Your recent editorial (1-7 April) rightly drew attention to incidents of rape of female survivors of the Haiti earthquake. These incidents are occurring despite the recent arrival of 20,000 US Marines “to ensure stability and security”.
However, while protesting the most recent incidents of sexual assault, we should also remember that such incidents are not only carried out at a time of upheaval, but were a consistent thread over decades of misrule of the Haitian people by foreign-backed governments which not only tolerated such acts, but seemed to be use them as a weapon to intimidate and demoralise any resistance from the Haitian people.
We would wonder at the wisdom of your suggestion that Concern would be the appropriate organisation to set up some kind of protective net or to head up some kind of opposition to the rape of Haitian women. Concern was present in Haiti before the earthquake, along with about a thousand other NGOs, but the attacks continued throughout.
While we must protest at this time that so many Haitians still do not have enough food, shelter, safe drinking water and other services, we should also stand in solidarity with the Haitian people to construct out of the rubble of their cities, towns and villages a viable and just society which will inevitably meet the resistance of Haiti’s rulers and their foreign backers.
Cormac Walsh
Haiti Solidarity Ireland
