13502: Karshan: Haitians Flee a Land That We're Depriving (Newsday) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: MKarshan@aol.com

Haitians Flee a Land That We're Depriving
Newsday

October 31, 2002

We hadn't witnessed a scene like this one in some time:

More than 200 Haitian refugees, outside Miami in a stranded boat after days
at sea, were leaping into the water, tossing their children to people who
were already immersed, swimming frantically to shore, and then sprinting onto
a highway, where - trying to elude the Coast Guard officers and police who
pursued them - they ran and jumped onto moving vehicles when they could.

We've heard about refugees being picked up at sea and sent back home. But
they are usually just images in our minds. These Haitians, however, were
flesh and blood, and we watched their desperate flight in living color.

"It really broke my heart to see that," said Ray Laforest, a Haitian-American
and New York labor activist who fled Papa Doc Duvalier's regime 34 years ago.

"It made me angry also," he continued, "because they're fellow human beings,
and they're looking for a better life, and dignity. And I'm angry at the Bush
administration for imposing their way on the Haitian government."

The refugees' frantic scramble in Miami showed how determined they were to
get out of Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world. Recent visitors
to that country tell of pitted and garbage-strewn roads, frequent power
blackouts, a serious water shortage, a physical infrastructure that has
collapsed, a public school system that has ceased to exist for lack of funds,
a dire lack of health care, and infiltration by drug-runners from Colombia.

So the Haitians come here. I'm not suggesting that we open our doors to every
poor Haitian who wants to live here. But the difference in the way we treat
them, compared with other refugees, is shocking.

The Haitians who landed in Miami picked up three Cubans on their way over,
but the Cubans, once here, will be released and allowed to stay. The Haitians
were rounded up and arrested. Those who can't make valid claims for political
asylum will be sent home, while the ones who can will be locked up until
their cases are resolved. Virtually no other group of refugees is treated
this way.

"If Cubans can hit the ground and be accepted, and Haitians who manage to
scramble onshore can't, that is so blatantly discriminatory," says Ron
Daniels, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New
York City, and an advocate for the Haitians.

Living conditions are so bad in Haiti that most Haitians would come here if
they could. The irony is that our government is contributing to the problem.

Since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's re-election and the 2000
parliamentary elections, the United States has been blocking more than $500
million in humanitarian and development loans to Haiti from the
Inter-American Development Bank. Aristide was overwhelmingly re-elected, but
the United States disapproves of the makeup of the legislature.

So the Haitian government has no money to function, and Haitians are growing
more desperate - and are coming here.

The United States' current behavior is compounded by our long and
disreputable history with Haiti: from our military occupation and total
control of the country from 1915 to 1934; to propping up the corrupt and
tyranical Duvalier regimes; to complicity in the 1991 coup that initially
overthrew President Aristide. Now we're blocking badly needed aid to this
country.

Our prolonged and staggering contribution to Haiti's misery ought to inspire
enough responsibility in Washington to force a change in our Haiti policy.
Daniels and Laforest are among the many Haiti advocates who are calling for a
less discriminatory and, yes, less racist, policy towards Haitian refugees,
and for releasing the country from a form of economic blackmail.

"The embargo affects the mass of poor Haitians more than anyone else,"
Laforest told me. "Those people coming here are desperate people."

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Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.