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The Asia-Pacific Solidarity Coalition (APSOC) joins the whole world in solidarity with the people of Haiti who were hit last January 12, 2010 by the 7 -magnitude earthquake, the deadliest to strike the disaster-prone country in recent memory.
Reports coming from the nation’s capital, Port-au-Prince revealed the extent and magnitude of the tragedy and the compounded human sufferings borne by the impoverished and vulnerable people of Haiti.The dead and injured including those still buried under the rubbles of collapsed buildings and houses could run into hundreds of thousands. Water and food shortages were acute, basic services including emergency health and other relief efforts of the Haitian government were paralyzed, communications were knocked down and are starting to be restored. And as images of dazed, hungry and helpless survivors wandering into the streets of Port-Au-Prince, looking for their lost kins and friends, are seen by the stunned people of the world --the horrific and desperate situation in Haiti calls for global solidarity and urgent humanitarian help.
APSOC therefore joins the call for international solidarity to help the people of Haiti. APSOC pleads for our common humanity to be one with them in this hour of their greatest need. We urge our partners and networks to extend whatever relief and other forms of assistance to the earthquake victims. We ask that we help reach out to the widest number of global citizens as possible , to rise to this humanitarian crisis and be counted.
Haiti and its valiant and resilient people, share a lot of the cursed fate , with the peoples of the south , particularly in the Asia-Pacific. We continue to brave against: the common history of colonial domination, underdevelopment and widespread poverty, debt-bondage, continued foreign economic and political domination, widespread corruption elite-controlled governance, political repression and human rights violations, impunity, environmental degradation, people disempowerment—and disaster vulnerability. Just as the Asia-Pacific were hit by natural calamities of global proportions in recent years such as the Aceh earthquake and Tsunami, Cyclone Nargisin Burma, and recently, Typhoon Ondoy in the Philippines—Haiti has just barely recovered from series of devastating typhoons that swept through the country in 2008, But it is precisely the dehumanizing conditions and various forms of deprivation and injustice suffered by the vast majority of the people that have rendered them helpless and therefore amplified their vulnerability in the face of disasters and upheavals..
Let us make our spirit of solidarity work —this time, on behalf of those who were easily rendered vulnerable to deadly disasters, because of their abject and disempowering conditions of unfreedom—from want, hunger and fear.
Let us continue to invoke our common humanity, not only in the face of horrific human-made and natural disasters. But also to ultimately help end the sources and conditions of vulnerabilities and disempowerment of millions in Haiti and elsewhere who face daily precarious lives and continue to live on the edge. |
