Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 26, 1994 TAG: 9404260127
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: B-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI LENGTH: Medium
The soldiers raided a seaside neighborhood near the west coast city of Gonaives, firing shots in the air Saturday, but causing no reported injuries.
Hours later, they returned and began shooting indiscriminately at people gathering firewood on the beach. The troops also commandeered rowboats and attacked fishermen off shore. The weekend attack was first reported Monday.
The killings come as Washington has toughened its stance against the military, which has dominated Haiti since ousting the elected Aristide in a 1991 coup. Up to 3,000 people, many of them Aristide supporters, have been killed since 1991 in political violence.
``I think this is a continuation of the effort to decapitate the democratic movement in Haiti,'' Ira Kurzban, the U.S. counsel for Aristide's government, told The Associated Press from his office in Miami.
The Raboteau slum where the attack took place has been a scene of recent struggle between Aristide supporters and militants of a paramilitary movement, the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti.
Residents and the pro-Aristide Haitian Information Bureau said the attack began with a raid on the dusty, seaside slum in Gonaives, 100 miles north of the capital Port-au-Prince.
Soldiers who said they were looking for armed Aristide partisans shot into the air, roused people from their beds and roughed them up, witnesses said.
The soldiers returned at dawn Saturday, firing at embarking fishermen. They commandeered rowboats and hunted down fishermen and merchants bringing in goods.
The bodies washed ashore gradually: three on Saturday and at least 20 from Sunday to early Monday afternoon, said the witnesses, speaking on condition of anonymity.
By Monday, many Raboteau residents had left their homes for fear of further attack.
There was no immediate comment from state radio or from the military.
Gonaives led the struggle to topple the 29-year Duvalier family dictatorship in 1986, and the city was a stronghold of support for Aristide in his overwhelming electoral triumph in 1990.
On April 17, a front militant, Pierre Paul Camille, was the victim of assault and battery, presumably by Aristide partisans, the independent Tropic F.M. radio reported.
The next day, militants set up barricades of flaming tires, Tropic reported. Soldiers raided Raboteau and beat up its residents.
On April 8, soldiers beat off an armed attack of their Petit Bourge outpost by presumed Aristide partisans. About 500 soldiers subsequently participated in regional sweeps in which peasants have had to pay ransoms to escape arbitrary arrest and women and girls were raped, the pro-Aristide Haitian Press Agency reported.
The U.S. Coast Guard, meanwhile, shipped back 98 Haitian boat people who had been intercepted trying to flee their troubled homeland. U.S. Embassy spokesman Stanley Schrager said 18 of the refugees were detained by Haitian authorities after being repatriated.
Under a May 1992 White House order, Haitian boat people intercepted at sea are returned home without a check to determine whether they are fleeing economic devastation or political persecution.
The Clinton administration said the policy keeps more Haitians from risking their lives at sea; Aristide and his supporters say the repatriations violate international law and expose the refugees to retaliation.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB