Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 14, 1992 TAG: 9202140443
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB and ADELE DELLAVALLE-RAUTH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
THE TV-NEWS headline still rings in our ears: "Haitians are now beginning their return home after their stay at a U.S. Naval Base in the Caribbean."Sound like a vacation? Let us fill in the gaps.
Following a bloody coup d'etat during the night of Sept. 29-30, 1991, the military virtually took Haiti hostage, cutting off all outside communication. President Jean Bertrand Aristide barely escaped assassination and was forced into exile. Within days, thousands of helpless civilians were randomly killed on the streets and in their homes. Since then, 70 percent of the population - i.e., all who support Aristide's government - is targeted for arrest, torture, disappearance and murder, continuing an unprecedented climate of fear and repression.
This is why more than 14,000 Haitians desperately crowded into unseaworthy boats out of fear for their lives, only to be picked up by U.S. Coast Guard cutters and imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (Little known: 25,000 have also fled to the neighboring Dominican Republic.)
Eyewitnesses described conditions in Guantanamo as resembling a concentration camp. Men, women and children were thrown inhumanely together behind barbed-wire enclosures. There was no privacy for even the act of childbirth. According to one American visitor, there were only 120 toilets and 40 showers for a camp that had as many as 7,000 residents.
On Oct. 2, 1991, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker spoke boldly before the Organization of American States:
"The test we face is clear: to defend democracy; to stand united as a community of democracies; to make clear that the assault on Haiti's constitutional government has no legitimacy and will not succeed . . . . The United States stands as a member of this proud organization. The United States condemns this assault on Haiti's democratically elected government and the violence committed against innocent Haitians . . . . Until President Aristide's government is restored, this junta will be treated as a pariah throughout this hemisphere - without assistance, without friends, and without a future. We do not and we will not recognize this outlaw regime."[Emphases Baker's.]
Since Baker's statement, we have searched for the will behind these words. We have found a deafening silence regarding the human-rights violations so blatantly occurring everyday against Haitians.
Instead, we have found a tacit acknowledgement of the outlaw regime controlling Haiti. Press coverage has, at times, even favored the coup leaders. The U.S. press continued to contradict itself during October and November.
On one hand, Aristide was presented as the legitimately elected president in Haiti's first free, fair and democratic elections and should thus return to office in Haiti. On the other hand, Aristide was presented as an authoritarian leader with a questionable human-rights record. Yet in no case was a human-rights violation found to be associated with the Aristide government.
We have searched for consistency between U.S. rhetoric and U.S. actions. And now, demonstrating the height of inconsistency, the U.S. Supreme Court, overturning lower-court decisions to grant political asylum to fleeing Haitians, has sided with Bush's contention that they are "economic refugees, leaving Haiti to seek a better life in the U.S."
Christians, Jews and believers of other faiths should be especially outraged at this turn events. It is reminiscent of the 1939 Jewish boat people who were turned away by the British from the shores of then-Palestine, to face certain death in the gas chambers of the Hitler regime. Let us consider the adage that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
We call upon America to fulfill its claim to be a defender of human rights; to be a leader in welcoming those yearning to be free; to be hope for those who are powerless and have nowhere else to turn. Refusing these refugees is a ruse to prevent a relatively small number of Haitians from entering U.S. borders in order to save their lives. Haitians sent back are subject to beatings, torture and death at the hands of the military.
It is up to the citizenry of this potentially great country to challenge our leaders to act in conformity with Baker's words. Our exercise of democracy is tied up with every nation in the Western Hemisphere. To allow military rule in any country is ultimately to support military rule in our own.
During a surprise visit to Washington, D.C., not covered by the press, President Aristide himself on Jan. 19 told a gathering of more than 300 U.S. and Haitian supporters: "If we win, you win; if we lose, you lose."
Let us break the deafening silence surrounding Haiti's plight. At the very least, Congress should grant Temporary Protected Status for political refugees fleeing Haiti, and there should be active OAS involvement in returning Aristide to office.
Silence is complicity. In this case, silence is a matter of life or death.
Bob and Adele DellaValle-Rauth, of Huddleston, are members of the Haitian Commission of the Richmond Catholic Diocese. She has been to Haiti twice; he was there in 1990.