24375: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-One Year After (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By MICHELLE FAUL

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 28 (AP) -- Supporters of ousted President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide marked the anniversary of his fall with a protest
Monday that quickly turned violent. Police fired on the crowd and killed at
least two in another bleak reminder of a year filled with disaster and
disappointment.
   Since former soldiers led a rebellion that pushed Aristide from power on
Feb. 29, most Haitians are still jobless, and investment is scant. Many
still mourn for more than 3,000 people who died in floods last year.
   "Life only gets worse," said Lelene Derivalle in Cite Soleil, a seaside
slum that helped Aristide rise to power more than two decades ago. "We have
no work, we have no food, and today I don't even have a few gourdes to buy
water."
   At the protest, police fired into 2,000 Aristide supporters. At least
two people were killed and about 10 people were wounded.
   Still, the U.S.-backed interim government says the country is better off
today than under Aristide, accused of corruption and mismanagement.
   "We have established order in the country's finances with good
governance to the point that today we have reserves to start a good job
creation program," interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue told The
Associated Press on Monday during a telephone interview. "We are building
new roads and now we must get ready for the elections."
   Whether the country will be stable enough for elections in October and
November remains to be seen as tensions grow between the government,
disgruntled former soldiers who helped oust Aristide, a depleted police
force, armed gangs loyal to Aristide and U.N. peacekeepers.
   Groups have been calling for Latortue's resignation since Feb. 19, when
nearly 500 of the 1,250 prisoners escaped from the National Penitentiary
after a handful of armed men opened fire and threatened guards.
   "This government can't provide security so there's no way it can
continue," said Prince Pierre Sonson, leader of the opposition Democratic
Haitian Reform Movement party.
   Before the shooting Monday, demonstrators shouted slogans against
President Bush, whom Aristide and his supporters blame for his ouster. U.S.
officials say Aristide left voluntarily. He is now in exile in South
Africa.
   "George Bush is the biggest terrorist!" the crowd yelled.
   At Cite Soleil, a shantytown home to more than 1 million people,
Derivalle padlocked the door to her one-room home, fearful that protests
would trigger more than the usual violence.
   She held her belongings in a shopping bag -- all she owns since
gangsters looted her home two months ago. One of them raped her in front of
her three young children, she said, looking down at a daughter dressed only
in a T-shirt.
   U.S. soldiers arrived the day Aristide left and helped install an
interim government under Latortue, a former United Nations bureaucrat who
was living in exile in Florida.
   They handed over to a U.N. force in June, but it only reached its full
strength of 7,400 peacekeepers in December. Most of Haiti's countryside
remains at the mercy of ex-soldiers who refuse to disarm and are demanding
the return of the army that is blamed for the killings, torture and maiming
of more than 3,000 people under the coup regime of 1990-1994.
   "The problem of Haiti transcends Aristide," said former Sen. Gerard
Gilles. "It's a problem of apartheid, of the majority of the population
being excluded for 200 years."
   Once the richest colony in the Americas, Haiti has been kept in poverty
by a series of corrupt dictators since 1804, when the only successful slave
rebellion forced out French colonizers.
   In 1987, soldiers aborted the first free elections in a bloodbath at the
polls. Aristide, then a priest who preached rebellion to slum-dwelling
Haitians, was elected in 1990 but overthrown by the military in seven
months.
   The United States sent 20,000 troops to restore him in 1994. Aristide
won elections marred by violence and a boycott in 2000.