What we shunned internationally is now visited upon us nationally

Aug 20, 2019 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,

The current debate over the unexpected and unexplained arrival of thousands of Haitians all of a sudden in our country was bound to attract national attention.
It is not so much the arrival of the Haitians but the timing of their arrival and the mystery surrounding their departure that has created the stir.
Thus far, no plausible official explanation has been forthcoming neither from the Commissioner of Police, Head of the Immigration Department nor the Ministry of Citizenship about the Haitian arrivals/departures.
The special arrangements in place for the Haitians on arrival at CJIA and the absence of any convincing information about their departure continues to fuel suspicion.
The crescendo of queries from a wide cross section of society notwithstanding, the government refuses to clarify whether the Haitians like everyone else, are stamped in by an Immigration Officer on arrival at CJIA and whether they are stamped out once again, by an Immigration Officer, when departing the jurisdiction.
Where there’s smoke there is fire. And government’s refusal to come clean on this matter is precisely why suspicions will persist in respect to the Haitian presence in Guyana.
It is not for members of the public to do the work of the police and to inform the police what they have uncovered. Experience has shown that when that happens the informant is usually abused and asked by the police; “Who asked you to do police ‘wuk’?”
Caught in the web of ethnic solidarity and perhaps, because of some undisclosed agreement with the authorities at Port-au-Prince, the response by spokesmen of the caretaker government, is to talk from the two ends of their mouths.
If there’s anyone to blame for this state of affairs, it is the APNU+AFC Coalition Administration. And it is because of their refusal to answer certain questions raised.
I refuse to participate in the confines of a narrow, romantic, and at times racially tinted debate in which regrettably, much of the current conversation on this matter has been framed.
We need to situate the Haitian arrivals/departures in context and the big picture.
It is a global and wider problem.
Climate change in Haiti has had a profoundly negative impact on land use resulting in degradation, reduction in food production and insecurity.
Consumables in Haiti have become more expensive and cost of living has surged to unreachable heights. Unemployment is the order of the day.
The thought of social revolution to usher in changes in ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange at this juncture of Haiti’s historical development is out of the question.
We Guyanese are all proud of the historical and heroic role played by Toussaint l’Overture, Dessalines Christophe and the ‘Black Jacobins’ in the struggle for Haiti’s independence and their determination to free their country from French domination.
Yet there is no room for romanticism and to be sentimental today about that chapter in Haiti’s history.
We live in a world characterized by naked self-interests and disorder. There are brutal and harsh realities out there. And Haitians know that.
We Guyanese have witnessed on TV and social media, images of millions from Africa and the Middle East pouring into Europe.
We were numb to these images. The happenings were far away from us so we couldn’t care less.
At that time, we were not affected, neither a host or transit country for persons fleeing their country of birth.
As the mass of human souls continued to move worldwide, xenophobia hate crimes and naked racism raised their ugly heads in those countries where migrants and refugees were forced to batten down and to hanker out on the periphery of society.
Currently, there are approximately 70 million refugees around the world; 37,000 are forced to flee their countries every day.
Many are either in detention and/or transit centres in host countries.
Governments in Australia, Bangladesh, Hungary, Italy, Myanmar, and the United States took steps nationally and internationally to distinguish and insulate themselves from this human tragedy.
Others who opened their borders to the moving mass of people suffered electoral defeat at the hands of far-right nationalist parties demanding the expulsion of the migrants and refugees.
Those countries, who are not state party to the UN 1951 Refugee Convention nor the 1967 Protocol to the Convention, but are prepared to facilitate safe passage of migrants or refugees through their national territories to a third country, do so as party to the United Nations Global Contract on Refugees and Global Contract on Migration.
It is within this global context that we must situate the Haitian arrivals to departures from Guyana.
What we shunned internationally is now visited upon us nationally.
Why are Haitians moving out of their country? Here is just one explanation. Haiti ranks 168 out of 187 on the UN Human Development Index. According to the World Bank, 80% of Haiti’s population live in poverty. Fifty-nine percent of the population numbering approximately 104 million live on US$2 per day, while 24.7% live in extreme poverty on less than US$1.25 per day.
About 75% of Haiti’s poverty stricken live in rural areas whilst 49.7% live in the urban areas.
Out of every 1,000 59 Haitians die before reaching their first birthday.
The infant mortality rate is 55 per 1,000 live births. Two thirds of Haiti’s labour force has no jobs.
These are facts about the depressing conditions obtaining in Haiti, a sister CARICOM country, which we Guyanese are not proud about.
We Guyanese know what it is like; we were there once. Our greatest fear is going back there under the APNU+AFC.
The searching questions that Guyanese would like to have answered about the Haitian arrivals and departures at this time, is bound up with their preoccupations about free and fair elections.
And this is quite understandable in the context of an elections season. It has nothing to do with the Rights of Haitians within the meaning of the CARICOM Treaty. Nor does it have anything to do with racial prejudice as is being suggested by the usual suspects.
While in government, the PPP/C administration extended tangible support to Haiti in September of 1994 when a detachment of the GDF, was dispatched as part of a CARICOM military contingent to Haiti, to assist in the restoration of democracy and to help rebuild the various facets of free and democratic institutions in Haiti.
In today’s context, the interconnection between concerns over the Haitian arrivals and departures, and free and fair elections is a genuine concern of the Guyanese electorate.
To claim that the police have investigated the matter and found that the concerns raised are groundless is not good enough.
Given the historical antecedents of elections in our country, full disclosure of the facts by government in respect to the Haitian arrivals and departures is a sine qua non if the deep concerns of the electorate Guyanese are to be dispelled.

Yours faithfully
Clement J. Rohee

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