19987: (Chamberlain) Hunting Haitians (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By MICHAEL SMITH

   ABOARD THE U.S. COAST GUARD CUTTER DILIGENCE, March 7 (AP) -- Dr. Daniel
Garcia says it's the hardest job in his 6 1/2-year career with the U.S.
Coast Guard: hunting down Haitians on homemade boats and returning them to
the turmoil embroiling their homeland.
   The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Diligence was among a dozen patrolling
waters off Haiti on Sunday, a fleet increased from the usual two vessels to
prevent a feared exodus.
   Sea and air patrols have been stepped up since President Bush on Feb. 25
urged Haitians to "stay home" and warned anyone who did not would be
repatriated.
   That policy, announced as the United States was preparing to evacuate
Americans from a dangerously volatile situation, has drawn criticism from
human rights groups and some U.S. legislators. Critics say the United
States is obligated by international law to grant asylum to people fleeing
conflict zones.
   On Feb. 27, Garcia's cutter encountered a 50-foot homemade wooden boat
carrying 233 Haitians and brought them aboard.
   Garcia spent four hours giving each one a physical checkup. He had to
rely on a handful of English and Spanish speakers among the bedraggled boat
people to translate the Haitians' native Creole.
   He watched as they were dropped at the dock at Haiti's capital of
Port-au-Prince.
   "Since my six-and-a-half years in the Coast Guard, this has been the
most trying time," Garcia said, especially "seeing what they have to go
back to."
   "I don't blame them. I'd leave too," he told The Associated Press.
   Officers said some of the boat people got unruly when they realized they
were being returned to Haiti. A few had to be shackled because they didn't
want to go back.
   The group was among more than 904 boat people, including babies, to be
repatriated by the Coast Guard since Bush stepped up the policy.
   Many of the Haitians in February were left on the dock on the southern
outskirts of the capital as militant Aristide loyalists were setting up
flaming barricades and robbing people of cars and money.
   The boat people had only bundles with blankets, clothing and meals of
beans and rice that the Coast Guard gave them.
   Most said they had left to escape Haiti's grinding poverty, not because
of political motivations or fear of being swept up in the rebellion.
   U.S. Marines had to guard the frightened returnees and Haitian Coast
Guard officers trained their rifles on the taunting crowd to force a
passage through for the refugees.
   A reporter there watched them walking uncertainly, most barefoot, in the
direction of the tumultuous capital -- a city most had never visited many
miles from northern hometowns cut off by the rebellion.
   On Feb. 29, Aristide fled the country, under pressure from rebels
advancing on the capital and U.S. and French calls for him to bow out.
   In recent days, the cutters haven't come across any boats with migrant
hopefuls. But they worry that could change.
   In the early 1990s, some 65,000 Haitians were intercepted at sea as they
tried to escape the Caribbean nation's brutal dictatorship and reach U.S.
shores. With no leadership and much of the nation divided between Aristide
opponents and supporters, many may opt to flee again.
   It's not known how many die attempting to reach Florida in rickety
overcrowded sloops. Haitian boat people rarely make the news unless dozens
drown in a capsized boat.
   On another cutter, the Escanaba, crew members scanned the ocean late
Saturday in search of migrant boats. The cutter hadn't intercepted a
Haitian boat since December, when 361 Haitians were traveling aboard a
54-foot sailboat.
   It took the crew six hours to bring them all aboard. The wooden boat was
littered with human waste. The cutter did not have enough blankets and
clothes on board to accommodate the Haitians, so crew members gave up some
of their own.
   One crew member, a Haitian-American, helped translate for the migrants
along with another translator who was on board. Some told him to let them
go, that he should understand their situation since he was one of them.
   But the crew member, Petty Officer Fritzgerald Saintime, said he didn't
feel too guilty about returning the Haitians.
   "There's no way they were going to make it" to Miami, Saintime said. "We
definitely saved their lives."