13738: (Chamberlain) Student demonstrators in Haiti storm police station (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>


By MICHAEL NORTON

                  PORT-AU-PRINCE, Nov 20 - Anti-government protesters
forced their way into a police station courtyard in provincial Petit-Goave
on Wednesday, prompting a clash with authorities that left 10 people
injured, four with gunshot wounds, news reports said.

                  The clash happened as thousands of mostly high school
students demonstrated against the high cost of living and increased school
exam fees in the town.

                  The protesters also called for President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide to resign. It was the fourth major demonstration since Friday,
reflecting a growing breach of confidence in the president's leadership.

                  The four people shot were in stable condition, a hospital
administrator told independent Radio Metropole. It was unclear how the
other six were injured or what condition they were in.

                  The four gunshot victims were high-school students and
were wearing school uniforms, independent Radio Vision 2000 reported.

                  Witnesses said police opened fire on the protesters, but
police denied the claims, the reports said.

                  The students were peaceful for the most part, but
"infiltrators" among them opened fire, said a duty officer who did not want
to be identified.

                  Crowd-control police were dispatched to patrol the town,
but made no arrests.

                  "The population is at bay," said Jean Limongy, an
opposition politician and private school principal in Petit-Goave, 70
kilometers (44 miles) west of the capital.

                  "The decision to raise the final exam fee from 20 gourdes
($US0.60) to 750 gourdes ($21) was the last straw for the hungry students."


                  A government communique later denied there was an
increase in exam fees. Before invading the police courtyard, the
demonstrators lowered the national flags at several public buildings.

                  The students also demanded justice for slain journalist
Brignol Lindor, who was ambushed and hacked to death on Dec. 3, 2001, after
allowing opposition politicians speak on his evening talk show program.

                  On Monday, thousands poured into the streets of
Petit-Goave also calling for justice in the Lindor case.

                  Ten members of a pro-Aristide grass-roots group have been
indicted for the slaying, which happened just outside the town.

                  On Sunday in Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second largest city,
tens of thousands called for an alternative to Aristide's allegedly corrupt
and inefficient government. The demonstration - which included business
leaders and politicians, workers and unemployed - was the largest since
Aristide was elected to a second five-year term in November 2000.

                  On Friday, thousands of university students and
professors stormed the administrative offices of Haiti's State University
in the capital and symbolically reinstated the school's administrative
board, which the government had removed in July.

                  Haiti's economic and political stability has deteriorated
since May 2000 elections, which observers said were flawed. The elections
gave most victories to governing party candidates.

                  The government and opposition parties have been in a
stalemate since then. Failure to agree on new elections has held up
hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid, and poverty has deepened in
Haiti, the Western Hemisphere's poorest country.