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- <text id=92TT1199>
- <title>
- June 01, 1992: Against All Odds
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- June 01, 1992 RIO:Coming Together to Save the Earth
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK, Page 23
- WORLD
- Against All Odds
- </hdr><body>
- <p>Calm weather and abject despair drive Haitians back into the sea
- </p>
- <p> When they set out in their frail boats, most know they will
- never reach the U.S. mainland. Yet Haiti's poor are so
- desperate to escape their country's turmoil that a record 10,514
- have left the island so far in May, including 1,635 in one day
- alone last week. With the refugee camps at Guantanamo Bay in
- Cuba reportedly full and no plans for an expansion in the
- works, the Coast Guard began limiting its rescue efforts to
- refugees in "imminent danger" of sinking or starving during the
- 600-mile voyage through the northern Caribbean to Florida.
- Others were urged to return home but not stopped.
- </p>
- <p> Although May's traditionally calm seas encouraged the
- renewed exodus, the real culprit is a pervasive sense of
- hopelessness on the island fostered by the ambivalent policies
- of Haiti's neighbors. Military leaders seized power last
- September from the popularly elected President, Father
- Jean-Bertrand Aristide, but the Organization of American States
- decided only this month to tighten its embargo by barring ships
- from their ports that traded with Haiti. The U.S. supports the
- embargo and is pressuring the European Community to stop
- sending supplies, but the Pentagon has refused to strong-arm its
- onetime military allies into accepting an OAS-brokered peace
- plan.
- </p>
- <p> Aristide, who is in the U.S. to win backing for his
- return, hopes to address the United Nations this week even as
- military leaders on the island are trying to push through a new
- government formula excluding him from power. At least four
- people died last week in Port-au-Prince during a one-day general
- strike supporting his return.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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