Haitian Anguish - and Impending Danger

Every society has them, the ravaging scum who emerge from the dusk of cities' dank alleyways to advantage themselves whenever law and order have been dimmed by some catastrophic occurrence. Haiti, a poverty-stricken country, the most indigently-sunk of the Western Hemisphere, has more than its share of thugs. Seems a tradition in that misbegotten place where even its government has been comprised of self-availing thugs.

Some countries just seem to have no luck, none whatever. Haiti's colonial past was a miserable one, of African-voyaged slaves settled on Hispaniola to serve their French masters. Much as Haitians wanted their independence, hoping for an upturn in their fortunes and the human need to live as free people, their aspirations continued to be foiled by one corrupt government after another, conspiring to deliver to exterior interests its valuable natural resources.

Now this piteously sad country delivered yet another devastating blow by yet another debilitating natural phenomenon is attempting to gather its human resources to find its way out of the latest torment. Its almost-absent government states through its Interior Minister that 50,000 bodies have been collected and 40,000 buried in a mass grave. And it is expected that a total between 100,00o to 200,000 will eventually be numbered among the dead.

If this is indeed so, it will represent one of the deadliest earthquakes ever recorded globally in the wake of 7.0 magnitude quake that demolished the capital city, Port-au-Prince. In the near-total absence of government action doing what it normally should to ameliorate the dread conditions the people find themselves in, along with the absence of police, gangs of robbers wielding machetes have emerged to prey on others.

They seek out destroyed homes and shops to gather anything at all, clothing, toys lost in the rubble. They enter makeshift camps arrayed along sidewalks and streets hosting the survivors and threaten people, extorting whatever paltry sums of money they may have, or any commodities they can extract from already-traumatized Haitians. Police are elsewhere engaged, perhaps it has been said, digging out their own loved ones.

Because the vast mass of the affected population, days after the earthquake, have not been given humanitarian aid; medical treatment, food, potable water, shelter, the mood of the survivors has the potential to turn desperate and ugly, resulting in angry demonstrations of futile rage. Aid has been slow in presenting itself; despite the efforts of the international community, life-saving equipment and emergency supplies have not been distributed.

"Men suddenly appeared with machetes to steal money", a young woman working in a beauty parlour not far from the ruined city centre, explained. Radio Metropole has tried to energize people to present a united front in their own defence against the marauders: "Organize neighbourhood committees to avoid chaos! To prevent people looting shops and houses."

Concern is growing that desperation is turning to violence. And then a duel pestilence will present its opportunistic Janus face; on one side heartless looters, preying on the helpless, on the other an epidemic of disease, as peoples' injuries are not treated, and unburied cadavers rot, spreading another kind of corruption.