15322: (Chamberlain) Dominican-Boat Capsizes (later story) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By ANDRES CALA

   VILLA VASQUEZ, Dominican Republic, April 16 (AP) -- First high winds
broke the mast of the overcrowded sloop and knocked the captain overboard.
Then the passengers ran out of food and water. Days later, the boat crashed
into a reef.
   The toll: six dead, 16 missing and dozens of ever-more impoverished and
disillusioned Haitians forced back to the troubled land they fled.
   Haiti's "economic situation is deteriorating and driving people to risk
their lives at sea," said the director of Haiti's national migration office
in Port-au-Prince, Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine. "We warn them not to go, but
their desperation is greater than their fear."
   Survivors from the boat that sank early Tuesday about 200 meters off
Punta Rusia in off the northwestern Dominican Republic told authorities
that 113 people set off from Haiti's northern city of Cap-Haitien on April
8.
   A Dominican fisherman spotted the 30-foot vessel aground on the reef
late Monday and ferried dozens of survivors to shore, U.S. Coast Guard
spokesman Ryan Doss said by telephone from Miami.
   The fisherman said he saw more than a dozen people wade ashore into
mangroves. Dominican officials said it's possible many of the missing are
hiding for fear of being sent home.
   Henri-Claude Beausejour, 26, said he paid $220 for the voyage because "I
want to go to whatever country will give me a job."
   He said the passengers had hoped to get to the Turks and Caicos Islands,
just north of Haiti.
   But officials in that British territory, with health and economic
services strained by monthly arrivals of some 400 Creole-speaking Haitians,
are trying to keep out illegal immigrants amid calls for a mass deportation
of Haitians.
   Beausejour was being treated for dehydration at a hospital in the town
of Villa Vasquez. When he recovers, he will be returned home.
   Ninety-one survivors from his ill-fated voyage were taken back across
the border on Tuesday, according to Jean-Baptiste Bien-Aime, Haiti's consul
in the Dominican frontier town of Dajabon.
   Beausejour said tragedy struck them early on. Heavy winds snapped the
boat's mast, which in turn knocked the captain and another man into the sea
on April 9, just one day into their journey.
   The following day, they ran out of food and water.
   "We were lost, and the wind took us until we hit something, and we
started sinking," said Beausejour.
   The fisherman rescued dozens of people before a Dominican coast guard
boat reached the scene early Tuesday and was joined by a C-130 plane, a
helicopter and two cutters from the U.S. Coast Guard.
   Four bodies were taken to the hospital in Villa Vasquez, said hospital
administrator Luis Brea. The town is 125 miles northwest of Santo Domingo,
the Dominican capital.
   Thousands of Haitians risk their lives each year to escape poverty and
political turmoil by crowding into homemade boats and heading north. Most
hope to get to the United States. Many die at sea.
   Haiti "is a tragedy that probably, collectively, we (leaders) are not
spending enough time on," visiting Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien
told Dominican officials early Tuesday, before they reported the latest
happening.
   There are about 8.3 million people in Haiti while more than 2 million
live abroad -- including 1 million in the United States, 600,000 in the
Dominican Republic and 200,000 in Canada, according to the Haitian
government.