Haitian Boat

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 -- For the first time, the Clinton administration mounted a broad, unqualified legal defense yesterday of the forced return of fleeing Haitians to their homeland -- a policy President Clinton as a candidate called "cruel" and invalid.Standing before the Supreme Court, a career Justice Department lawyer made an argument that had been gone over closely by the White House, fully supporting the president's power to have Haitians picked up at sea and put back on their land without a chance to ask for asylum.

THE U.S. government's decision to close the door on thousands of Haitians desperately seeking a modicum of life, liberty and happiness has made a mockery of traditional American compassion for the downtrodden.But standing firm on wrongheaded principle -- forcing poor people to turn their boats around for the sake of bureaucratic or political expediency -- is hardly unique to the Bush administration. Sadly, we haven't learned much from the lessons of history.In 1939, Franklin Roosevelt refused entry to nearly 1,000 Jews fleeing Nazi Germany aboard the infamous St. Louis, a former luxury liner that circled helplessly for days off the coast of Miami Beach, Fla., until a Coast Guard patrol boat chased it out to sea. The St. Louis made its way back to Europe, where its forlorn passengers were put ashore.

MIAMI -- Dozens of refugees forcibly returned to Haiti in recent months have told United Nations officials that they suffered beatings, imprisonment, death threats, and other abuses that prompted them to flee their country a second time.The statements, made to interviewers last month at the refugee camp set up by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, appear to undercut a key argument made by the Bush administration in defending its policy of forcibly returning Haitian boat people.State Department officials have consistently said there was "no evidence" that any Haitians have suffered political repression upon their return.

The scenes of Haitian boat people scrambling ashore in Florida 12 days ago recalls the campaign pledge of then-candidate Bill Clinton in the face of similar events in 1992 to stop the influx of Haitian boat people to the shores of the United States. Clinton recanted after he was elected, committing his administration instead to restoring democracy and bringing about the return of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide as an antidote. Sadly, the Clinton administration failed. As the latest arrival on the beach at Miami demonstrated, Haitians are still fleeing their impoverished island, where democracy simply does not exist.

Supreme Court approval of the Bush-Clinton policy of forcing NTC Haitian refugees back to their native land without a hearing places a high moral obligation on this country. The U.S. has to make sure a United Nations oil embargo taking effect today will force Haiti's repressive military regime to its knees. The time for real pressure is now.For the first time, Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, head of the illegal junta, has agreed to negotiate directly with Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's first popularly elected president, who was overthrown in September 1991 and sent into exile.

Last time the Marines marched into Haiti, they stayed for 19 years. The U.S. occupation from July 1915 to August 1934 was justified on humanitarian grounds (a mob had butchered the president) and to uphold the Monroe Doctrine (the French presence preceded the American Revolution by more than a century). While the Americans dominated Haiti, politically and financially, they did little to endear themselves to a population that remained mired in poverty. Both countries were relieved to part company.

O.K., ONE more time: You cannot catch AIDS by hugging and kissing. You cannot catch AIDS by holding hands. You cannot catch AIDS from your favorite restaurant simply because an AIDS sufferer also dines there. You cannot catch AIDS by sharing a hat, a coat, your hopes and dreams. You cannot catch AIDS by falling in love.Why mention all of these ways you cannot catch AIDS? Because there are ignorant people out there who persist in spreading such myths.These myths help build walls between us, instead of bridges of understanding -- bridges that you and I need to cross to help society deal with this plague.

Washington.--If you wonder why U.S. officials keep criticizing China on human-rights issues, or why Freedom House lists as ''not free states'' Afghanistan, Myanmar, Egypt, Indonesia, Nigeria and others, let me tell you a story about the dimensions of human tragedy in this world:The refugees, hundreds of them, gathered on a strip of land between the borders of Somalia and Kenya. Some were frail and elderly, others sickly and orphaned. Virtually all were exhausted, with no possessions except the ragged clothes on their backs, some water containers and pouches that once had held food.

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration urged the Supreme Court yesterday to bring to a swift end the three-month legal fight in U.S. courts over the forced return to Haiti of thousands of "boat people" fleeing that Caribbean nation.In two legal documents, government lawyers criticized a federal judge in Miami for repeatedly stopping the U.S. program of returning the Haitians to their homeland after intercepting them at sea.The attorneys stopped just short of blaming Judge C. Clyde Atkins personally for the drowning of more than 100 Haitians who, they suggested, left Haiti in unsafe boats after the judge temporarily stopped the forced return of "boat people."