Typical. The benighted natives of Haiti, prone, we have had it explained, to outbreaks of random savagery, are with their foolish & random acts of violence only hurting themselves. But then, you know, they are irresponsible voodoo-practicing child-neglecters with a ‘progress-resistant culture’. Poor, poor UN, trying so hard to save them. & anti-UN riots, because of ‘false rumours’ blaming them among other things for the cholera outbreak, are the thanks they get.
A thousand stentorian reports make clear that the Haitians believe such nonsense because they are simple folk: they’re ‘easily manipulated’; they are being directed, trying to blame someone. Like children. & these riots are ‘politically motivated’, anyway, ‘traditional spoilers’ trying to sabotage the upcoming elections.
Tchah. If only Haitians could be made to understand their ‘misconception’ - the UN has denied all cholera-spreading responsibility, so that’s that. & anyway, it says uncovering the source of the cholera isn’t a priority. Haitians need to see ‘that the peacekeeping missions from around the world … are there to help them rebuild their nation as quickly as possible’.
Yeah, Haitians. Stupid & ungrateful.
Well now.
Anarchists, troublemakers & world-renowned public health experts might suggest that finding the source of the cholera is in fact a good idea, & the abjuring of that method politics, not hippocratic rigour.
Showboaters or internationally respected investigative media outlets could document the source of those ‘rumours’, the half-arsed sanitation on a UN base where toilets leak into the river where the outbreak started. It might seem in poor taste for ‘US experts’ to patiently advise Haitians to ‘drink, use clean water’ (thanks for that) when they are literally being fed the UN’s shit.
In any case. Whether it was or was not this particular UN troop who imported the killer disease, their shooting dead Haitians doesn’t help. & besides, the spread of cholera is hardly unrelated to years of imperially maintained mass poverty.
Killjoys & troublemakers might aver that blaming the UN for death squads & anti-democratic invasions was not without absolute justification. That this ‘politically motivated’ complaining about elections that disallow legitimately elected popular leaders in exile to stand is in fact fighting for democracy.
A prediction: within 6 weeks, articles will start to appear stating that the rumours have gotten even more out of hand, & that people in Port-au-Prince are now claiming that the cholera is a bioweapon designed to deliberately wipe out the Haitian poor. This notion, mooted as it might be by a few people, will be offered up with sad headshakes as evidence for Anglo-American media consumers of the credulity of the Haitian masses, as articles of the same genre do about African Americans. Because after all, no US government ever deliberately experimented on the poor or secretly used black people as petri dishes for syphilis or experimented with biological race war &c &c &c.
If that sort of thing had happened, then one might think that the Haitian riots were a fightback; justified rage; a shouted answer ‘No’ to the instruction, that has been repeated over many years, by the imperial rich to the Haitian poor: ‘Continue dying’.
Tout moun se moun.
