Development Seed Blog

Blogger Kathryn Cramer has uncovered an incredible story about a U.S.-expat owned company allegedly spying, undermining democracy, and detaining whistleblowers in Haiti. She says the company is providing covert surveillance at Haiti’s presidential debates, in the form of operatives disguised as reporters. And she says the U.N. is aware of this and shows a U.N. PowerPoint referencing the company and their actions on her blog.

One of Cramer’s sources, who has since been detained and whose “status is unclear” said:

The US spies called CAG are undermining the election process to prevent the popular election of Rene Preval and the return of President Aristide.

At a time when much of the reporting coming out of Haiti is heavily relying on UN and U.S. government sources for security, access, and other reasons, Cramer’s blog posts are invaluable to the people of Haiti and the international community who want to know the full story of what is going on in the country and how much other countries are influencing its transition to democracy. I hope Cramer and other bloggers continue to report on what they find in Haiti so that the world gets a clearer picture of the situation. The more voices speaking about Haiti can only help the country as approaches its elections. Now I'm interested to see if anyone in the blogosphere can verify the story.

Check out her blog for more on Haiti and her Flickr photos here and here.