By CHIP website editors, January 13, 2015
Haitian rights activist and Ottawa community radio host Jean Saint-Vil was interviewed for 14 minutes by CBC Ottawa Radio host Alan Neal on January 12, 2015. The interview aired on the afternoon radio program All In A Day.
In the hard-hitting interview, Saint-Vil reviews the record of post-earthquake relief and reconstruction in Haiti. He talks of the history of foreign governments subverting Haiti's sovereignty and weakening successive national governments, and how the vast majority of the aid money raised in the name of earthquake relief (said to be $13 billion) was never delivered to Haitian authorities to be spent. Neither did much of it reach the people in the form of material assistance, still less as reconstruction and development investment for the future. Witness the estimated 85,000 Haitian people still living precariously in tent camps.
An example of post-earthquake negligence provided by Saint-Vil to All In A Day is that of the cholera epidemic recklessly introduced to Haiti in October 2010 by the military occupation regime of the UN Security Council known by its French acronym 'MINUSTAH' (International Mission of the United Nations for the Stabilization of Haiti).
The large issues addressed by Saint-Vil were largely ignored in CBC's much-promoted national news television coverage of the five-year anniversary of the earthquake. The coverage began last Friday, January 9. One of the key issues ignored by CBC television is the mass protests that have rocked Haiti in recent months. A mass, popular movement is demanding the resignation of Haitian president Michel Martelly, the holding of delayed national elections, and the departure of MINUSTAH from the country. MINUSTAH is a key prop for the authoritarian, governing regime of Martelly. And in the upper echelons of MINUSTAH are the the big power governments truly running Haiti--the U.S., European Union and Canada.
"Five years after the earthquake in Haiti, All in a Day was joined by a Haitian radio host in Ottawa, who has criticisms over how aid money was spent in his home country's reconstruction." Listen to the podcast here. Or listen via the CBC radio player by clicking here.
Some other CBC Radio One programs provided informed interviews about Haiti on January 12. One of those was the CBC national radio program As It Happens. It interviewed Carel Pedre, a radio host in Haiti. Listen to that interview here.