30396: (news) Chamberlain: Haitian Boat Capsizes (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   CAP-HAITIEN, May 10 (AP) -- Survivors of a capsizing that killed at
least 61 Haitian migrants said a Turks and Caicos patrol boat rammed them,
towed them into deeper water and abandoned their overturned vessel.
   "Our boat flipped over and they just left us out there," said Dona
Daniel, 23, one of a half-dozen survivors interviewed by The Associated
Press on Thursday after they were repatriated to Haiti from the nearby
British territory.
   The survivors said some migrants tried desperately to pull themselves
aboard the patrol boat but were beaten back with wooden batons.
   Others were run over by the patrol boat after they were flung into the
shark-filled waters as their boat capsized, said Lovderson Nacon, 19.
   Many of the migrants did not know how to swim and were screaming "God
help me!" in the darkness, Nacon said.
   The Haitians said their sailboat, loaded with an estimated 160 people,
was minutes away from the shore of Providenciales, one of the Turks and
Caicos Islands, on May 4 when the patrol boat rammed them before dawn.
   "When they hit us the first time, water rushed into the boat and
everybody screamed," Daniel said. The patrol boat crew ordered the migrants
to lower their sails, threw them a line and began towing them into deeper
water. The boat then capsized, he said.
   "We thought they were bringing us to shore but they took us further out
to sea," said Daniel, whose two brothers drowned.
   Minutes after towing began, the migrants' boat jerked violently and
tipped over, flinging everyone into the water, several survivors said.
   "They were towing us but they pulled too hard and the boat flipped
over," said another migrant, Marcelin Charles, 37. "We fell into the water
and many people drowned. I was swimming past dead bodies left and right."
   The Turks and Caicos government has said it will not comment until two
investigations are completed. Britain's Foreign Office also declined to
comment on the capsizing in its island territory. One probe is being
conducted by the local government, and three government experts from
Britain are carrying out an independent investigation.
   The Turks and Caicos government has criticized Haiti for not doing
enough to stem illegal migration. Some 400 Haitians arrive monthly in the
British territory of 20,000, many having been duped by migrant smugglers
into thinking they were being taken to the United States, officials say.
   After being flown back to Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city, the
migrants, wearing maroon T-shirts and athletic pants, were driven on a
school bus to a gymnasium where about 100 relatives, many weeping, greeted
them.
   The relatives called out their loved ones' names, not sure if they had
survived the worst disaster to hit Haitian migrants in years. More than a
dozen are still missing and presumed dead.
   Nacon said he was in the water for more than 15 minutes before a smaller
Turks and Caicos patrol boat came out to pull survivors from the water.
Other migrants said they were in the water for more than 40 minutes as they
waited for the rescue boat to make a return trip.
   "They heard us screaming so much, they finally came and helped us,"
Nacon said. "The people who knew how to swim lived. The people who didn't
drowned."
   At United Nations headquarters in New York, spokeswoman Michele Montas
earlier Thursday described the capsizing as "a tragedy" and said "it could
have been avoided." However Montas, a Haitian, said the U.N. had no further
comment and that the issue was between the Turks and Caicos Islands and
Haiti.
   Jeanne Bernard Pierre, director-general of Haiti's National Migration
Office, said Tuesday that the Haitian government would consider the ramming
of a migrant boat to be a "criminal" act.