19785: (Hermantin)Sun-Sentinel:Radio pleas help cut back some looting (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Radio pleas help cut back some looting

By Joseph B. Frazier
The Associated Press
Posted March 4 2004

JACMEL, Haiti · In the laid-back seaside resort of Jacmel, the looting
started immediately after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled. Hours
later, a citizens' committee went on the radio to beg people to return the
stolen goods.

They did.

Haiti's other cities were wracked by looting, rampaging mobs and killings.
Bodies lay in the streets with heads partly blown away, hands tied behind
backs.

In a particularly vicious slaying, a man accused of being an Aristide
militant in the fourth-largest city of Gonaïves was burned to death after
flaming tires soaked in gas were flung over his head.

As violence ripped through the rest of Haiti, Jacmel -- a traditionally
tranquil artist community -- made it through the three-plus weeks of
violence virtually unscathed -- in the end -- as a result of quick action by
many residents.

"The caco [looters] were doing their own thing in Port-au-Prince, so we did
our own thing in Jacmel," said artist Moro Baruk.

After some looters first hit the Jacmel police station, the citizens
committee went straight to the streets to urge calm. When the electricity
came on, they went on the radio to ask looters to put back what they had
taken, Baruk said.

"The committee told people these things belonged to Haiti, not to one party
or another or to Aristide." The looters brought everything back, he said,
except what was taken from the police chief's house.

"Everything passed smoothly because of the work of the committee.

"This is not a town where people kill or rob," Baruk said, "but there are
some who say that `if people are rebelling, well, why not?'"

Committee member Jacques Khawly, the head of the chamber of commerce and a
former mayor, said the committee was basically formed from men who gathered
in the morning to drink coffee together.

They went to the radio station and made constant broadcasts urging calm, he
said. "We all lived through the atrocities after Jean-Claude Duvalier fled
in 1986. We always swore that would never be repeated in Jacmel."

Agronomist Gerard Mathurin, also a committee member, said Aristide forces
tried to control Jacmel for years, but the town had remained politically
neutral until recent days when it turned against him.

Residents had voted for Aristide in 1990, Khawly said. "But you must never,
never forget that in 2000 only 3 percent of us did."

Jacmel, a city of about 150,000 that is popular as a weekend getaway, is
vastly different from Port-au-Prince. Here, people stroll the streets at
night, something only the oblivious or criminals would do these days in the
capital.

Kids race on their bikes and dominoes clatter on makeshift tables under
streetlights. Much of the city resembles parts of old New Orleans, slightly
down at the heels and in need of some paint.

Ornate ironwork decorates balconies, and stone arches separate sidewalks
from streets. It is cleaner than Port-au-Prince, but then most cities are.





Copyright © 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

_________________________________________________________________
Store more e-mails with MSN Hotmail Extra Storage – 4 plans to choose from!
http://click.atdmt.com/AVE/go/onm00200362ave/direct/01/