19305: Esser: Aristide guard seeks asylum (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

The Montreal Gazette
http://www.canada.com/montreal

Aristide guard seeks asylum
But our embassy isn't equipped to grant it
 
SUE MONTGOMERY
The Gazette

Friday, February 27, 2004


One of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's security guards
knocked on the high metal gate of Canada's makeshift embassy here
yesterday to seek protection.

At the time, ambassador Kenneth Cook was telling journalists Canadian
officials would not offer asylum to Haitians unless their lives were
in immediate danger.

Security guard Joseph Orelus, the 46-year-old father of three young
girls, said he faces the same difficulties as Aristide because he is
widely known in this city of 2.5 million to be close to the embattled
president.

Aristide is desperately trying to stave off an imminent attack by
rebels approaching from the north.

"He's in trouble despite the fact he was elected for five years,"
Orelus said in an interview in his jeep outside the embassy.

"And the fact he's in trouble means I'm in trouble."

Orelus explained that as an employee of the government in 1991, he
was closely allied to Aristide, who had just become Haiti's first
democratically elected president. Orelus had to flee to Mexico as a
political refugee after a coup when Aristide had been in power for
just eight months.

Orelus returned in 1994, when Aristide was reinstated with the help
of 20,000 U.S. troops, and the badge he showed Canadian embassy
officials yesterday was proof he was part of the special service
protecting the president.

Aristide and his supporters now face another crisis as rebels who
were in the military and police force during the dictatorship advance
on the capital, taking one city at a time.

There has been widespread looting, burning of houses and attacks on
Aristide supporters as a hopelessly ill-equipped and outnumbered
police force flees for safety.

Rebels warn they will be in the capital within 48 hours, and they
have repeatedly called for Aristide's resignation, as has the
opposition.

The rebels' leader, Guy Philippe, told the Associated Press their
mission was to arrest Aristide if he did not resign.

"I don't want him to die - it would be too easy. He has to pay for
what he has done to the Haitian people," Philippe said in Cap-Haïtien
on the north coast of Haiti, which the rebels have controlled since
Sunday.

Pressure is mounting for Aristide to resign. France blamed the
president for the chaos dating to his re-election in 2000, which was
said to be fraudulent. France urged a transitional government replace
Aristide.

The UN Security Council met yesterday to discuss the situation.

Cook said he couldn't comment on individual cases of people seeking
asylum, for reasons of privacy, but said Orelus's name was not
familiar to him. "If it was someone we knew very, very well who was
very high profile, we could go back to Canada and discuss the case."

Getting to Cook's home, located on a hill above the city, was
difficult yesterday. Aristide supporters, some sporting black
balaclavas, set up makeshift barricades with rocks, tree stumps, old
chairs and broken bottles, then swarmed cars, demanding money to pass
and yelling their battle cry, "Five years!"

The call is a reference to Aristide's mandate, which finishes in
February 2006.

About 20 people are now at the Canadian embassy, including five
members of a military assessment team, nine soldiers sent to provide
security at the embassy, and six employees. A truck delivered 200
five-gallon bottles of water to the house yesterday as officials
prepared to hunker down.

But officials were tight-lipped about plans to get 1,500 Canadians
who are in the country to leave, should the situation deteriorate.

There was an eerie silence in the capital yesterday after rebel
leaders, already in control of most of the north, warned an attack
was imminent and said residents should stay home. The normally
bustling downtown was quiet, with little traffic, as those Haitians
who have jobs stayed away from work.

While helicopters hovered overhead, a convoy of heavily armed U.S.
marines escorted about 100 nonessential United Nations employees and
their families to the airport, where they caught a flight to the
Dominican Republic. The mission was cancelled Wednesday when the
marines decided the 20-minute trip to the airport was too risky.

Thirty Canadians were taken by Mexican and Canadian military to
Mexico City and the Dominican Republic.

smontgomery@thegazette.canwest.com

© Copyright  2004 Montreal Gazette
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