Here we post Joe Higgins’ article from Wednesday January 27th’s edition of the Daily Mail, on the crisis in Haiti. We apologise for the delay in posting the article online.

Last week in the European Parliament, during a debate on earthquake in Haiti, I heard what must have been the meanest, most disgusting and begrudging speech uttered in any parliament in many a long day. The speaker was Nick Griffin representing the extreme right wing British National Party(BNP).

Mr Griffin attacked the idea of sending aid to the stricken people of Haiti to try and relieve some of their desperate suffering. Posturing as a champion of European pensioners who die prematurely from hypothermia due to inadequate heat in their homes, he stated, ‘Hundreds of thousands of our own people are dying because of government neglect and EU cold taxes, yet you insist on throwing other people’s money at a disaster in somebody else’s backyard.’ That is not compassion, that is stinking hypocrisy.

Mr Griffin then went on to quote the bible to justify no emergency assistance for disaster struck communities outside of Europe. ‘I know this place is uneasy with our Christian heritage but as always our Bible reveals an eternal truth that most here would rather ignore – first book of Timothy, 5:8. “but if any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.”‘

It would seem that Nick Griffin’s knowledge of the bible is as selective as his compassion. Those who genuinely uphold Christian beliefs point to the parable of the Good Samaritan to illustrate that one’s neighbour is not merely ‘our own’ but the stranger who falls on hard times.

No doubt it is the poisonous racism of the BNP that really drives Mr Griffin’s begrudgery toward the Haitians. Referring to ‘our own’ is a thinly disguised code for white Europeans whom extreme right wing parties claim to champion. Fortunately, the common decency and generosity of ordinary people around the world utterly repudiates the callous cynicism of Nick Griffin. They rushed in their thousands to give generous donations to aid relief work.

Unfortunately this instinctive generosity toward the Haitian people has not been matched by empires and powerful countries in the past nor by the major economic and financial cartels of today. The truth is that the massive numbers who died were killed as a result of the poverty in which Haiti has been kept by its previous imperial rulers and the corrupt dictatorships which were backed by those powers. They couldn’t afford earthquake proof homes.

Although the earthquake was very strong, measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale, the fact is that a similar sized quake in California would kill dozens not tens of thousands because buildings are constructed to withstand it.
The original inhabitants of what is now Haiti, the Taino people, had the misfortune to be where Christopher Columbus and his sailors landed in 1492. It wasn’t long before pillage, disease and forced labour in horrifying conditions at the hands of conquering Europeans wiped them out. Their replacements, African slaves, suffered horribly also but survived to overthrow slavery and establish an independent state at the beginning of the 1800s.

In 1825 the French government exacted a terrible price on Haiti for daring to end slavery. By force of arms they imposed a burden of tens of millions of Francs on the Haitian people to compensate French colonists who lost the land they had stolen and the slaves they had cruelly imported from Africa and bought and sold.
When the French had extracted their millions it was the turn of the Americans who occupied Haiti in 1915. When the United States left it backed the rotten dictatorship of the Duvaliers who plundered the resources of their own people. Such is the traumatic history of Haiti which has left a legacy of mass poverty, hunger, infant mortality and appalling slums. The question now is on what basis can this flattened country be rebuilt.

The reality is that the Haitian people will again be seen merely as pawns to be exploited economically if the regeneration is left to multinational corporations and speculating financial institutions. After all in the 1980s and ’90s many poor countries like Haiti were bullied into changing their economic policy toward liberalisation and privatisation as a condition for getting American and Europeans assistance.

Some of the reporting on the aftermath of the earthquake highlighted alleged violence and looting. This was seriously exaggerated. By the way what is looting? Should starving and dehydrated people desperately needing food and water die on the roadsides besides some stores or shops where some food or drink may have been stored?

Of course the world should now help to reconstruct Haiti. But the Haitian people must be democratically in charge of the process. It must be for their benefit and under their control, not another means of enriching those who have preyed on these heroic people for too long.

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