No Evidence Haitians Sent Home by U.S. Have Been Mistreated, Investigators Say : Boat people: Just to be born, live there is a ‘human rights violation,’ monitor says.

Haitian existence has descended into such a mode of oppression and misery that just to live here is a “human rights violation,” according to congressional and independent investigators.

However, these monitors say that weeks of interviews with hundreds of Haitians in key areas of the country have turned up no evidence of any specific acts of retribution by the army or its civilian allies against thousands of boat people forcibly returned here after seeking refuge in the United States.

“There is a high level of terror, fear and brutality,” said one Western investigator hired specifically to track the returning refugees, “but we have found no incidents where any of those brought back have been singled out.”

Other investigators said that at least 750 returnees have been questioned, but not otherwise abused, by Haitian authorities. The investigators said they will continue to conduct interviews for another two to three weeks.

All the interviews are conducted in private in the local Creole language with no direct involvement by either U.S. officials or Haitian government personnel, the monitors said.

And while the investigation is not nationwide, the investigators say it covers those regions where most of the 15,000 fleeing refugees live. Furthermore, their conclusions support the random impressions of journalists who have scoured the countryside, following up reports of repression.

Among those conducting investigations are former Peace Corps workers, academic anthropologists, Haitian human rights advocates and staff members of the U.S. Congress’ Government Accounting Office.

The interim findings run contrary to claims of various Haitian refugee support groups and human rights organizations in the United States as well as by London-based Amnesty International, all of whom have bitterly criticized the Bush Administration’s policy of forcing the boat people to return home.

Since the problem of the boat people emerged in the weeks after a Sept. 30 military coup overthrew the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected president, the United States has been charged with sending the refugees back to what human rights groups say is a situation of certain repression.

The Bush Administration, on the other hand, says those sent back were fleeing from economic troubles and were not eligible for political asylum in the United States. U.S. officials also say that about 5,000 Haitians have been identified as having credible claims for political-refugee status and will receive hearings on their status.

The investigators’ statements come as the United States is about to wind up the scheduled return of thousands of the boat people, most of whom have been held at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for the Bush Administration to send back boat people picked up at sea, the Coast Guard has been returning refugees on a regular schedule of three or four contingents a week.

That schedule is supposed to end today, although Coast Guard officials say return voyages will be continued as needed because new refugees are still being picked up.

While tending to support the Administration stand that returned boat people have not been singled out for mistreatment, the investigators say that the general situation for most Haitians has deteriorated seriously since the coup and continues to get worse.

“In a sense, the whole question about the treatment of the boat people misses the point,” one monitor said after several days’ work in Haiti’s southern peninsula.

“There is a extremely high level of tension and fear caused by an obvious policy of brutality and repression by the army, by section chiefs (local agents of the central government) and by attaches,” he said, referring to local thugs hired by the military to terrorize citizens.

In addition, nearly all of Haiti, and particularly its rural areas, is being pushed past economic ruin to the edge of starvation because of an international economic embargo imposed to punish the coup leaders and their supporters.

“It’s as if just living here is a violation of human rights,” said one investigator. “Hell, just being born here is a human rights violation.”

The systematic interviews and observations of the independent investigators confirm the findings made over the last two weeks by reporters in interviews with dozens of returnees.

In the area around Petit-Goave on the southern peninsula, returnees told of coming home to find that the military and their agents were constantly harassing people, sometimes beating them and extorting money.

“But this is what was going on when I left,” said a woman called Perle Jean, a 44-year-old street vendor. “It is why I left.”

She said she has not been bothered since she was brought back.

To the north, in the area around the city of Gonaives, Stevenson Damien, a fisherman who had tried to reach Florida in November and was returned in early March, said the level of misery from economic deprivation and repression is nearly intolerable.

“The section chief (a loose equivalent of a county sheriff) and his people come to the houses and demand $200. If you can only pay $100 they beat you 100 times. If you can’t pay at all they burn down your house.”

But Damien said the situation is worse for everybody and not just the returnees. “I am always afraid,” he said, “but I left because there was no work and no food.”

One monitor suggested that while the misery level is high and grounds for fear exist, an impression of near total army-government control might be misleading.

“We were told that (Aristide backers) were purposefully not resisting and often going into hiding because of a plan not to confront the army, at least until current efforts under way to arrange for Aristide’s return are played out.”

Those negotiations are supposed to culminate this week with a vote in the National Assembly on an agreement that would restore Aristide as president--but leave the date of his physical return to be arranged later. while governmental authority is turned over to opponents of the ousted leader.

But most experts say that chances for the accord have slipped to the point where army leaders who had either pledged to support it or promised to stay neutral are now telling their troops that Aristide will never return.

While some anti-military forces said that such an outlook would mean another uprising, many experts say that the Aristide forces are so fragmented and weak that it means just the opposite.