13730: (Chamberlain) Haitian Police Fire on Demonstrators -- radio report (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

By Michael Deibert

Port-au-Prince, Nov 20 (Reuters) Police opened fire
open on thousands of students demonstrating for the
resignation of Haiti's embattled president
Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the provincial city of Petit
Goave on Wednesday, private Radio Metropole reported,
wounding six and adding fuel to the fire of massive
demonstrations that have shaken the country in recent
days.

The students, who were representing several local high
schools, organized the demonstration this morning,
calling for Aristide’s resignation, as well as end to
Haiti’s spiraling inflation and against an increased
tax students must pay to take their final exams.
There were  no reports of fatalities.

Petit Goave, known as “Ti Goave’ in Haitian Creole,
has long been a flashpoint of anti-government
sentiment and was the site of an anti-Aristide
protests that drew several thousand on Monday.

On December 3rd of last year, a local Petit Goave
journalist, Brignol Lindor, was macheted to death by a
mob of government partisans a week after the town’s
deputy mayor, a member of Aristide’s Lavalas Family
political party, had called for the application of
“zero tolerance” against those he accused of working
against the government and with the opposition
Democratic Convergence coalition.

The shootings also come on the heels of a massive
anti-government rally in the northern city of Cap
Haitien on Sunday.  The march, sponsored by a local
umbrella-organization known as the Citizens
Initiative, was lead by opposition politicians, former
members of the Haitian military and civil society
figures as thousands of ordinary citizens joined in
chants of "Down with Aristide" and "Down with Lavalas
criminals.”

The march was said to have drawn over 10,000
participants.

Port-au-Prince, the nation’s capital, was the site
last week of a large demonstration by university
students protesting against what they said was the
government's interference in the country's state
university system.

The students stormed and occupied the university's
rectory, then marched to the gates of the National
Palace, demanding Aristide's resignation and new
elections.

Opposition groups said they plan a large rally in
Petit Goave on December 3rd as a memorial to the
murdered journalist Lindor.

Aristide began his second term as Haiti's president in
February 2001 and has since been locked in a two-year
dispute with the Convergence coalition over May 2000
legislative elections that his opponents contend were
biased to favor Aristide's Lavalas party.

The deadlock has stalled over $500 million in
international aid.

Inflation in Haiti has risen 16%, and the Haitian
currency, the gourde, has lost 40% of value in the
past year.

A pyramid investment scheme collapsed last summer,
wiping out the life savings of tens of thousands of
Haitians and a rumor that the cash-strapped government
was planning to convert dollar bank accounts to the
Haitian currency at a low rate recently resulted in a
run on banks that saw depositors withdraw $20 million
in three days.