Haiti: hunger sparks growing protests

[Hannah Bell]

Thousands of demonstrators, most of them women, marched through the streets of Petionville, a Port-au-Prince suburb, denouncing the local mayor, Lydie Parent, for hoarding food for resale and not distributing it to the hungry.

A significant amount of food aid has been channeled into Haiti’s informal markets, sold at elevated prices and clearly yielding a profit for some officials who are in charge of its distribution...

“I am hungry, I am dying of hunger,” one of the marchers told the news agency. “Lydie Parent keeps the rice and doesn’t give us anything. They never go distribute where we live...”

Petionville, up the mountain from the capital, has traditionally been the preserve of Haiti’s economic elite. Shanty towns sprung up around the walled mansions of the country’s businessmen and politicians, however. Since January 12, one of the principal watering holes of the well-heeled, the Petionville Club, has been transformed into the capital’s biggest homeless encampment, where more than 40,000 quake victims have sought refuge on the club’s nine-hole golf course.

Sent in to police this yawning social divide are 360 US combat troops from the 82nd Airborne Division, who have set up camp around the club’s swimming pool and restaurant.

Last Friday, former US President Bill Clinton was also met by protests upon his return to Haiti. Hundreds gathered outside the judicial police headquarters, the makeshift headquarters of the Haitian government, during Clinton’s visit there with the country’s President Réne Préval.

“Our children are burning in the sun. We have a right to tents. We have a right to shelter,” one of the protesters, Mentor Natacha, 30, a mother of two, told Agence France Presse. Hundreds of others demonstrated outside the US embassy.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/hait-f09.shtml

[Mike K]

1. Since Bill Clinton -

- has accepted the post in Haiti as his return to the political stage he should also accept this hoarding issue as his problem to solve.

[aquart]

2. No, dear. He went there to get a tan.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

3. My fear is that this horrific situation is going to fade

from the public conscience. Already local volunteers are returning and I don't think new
groups are going into Haiti as much. If anyone can turn this around Bill Clinton can.

[cutlassmama]

4. Perhaps if enough people there die the media will again start covering Haiti.

The only channel covering it is CNN *yuk*

[blindpig]

5. k&r

[maryf]

6. Kick

Thanks HB, sorry I missed this until now...