14. THE TRAGEDY OF GRENADA SINCE OCTOBER 25, 1983

While the media permit Ronald Reagan to cite Grenada as an American success story, the people of Grenada aren't buying it. The following description of what has happened in Grenada since the 1983 U.S. invasion was published last year by the Committee for Human Rights in Grenada.

1. Removal of price controls on food, cement, housing, and other essentials of life.

2. Summary firings of Grenadian workers without notice, compensation, or legal redress.

3. Unemployment now well over 50%.

4. Internationalist workers who previously provided free health services deported.

5. Uncontrolled escalation of land, rent, and all prices.

6. Free medical, dental, optical care, and medicines, formerly accessible to all Grenadians, now eliminated.

7. Grenadian graduates of Cuban and other socialist-nation universities not allowed to practice in Grenada.

8. Open prostitution since arrival of U.S. Troops.

9. Use of cocaine, heroin, and crack since invasion.

10. National Women's Organization, National Youth Organization, and the Grenada Human Rights Organization eliminated.

11. Former institutions now diminished to point of uselessness include independent, progressive union movement; free judiciary; and free and independent media.

12. Severe devaluation of Grenadian dollar.

13. Grenada, whose economy was praised by the World Bank and the IMF in Spring, 1983, had a $168 million debt as of March 28, 1986.

Finally, the Committee reported in April, 1987, that the O.E.C.S. (Organization of Eastern Caribbean States) occupying troops, trained by the U.S. have returned in force to Grenada and that they are directed by U.S. military officers, usually in civilian dress. Ominously, the Committee adds "Their abuses are well known."

The extent and inflammatory nature of the charges by the Committee for Human Rights in Grenada surely deserve investigation by the U.S. media.

SOURCE:

BULLETIN OF THE COMMITTEE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN GRENADA, No. 1, April/May 1987, by the Committee for Human Rights in Grenada, PO Box 20714, Cathedral Finance Station, New York, NY 10025, pp 1-8.