| DAJABON, Dominican Republic — A small bridge and a narrow river are all that separate the Dominican Republic from Haiti in this small border city and for the first time in weeks, the area separating two uneasy neighbors shows hesitant signs of normality.
A twice-weekly market has re-opened, allowing Haitians to legally cross the border into the Dominican Republic and buy and sell goods in Dajabon.
But tensions continue to emanate from Haiti, a nation still trying to find its way in the wake of political change viewed by some asa U.S.-led coup against now-exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and by others as a justified rebellion in a country in need of new leadership.
Whatever Haiti’s political fate, the humanitarian situation remains grave.
“People are knocking on my door saying, ‘Help me, pastor, help me,’” said the Rev. Paul Michelet, an Assemblies of God pastor in Quanaminthe, Haiti, who had crossed the border into the Dominican Republic.
Members of his congregations, he said, were pleading for anything — food, medicines — that would alleviate their suffering.
Michelet, a Haitian, also spoke of continued shooting and murders, of kidnappings and of violence against women. Such violence has continued to sporadically spill over into the Dominican Republic, the nation with which Haiti has long shared the island of Hispaniola in an uneasy relationship.
“We don’t know who’s really in power,” said the Rev. Alejandro Fernandez, a Uruguayan pastor who works with Michelet and other ministers along the border. “There is still a lot of confusion,” Fernandez told ENI about conditions in rural Haiti, where anti-Aristide rebels are alleged to be responsible for continuing violence.
Former president Aristide fled Haiti, the western hemisphere’s poorest nation, on Feb. 29 amid charges of corruption and unhappiness with his government. Once a Roman Catholic priest, Aristide is currently in temporary exile in Jamaica. A U.S.-backed interim government is headed by Prime Minister Gerard Latortue.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Monday in Haiti that U.S. judicial authorities were looking into prosecuting Aristide on corruption charges. The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush has denied that Aristide was “kidnapped” by U.S. troops responding to the Haitian crisis, a charge initially made by the exiled president. But some critics, some of them church-based, continue to argue that the Bush administration had long been trying to destabilize the Aristide government.
The Ecumenical Program on Central America and the Caribbean (EPICA), a Washington-based coalition of religious and social action groups, is one of a number of U.S. groups calling for a formal investigation into the recent US role in Haiti. It said alleged U.S. support for Aristide’s ousting was a “flagrant violation of international sovereignty laws” because, it said, the United States overthrew “the democratically elected president of Haiti.”
“This reckless usurpation of power further isolates the United States in the global community of nations and more closely resembles the activities of a rogue state,” the ecumenical coalition said in a recent statement.
Whatever is determined about the U.S. role in Haiti, observers say political reprisals have become the norm, despite the presence of a multilateral force that includes European and US troops. Aristide supporters, in particular, have said they have experienced harassment in recent weeks.
This has been confirmed by human rights observers, including New York-based Human Rights Watch, a U.S. human rights group, which said that in northern Haiti — the area just across the border from Dajabon — leaders of Aristide’s “Lavalas” party and its supporters are in hiding.
“The rule of law has yet to be re-established in the north,” Human Rights Watch said in a Marc h 22 statement. The agency had previously stated that the rebels who eventually overran and controlled the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, including rebel leader Guy Philippe, had a long history of human rights abuses.
Meanwhile, interim leader Latortue announced on Monday he would create a commission modeled on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission to deal with past crimes and grievances.
|
