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                                                                                WORLD, Page 44

THE CARIBBEAN

Showing Them the Way Home


Washington has begun repatriating Haitians, but an acute dilemma
remains: Is the U.S. right to close its door?

By JILL SMOLOWE -- Reported by Bernard Diederich/Port-au-Prince
and J.F.O. McAllister/Washington


    By the hundreds, Haitian boat people in search of asylum
in the U.S. were delivered by Coast Guard cutters back to
Port-au-Prince. Each was fingerprinted and photographed by local
immigration officers. Just routine procedure, police assured
scores of foreign journalists. But the swiftness with which the
returnees melted into the population suggested that these
Haitians were more than a little skeptical -- perhaps with good
cause.

    Three days after his repatriation from the detention camp
at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba, a youth who
identified himself only as Marcelin spoke briefly with TIME. He
said that last Monday, within hours of returning to his family
in Carrefour on the southern fringes of the Haitian capital, a
soldier and a man in civilian clothes appeared at his door.
Addressing him by name, they asked where he had been for the
past two months. "Cap Haitien," Marcelin answered, referring to
a city in north Haiti. "You were over there in Guantanamo, not
Cap Haitien," one of the men responded. "O.K., we'll come for
you. We'll come and kill you." Soon after that, Marcelin boarded
a bus back to Port-au-Prince and went into hiding.

    Such accounts by frightened returnees have done nothing to
move the Bush Administration to reconsider its plan to ship
home more than 10,000 Haitian boat people from Guantanamo. The
dilemma for Washington remains acute: Are these people merely
looking for a better life, or genuinely in danger of
persecution?

    Those in danger are supposed to be admitted to the U.S. --
but proving they face reprisals, even death, back home is
rarely easy. Those seeking a better life pose one of the more
painful questions for a nation philosophically committed to an
open door. While Administration officials acknowledge that the
political climate in Haiti has worsened since the Sept. 30 coup
that deposed democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, they maintain that most of the boat people are
economic migrants whose free-floating fears of persecution are
not grounds enough for asylum. Backed by a Jan. 31 Supreme Court
decision, little can now deter the Administration's plan to
empty the detention camps, save a public outcry.

    On Capitol Hill, a House Judiciary subcommittee approved
a bill halting the exodus until violence in Haiti is
sufficiently reduced so that no returnee faces "persecution or
politically motivated violence." But with Congress in recess
until Feb. 18, the Administration has time to return thousands
more Haitians before the bill can be put to both houses for a
vote.

    Human-rights activists are waging a loud campaign to halt
the repatriations, backed by groups ranging from the N.A.A.C.P.
and AFL-CIO to the American Jewish Committee and the U.S.
Catholic Conference. But it is uncertain how long Americans will
listen. "The White House is banking on the fact that people
won't care," says a disillusioned Republican congressional
staffer. "Politics, not principle, is the overriding
consideration."

    With the presidential race under way, the White House has
apparently not forgotten the drubbing Jimmy Carter took in 1980
from Florida voters after the Mariel boat lift, which settled
some 125,000 Cubans in the U.S., mostly in Miami. The state,
which already houses 80% of the 1,402 Haitians who have been let
in to make their case for political asylum, can expect to be
hard hit by further waves of refugees. Yet last week the
repatriations drew fire from Florida politicians, including
Senator Connie Mack, a conservative Republican, who charged that
the policy was "based on crisis management instead of the
principle of freedom."

    Meanwhile, the Administration strove to create the
impression that it was taking humanitarian steps to alleviate
Haitians' suffering. Officials spoke of "redirecting" the
economic embargo imposed by the Organization of American States,
to relieve pressure on ordinary Haitians and target the assets
of individuals connected with the coup. Yet in the four months
since the trade ban was imposed Bush has taken no steps to
implement such a "scalpel embargo," giving coup sympathizers
time to clear their assets out of the U.S. An official
acknowledged that the Administration had bowed to domestic
business interests after complaints that the embargo had shut
down U.S.-operated assembly plants in Haiti, putting 40,000
locals out of work and costing U.S. jobs.

    Washington's decision emboldened Haiti's army officers to
stall the docking of two U.S. ships carrying 508 boat people.
"The military believes it can get the U.S. to soften up the
embargo even more," says a leading Haitian businessman. Last
week, as the commander of the country's armed forces elevated
to a top post a former police chief who was fired by Aristide,
the prospect of the deposed President's return seemed more
remote than ever.

    Washington still has many untested weapons at its
disposal. It could grant the boat people temporary protection,
spearhead an oil blockade or try to rally support for an
international peace-keeping mission that would guard against
human-rights violations. But as last week closed, it was hard
to shake the sense that the Bush Administration was giving up
on Haitians -- and their democratic aspirations -- for good.