THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 15, 1994 TAG: 9409150432
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A16 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
Concertina wire, wound in jagged loops as big as a hula hoop, snakes around and through the tent cities that have sprung up at the U.S. naval base to hold more than 40,000 frustrated and angry refugees.
In some spots, the coils are doubled and even tripled to mark ``boundaries,'' as the military chooses to call the barbed-wire fences.
As if to scoff at the mild menace, for they could easily breach the wire by using a military cot as a bridge, refugees have turned the wires into makeshift laundry lines for their sheets and shirts.
The military itself has thrown camouflage webbing and neon orange plastic mesh over the wire in some sections to soften its message.
But such humanizing touches can hardly mask the fact that the refugee camps at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base are bleak and unhappy places. Holding more than 30,000 Cubans and 14,000 Haitians, the camps are simmering with the resentment of people who feel they have been lied to and treated unjustly by the U.S. government, even as it spends millions to feed and shelter them instead of allowing them to step onto U.S. shores.
There have been a few incidents of violence in the camps under U.S. jurisdiction, including two rapes at the Haitian camp. Military commanders so far have largely held the anger at bay with a humanitarian arsenal that includes schools and transistor radios, baseball gloves and soccer balls. With every amenity, base commanders say, the frustration level ratchets down.
But for how long?
Friday's U.S.-Cuba agreement should stem the flow of refugees that has caused the Cuban population here to grow so rapidly. But it offers those already at Guantanamo no option but to move to another detention camp elsewhere in the Caribbean or return to a homeland they risked their lives to escape.
The Haitians, with no hope of reaching America, can only await the demise of the dictatorial regime back home.
``It's a large group of frustrated and potentially angry people,'' said Brig. Gen. Michael Williams, the base commander. ``And it doesn't take much to turn frustrated people into an angry crowd, and once they're angry they're only minutes away from becoming a mob.''
The suppressed anger already has bubbled over, as petty misunderstandings over orange juice and a soccer ball have escalated into rock-throwing melees directed at military police patrolling the camps. The military is ``segregating'' single males in separate camps from families and single women, and requires that they spend the night in their designated sections. ILLUSTRATION: Staff graphic
CubaWatch Wednesday
Source: U.S. Coast Guard, Defense Department, National Weather
Service
KEYWORDS: CUBA REFUGEES by CNB