In this video, CHAN comrade Jean St. Vil raises the issue of restitution.
Category: In the News
In the News: Haiti:The politics of rebuilding
This is a good program (from Al Jazeera) about how the role of profitability and foreign investment in the aid response to Haiti. There’s some great footage of Gildan boxes in amongst the rubble of a former garment factory.
In the News: Canadian aid groups told to keep quiet on policy issues
by Campbell Clark, The Globe and Mail
Aid groups say the federal government is casting a chill over advocacy work that takes positions on policy or political issues – and one claims a senior Conservative aide warned them against such activities.
An official with a mainstream non-governmental aid group said that Keith Fountain, policy director for International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda, gave a verbal warning that the organization’s policy positions were under scrutiny: “Be careful about your advocacy.”
The official did not want to be identified out of concern that it might jeopardize funding for the group’s aid projects from the Canadian International Development Agency, or CIDA.
That’s a concern voiced by some other NGO leaders, who said they have received hints the government dislikes their policy advocacy or criticisms of the government policies, but did not want to be identified.
Most aid organizations, from church-based organizations such as Anglican and Mennonite aid agencies to big agencies such as World Vision, Oxfam and CARE, take public positions on some policy issues, and some organize letter-writing campaigns or publish pamphlets.
The aid groups use CIDA money to finance 75 per cent of specific programs, but don’t use it for advocacy.
Some have had veiled warnings about positions that clash with Ottawa’s on issues such as climate change, free trade with Colombia, or the Middle East, said Gerry Barr, president of the Canadian Council for International Co-operation, an umbrella group.
“NGOs are being positively invited to remain silent on key questions of public policy,” he said.
Cheryl Curtis, executive director of the Anglican Church’s Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund, said government officials have never warned her organization about public-policy positions, but other aid organizations have reported such messages.
“We’ve certainly heard that amongst colleagues,” she said, adding: “There clearly is a conversation that’s brewing at the government level.”
In the News: No, Mister! You Cannot Share My Pain!
by John Maxwell, originally posted at The Jamaica Observer, January 17th, 2010
If you shared my pain you would not continue to make me suffer, to torture me, to deny me my dignity and my rights, especially my rights to self-determination and self-expression.
Six years ago you sent your Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to perform an action illegal under the laws of your country, my country and of the international community of nations.
It was an act so outrageous, so bestially vile and wicked that your journalists and news agencies, your diplomats and politicians to this day cannot bring themselves to truthfully describe or own up to the crime that was committed when US Ambassador James Foley, a career diplomat, arrived at the house of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide with a bunch of CIA thugs and US Marines to kidnap the president of Haiti and his wife.
The Aristides were stowed aboard a CIA plane normally used for ‘renditions’ of suspected terrorists to the worldwide US gulag of dungeons and torture chambers.
Continue reading In the News: No, Mister! You Cannot Share My Pain!
In the News: Marking the first Anniversary of the disappearance of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine
by Alissa Trotz. Originally published by Stabroek News
Tomorrow, August 12th marks the first anniversary of the disappearance of human rights activist Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, Haitian political activist kidnapped for his active and tireless commitment to a democratic and sovereign Haiti. Special vigils will be held across the world, including Haiti, London, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The statement put out by the Global Women’s Strike calls for us to remember Lovinsky’s work for justice and his abduction, and to remind the US, UN and Haitian authorities that his family, friends and community, and people around the world will continue tirelessly to demand his safe return. It is true that in the English-speaking Caribbean we have our share of woes – political stagnation, rapidly rising crime levels and kidnappings. This might lead us to ignore what is going on elsewhere. But it is unfortunate (more than unfortunate, disgraceful really) that we know and seem to care so little about the ongoing struggles of the Haitian people, when it is Haiti that has given the entire Caribbean and the world one of the earliest lessons in liberation from oppression, with the example set by Toussaint L’Ouverture and the Haitian revolution. The crisis in that country today cannot be divorced from the shameful price it was forced to pay for its independence and defeat of Napoleon’s army (a price that included compensating France for the ending of slavery and crippling sanctions imposed by the United States). As Trinidadian Calypsonian David Rudder sings:
Toussaint was a mighty man and to make matters worse he was black
Black and back in the days when black man knew his place was to be in the back
But Toussaint he upset Napoleon, who thought it wasn’t very nice
And so today my brothers and sisters, they still pay the price