By Steve Thomas Observer Nevis Editor
(Charlestown, Nevis) ” With no fanfare or public announcement, security forces and the Royal St. Kitts and Nevis Police shipped 45 Haitian nationals back to their homeland on Dec. 20. Officials are refusing to disclose how much was spent on humanitarian aid to take care of the 47 refugees that came ashore at Long Point in early October. Two refugees, one from Cuba and one from Peru, are still on Nevis. Two sources have said these men are now being held in the Charlestown police station, but no officials will go on the record to confirm this. On Saturday afternoon, police and security officials went to the Community Centre on Hanley’s Road and loaded up the refugees, who were then flown back to Haiti. For Haiti, 2008 has been an especially tough year, with natural and man-made disasters whipsawing the country. According to the Canadian Red Cross, “Hurricanes Gustav, Hanna, and Ike swept through the Caribbean in quick succession causing wide-spread destruction. According to the Haitian National Civil Defence, the storms have killed over 400 people, destroyed 10,000 homes, and damaged another 44,000. In total, it is estimated that 131,000 families have been affected. In addition, many crops have been destroyed, further challenging the already vulnerable food security situation in Haiti.” In November, man-made disasters came in the form of collapsing schools. On Nov. 12, the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti rushed an emergency response team to the site of a collapsed school in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, where eight people were injured and sent to the “hospital. The U.N. troops, known as MINUSTAH, immediately deployed a specialist crowd control unit to enable rescue workers to dig through and clear the rubble, as several hundred anxious parents flocked to the Grace Divine School. Nine days earlier, the religious school in the Canape Vert section of the capital collapsed. It was attended by some 135 children and looked similar in construction to the school that collapsed in the P’tionville suburb of Port-au-Prince, killing 89 people and hospitalizing 150. In April, parts of the nation were rocked by food riots that erupted it the wake of skyrocketing prices.
