13744: Hermantin: Political Danger Is Real (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/editorial/search/sfl-editmshaitiansnov17.story

Political Danger Is Real
South Florida Sun-Sentinel Editorial Board

November 17, 2002

A gang has already killed your father and brother for speaking out against
the government. The same people stabbed another brother, who nearly died.
Even your 9-year-old daughter has had a lesson in local politics: a kick in
the mouth to teach her to keep it shut.

Now their threats have found you, and you fear harm next. You flee, tell
your story to immigration officers at your destination and ask for political
asylum. Their response is to throw you in a jail with violent criminals.

Farfetched?

Not to Marie Jocelyn Ocean, who was among 167 Haitians crammed on a boat
that was intercepted by the Coast Guard last year. She lived in fear in
Haiti, then spent six months in detention in Miami-Dade County. She
testified about her experiences before the Senate Judiciary Committee just
four weeks before the boat carrying Haitian migrants ran aground last month
near Virginia Key.

Of Ocean's companions, the INS found all but two had credible asylum claims.
Many remain detained.

Violence in Haiti against those who oppose the Aristide government and the
ruling Lavalas Family party is on the rise on the troubled island and cannot
be ignored. Since a Dec. 17, 2001, attack on the National Palace that
President Jean Bertrand Aristide initially claimed was a coup attempt, armed
bands that support the Lavalas Family attacked and burned down the homes of
opposition supporters. A journalist sympathetic to the opposition, Brignol
Lindor, was lynched. Pressure, harassment and attacks against people and
property have prompted judges, social and political activists, and
journalists to flee.

While not all of the 200 people on board the boat that ran aground last
month near the Rickenbacker Causeway claimed political asylum, many of them
have lived through the same threats and fear as Marie Ocean.

Fairness and basic human decency, not to mention international law, require
that Haitian asylum claims be given equal treatment to those of other
nationalities. Because of the growing political violence in Haiti today, the
presumption can't be made that Haitian refugees are fleeing for economic
rather than political reasons.

Indeed, the Coast Guard's own numbers refute the notion that Haitians are
amassing on the island's beaches to flee by the tens of thousands, as they
did in the early 1990s. In the two months prior to the October landing, only
four Haitians had been picked up at sea by the Coast Guard. In the fiscal
year ending Sept. 30, 4,104 migrants had been interdicted. The largest
number, 1,608, came from Ecuador. Haiti came in second with 1,486.

In these troubled times, when terrorism comes from domestic as well as
foreign sources, the United States government must guard its borders
closely. But interdicting and indefinitely incarcerating legitimate
political asylum seekers to deter the arrival of others would be a clear
violation of international law that undermines the very premise of refugee
protection.
Copyright © 2002, South Florida Sun-Sentinel


That disaster may come in months, or in years. One diplomat refers to Haiti
as a "the ultimate survivor country" while Esperance said predicting any
course in such a chaotic climate is impossible.

"I don't know how long this situation can last--there is really no
alternative to Aristide," said Esperance, who was shot several times during
political violence in 2000, the last election year. "What's clear is that
the country can explode at any time."

Tim Collie can be reached at tcollie@sun-sentinel.com.



Copyright © 2002, South Florida Sun-Sentinel






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