15558: (Forry) Re: News Release from the Boston Haitian Reporter (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Bill Forry <bforry@dotnews.com>

Contact:
William J. Dorcena
Publisher, Boston Haitian Reporter
617-436-1222 x14

Award-Winning Author Edwidge Danticat Chronicles Suffering of Haitian
Prisoners in May Edition of Boston Haitian Reporter


(May, 8, 2003/ Dorchester, MA)- The May edition of the Boston Haitian
Reporter, which hit the streets this week across Greater Boston, includes an
exclusive account by award-winning novelist Edwidge Danticat, who writes on
the misery of Haitian refugees being held captive by the U.S. government in
Florida.

Danticat, the author of several best-selling books including The Farming of
Bones and Breath, Eyes, Memory gives a detailed account of her February 2003
visit to two Florida facilities where scores of Haitian men, women and
children are being jailed by the U.S. government. Last week, Attorney
General John Ashcroft ruled that the Haitians, most of whom arrived in South
Florida by boat last year seeking political asylum, could be detained
³indefinitely² because Haiti is now considered a potential haven for
terrorists by the State Department.

In February, Danticat visited the Krome Detention Facility and a Comfort Inn
hotel, both in Miami-Dade county, where more than a hundred Haitian men,
women and children are being held. Some have been incarcerated since
December 2001, when the Bush administration covertly implemented a new
policy- applied only to Haitians- which denies them release pending their
asylum hearings. Unlike other asylum-seekers, who are released to community
activists and family members, Haitians are now jailed indefinitely.

Danticatıs investigation reveals a surreal setting at a Miami hotel that has
been turned into a makeshift jail, in which women and children are forced to
remain indoors for weeks at a time, without adequate clothing, food, medical
care and legal access.

³How many others are banging their heads against walls at night?² Danticat
writes.² ³How come these sounds go unheard? How come we, on the outside do
not hear them? We, who are so like them, we who could be them. We, of a
younger generation, fluent in English, living here, working here. Are they
too far from us or we too far from them?²

Boston Haitian Reporter readers will be the first to read Danticatıs moving,
4000-word account, one of the only eyewitness reports from inside the
Florida facilities. Danticatıs story is the highlight of the Reporterıs
special Haitian Heritage Month edition. May is the busiest and most exciting
month of the year for Haitian Americans in the United States. Here in
Boston, a massive May 18th parade on Blue Hill Avenue in Dorchester and
Mattapan will mark the celebration of Haitian Flag Day.

³It is unfortunate that in this special edition of the Boston Haitian
Reporter, in a month intended to celebrate the heritage and history of our
common homeland, we must instead dedicate our cover to a great miscarriage
of justice at the hands of our own government,² says William J. Dorcena,
publisher of the Boston Haitian Reporter. ³We are grateful to Edwidge
Danticat, our peopleıs most celebrated literary flag-bearer, for sharing her
first-hand account of the Florida prisoners with our readership.²

Boston Haitian Reporter is a monthly, English-language newspaper dedicated
to ³a celebration of the Haitian-American experience.² The newspaper was
founded in May 2001 and is circulated free throughout Greater Bostonıs
Haitian neighborhoods. It is one of three newspapers under the umbrella of
Boston Neighborhood News, Inc., a family-owned, independent newspaper
company, which also publishes the Boston Irish Reporter and the weekly
Dorchester Reporter.

For more information on the May edition of the Reporter, or on Edwidge
Danticatıs special report, please contact William J. Dorcena at (617)
436-1222 x14. Copies of the edition are available upon request.