UK urges Haiti creditors to cancel debts Main creditors Taiwan and Ven

[Bacchus39]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/19/haiti-debts-uk-taiwan-venezuela

UK urges Haiti creditors to cancel debtsMain creditors Taiwan and Venezuela under increasing pressure after earthquake devastates western hemisphere's poorest nation

Taiwan and Venezuela, Haiti's main bilateral creditors, are under intensifying pressure to cancel the impoverished Caribbean country's debts after last week's catastrophic earthquake.

Haiti owes $167m (£102m) to Venezuela and $91m to Taiwan. The Paris Club – an informal group of 19 creditor governments from industrialised countries, including Britain – agreed last July to cancel their claims on Haiti, totalling $214m, pending individual bilateral agreements.

Britain was one of the first members of the Paris Club to cancel all the debts , and it has now urged Venezuela and Taiwan, which are outside the Paris Club, to provide full debt cancellation for Haiti.

"We are calling on all bilateral creditors of Haiti, especially Taiwan and Venezuela, to urgently provide the debt relief expected under HIPC ," Stephen Timms, the financial secretary to the Treasury, said in a letter posted on the Treasury website (pdf).

Taiwan's president, Ma Ying-jeou, said Haiti owed its debt to private banks rather than to the government, but he would ask the foreign ministry to consider how it could help.

Venezuela has yet to respond, but the president, Hugo Chávez, has lost little time in criticising the US.

"It appears they are militarily occupying Haiti, taking advantage of the tragedy," Chávez said during his weekly radio and television show on Sunday. He said Venezuela would give Haiti "however much fuel is needed" to help it recover, and that the first oil tanker was heading out on Monday.

France, which chairs the Paris Club, has also called on Taiwan and Venezuela to offer debt relief. Haiti's debt to France was €58m, of which €4m has been cancelled, and France said it was speeding up the process of cancelling charges on the rest.

Haiti was granted $1.2bn in debt relief from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in June last year, in a move the IMF said would free up about $50m a year for spending over the next 10 to 15 years on reducing poverty. Debt campaigners say it never made sense for Haiti, as the poorest country in the western hemisphere, to pay $1.6m in debt a month, most of which was accumulated under the notorious Duvalier dictatorships.
guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/19/haiti-debts-uk-taiwan-venezuela

[Peace Patriot]

1. Lord, what a lot of disinformation there is in this article!

While the UK is calling for "debt relief," the IMF just made a $100 million "loan" to Haiti, which will no doubt have to be paid off for generations to come of slave labor for multinational corporations. So, what these big powers are losing in "debt relief," they are making up in MORE debt!

Secondly, France owes Haiti slavery reparations, which President Aristide estimated at $21 billion--for the enslavement of the Haitian people and the utter rape of Haiti--including the dastardly enforcement of monetary sanctions after the successful slave revolt and liberation of Haiti from French colonial rule. Haiti owing anything to France--or to any of the "first world" countries that have, time and again, destroyed that country's democracy and sovereignty--is absurd. There is a reason why the going wage in Haiti is $2/day, and why most Haitians were living from meal to meal before the quake--the continual European/British and US interference in that country, including supporting heinous dictatorships, rapacious exploitation and forced removal of elected presidents and other coups for more than a century.

Thirdly, Hugo Chavez was not alone in criticizing the US for its intention to "occupy" Haiti. Brazil, France, Doctors Without Borders, the UN Food Program and other aid organizations all made the same public criticism this week. Doctors Without Borders said that they were having to amputate limbs that could have been saved, and were having to amputate them without anesthetics, and that people were dying, because the Pentagon had DELAYED the delivery of medical supplies, to land 10,000 troops in Haiti that were not yet needed.

This is a paradigm of the ill intent of the whole article. Several countries and several major aid organizations made the same criticism of the US as Chavez did, and they are not mentioned in this article. The article is deliberately, consciously unfair to Chavez. What else are they being unfair about? What else are they not saying? What other black holes are there in this article where information should be, and isn't?

-----------------------

(In 1825, France forced Haiti to pay 150 million francs (equiv. $20 billion today) for their liberty!)
http://www.nathanielturner.com/haitimakescaseforreparations.htm

(discussion of Aristide's demand for reparations, and the Bushwhacks kidnapping and forced removal of him from Haiti in 2004)
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Haiti/Aristide_ReparationsFrance.html

[Bacchus39]

2. the article is about forgiving Haitis debt, surely you think Taiwan and Ven should do so

don't know how that is misinformation. if the debt is there its there PP. lets see what happens OK. by the way, now that the US fixed at least one pier, the ship Ven sent with fuel can finally dock I assume.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Oh, for chrissake! Look at the photo juxtaposition in this article. It is FOUL!

They have a photo of Chavez pointing his fingers and looking severe in the first photo, then a photo inserted into the article near the top showing a wounded Haitian child on a respirator!

The wounded child photo is in an ad about donating to an emergency fund. It has nothing to do with the article. But, by juxtaposition of the photos, they make it appear that Chavez is denying that child aid and a future!

That is foul play if I ever saw it. This Guardian article by Mark Tran is a disgusting hit piece on Chavez!

Let me make this clear: It is not Venezuela that enslaved Haiti. It is not Venezuela that threw Haiti's elected president out of the country in 2004. It is not Venezuela that raped and ruined Haiti for more than a century. It is not Venezuela that just landed 10,000 troops to "occupy" Haiti instead of delivering medical supplies. It is not Venezuela that just indebted Haiti to the tune of $100 million.

The US and other "first world" countries have always been the malefactors in Haiti, not Venezuela!

And certainly not the Chavez government, which supported democracy and the elected president of Haiti, when the "first world" overthrew Haitian democracy and threw President Aristide out of the country.

This Guardian article is shit journalism.

[Bacchus39]

4. ahhh poor Hugo well, he can help the children of Haiti by canceling the debt

you are as paranoid as Chavez is. I am sure an article in venanalysis will rectify the situation