
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 9, 1993                   TAG: 9306090226
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

RELEASE OF HAITIANS ORDERED

A federal judge denounced the Clinton and Bush administrations Tuesday for running a "prison camp" at a U.S. Navy base in Cuba for Haitian refugees infected with the AIDS virus, and ordered the refugees freed immediately.

U.S. District Judge Sterling Johnson Jr., of New York said "the Haitian camp at Guantanamo is the only known refugee camp in the world composed entirely of HIV-positive refugees." Keeping the 158 refugees there further, he ruled, "is totally unacceptable."

He did not order the government to bring the refugees to this country, saying only that they could not be detained any longer and must be free to go "anywhere but Haiti." Their lawyers said the "practical effect" of the ruling would be that all would go to U.S. cities to join families or to stay in centers set up for them.

The Clinton administration, which has continued the detention policy started under President Bush, said the Justice Department was studying its options, and made no immediate decision on what to do.

The ruling, together with the resignation Tuesday out of frustration of the Haitian military junta's designated prime minister, Marc Bazin, triggered speculation about a new wave of Haitians seeking to leave their country, perhaps in rickety boats.

The U.S. government, however, still has in force a policy of picking up all refugees bound for the United States as soon as they flee by sea, and putting them back on shore in Haiti. The Supreme Court is expected to rule shortly on the legality of that seizure policy.

Lawyers for the refugees being held at the Guantanamo base expressed doubt Tuesday that, whatever the court rules on that issue, the decision by Johnson to free those refugees would be affected. The government, though, has the option of seeking to have the judge's release order blocked, at least temporarily, during an appeal.

The judge's 53-page opinion was filled with scathing criticism of the U.S. government for holding the ill Haitians at a segregated "HIV prison camp." He wrote: "The detainees are imprisoned in squalid, prison-like camps surrounded by razor barbed wire. They are not free to wander about the base. Guarded by the military day and night, [they] are subject to surprise predrawn military sweeps conducted by soldiers outfitted in full riot gear searching for missing detainees."

Johnson ordered the U.S. government to adopt a more generous system of asylum review.

by CNB