Boat People

For the past week, Americans have witnessed with growing concern the spectacle of bedraggled refugees being plucked from vessels at sea by U.S. Coast Guard patrols and returned to the tender mercies of Haiti's bloody military dictatorship.Until the Bush administration backed off somewhat Monday by agreeing to house the refugees temporarily at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, it was doing to the Haitians exactly what it had chided Britain for doing to Vietnamese boat people who arrived in Hong Kong last year -- i.e. returning them against their will to a government bent on persecution and revenge.

I t is possible in this day and age to fly south in December and three hours later land in a city where you can sit comfortably in your T-shirt and linen jacket and eat your dinner at a cafe under palm trees and still enjoy the protections of the U.S. Constitution, which is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Paradise, in fact. The problem with paradise is that it's temporary: You don't belong here, and the neighbors are nobody you care to know, so it's only blissful for a week or so. You're in a city built on sandy marsh in a boom period, and when you look around at the freeway, the office parks, the malls, the curvy streets of houses, your hotel, you see nothing that predates 1980, nothing that distinguishes this city from Scottsdale or Fort Lauderdale or any other suburb in America, which is exhilarating to some people but not to you. And the people around you are all in the throes of relaxation.

HONG KONG -- Spurred on by hope from Washington that they may be resettled in the United States, 21,000 Vietnamese "boat people" are refusing to return home from Hong Kong refugee camps, setting the stage for what could be an ugly scene when China takes over this British colony in 18 months.Since legislation was introduced in Congress in June to help the Vietnamese refugees, no Vietnamese have volunteered to return home. Riots broke out when Hong Kong authorities tried to force them to leave.

Motoring down Spa Creek in his aluminum patrol boat Friday, George Ward points at a red canoe filled to the brim with sea water and in dire need of a bailout. "That canoe's got to go," the Annapolis deputy harbormaster says, shaking his head. "I already put a note on it." During the winter, Ward patrols the 18 miles of Annapolis coastline once a week looking for derelict boats, sinking boats, drifting boats and anything that is even a little out of the ordinary. When he sees an endangered vessel, he'll try to get in touch with the owner and let him or her know that something is amiss.

The trouble with Baltimore's juvenile court system is that there is not enough of it.The Japanese prime minister says Americans lack a work ethic? Well, he lacks tact. So there.What the Democrats really need is Hillary Clinton without Bill.We are shipping the Haitian boat people back whence they came. Native Americans are wondering why they didn't think of that for the English boat people of 1607.Bert Parks has gone to the great Beauty Pageant in the sky.The best thing to do with Eastern High School is move Lake Clifton High School to it and use the Lake Clifton campus for something else.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government expects the repatriation of Vietnamese boat people from Hong Kong to be carried out without the use of force, an administration official said yesterday."

WASHINGTON -- Human rights lawyers will fly to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, today to seek evidence that more than 5,000 Haitian boat people picked up on the high seas by U.S. Coast Guard cutters in recent weeks face unfair consideration of their asylum requests.The lawyers will argue in a Miami court Monday that the way the boat people are being screened by U.S. immigration officials prevents proper judgment on whether they are refugees with an internationally recognized right to haven outside their own country.

WHEN the Clinton administration announced this month that it would no longer forcibly return Haitian boat people who have a well-founded fear of persecution, the president himself was said to have insisted upon the change -- reminding his advisers that "they are chopping people's faces off" in Haiti.The president is right. Unfortunately, the government is still wrong.The old repatriation order remains in force. Since the announcement, 1,000 boat people have been returned to Haiti, without the promised interviews to determine whether they are in danger of persecution.

Washington. - The decision to forcibly return Haitian boat people to their country, temporarily held up by a federal judge in Miami, underscores that the U.S. government is prepared to espouse policies for other countries it is not ready to live with itself. Further, it demonstrates once again that the U.S. government is highly selective in its decisions of who it will and will not be generous toward when it comes to emergency migration.The U.S. government, at the very highest levels, has opposed the involuntary return of Vietnamese boat people.

WASHINGTON -- Panama withdrew its promise of haven to 10,000 Haitian boat people yesterday, dealing an embarrassing new blow to President Clinton and increasing pressure for U.S. military action to remove Haiti's dictatorship and stem the exodus of refugees.The Clinton administration vowed to continue offering safety to refugees without Panama's help, while trying to keep more boat people from entering the United States.It won an agreement from Grenada to house some of them there, and officials said the tent city at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,would be expanded beyond its capacity of 12,500.

WASHINGTON - If it weren't for Iraq, official attention in Washington would probably be fixed on the Caribbean nation of Haiti, where a spreading insurrection against the government and persistent poverty threaten to cause a new exodus of "boat people" bound for Florida on leaky vessels. Nine years after the United States disbanded a military junta and led an international force to restore democracy in Haiti, the hemisphere's second-oldest republic is in the grip of an armed uprising that has seized as many as 11 cities and left dozens of people dead.

HONG KONG -- When Bui Thi Minh and her husband stealthily left Vietnam in a rickety boat eight years ago in search of a brighter future, they knew their quest would be far from easy. But the couple never imagined that years after being swept onto Hong Kong's shores, they would still be in a refugee camp -- and facing the likelihood of a forced return to the country they risked their lives to flee.Barring an 11th-hour miracle, that return certainly will happen. And such a miracle seems unlikely.

HONG KONG -- Spurred on by hope from Washington that they may be resettled in the United States, 21,000 Vietnamese "boat people" are refusing to return home from Hong Kong refugee camps, setting the stage for what could be an ugly scene when China takes over this British colony in 18 months.Since legislation was introduced in Congress in June to help the Vietnamese refugees, no Vietnamese have volunteered to return home. Riots broke out when Hong Kong authorities tried to force them to leave.

San Francisco. -- In honor of the United Nations' 50th birthday San Francisco is flying U.N. flags showing two hands joined at an angle shielding the lone figure of a refugee. A more accurate symbol would show the U.N. hands slowly descending upon the figure to squeeze it into a wad and toss it back where it came from.For at least 40,000 Vietnamese boat people now in U.N.-supervised camps and detention centers throughout Southeast Asia, the flag of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees now stands for gagging, tranquilizing and tear-gassing them into submission for a one-way trip back home.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Proposed U.S. legislation that could result in offers of resettlement to tens of thousands of Vietnamese "boat people" is threatening to unravel deportation to Vietnam from detention camps throughout Asia.The plan, which has alarmed the United Nations and some Asian governments, is contained in a foreign affairs appropriations bill drafted by House Republicans.The administration opposes the measure, but it has been approved by the House International Relations Committee and is awaiting a vote by the full House of Representatives.

WASHINGTON -- Fidel Castro's release of thousands of boat people in recent days is only the latest in a series of provocations spanning more than three decades that have kept the relationship between Havana and Washington always tense, frequently troublesome and sometimes, as now, in crisis.Brutal dictator to some, heroic revolutionary to others, Mr. Castro has been a thorn in the side of the United States since he seized power in Cuba in 1959 by overthrowing the corrupt dictator Fulgencio Batista.

MIAMI -- Between the bags of beans, rice and plantains in the small La Bodega supermarket in Miami's "Little Havana," you'll find Cuban-Americans split over President Clinton's decision to block the boat people from landing here, to end family reunion visits and cut off money transfers.To J. L. Correa, retired former owner of the store in southwest Miami, Mr. Clinton has made a "big mistake" in closing the door to Cubans.A poll in the Spanish-language editions of the Miami Herald yesterday suggested that 62 percent of Cuban-Americans opposed the decision to detain the boat people at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

When the vital interests of the big powers are not involved, can the international community ever muster the will to take collective military action against tyrants and aggressors who outrage humanity? The Persian Gulf war, when oil supplies were at stake, inspired brave talk about a "new world order." But since then, international resolve has been found wanting, not least because the United States has been unable to live up to its self-proclaimed leadership role.The twin tragedies of Haiti and Bosnia underscore the problem.

MIAMI -- Between the bags of beans, rice and plantains in the small La Bodega supermarket in Miami's "Little Havana," you'll find Cuban-Americans split over President Clinton's decision to block the boat people from landing here, to end family reunion visits and cut off money transfers.To J. L. Correa, retired former owner of the store in southwest Miami, Mr. Clinton has made a "big mistake" in closing the door to Cubans.A poll in the Spanish-language editions of the Miami Herald yesterday suggested that 62 percent of Cuban-Americans opposed the decision to detain the boat people at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.