THE former long-serving Prime Minister of Jamaica, Percival J. Patterson, has  blasted the decision by the United Nations to invoke “legal immunity” for rejecting compensation claims by some five thousand Haitian victims of cholera.

”It is simply appalling, a most reprehensible behaviour for the UN to claim such immunity”, Patterson declared in a telephone interview yesterday.
“The moreso”, he said, “when scientific evidence substantiates that the cholera epidemic was originally introduced in Haiti at the time by peace-keeping soldiers (from Nepal) under UN command…”
Patterson, who has often served as  “special adviser” to CARICOM on matters involving developments and events in Haiti,  was responding to concerns over prevailing silence by the 15-member Community over “this most upsetting, immoral decision” to have emanated from the UN’s legal department.
He said he was aware of the current two-day visit to Haiti of former United States President Bill Clinton who is the UN’s Special Representative to that  CARICOM state.
However, it was not for him to suggest what position either Clinton or CARICOM should adopt in relation to the UN’s “disgraceful claim of immunity” as an excuse to avoid using its resources and influence to appropriately respond to the humanitarian compensation claims by thousands of Haitian cholera victims and their families.
The claims were officially filed some fifteen months ago by a reputable Boston-based human rights organization,  ‘Institute for Democracy’ . But it was not until after the conclusion last month of CARICOM’s Inter-Sessional Meeting of Heads of Government, that UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, telephoned Haiti’s President Michel Martelly, to inform him of the rejection of the compensation claims, based on “legal immunity”.
President Martelly is the current Chairman of CARICOM and presided over  the Community’s first-ever summit meeting in Haiti that took place on February 18-19 and bout which UN officials dealing with the Caribbean would have been aware.
But it was on February 21, two days following the CARICOM summit, that there came the unexpected bad news of “no compensation” in a telephone call from the UN Secretary General to President Martelly.
While  either President Martelly or the CARICOM Secretariat  is yet to make public a response to the UN’s resort to “legal immunity”, Patterson, who has represented the  Community at various regional and international fora on issues affecting Haiti, is questioning whether “this very disgusting stance” could stand up to the impartial judgement of an international court?
Last Tuesday,  in an editorial titled “UN’s tragic stand  against Haitian cholera victims”, the Barbados ‘Daily Nation’ deplored the world body’s non-compensation stand.
It noted that the cholera epidemic had exploded in Haiti while the country was still engaged in the early phase of “monumental challenges” posed by the January 2010 earthquake devastation.
According to the petition claims for compensation submitted to the UN by the Institute for Justice and Democracy, approximately 8,000 Haitians have already been killed by the cholera epidemic and almost another 6,000 infected  with an average of 200 new cases being reported daily.