20607: erzilidanto: Haitians Under the Gun Getting the Word Out on Cell Phone (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Erzilidanto@aol.com

Haitians Under the Gun Getting the Word Out on Cell Phone


News Feature, Lyn Duff and Dennis Bernstein,

Pacific News Service, Mar 19, 2004


Editor's Note: For many Haitians hiding from gunmen roaming the countryside

since the ouster of Haitian President

Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the cell phone is their lifeline to the outside

world.

*

For survivors of the violence in the hemisphere's poorest country -- many

of them in hiding -- modern cell phones have

turned what might have been a post-coup information blackout on its head.


One call from Haiti to a California radio station covering the coup

aftermath came like so many others: on a shaky cell

phone, with a connection that crackled and faded in and out, but which

carried a clear message. This time it was the mayor

of Milo, hiding from a group of armed former military men and convicted

death squad leaders.


"We are swimming in blood everywhere. The oppression is atrocious," said

Jean Charles Moise, who advocates for the

return of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Moise's district of

50,000 persons counts many being targeted now by

gunmen of the National Liberation and Reconstruction Front.


Noel Vincent, a literacy teacher, is using cell phones to report from Cap

Haitian to family in Florida. "I am so afraid I may

never see you again," he told relatives as a reporter was allowed to listen

in. "You must tell everyone what is happening here

and in the Central Plateau... The death squads are reforming and they are

coming for all who support democracy."


Cell phones became widely available only a few years ago with the

establishment of the Celcom and Haitel networks.

Cheaply made cell phones are sold even in the most isolated villages, and

Haitians have found pay-as-you-go cell phones to

be an effective way to communicate in a country where one can wait five

years to have a landline phone installed.




A battered and dirty cell phone is Andralese Lafortune's most prized

possession. The 49-year-old high school teacher from

Gonaives is in hiding too.


"During the last coup, we didn't have any way to reach the outside world,"

Lafortune recalls. "For three years we suffered

under a repressive regime, while many were killed and tortured. But we had

no voice then. We were muzzled."


Now Lafortune's daily challenge is finding electricity to charge her

scarred blue and gray Nokia flip phone. With it she calls

relatives in other parts of Haiti and abroad. One of them put her in touch

with American journalists.


Many are dying violently at the hands of anti-Aristide forces, Lafortune

says. She "cries," she says, when her cell phone

battery dies because "then I am alone. Anything could happen to me and no

one would know."


One U.S. attorney, Brian Concannon, receives reports from Haiti to his

office in Miami by cell phone. He says one caller

told him two witnesses who testified in a case against death squad members

in which he was assisting have had their homes

burned down.



Mike Levy, a journalist with the Haitian News Agency AHP, Haiti's largest

wire service, who also says thousands of

Haitians are in hiding, reports -- by cell phone -- that many have been

arrested simply for their membership in Lavalas, the

political party with which President Aristide is affiliated.


During a March 14 press conference in Port-au-Prince, Leon Charles, the new

director general of the Haitian National

Police and a staunch supporter of those who overthrew Aristide, outlined

for reporters his plans to arrest more Lavalas

members. He called the party a "criminal" group.



>From her hiding place in a mountainous village one young girl spoke by cell

phone about the actions the National Liberation

and Reconstruction Front has taken against those who are affiliated with

Lavalas.


"I saw them come with many guns to a home. The guns were brand new and the

boys holding them were not adults yet." The

sound of static and the unmistakable thump of helicopters were audible as

she spoke. "They took the people out of the home

and took them away in truck with their hands tied behind their backs. They

stole all the things from the house and then set it

on fire."


It is through cell phone accounts on the spot that reporters outside of

Haiti first heard of helicopters with searchlights being

used by members of the former military to hunt down those hiding in Haiti's

north.


Jean Kernazan is a radio producer on Radio Soley in Brooklyn, home to the

largest Haitian community in the United States.

Kernazan says he's spending hundreds of dollars weekly on calls to cell

phones in Haiti. Many callers from Haiti, in order to

save money, place quick calls and ask to be called back.


"In 1991 (when the last coup occurred) it was almost impossible for people,

especially in the countryside, to get the word

out," Kernazan says. "But today we can practically save people's lives with

a cell phone.


"To put it simply," Kernazan says, "the expense of these phone calls to

Haiti are driving me to the poor house, but they're

worth every penny."


Dennis Bernstein is executive producer of Pacifica Radio's "Flashpoints"

(KPFA-FM 94.1 in Berkeley, Calif.). Lyn

Duff (lynduff@aol.com) is a writer currently based in Jerusalem. She

traveled to Haiti in 1995 to help establish that

country's first children's radio station. She is writing a book on Haiti.


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