”Shameful and scandalous.”
Those words were used by a Haitian church leader and backer of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to describe the Bush administration`s decision to repatriate refugees who fled Haiti after the military overthrew Aristide four months ago.
It`s hard to disagree with him. Things did not have to go this way.
The administration could have provided the boat people temporary protection, in keeping with America`s deserved reputation as a haven for the oppressed. Instead, it fought to begin returning them to Haiti, where politically inspired violence seems to be escalating rather than subsiding.
If-or, more likely, when-the repatriated Haitians begin falling prey to the thugs in charge of their country, the moral responsibility will rest on those who chose to force them back.
The Supreme Court gave a green light for the forced repatriation last week, when it set aside a federal judge`s order that had blocked return of the refugees.
About 150 of them, a tiny fraction of the 10,000-plus Haitians being kept at a U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, set sail for Port-au-Prince on Saturday and arrived Monday.
The military rulers promised they would not be harmed. But those are the same military rulers who pledged to respect Haiti`s democratic government and institutions-and then overthrew Aristide, the country`s first democratically elected president.
The start of the refugee tide coincided with the coup and the assumption of power by the military. From its beginning, the Bush administration has been concerned not to encourage an exodus. That`s not an unreasonable fear, given Haiti`s relative proximity to the U.S.
But it should have been possible to craft some temporary expedient that would have given the refugees protection until a solution is reached to restore lawful government and the rule of law in their homeland.
In the months since Aristide`s overthrow, the U.S. has lent support to various diplomatic efforts to restore him to power, as well as to a hemispheric trade embargo of Haiti. But none of it has borne fruit.
The administration maintains that almost all of the Haitians fled for economic reasons, not out of fear of political persecution. Yet the evidence to the contrary is abundant, and the U.S. has supported the effort to restore Aristide to power because of Haiti`s errant politics, not because the unemployment rate is high.
Washington reacted with appropriate indignation and condemnation in the aftermath of the military takeover, but it has performed abysmally in responding to the refugee flow.
Now this part of its Haiti policy has gone from bad to worse. The U.S. must return to the humane course and stop sending Haitians back into the maw of deadly political chaos.
