From: nyxfer%panix.com@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (N.Y. Transfer)
Subject: NEWS:US "Deathcamps" for HIV+ Haitians/WW
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: ?
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 19:51:25 GMT



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

U.S. "Death Camps" for Haitians with HIV

By Pat Chin

Two hundred and thirty-three HIV-positive Haitian refugees and 61
of their family members are being detained at Camp Bulkeley,
located in a remote corner of U.S.-occupied Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
They were among the first waves of people who fled Haiti after
the bloody 1991 military coup that toppled popularly-elected
Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide.

In what the Aug. 25 Village Voice describes as "the first mass
isolation facility for HIV-positive people organized by the U.S.
government," the Haitians are being held under armed guard behind
barbed wire. They cannnot make phone calls, lawyers are not
allowed there, and journalists have been banned from the area.
All letters are checked and censored before being dispatched.

The 294 internees were among 37,000 refugees stopped on the high
seas by the U.S. Coast Guard and taken to Guantanamo Bay. "Past
INS practice," said the Village Voice, "had been to bring
eligible asylum seekers to the mainland before medical testing.
But since February none of the refugees at Guantanamo has been
granted entry without taking the HIV test. And none who test
positive have been admitted." Close to 30,000 fleeing Haitians
have been involuntarily returned to the escalating reign of
terror in their homeland.

After being taken to Guantanamo Bay by the Coast Guard, the
refugees were tested without explanation. One detainee,
Port-au-Prince dentist Franz Guerrier, was pinned down by MPs and
tested. He was never told the results. The Miami-based National
Coalition for Haitian Refugees has documented the assault and
jailing of at least five refugees who refused to be tested and
the forcible repatriation of 100 others who also resisted.

Months later this past April, after being herded into a hangar
under the pretext of being flown to Miami, the refugees heard
test results publicly announced over a loudspeaker. "People were
screaming and crying" said Jacques Fabre, a Haitian priest who
was present.

The concentration camp-like conditions at the U.S. Navy-run site
were first revealed in a July 27 letter written to the National
Coalition for Haitian Refugees. Smuggled from Guantanamo, the
correspondence was written by all 294 refugees at Camp Bulkeley.
It invoked the name of Haitian national hero Boukman, who "fought
to see us out of slavery," and of Toussant L'Ouverture,
Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Charlemagne Peralte, leaders in the
fight for independence from French colonialism and U.S.
domination.

Conditions where a dog couldn't live

The letter described "conditions where a dog couldn't live,
because he would have died with remorse." The communique blasted
the racist nature of the internments and exposed the brutally
"bad treatment from medical to beatings" at what is now being
called a death camp. It also described demonstrations against the
detentions and cruel mistreatment.

"We will try to explain to you something very painful," said the
letter. "We think it will probably make you cry, but be strong.
On July 13 all of us on the base mobilized, in the camp, to stage
a peaceful march, where everyone was crying because the pain was
unbearable. ...

"We can no longer live under these conditions, we are housed in a
barn. On July 17, there were 20 Haitians who were trying to leave
the camp because they couldn't live in these conditions, they
were arrested. The military wanted to incarcerate these people.
Meanwhile all 294 in the camp took to the streets to protest that
they can't live on a military base, we spent the day under the
sun.
...

"While the protest was taking place, five military personnel
grabbed an Haitian and they were mistreating him, we all got into
the action. ... On the following day July 18, at around 4 p.m. we
noticed that our camp was surrounded by about 2,000 heavily armed
soldiers, with iron batons, bullet proof vests--at any rate they
were heavily armed. Well this scenario really did hurt us,
because we thought we were going to die without our families
being able to recover our cadavers.

"Thirty minutes later two airplanes came down low over our heads.
... Afterwards, the soldiers went to the camp, handcuffed us and
beat us with aluminum batons. It would be very painful to see how
your brothers were being treated. They destroyed our belongings
in the camp. ..."

Allegations of rape

Protesters have also been hosed down and jailed. Those labelled
"toublemakers" have had their food rations cut. According to a
news report aired on Pacifica Radio-WBAI Aug. 18, there have also
been allegations of rape.

Meanwhile, there was an ominous sign that the U.S. plans to hold
these HIV-positive Haitians and their family members hostage for
some time to come at Camp Bulkeley. New facilities are being
built to, as was aptly put in the July 27 letter, "to assert the
fact that Haitians spread AIDS around the world."

As if the Bush administration's callous, racist and illegal
policy of returning fleeing Haitians to the military-backed
carnage in their homeland were not enough, now comes news of the
indescribably cruel treatment of refugees who are HIV-positive.
But revelations about Camp Bulkeley have sparked a growing chorus
of criticism of the Bush administration, from Haiti solidarity
groups to international organizations and even U.S. government
health officials.

                              -30-

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted
if source is cited. For more info contact Workers World,46 W. 21
St., New York, NY 10010; "workers@igc.apc.org".)

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