PRESIDENT LUIZ Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil has laid the blame for the disaster in Haiti at the door of the world’s rich countries which he accused of “a lack of respect for the minimum sacred right of citizenship which every human being has a right to”.
In a forthright speech, he said he had used diplomatic summits during the last five years to plead with rich donor nations to fulfil pledges of aid to the poorest country in the Americas, but to no avail. “There was billions promised but it did not arrive . . . All of us should be indignant with the developed world which is responsible for what happened in Haiti,” he told left-wing activists attending the World Social Forum in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre on Tuesday.
Over 150,000 people are now confirmed dead in this month’s earthquake, when poorly constructed housing collapsed across much of the capital Port-au-Prince in the 7 magnitude tremor.
Since 2004, the Brazilian army has led the military component of the UN Stabilisation Force in Haiti. Eighteen Brazilian soldiers were killed in the earthquake as well as diplomat Luíz Carlos da Costa, who was the UN mission’s number two in the country.
Mr da Silva said that since Haiti became the first former slave colony to achieve independence, it had been occupied by the US, France and Britain. “The concrete fact is that now this earthquake is perhaps shaming the human beings in the governments who run the planet to do now what should have been done 30, 40 years ago or could have been done 10 years ago when we started to discuss the democratisation of Haiti.”
On Monday, Brazil’s congress voted to send an additional 1,300 soldiers to the stricken Caribbean country to join the 1,300 already there. It is part of Brazil’s biggest ever foreign aid package which will total €150 million. Mr Lula will visit Haiti next month.
The former union leader was speaking ahead of his trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos later this week where he will receive a “Global Statesman” award from organisers. He said he will “throw in the faces of the richest countries” the blame for the financial crisis, saying they failed to predict a meltdown that the World Social Forum had been warning about since 2001.
The social forum is a left-wing alternative to the gathering of political and business leaders in the Swiss ski resort.
Reuters adds: International charities pouring a jumble of aid into Haiti must work better together to reach and help survivors of the catastrophic earthquake, President Rene Preval said yesterday. Mr Preval also said Haiti would indefinitely postpone February 28th parliamentary elections and that he would not seek to stay in office after his term expires in February 2011. That means his government will have just over one year to rebuild the earthquake-ravaged nation before handing off the task to new leadership. Aid groups and troops have struggled to distribute aid to an estimated three million Haitians injured or left homeless in the quake.