COUNTYWIDE : Activists Protest for Haitians

About 30 activists rallied Friday in front of the Federal Building in Santa Ana against the U.S. government’s forced repatriation of Haitian refugees and called for the return of Haiti’s democratically elected government.

“We just want people to see this,” said Dr. Frantz Delva, a physician from San Diego and head of the Coalition for a Democratic Haiti, who joined protesters carrying banners and a cardboard cutout of the “Goddess of Democracy,” in emulation of the sculpture erected by Chinese students in Tian An Men Square in 1989.

“People are dying in Haiti,” he said, “and we just want people to call or write their congressmen telling them the people want democracy in Haiti.”

Few pedestrians or motorists stopped or joined the crowd, nor did the protesters chant or march.

“We just want the people who drive by to have their consciousness raised just a little bit,” said Sam Day, 65, who lives in Wisconsin and is in the county on vacation. “We have a modest goal. People in Orange County should know that citizens are concerned enough about human rights to spend the lunch hour on a street corner.”

The elected government of Haiti’s deposed president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was toppled in September in a military coup. Since then, thousands of refugees seeking to enter the United States have been held at the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, awaiting repatriation to Haiti.

Delva said he telephones his cousin in Haiti nearly every day to check on the situation there.

“He hears shooting in the area all the time,” Delva said. “The oppression is very bad. He doesn’t want to be arrested.”