The supreme court of Cuba upheld a 15-year sentence for Alan Gross, a US citizen, accused of using his contract work to establish Internet access for Havana’s Jewish community as a cover to foment social-network protests.
Activity in the US Congress reflects growing environmentalist opposition to a $450 million pipeline which would carry imported natural gas from the southwest coast to a place near San Juan on the north coast.
Port-au-Prince authorities are evicting 400-450 families from the parking lot of the Sylvio Cator soccer stadium, where they have been living after being displaced by a January 2010 earthquake.
A 24-hour national general strike against the economic policies of Dominican president Leonel Fernández was “95 to 100%” effective, according to the organizers. But there was significant violence, with at least three people reported killed.
Villagers in northeastern Haiti say they were never consulted or even warned about plans to build a huge new industrial park on land where many of them have been farming for some 20 years.
Several Haitian social organizations called on the UN “peacekeeprs” to pay reparations to the victims of a cholera epidemic that appeared to originate at a UN base last October.
The distribution of international aid after the devastating January 2010 earthquake in southern Haiti has been slow and in some ways counterproductive, according to a UN report.
Thousands of Haitian peasants marched to demand food sovereignty, the restoration of the environment and the development of agriculture “adapted to the reality of our country.”
Haitians left homeless by the January 2010 earthquake demonstrated in Port-au-Prince to demand action on the housing situation and an end to forced evictions from the displaced persons camps.
US cables released by WikiLeaks show that “[t]he US embassy in Haiti worked closely with factory owners…to aggressively block a paltry minimum wage increase for Haitian assembly zone workers” in 2009.
WikiLeaks is releasing 1,918 previously unpublished diplomatic cables concerning Haiti to the weekly newspaper Haïti Liberté—the first revealing the details of US pressure to keep Haiti out of the Venezuela-led PetroCaribe program.
US Homeland Security is extending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians for another 18 months, but it continues to deport “criminal” Haitians, exposing them to life-threatening dangers.
