The dewy eyes and beguiling smile of Walt Disney's newest animated star, Pocahontas, may have charmed children the world over this Christmas. But in Haiti, Pocahontas symbolizes a living hell for many of the young women toiling in the country's assembly zones, according to a new report released last month.

Workers stitching clothing emblazoned with feel-good Disney characters are not even paid enough to feed themselves, let alone their families, charges the New York-based National Labor Committee Education Fund in Support of Worker and Human Rights in Central America (NLC). Haitian contractors producing Mickey Mouse and Pocahontas pajamas for U.S. companies under license with the Walt Disney Corporation are in some cases paying workers as little as 15 gourdes (US$1) per day -- 12cents an hour -- in clear violation of Haitian law, said the NLC.   Along with starvation wages, Haitian workers making clothes for U.S. corporate giants face sexual harassment and exceedingly long hours of work. Haiti does need economic development and Haitian workers do need jobs, but not at the price of violating workers' fundamental rights. Paying 11 cents an hour to sew dresses for Kmart  is not development. It is crime, charged the NLC.

Over the past two decades, U.S. State Department officials have consistently prescribed development of the transformation industry as the antidote to Haitian poverty. In the early 1980s, about 250factories employed over 60,000 Haitian workers in Port- au-Prince. The minimum wage then was US$2.64 a day. But many sweat-shops fled Haiti after the fall of the dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986. Others left shortly after the election of Jean- Bertrand Aristide in 1990,who campaigned with nationalist rhetoric, and still more left after the 1991 coup d'etat.

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