Haitian activists have started an international campaign to force Port-au-Prince apparel assembly plants to rehire six union members who were dismissed in the last week of September, allegedly for their union activities. As part of the campaign, Yannick Etienne, an organizer with the Haitian leftist group Batay Ouvriye ("Workers' Struggle"), was in Montreal on Nov. 14 meeting with local labor rights activists and with media to put pressure on Gildan Activewear Inc., a Montreal-based apparel firm that has garments stitched at one of the Haitian plants.

Sylvie van den Wildenberg, spokesperson for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), acknowledged in Port-au-Prince on Nov. 11 that the mission had received a petition for relief filed on behalf of hundreds of thousands of cholera victims. Overwhelming scientific evidence indicates that the cholera epidemic that struck Haiti in October 2010 was caused by poor sanitation at a base operated by MINISTAH, a 10,000-member international military and police operation which has occupied the country since June 2004. Almost 500,000 Haitians have contracted the disease over the past year, and some 6,500 have died from it. MINUSTAH and the United Nations (UN) have refused to accept responsibility for the epidemic. (AlterPresse, Haiti, Nov. 11)

Haitian police arrested legislative deputy Arnel Bélizaire at Port-au-Prince's international airport on Oct. 27 as he returned from an official visit to France; the agents then took him to the National Penitentiary in the capital. Chamber of Deputies president Sorel Jacynthe and a delegation of other legislators were kept from entering the airport to welcome Bélizaire, while several hundred demonstrators protested outside and chanted slogans against Haitian president Michel Martelly. The president himself left for the US the same day for unexplained health reasons. This was his second medical trip to the US since he took office in May; he was expected to return on Nov. 6.

Haitian activists marched in Port-au-Prince on Oct. 19 to demand the immediate withdrawal of the thousands of foreign soldiers and police agents in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH); they also called for the United Nations to pay compensation for the country's current cholera epidemic. The organizers chose Oct. 19 for the protest to mark one year since the outbreak started, apparently because of poor sanitary conditions among Nepalese troops at a MINUSTAH base near Mirebalais in the Central Plateau.

Right-wing Puerto Rican governor Luis Fortuño is now trying to control damage from a Sept. 8 report by the US Justice Department condemning unconstitutional conduct by the island's police force. The report cited "continued civil rights violations," "the failure to implement meaningful reforms," discrimination against Dominicans, and failure to report and investigate alleged sex crimes and domestic violence. The US government's criticisms followed repeated charges of police brutality from Puerto Rican student protesters and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Chanting "This has to change," some 200 Haitians marked World Day for Decent Work on Oct. 7 with a march to the National Industrial Parks Company (Sonapi), where most of Port-au-Prince's low-wage assembly plants are located. Some of the marchers had their faces covered to keep from being identified; managers at three Sonapi plants fired a total of six officers of the newly formed Textile and Garment Workers Union (SOTA) in the last week of September. Police agents from the Departmental Unit for the Maintenance of Order (UDMO) were stationed at the industrial park to keep the marchers from accessing the plants.

The Haitian Senate was scheduled to start discussions on President Michel Martelly's latest nominee for prime minister, Garry Conille, on Oct. 3. The Chamber of Deputies voted 89-0 on Sept. 16 in favor of the nomination after Parliament rejected Martelly's two previous choices. The government has been administered by acting prime minister Jean-Max Bellerive, a holdover from the previous administration, ever since Martelly took office in May.

The management of two Port-au-Prince apparel factories owned by wealthy and powerful Haitians—Gerald Apaid and former presidential candidate Charles Henri Baker—fired a total of five officers of a new garment workers union between Sept. 23 and Sept. 25, a little more than a week after the union announced its formation. Johny Deshommes, a spokesperson for the Textile and Garment Workers Union (SOTA), lost his job at Apaid's Genesis S.A. factory on Sept. 23 when he asked to be allowed to go home because of a fever. Three other members of SOTA's executive committee, Brevil Claude, Wilner Eliacint and Cénatus Vilaire, were fired on Sept. 25 when they tried to meet with the human resources director to discuss Deshommes' firing; Genesis management brought in two police agents to intimidate and threaten the unionists before they were allowed to leave. SOTA's secretary, Mitial Rubin, was fired from Baker's One World Apparel after he had leafleted workers outside the factory.