18015: Durban: AP Story on Sunday Demonstration (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Lance Durban - MANUTECH <lpdurban@yahoo.com>

As reported on CNN online....

  Thousands march to demand Aristide's resignation
   Government supporters shoot guns, throw rocks
Sunday, January 18, 2004 Posted: 7:23 PM EST (0023 GMT)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- About 4,000 protesters marched
through Haiti's capital Sunday to demand the resignation of
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, defying government supporters
who hurled rocks at them and set up a flaming barricade.

One man was shot in the abdomen when a carload of people opened
fire on the demonstrators. The man, a street peddler who had
been on a nearby sidewalk, was being treated in a hospital,
police said.

Later, hooded men fired a shotgun at students as they left the
demonstration, wounding two, Radio Vision 2000 reported. Several
were also being treated at a hospital.

Pressure has been building on Aristide's administration since
his party swept 2000 legislative elections that observers said
were flawed. Poverty has deepened and unrest has risen. In the
past four months, at least 46 people have been killed in
demonstrations.

As the demonstrators wound through Port-au-Prince on their way
toward Haiti's national television station, they were met by a
handful of Aristide supporters who threw rocks at them.

Security guards and police fired rounds in the air to chase the
rock-throwers away after they broke several windows of the TV
building. At least two Aristide supporters were detained by
police, witnesses said.

The Democratic Platform -- a coalition of opposition political
parties, clergy, students and business leaders -- has called a
number of protests and refused to participate in new elections
unless Aristide resigns.

On January 11, the opposition drew its largest crowd ever to
protest against Aristide, with tens of thousands marching in the
capital.

The opposition has refused to meet Aristide or his
representatives, saying he must step down and be replaced by a
transitional governing council.

Aristide became Haiti's first freely elected president in 1990
but was overthrown in a coup in 1991. He was restored in 1994
after a U.S. invasion. Forced by a term limit to step down in
1996, he was re-elected in 2000 and says he plans to serve out
his term, set to end in 2006.