25581: Minsky: (news): We paid 30G to save my niece NYDaily News (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Tequila Minsky <tminsky@ix.netcom.com>


NYDaily News
We paid 30G to  save life of my niece
July 5, 2005
By LESLIE CASIMIR   DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER


Violence after President Aristide’s exile continues.
Six weeks ago, a Brooklyn doctor got a chilling phone call from relatives in 
Haiti: His 72-year-old brother-in-law had been kidnapped, and if the captors 
didn't get $200,000 overnight, they would kill their hostage.

 "I was in shock. Where were we going to get that kind of money?" said the 
56-year-old doctor, who asked that his name not be published. "Every day I hear 
Haitians are getting kidnapped, but I did not expect this to happen to my 
family."

 The wave of abductions - which Haitian authorities blame on supporters of 
exiled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Haitian-born criminals 
deported from the U.S. - has left New York's Haitian enclaves reeling.

Since Aristide's government was toppled last year, violence has claimed more 
than 700 lives and there are six to 10 reported kidnappings a day.

 "This is the most important issue right now for Haitians," said Ricot Dupuy, 
director of Radio Soleil D'Haiti in Brooklyn.

 In the case of the doctor, who lives on Long Island, he withdrew $10,000 from 
his savings, other relatives took out home equity loans and cash advances and 
one flew to Port-au-Prince with the cash.

 After four days of negotiations with the abductors, the family was able to 
bring the ransom down to $58,000. The brother-in-law, a university 
administrator, was released.

Two weeks later, the doctor's niece was kidnapped.

 "Around here, we are all sad and feeling powerless," the doctor said. "There's 
nobody to call, nobody to ask for help. Haiti now is in a free fall."

 Felix Augustin, Haiti's counsel general to New York, said six New Yorkers have 
asked him for help and money for the ransoms. But there is not much he can do, 
except take down the relatives' names and contact Haiti's national police.

 "These are very scary stories - no one is safe," Augustin said. "One person 
told me they beat their relative to make him cry out loud so that the relative 
can hear this on the phone."

 Loved ones know their relatives' torment is real.

 Beatings and miserable conditions are a given, and a Brooklyn woman's daughter 
still being held captive was gang-raped by her kidnappers.

 A 30-year-old medical biller who lives in Queens Village said her best friend 
from childhood was lucky. Her kidnappers only kicked her, she said.

 "We tried our best to help - it's heartbreaking. Me and my mom and a couple of 
neighbors and our church came up with $2,500," said the woman, whose 
34-year-old friend was released.

"We had to pay $200 to wire the money. ... I pray to God it never happens 
again. I have aunts, uncles, cousins over there."

 A 56-year-old woman from Flatbush, Brooklyn, was cooking dinner on a Wednesday 
evening last November when she and her husband got the call that her toddler 
great-niece had been kidnapped in Port-au-Prince.

 The ransom for the 2-year-old was $30,000, down from the original asking price 
of $75,000. The woman, a school bus monitor who takes in only about $350 a 
week, said she collapsed.

 "It's not a death in the family, but it might as well be," she said.

She immediately withdrew her meager savings and borrowed from friends but only 
could come up with $2,000. A brother and four Miami relatives came up with the 
rest.

 "I live to pay bills and each month, I already send $150 to my relatives in 
Haiti so that they can eat and pay for their houses," the woman said last week 
as she sat surrounded by photos of her great-niece in her living room.

 "We thought there would be change in Haiti. Now my heart skips a beat every 
time someone calls from Haiti. If they kidnap my family again, I will die - 
where am I going to get the money?"

Originally published on July 5, 2005