another ruse. Speculators are simply driving
up the price of oil to hedge their bets on the falling dollar. What else can
they do; put them in the frozen bond market, or the sinking stock market, or
the collapsing housing market?
>From the Washington Times:
"Farmers and food executives appealed fruitlessly to federal officials
yesterday for regulatory steps to limit speculative buying that is helping
to drive food prices higher. Meanwhile, some Americans are stocking up on
staples such as rice, flour and oil in anticipation of high prices and
shortages spreading from overseas. Costco and other grocery stores in
California reported a run on rice, which has forced them to set limits on
how many sacks of rice each customer can buy. Filipinos in Canada are
scooping up all the rice they can find and shipping it to relatives in the
Philippines, which is suffering a severe shortage that is leaving many
people hungry."
(Patrice Hill, Washington Times)
The Bush administration knows there's hanky-panky going on, but they just
look the other way. It's Enron redux, where Ken Lay Inc. scalped the public
with utter impunity while regulators sat on the sidelines applauding. Great.
Now its the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) turn; they're taking
a hands-off approach so Wall Street sharpies make a fortune jacking up the
price of everything from soda crackers to toilet bowls.
"A hearing Tuesday in Washington before the Commodity Futures Trading
Commission starts a new round of scrutiny into the popularity of
agricultural futures, once a quieter arena that for years was dominated
largely by big producers and consumers of crops and their banks trying to
manage price risks. The commission's official stance and that of many of the
exchanges, however, is likely to disappoint many consumer groups. The CFTC's
economist plans to state at the hearing that the agency doesn't believe
financial investors are driving up grain prices. Some grain buyers say
speculators' big bets on relatively small grain exchanges, especially
recently, are pushing up prices for ordinary consumers." ("Call Goes Out to
Rein In Grain Speculators", Ann Davis)
The agency doesn't believe financial investors are driving up grain prices!
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at:
fergiewhitney at msn.com
http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/3131.cfm
Haitian Food Riots Unnerving but Not Surprising
Mark Schuller
Americas Program
Center for International Policy
April 29, 2008
Haitians protest against the cost of living on April 7 in Port-au-Prince.
(Photo: Thony Belizaire / AFP-Getty Images)
Beginning early April, Haiti was gripped by a nationwide mobilization to
protest high food prices, reaching a crescendo on Thursday the 10th, as
thousands of people took to the streets. Some protestors burned tires,
blocking national highways and city streets in Port-au-Prince, and a few
looted local stores. Clashes with police and United Nations troops resulted
in an official count of five dead.
The media covered these events during the days of the crisis but offered
little information to explain the protests. This superficial coverage tells
an all-too-familiar story of Haiti. The media swarmed to cover the high
drama of United Nations troops breaking up demonstrations with rubber
bullets, and the State Department warning its citizens not to enter the
country. Then, almost as quickly as it appeared on the news, Haiti
disappeared, leaving the residual image of being hopeless, violent, and
dangerous.
As awful as the loss of life, property damage, and the resulting climate of
fear are, the "rioters" in the street are only the most visible
manifestation of a crisis with deep roots. Both the Haitian government and
the international community played important roles in creating the current
crisis.
Collective Coping
While some individuals chose to "riot"—and even fewer looted stores—most
people in Haiti's poor majority actively help one another to survive.
While the rising sale of "dirt cookies"—biscuits made of clay, salt, and
oil—and the food protests and isolated cases of looting illustrate the
desperation of the hungry, Haiti also has a still-extant tradition of youn
ede lòt—one helping the other. Although foreigners may not see these
invisible ties, even in the crowded capital city ordinary Haitians often
share what little they have with neighbors and extended kin.
Several times, I have seen a neighbor, fellow church member, coworker,
friend, or cousin drop in on someone with a plate of food in hand to make
sure he or she had something to eat that night.
Most people I know in Haiti also, with no outside help or guidance, organize
sòl—solidarity lending groups. Each pay period a group pools together funds,
with one person receiving the entire amount, usually to pay for their annual
or biannual rent or to pay for their children's schooling, a quarter to a
half of a minimum-wage earner's salary. People also organize in neighborhood
associations, picking up trash, fixing potholes, and even opening community
schools.
Unnoticed by mainstream accounts, this collectivist tradition in Haiti
allows people living on the margins of society (the minimum wage for those
few who work in the formal sector is 70 goud, or $1.80 per day) to survive.
A Haitian proverb explains the dynamic: bourikchaje pa kanpe (the overloaded
donkey can't stand still). People who are forced to deal with many problems
at once can't stop, they must keep going.
Why did some take to the streets now?
Many people have been telling me for the past four years, including three
weeks ago,1 that their top concern was lavi chè a— the high cost of living.
Sylvie St. Fleur,2 a recently laid off factory worker in her 50's, spoke for
many: "The thing that destroys the country is that you can't buy anything.
This high cost of living is killing us in Haiti."
Sylvie argued, "If you used to buy a sack of rice for 1,000 goud, you have
to buy it at 1,500 goud ($37.50). Only now, a cup of sugar costs 25 goud, a
cup of rice costs 18 or 19 goud, a cup of beans costs 25 goud. Even if you
work for 70 goud per day (minimum wage), you buy a gallon of gas for 150
goud ($3.75) … you see? Here you can work two whole days and you can't even
buy a gallon of gas."
On each visit to Haiti I have observed new increases in food prices. Each
visit also brings news of someone's death from not having access to clean
water, enough food, or health care. Three weeks ago, colleagues at a
grassroots women's organization mourned the loss of Imanne, a public health
care worker in her mid-40's who had high blood pressure and
diabetes—diseases we've been treating in the United States for generations.
Imanne could have survived despite Haiti's lack of investment in health care
if she had the means to afford privatized care. As a low-wage earner, she
could not.
Rents in safe neighborhoods in Pòtoprens doubled in 2004-53 and the poor
have been forced into neighborhoods like Bèlè (Bel-Air) or Sitesolèy (Cité
Soleil) where clashes between armed gangs and United Nations troops are
regular occurrences. Yolette Pierre explains, "In my neighborhood, in Cité
Soleil, people who were able to leave, they left. People who remained, we
have no choice. You sit in your house and the bullets come through the
walls, inside your house."
Prices for staple goods such as rice, corn, beans, and cooking oil increased
on average 30-40 percent over this one-year period. Rising gas prices
explain part of these dramatic price hikes.4 However, according to the
Nouvelliste , the cost of gas only went up 15 percent over this same
period.5 What accounts for the rest of the increase? Sylvie St. Fleur
explained, "Haiti doesn't suffer from a lack of food because there's no
food, no! It is because the rich don't understand the poor."
Missing from most media accounts is that while Haiti is the "poorest country
in the hemisphere" by economic measures—80 percent live on less than $2 per
day, and around half have an income of $1 or less—it is also the most
unequal. It is second only to Namibia in income inequality (Jadotte 2006),
and has the most millionaires per capita in the region. Margarethe Thenusla,
a 34-year-old factory worker and mother of two said, "When they ask for aid
for the needy, you hear that they release thousands of dollars for aid in
Haiti. But when it comes you can't see anything that they did with the food
aid. You see it in the market, they're selling it. Us poor people don't see
it."
'We're Waiting and Watching the Situation'
The role Haiti's government has been playing in this deteriorating economy
receives some attention and analysis, but much less than the hit-and-run
accounts that reinforce the country's bad image. The interim regime of
United Nations retiree Gérard Latortue (2004-6) took no effective measures
to halt the rising prices in rent, food, and transport. On the contrary, his
government's words and actions likely contributed to their increase.
In his first month as Interim Prime Minister, Latortue withdrew Aristide's
$22 billion demand for restitution from France, severed diplomatic ties with
CARICOM (the Caribbean community), hailed Aristide's armed opposition as
"freedom fighters," and granted a three-year tax exemption for the large
importers—traditionally an elite made up of lighter-skinned people—who
control the country's foreign trade.
Through a top-down, rushed process called the Cadre de Coopération
Intérimaire (C.C.I.—in English, I.C.F.),6 the interim government signed off
on neoliberal plans such as privatization of state-run enterprises, lower
tariffs for imported rice, and an export-oriented agricultural and
industrial plan to the detriment of local production.
People have been talking about lavichè a—the high cost of living—for years.
In addition to being what most people cited as their top concern, many
Kanaval, Rasin, and even the typically apolitical, light-hearted konpa songs
decry lavi chè a.
This common cause bridged the political divide: members of Aristide's Fanmi
Lavalas party demanded Latortue address the problem, while leftist groups in
opposition to Aristide, including PAPDA,7 and student organizations
organized sit-ins to demand lower prices for staple goods. Latortue promised
to create a commission to study the issue. Ultimately no action was taken.
When it came time to hold elections, the international community stalled the
elections process and USAID attempted to influence the outcome by funding
Gallop polls that noted a steady decline in support for former president
Rene Préval. Nonetheless Préval was voters' clear favorite in elections
finally held on Feb. 7, 2006. Préval received the majority of votes that
were cast for the office, but blank ballots brought his total to just under
50 percent. Like most other Latin American countries, the Haitian
Constitution stipulates a run-off of the top two contenders. According to
non-governmental and government sources I spoke with at the time and again a
month ago, this was the stage on which the international community demanded
that Préval form a so-called "unity government" made up of members of all
six parties that gained seats in the Parliament.8
Préval's government made some progress on security and stabilization;
kidnapping and homicide rates dropped. Responding to mobilizations noted
above, one of Préval's first actions was to negotiate Petro Caribé with
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Petro Caribé is a bilateral agreement
offering lower-cost oil and credit at reduced interest rates. In Haiti's
case, the agreement also included developing state-run power plants.
According to Préval's chief of staff, three such plants were scheduled to be
on-line this month. Haiti's parliament ratified Petro Caribé in August 2006,
and taptap (public transit "bus") fares immediately returned to pre-coup
levels of five goud.
However, many people told me, "se tann nap tann" or "se swiv nap swiv."
("We're waiting," "we're following the situation closely.") While Préval is
generally well-regarded for his honesty and sincerity, behind closed doors
people from all classes I spoke with—day laborers, street vendors, factory
workers, N.G.O. employees, and other middle-class professionals—complained
about his apparent lack of leadership and unwillingness to address the
public. To many observers, while his relative silence may have contributed
to keeping his "unity government" together, government inaction led to the
return of violence and lavi chè.
The events of early April demonstrated that the people's patience had
finally worn out. Vilner Chery, a peasant farmer who with his neighbors
blockaded Route National No. 2 outside of Les Cayes, decried, "Our children
are hungry and we can't feed them. We know we have a president in this
country. So we're forced to get out on the street and cry for help to the
people who have the capacity to do something for us. That's why we put up
the barricades to block the cars. The president must do something about
this."
The mobilization by Chery and others in the South was peaceful and
apolitical, led by local peasants. Journalist Reed Lindsay quotes a small
farmer, Jeff Desrosier: "We don't block roads to destroy vehicles and cause
disorder. We only need Préval to come to talk to us, so that the price of
rice goes down. There are eight people here who have died from hunger."
The demands were familiar, shared by poor Port-au-Prince women like Linda,
who asked pointedly, "Did the cost of living go up for the government?
Because the people, we are suffering and the government isn't. They act like
the cost of living hasn't gone up." Lindsay quoted the demands of Cavaillon
community organizer Frantz Thelusma, "First, we demand the government get
rid of its neoliberal plan. We will not accept this death plan. Second, the
government needs to regulate the market and lower the price of basic goods."
People in Port-au-Prince, especially the self-named "political class"
including the Senate, only became involved later. According to Lindsay, the
Port-au-Prince protests were larger, but differed from the original protests
outside the capital in that they had different motivations and sectors of
society involved. Often-conflicting political motives and people's sheer
desperation and relative anonymity lent a more violent character to the
later protests.
Some reports imply political motives behind the "riots." Carol Williams
wrote in an April 13 L.A. Times story that priest and close Aristide ally
Gérard Jean-Juste was seen leading some of the rallies. The implication was
that Lavalas—the most popular party among Haiti's poor majority—was unhappy
with the unity government's inaction and demanded its attention, threatening
a split.
On Saturday, April 12, the Senate recalled Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard
Alexis by 16 votes, with the 10 members of Préval's Lespwa party abstaining.
Rightist opposition leader Youri Latortue led the recall effort. Latortue
said that Alexis' removal, plus Préval's negotiation with local business
leaders and international agencies to lower the price of foreign rice from
$51 to $43,9 "would satisfy the people." Some people I spoke with from
citizen organizations and the government saw Alexis as neoliberalism's
champion, being behind moves to privatize the phone company, Teleco, laying
off thousands of workers.
Pointing to the fact that Lespwa sat out the vote, others disagree with this
interpretation, directly questioning Latortue's motives in this effort.
Alexis may have promoted neoliberalism, these analysts point out, but
Latortue's ousting him could usher in a more rightist prime minister. Some
commentators have even speculated that the interests of the economic elite
and the Army seek to destabilize the government.
For even the best mainstream news coverage, the analysis usually stops here,
at the state level.
'Politics of the Stomach'
The food riots in Haiti were also a result of policies and actions of the
international community. Haiti has lost its food sovereignty as a result of
decades of foreign-imposed neoliberal measures. This is a concrete example
of what longtime Haiti advocate Paul Farmer calls "structural violence"—the
long-term underdevelopment and inequalities in the world system.
Many people in Haiti point to the first trigger being the USAID eradication
of the Haitian pig population following an outbreak of swine fever. Peasants
counted on pigs as "bank accounts" (Diederich 1985) so the action amounted
to Haiti's "great stock market crash" (Smith 2001:29), contributing to
Duvalier's ouster on Feb. 7, 1986. Under United States military supervision,
Duvalier was replaced by an army junta, the C.N.G., whose finance minister
Delatour imposed a series of neoliberal measures, including currency
devaluation, trade liberalization, and opening Haiti's agricultural markets
to United States producers. Today, Haiti is the most "open" economy in the
hemisphere.10
In the 1990's, responding to humanitarian crises following the violent
1991-4 coup period, USAID gave millions of dollars in direct food aid
(PL-480). The implementation of this aid weakened Haiti's economy, with free
or heavily subsidized United States rice underselling the local peasantry;
with the grains and the food-for-work programs arriving during the peak of
harvest season, when farmers sold their crops and needed hired help the
most; and with conditionalities such as still lower tariffs and further
trade advantages for United States businesses (Richardson 1997).
While it can be argued that Haitian governments can choose to refuse this
aid, the majority of their funding comes from international institutions.11
People in Haiti call this dependency on foreign aid a "politics of the
stomach" (e.g., Fatton 2004). Not surprisingly, United States assistance to
Haiti is still laced with conditionalities that benefit United States
corporate interests. For example, the HOPE Act passed in December 2006 was
designed to create jobs and cut tariffs on sub-contracted textile
productions. While the estimates are way lower than projections, 2,000-3,000
instead of 50,000 jobs according to an industry lobbyist, the rationale is
that saving $1.50 on a pair of pants spurs foreign investment, sorely
lacking in Haiti.12 Nonetheless, the strings attached to HOPE give even more
benefits to United States business. HOPE contains a condition that Haiti
must not "engage in activities that undermine United States national
security or foreign policy interests"—Section (d)(2). In order for private,
often foreign, companies to receive tax benefits in the bill, the Haitian
government must establish or make progress toward "elimination of barriers
to United States trade and investment."
In addition to bilateral aid, international agencies also imposed neoliberal
conditions on Haiti through negotiations on foreign debt. By 1991, when
Aristide—Haiti's first democratically elected president—took office, the
official debt was $785 million (International Monetary Fund 2005b:27-28),
more than half of what was claimed in 2006 of $1.463 billion (I.M.F.
2007:73).
Debt drains resources that could otherwise be invested in national
production. For example, in 2003, Haiti's scheduled debt service was $57.4
million, whereas total foreign pledges for education, health care,
environment, and transportation added up to $39.21 million (I.M.F. 2005a:88;
World Bank 2002:vii). The scheduled debt service for 2009 is $78.7
million.13 Debt also is the leverage for imposing what used to be called
"structural adjustment programs" (S.A.P.'s),14 including privatization,
trade liberalization, and forced reduction in services such as health care,
education, or rural credit.
Some argue that competition and free trade bring prosperity to all. In this
logic, barriers to trade such as protective tariffs need to be removed. Many
of the proposals to respond to the crisis still depart from this logic.
But Haitian peasants cannot "compete" with the United States under a free
trade system. First of all, under the United States Farm Bill, United States
agribusiness and some individual farmers15 received $13.4 billion in
subsidies in 2006, a total of $177 billion over the previous decade.16 At
the same time, the World Trade Organization (W.T.O.) repeatedly strikes down
tariffs and other subsidies in Southern countries as "impediments to free
trade." Even without the subsidies, the average United States
farm—individual or corporate—benefits from what we now take for granted as
public responsibilities: building and maintaining roads, irrigation canals,
water treatment, pumps and pipelines, and federally insured credit, etc.
These public investments cost money, which high debt payments and reduction
in social spending mandated by structural adjustment programs have prevented
in Haiti.17
Occasionally, international institutions directly contribute to the increase
in prices, as in January 2003, when the I.M.F. demanded that the government
stop subsidizing the cost for fuel, triggering immediate hikes in taptap
fares as well as protests. Very efficient in economic terms because
timachann (street vendors) operate on very slim profit margins, the informal
market immediately saw a rise in prices for staple goods as a result.
As a result of all these factors, Haiti is almost entirely dependent on
foreign food production. Once an exporter of rice, now Haiti imports an
estimated 82% of total consumption, $200,000,000 per year (MOREPLA [Mouvman
Revandikatif Peyizan Latibonit—in English, The Peasant's Movement for
Justice in the Artibonite] and PAPDA 2004). Haiti has lost its food security
and food sovereignty. As Préval recently stated in his effort to calm the
populace: "In 1987, when rice began being imported at a cheap price, many
people applauded. But cheap imported rice destroyed [locally grown] rice.
Today, imported rice has become expensive, and our national production is in
ruins. That's why subsidizing imported food is not the answer."
It is therefore not surprising that prices for basic foodstuffs in Haiti are
tied to the global market where rising petroleum costs and inflation in
grain prices because of its increasing use as biofuel have driven up prices.
Thirty-seven-year-old community leader and timachann Linda Thibault
explains, "You have to buy Miami rice. Do the math: if a bag of Haitian rice
costs 150 goud, and a bag of U.S. rice costs 65 goud, I can buy two bags of
U.S. rice and still have money left over for the cost of one bag of Haitian
rice. I am forced to fill my body with U.S. rice. My children can eat more."
Why Now?
The question remains, why now? And, what does this mean for Haiti? The
answer depends on the level of analysis.
It is possible that the people were simply tired and fed up, not unlike the
dechoukaj—uprooting—following Duvalier's ouster in 1986, and that recent
mobilizations were spontaneous and grassroots, as Lindsay reported was the
case in Cavaillon where peasant associations organized peaceful
demonstrations calling upon the government and the United Nations to end
neoliberalism and lower prices for rice. The mobilization across the
"Aristide divide" might generate a productive reconciliation between Lavalas
party leaders and leftist N.G.O.'s: for example, unions such as Batay
Ouvriye (an outspoken critic of Aristide) and C.A.T.H. ([Centrale Autonome
des Travailleurs Haïtiens—in English, Autonomous Central of Haitian Workers]
with ties to Lavalas) are both pressuring for a substantial increase in
Haiti's minimum wage.
It is also possible that this could represent a fissure in Préval's "unity"
government, with Lavalas—and by extension the majority of people who voted
for him—demanding a greater say and role. Préval's rare public statement
outlines an alternative to the neoliberal vision of development embodied by
many donors, outlining national production as a priority. This—with the 364
tons of food aid Chávez provided, in addition to the power plants coming on
line—might foretell a progressive turn for the Préval government. An early
sign would be Préval's nomination of Alexis's successor, not named as this
article went to press. It is also possible that Latortue—who has made
several public statements in favor of returning the army that Aristide
disbanded for its role in perpetuating human rights violations—is
intentionally destabilizing the government as a pretext for promoting a
rightist agenda.
It is also possible to see the food riots as a reaction to the United
Nations Security General Ban-ki Moon's April 2 remarks, in which he said
that Haiti's economy was better than it had been in the past decade—a
complete denial of the realities of people like Sylvie or Yolette who saw
their minimum wage of 70 goud ($1.80) buy less and less on the market. His
speech also argued that the 9,000 United Nations troops in Haiti remain past
their current October mandate. Many people in Haiti, spanning political
ideology and socioeconomic status, share resentment of the United Nations
presence and view it as an insult to Haiti's sovereignty.
Some, particularly low-income residents of places like Bèlè and Sitesolèy,
see the United Nations as a threat since United Nations troops have shot and
killed many neighbors. Others, including progressive N.G.O.'s, see the
United Nations troops as establishing and maintaining a situation of a leta
restavèk—a "servant" government, referring to the practice of forced child
servitude. The United Nations shooting of the protesters and public
statements of support for Préval from Ban-ki Moon and individual governments
like Canada could foretell a division between Haiti's people supported by a
tenuous coalition of formerly bitter enemies—and Haiti's government,
supported by the international community.
As the many people in Haiti I talked with last week told me, Se swiv nap
swiv—time will tell.
Most importantly, the events of the week before last in Haiti need to be
viewed in context and not simply as "Haitian exceptionalism" (e.g.,
Trouillot 1994) based on the stereotypic narrative of Haitians being
violent, unruly, ungodly, and dangerous.
Rather, Haiti needs to be seen as an early warning. Haiti's geopolitical
position—especially its close proximity to the United States and level of
dependence on foreign aid—highlights the contradictions and flaws in the
system of international aid and growing global food crisis. The World Food
Program noted that costs for basic foodstuffs have risen 70 percent over the
past year worldwide, 40% since last summer (W.F.P. 2008). Before Haiti there
were riots in several countries, including Cameroon, Egypt, Bolivia, and
Indonesia. These so-called "food riots" are really the first flares shot up
to signal the need for significant changes to the economic model.
Cut the Strings
What is to be done? First, take heed. Second, take action. Long-term
solutions will have to address both our dependence on oil and the
inequalities in distribution within the world system.
One action we can take is to pass the Jubilee Act—which would be a complete,
immediate cancellation of the debts of 67 southern countries, of which Haiti
is one, without conditionalities—that passed the House of Representatives on
April 16 by a vote of 285 to 132. There was a Senate hearing on April 24.
Debt cancellation would free up resources—$80 million per year in Haiti—as
well as relieve the pressure of neoliberalism, empowering southern civil
societies and governments to define their own priorities, like national
production.
To unravel the inequalities of this contemporary neoliberal world system, it
is best to start with the thread that is already loose.
End Notes
I have conducted two years of anthropological fieldwork in Pòtoprens, and
have returned for several follow up trips, including working on a
documentary about Haitian women workers (www.potomitan.net).
Names of some individuals have been changed upon their request to protect
their anonymity.
Many middle class people were also forced out of their homes when landlords
rented to United Nations troops.
Fares for taptap (buses) doubled for many Pòtoprens routes from 2003 to
2005, from 5 goud to 10 goud.
It should be noted that these indices aren't necessarily related, as price
at the pump contains taxes and other variations. Globally the price for oil
did not go up as high as in Haiti; indeed, Haiti has the highest gasoline
prices in the region (I.M.F. 2007: 56).
Coming from a donors' conference in Washington in July 2004 in which donors
pledged 1.4 billion dollars in unmet need over the Latortue period.
The Haitian Platform to Promote Development Alternatives.
It is certainly true of most Parliamentary systems that leading parties
create coalitions of other, like-minded parties. But Haiti's "unity
government" contains representatives of all parties, from far-right to
far-left. Some ministers even come from parties that did not obtain a seat
in Parliament and secured less than 1 percent of the popular vote for
president.
Merchants agreed to a $3 cut to their profit margin.
Customs duties are the lowest in the hemisphere. Excepting gasoline, they
varied from 0 to 15 percent, "noticeably lowered in the 2000's" (I.M.F.
2007:54) following I.M.F. rulings, with an average of 9 percent according to
the Heritage Foundation.
The mid-1990's figure was 90 percent (Morton 1997:vi), the latest estimate,
65 percent (Mulet 2007).
Private direct investment in Haiti was 4.7 and 7.8 million in fiscal years
2002 and 2003 (I.M.F., 2005b:24).
World Bank, I.M.F., and Inter-American Development Bank (I.D.B.) Web sites
all list scheduled payments. (See also Weisbrot and Sandoval 2007.)
Because of rising opposition, they are now called "development policy loans"
or "poverty reduction and growth facility."
Ten percent of farms received 75 percent of the subsidies, according to this
study.
Environmental Working Group.
In 1825, Haiti was forced to pay an indemnity to France in exchange for the
former colonizer's recognition of Haiti's independence, won in 1804. The
initial sum of 150 million francs was reduced, but this plunged Haiti into a
century-long debt that consumed 80 percent of Haiti's customs to pay off
(Bellegarde-Smith 1982:15; Gaillard-Pourchet 1990).
Mark Schuller teaches anthropology at Vassar College and SUNY-New Paltz. For
a fuller analysis readers can consult Schuller's chapter in a recently
published book, Capitalizing on Catastrophe: Neoliberal Strategies in
Disaster Reconstruction. He is a collaborator with the C.I.P. Americas
Policy Program.
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Farmer, Paul, "An Anthropology of Structural Violence," Current Anthropology
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Fatton, Robert, "The Haitian Authoritarian Habitus and the Contradictory
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Gaillard-Pourchet, Gusti-Klara, L'Expérience haïtienne de la dette
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