From: nicanet@nyxfer.UUCP
Newsgroups: soc.culture.caribbean
Subject: Haiti News Update 12/20/92
Date: 21 Dec 92 22:23:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #N:9PB6VB8w165w@nyxfer.uucp:1431798053:000:5156
Nf-From: nyxfer.uucp!nicanet    Dec 21 14:23:00 1992


Subject: Haiti News Update 12/20/92
From: nyxfer!nicanet (NicaNet NY)


Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit

from...
         Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York
       339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499

            Weekly News Update #151, December 20, 1992


HAITI: REGIME STEPS UP REPRESSION OF YOUTH

The de facto Haitian government, installed by a military coup in
the fall of 1991, has been moving recently to consolidate control
over the state university. In late November Education Minister
Max Carre disbanded the elected student-faculty councils at the
teachers college and the two liberal arts schools; in December,
the government closed down two of these schools, announcing that
they would be reopened with new enrollments. On Dec. 1 the
Education Ministry replaced the dean of the agriculture school;
when the students demonstrated that day, soldiers beat more than
sixty of the protestors. Eighteen students are still missing. On
Dec. 12 police arrested two students from the teachers college.
They remain in custody, as do three high school students arrested
Nov. 27. The government followed up the repression with the Dec.
10 appointment of Gerard Bissainthe as rector of the university.
Bissainthe worked as information minister in the first government
formed after the coup and is a well-known opponent of university
autonomy.
 
The repression at the university seems in line with the designs
of de facto Prime Minister Marc Bazin, a longtime US favorite who
was appointed to his current position by the military last June
and who has been working hard to impose direct control over a
number of government agencies, including the Tax and Accounting
Office, the Education Ministry and the Electoral Council. Losing
support from army head General Raoul Cedras--who made remarks in
November about "personalist" and "electionist" polticians--Bazin
may be trying to build up his power base in the hopes of keeping
his position if elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide returns
to office. [Haiti Info Bulletin #9 12/19/92]
 
Two human rights coalitions, the Haitian Platform for the Defense
of Human Rights aand the Private Development Organizations
Committee (Inter-OPD), released a report on Dec. 10 detailing
government human rights abuses since the coup. The groups say
they have documented 1,867 illegal executions as of November
(they estimate that a total of 3,000 have taken place), 5,096
illegal arrests, and 2,482 illegal searches with damage to
persons or property. They say 45% of the victims were under the
age of 25, with 15% under 15. In a recent case, armed men rounded
up seven youths north of Port-au-Prince on the morning of Dec. 6,
shot them and buried them. One, 20-year-old Jean Sony Philogene,
survived and escaped; later in the day, five armed men found him
in the Canape Vert hospital and shot him dead while his
grandmother was visiting him. The military explained later that
the young men had been drug dealers. [Haiti Info Bulletin #9
12/19/92; Inter Press Service 12/10/92]
 

SOLARZ AND TORRICELLI ADVISE CLINTON ON HAITI POLICY

The Washington Post reports that "many prominent Democrats" are
urging Bill Clinton to make a "dramatic gesture" on Haiti before
his inauguration in order to forestall an "exodus from Haiti on
the scale of the 1980 boatlift that brought thousands to this
country from Mariel, Cuba." The Clinton team has outlined a
variety of options, including a tightening of the year-old trade
embargo against Haiti or the use of UN military intervention to
restore the elected government. Other options include dropping
Aristide, describedMIRROR as "a radical priest with anti-American
leanings" whose "strident populism led the Haitian armed forces
to seize power." (Bazin, by contrast, is described as "well-known
and well-regarded in the United States.") In this plan, former
president Jimmy Carter or former UN ambassador Andrew Young would
be sent to warn Aristide to be "more cooperative" or lose US
backing.
 
The Post reports that the Clinton people are asking for advice
from several members of Congress, including Rep. Charles Rangel
(D-NY), Rep. Robert Torricelli (D-NJ), ex-Rep. Michael Barnes (D-
MD), and Stephen Solarz (D-NY), who recently visited Haiti.
[12/20/92] Torricelli is the author of the anti-Cuba "Torricelli
Bill"; Solarz, driven from Congress in the fall by the House
check bouncing scandal and by Latino voters in New York City, has
been a forceful proponent of Bush-Reagan military interventions.
 

                               -30-

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