CPTnet
January 14, 1997
Haiti: Haitian Pastor Denounces Factory Exploitation
by Joshua Yoder

Three Christian Peacemaker Team reservists returned to the U.S. on December
21 after ten days of investigating conditions in Haitian sweatshops.

The three team members spoke with workers and managers in the offshore
assembly sector, as well as members of an indigenous worker solidarity
movement, Haitian civil servants, U.S. embassy personnel, members of civil
society and Christian leaders.

The goal of the trip was to better understand the assembly sector, its place
in Haiti's economy and development, to learn more about the workers' struggle
for better wages and working conditions, and to investigate how CPT can
support that struggle.

"The factories must pay a salary of justice, not a salary of blood and of
sacrifice," Pastor Herode Guillomettre of the Christian Center for integrated
Development (CCID)told a three-person team in December.

"I know of one Haitian who after 10 years of work had a cook pot to show for
it," continued Guillomettre. "The poor peasants are forced to accept this
miserable salary; they are even ready to prostitute themselves in order to
get this miserable salary, because hunger has no morals. When they are
hungry, the workers cannot refuse the salary offered by the owners."

Pastor Guillomettre said, "In Creole there is a proverb which says 'Sak vide
pa kanpe.' It means 'An empty sack cannot stand up.' The workers want to
live. They are staggering after life, but life flees before them. Hope
gives life. When they are working, the workers have hope even if the work
doesn't bring them anything."

North American people can play a crucial role in supporting the Haitian
people, Guillomettre added. "We need to eat, drink and work -- but solidarity
is even more important." CPT teams and delegations are an important way to
help North Americans identify with the suffering in Haiti.

"You have to know the Calvary of Haiti to help it pass from Golgotha to the
Ascension," he concluded.

Members of the three person investigative team were Nancy Frey (Elkhart, IN),
Joshua Yoder (Chicago, IL), and Pierre Gingerich (Ithaca, NY)