16363: Bellegarde-Smith: Republic of Haiti and Dominican Republic News (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: P D Bellegarde-Smith <pbs@csd.uwm.edu>


Dominican Republic: Cops Shoot Up Union Office
Haiti: US Arms Smuggling Row



DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: COPS SHOOT UP UNION OFFICE

Some 100 Dominican police agents burst into the Santo Domingo offices of the
National Federation of Unified Transport Workers (CNTU) on the afternoon of
Aug. 6 as union leaders were meeting to prepare for a protest later that day
against government economic policies. Without warning, the police agents began
hurling tear gas bombs and shooting birdshot from shotguns. CNTU general
secretary Ramon Perez Figuereo had received 30 gunshot wounds in his legs,
according to Dr. Jose Antonio Castillo Reyes, head of the clinic where he was
treated; he also had injuries to his head and chest from being beaten by the
police. Two other unionists, Genaro de la Cruz Brito and Bienvenido Urena,
were also wounded, and a number were arrested.

In an interview on Aug. 7 Perez Figuereo charged that the police had been
trying to kill him. He said that when he was being treated in the clinic,
people who were apparently police agents arrived and tried to take him away to
an undisclosed location.

The unionists had been preparing for a "torch of hunger" march, part of a
series of protests Dominican activists have planned to coincide with the 14th
Panamerican Games, held in Santo Domingo Aug. 1-17; the protests are targeting
constant electricity blackouts, government austerity policies and an impending
accord with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Police agents repressed the
first "torch of hunger" demonstration on Aug. 1, and the next day President
Hipolito Mejia acknowledged that he had ordered security forces to "give the
stick" to protesters (dar lena, play rough) [see Update #705]. On Aug. 7
Amnesty International said "[t]he authorities must immediately conduct a full
and impartial inquiry" into the attack on the CNTU office, which the
organization called a "worrying incident." [Hoy (Santo Domingo) 8/7/03,
8/8/03; La Hora (Quito) 8/8/03 from AFP; El Nacional (Santo Domingo) 8/7/03;
El Diario-La Prensa (NY) 8/8/03 from correspondent; Amnesty International
press release 8/7/03]

President Mejia's "get tough" policy failed to stop the protests, which
continued throughout the country on Aug. 6-8. The correspondent for the New
York Spanish-language daily El Diario- La Prensa called the week "one of the
most violent" in relation to grassroots protests; he said it left a total of
"three people dead, dozens of people wounded and hundreds of arrests." [ED-LP
8/9/03]

In the northern city of Nagua grassroots organizations called for a civic
strike on Aug. 6-7. Some 50 homemade bombs were thrown on Aug. 6, and there
was reportedly a gunfight between police and protesters that night, apparently
with no injuries. [EN 8/7/03; Hoy 8/8/03] Protests on Aug. 6 in the
northwestern city of Santiago left at least one person dead. Dixson Rafael
Bernard Hiraldo was shot outside his home, allegedly by a driver from the Taxi
Soberano cab company. Apparently the driver fired after his cab was stoned by
protesters trying to stop transit in the city. Bernard Hiraldo was a
bystander, according to his sister. The police were still investigating the
murder as of Aug. 7 and had detained several people. [EN 8/7/03]

On Aug. 7 residents of Villa Altagracia, a town near Santo Domingo, burned
tires, threw homemade bombs, fired guns in the air and blocked traffic on the
Duarte highway to protest a blackout which had started on Aug. 4. [EN 8/8/03]
On Aug. 6 some residents of the southeastern city of San Pedro Macoris
protested blackouts by blocking roads, burning tires and destroying hundreds
of electricity meters. On the same day, the city council voted unanimously to
declare the local electrical distributor, Edenorte, a "company non grata." [EN
8/7/03]


HAITI: US ARMS SMUGGLING ROW

On Aug. 1 Haitian customs officials found that a group of 15 US technicians
entering the country at Port-au-Prince's Toussaint Louverture International
Airport were carrying unregistered firearms--a total of six pistols and four
assault rifles, according to some sources. Judith Tronzo, an embassy
spokesperson, said the technicians were sent by the US Defense Department to
evaluate the security system at the US embassy. The embassy was "in complete
agreement with Customs' decision" to confiscate the arms, Tronzo said. The
embassy had "made these 15 people leave on the same day," she said. "This
problem is due to my government. It's a document question that isn't well
understood between the State Department and the Defense Department." [Haiti
Progres (NY) 8/6/03; Haiti en Marche (Miami) 8/6/03]

The incident came just one day after outgoing US ambassador Brian Dean Curran
used his farewell press conference to charge that Haitian government officials
may have paid thugs to attack a July 12 meeting of community and business
leaders. More than 40 people were injured when some 50 alleged supporters of
Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide began throwing rocks at the
gathering. Johnny Occilius, a former municipal employee in the Port-au- Prince
neighborhood of Cite Soleil, where the incident took place, claimed that Mayor
Fritz Pierre gave 500,000 gourdes [about $12,500] to two gang leaders to pay
their followers to break up the meeting. Curran, who was leaving Haiti to take
up a post in Naples, said Occilius had since fled to the US. According to
Mayor Pierre, Occilius was fired in November for falsifying documents and made
the claim about the July 12 meeting in order to get a US visa. [Miami Herald
8/1/03 from AP; HP 8/6/03]