Aloof towards Haiti

According to a new study conducted at the University of California and Harvard Medical School, the current cholera epidemic in Haiti could spread to nearly 800,000 people ­— twice the earlier estimate predicted by the United Nations.

At the same time, the United States has resumed the deportation of Haitians back to the country, which remains devastated by the catastrophic magnitude 7.0 earthquake that occurred last January as well as the recent presidential elections that, according to Yves Pierre-Louis, an organizer with the Heads Together of Popular Organizations, is more of “a mockery of an election, which will result in the ‘selection’ of one of the two arch-reactionaries ... shoved down our throat by the so-called international community.”    

In February, the United States deported 27 Haitians that were sent, according to Democracy Now!, “directly to a Haitian detention center.” This comes even though organizations, such as the Center for Constitutional Rights and Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, tried to warn the U.S. government that sending the men back “would be a death wish for some ... because of the cholera epidemic and the fact that cholera is so present in the detention centers.”  

Laura Raymond, a representative from the Center for Constitutional Rights, said some of her colleagues reported that, after visiting the deported former U.S. citizens, the detention center’s walls “were covered in feces and vomit” and the bathrooms “weren’t working, so men had to go the bathroom in trash bags.” Raymond added, “These conditions, during a cholera epidemic, are literally deadly.”

One man, described by the other deportees as “a leader ... who took care of the other men ... who took the lead in cleaning up the conditions of the cell,” is thought to have contracted cholera due to all the contact he had with bodily fluids. He died at his aunt’s house, two days after she negotiated his release.

And a report recently posted by BBC said the U.S. government “plans to deport 700 people convicted of crimes back to Haiti before the end of the year.”

The United States and France have been the primary torturers of Haiti during the last four decades. This includes, on our behalf (albeit denied), the kidnapping of its president in 2004, the nearly 20-year occupation from 1915 to 1934 to “safeguard the interest of U.S. corporations,” and military support for the brutal dictator, but useful thug against “the threat of communism,” François Duvalier.  

The very least Washington should be doing now, especially considering our criminal treatment of the Caribbean country, past and present, is sending doctors and other medical specialists to assist the foreign medical teams already contributing in Haiti, not individuals convicted of petty crimes, like drug possession, that have already served their prison sentences here in the United States.

­— mardunba@indiana.edu