U.S. Disputed as Rights Groups Detail Abuses in Haiti

Systematic human rights abuses continue in Haiti, three groups said Monday, disputing the Bush Administration’s contention that no Haitians who have fled their homeland have been persecuted since being returned to the strife-torn Caribbean nation.

After a recent trip to Haiti, Americas Watch, the National Coalition for Haitian Refugees and Physicians for Human Rights said the regime that seized control on Sept. 30 has terrorized poor neighborhoods.

It has shut down labor unions, church groups and private radio stations. And it has threatened patients and officials in hospitals and destroyed crops. As a result of the intimidation, thousands of Haitians have been forced to flee their homes, the groups said.

They criticized the Bush Administration for what they said was its muted criticism of the regime that deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. They urged President Bush to give the more than 8,000 Haitian refugees asylum until stability is restored.

Since the September coup, “the army has embarked on a systematic and continuing campaign to stamp out the vibrant civil society that has taken root in Haiti,” the groups said.

But a State Department spokesman said Monday that U.S. officials in Haiti have monitored the treatment of 416 Haitians returned since the coup. So far, “we have seen no generalized persecution of people who have gone back,” spokesman Richard Boucher said at a press briefing Monday.

In their report, the three groups said the post-coup massacres have ended. But “selected assassinations, disappearances, severe beatings and political arrests continue.” It also said that some Haitians have been arrested merely for having photos of Aristide in their homes.

The report quotes “reliable Haitian human rights groups” as estimating that 1,000 Haitians were killed in the first two weeks after the coup and another 500 since.

The groups said the army has attacked and “neutralized” organizations--including church groups and labor unions--believing that assembly by their members could spawn organized resistance. Haiti’s private radio stations, the most important mass media for the nation’s dispersed, largely illiterate population, have been silenced. Earlier this month, one radio station manager was abducted.

In their place, the government established Radio VSN-57, named for the Tontons Macoutes secret police of former Haitian strongman Francois Duvalier, the groups said. To intimidate enemies, the station recently began broadcasting threats against specific Aristide supporters and groups.

The report said the coup has brought “an alarming deterioration in the already abysmal state of health care in Haiti.” Dr. Steven Oliver, of Physicians for Human Rights, told of a gunshot victim who was forced to wait eight days for an operation. He displayed photographs of Haitians who had been beaten with police batons and heavy cables.

Some physicians who supported Aristide have been arrested, Oliver said, and others fled after being threatened. The report said that some rural health-care clinic workers--who often provide the only care available--also fled from fear of the army. The army has burned silos and slaughtered livestock in parts of the countryside.

The report said the new regime has freed about half of the estimated 1,000 prisoners in the National Penitentiary. Among them were secret police officials of the former Duvalier regime who had been jailed for torturing or murdering political opponents.

The report also told of an interview with Jean-Jacques Honorat, the former Haitian human rights advocate who has become the new regime’s senior civilian official. He acknowledged that some district police chiefs and land holders were taking “revenge” on former Aristide officials, but he insisted that “we are fighting that.”

He blamed his government’s bad image on the international press and the French Embassy, saying: “This country has been under an international wave of press defamation. I have one word for it: ‘racism.’ ”