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Last summer, a year and a half after Haiti's devastating January 2010 earthquake, Bill Quigley explained challenges so far unmet.
Haitians lucky enough to have housing live in heavily damaged structures "designated for demolition." Hundreds of thousands make do with "flimsy tents or tarps." Security is poor, water and electricity scarce, and cholera and other diseases rage.
Thousands living in tents face evictions with nowhere to go, some forced out at "gunpoint." Last summer, 320,000 cholera cases were reported. Now it's much higher. Before Haiti's quake, no one died of cholera. Its raging epidemic now claimed thousands. More on that below.
Visiting Haiti last summer, an unnamed UN internal displacement expert said:
"Haiti is living through a profound humanitarian crisis that affects the human rights of those displaced by the disaster."
He stopped short of saying Washington doesn't give a damn, and Western indifference turns a blind eye to extreme suffering. Plundering Haiti's resources and exploiting its cheap labor define their agenda, nothing else.
In early October , Quigley returned to Haiti and discussed what he saw, saying:
"Broken and collapsed buildings remain in every neighborhood. Men pull oxcarts by hand through the streets. Women carry 5 gallon plastic jugs of water on their heads, dipped from manhole covers in the street."
Hundreds of thousands are still homeless, surviving best they can in tents and tarp-covered shelters. Unemployment is rampant. So is extreme poverty and human depravation.
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