2010 January 20 - 26 [
WORLD]
Farmers movement gives relief money to Haitian Embassy
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January 22, 2010
Representatives of the National Federation of Farmers Movement (Nouminren) on January 21 visited Acting-Ambassador of the Republic of Haiti Jean-Claude Bordes at the Haitian Embassy in Tokyo and made donations for Haitian earthquake victims to reconstruct their lives.
The acting-ambassador thanked them for offering great sympathy for the disaster victims and called for emergency help to provide food and medicines to the survivors. He also said, “We need to learn from Japan about quake-resistance engineering and hope to exchange experiences with Japanese farmers.”
Nouminren and the acting-ambassador have communicated with each other since the summer of two years ago when a food shortage was causing riots in Haiti due to the neo-liberal agricultural policy.
Watching Haitian children eating mud cookies on TV, some Nouminren farmers thought of Japan’s responsibility as the largest food-importing nation in rising global food prices and contacted the Haitian Embassy to ask the acting-ambassador to attend a symposium to be held to find ways to secure food sovereignty for all nations.
He gave a lecture to a local Nouminren workshop last fall and took part in a local mochi-tsuki (rice cake making) festival late last year.
- Akahata, January 22, 2010
