Jamaica asks UN for help with refugees

[seemslikeadream]

Observer Reporter
Tuesday, April 27, 2004



Jamaica yesterday appealed for assistance from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) after 130 more Haitian boat people arrived in the island, putting additional pressure on the island to deal with the Haitian refugee problem.

The latest arrivals pushed to 491 the number of Haitians to have made the perilous 100-mile journey in small overcrowded boats from their homeland to Jamaica since the influx began in February, at the height of the unrest that culminated with the overthrow of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The overthrown president is currently on temporary asylum in Jamaica ahead of going to South Africa.

"We expect financial support from the UNHCR by the end of the week," said foreign minister K D Knight.

Jamaica had warned that it would need international help to cope with the problem if the arrivals continued, but officials had hoped that the flow of refugees would have subsided with the relative calm in the country that followed the installation of the interim government of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue.

But two separate batches arrived in Manchioneal, Portland and at Quaw in St Thomas between Sunday night and early Monday, forcing the Jamaican authorities to launch its appeal.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/20040427T000000-0500_59083_OBS_JAMAICA_ASKS_UN_FOR_HELP_WITH_REFUGEES.asp

[seemslikeadream]

1. Blood-soaked bureaucrats

John Maxwell COMMON SENSE
Sunday, April 25, 2004


Petionville, Haiti - Escorted by police, rebel commander Louis-Jodel Chamblain waves as he walks to a jail to surrender to justice officials in suburban Petionville, outside Port-au-Prince last Thursday. At right is Chamblain's lawyer, Stamblei Gouse. (Photo: AP)


Nowhere is it more true that the pen is mightier than the sword than in an efficient bureaucracy. Millions more were killed by Adolf Eichmann, the dispatcher, than by the armies of Rommel or Timoshenko.

But the machete wielders and the pistoleros are not to be despised as they do the work of the often faceless placemen who sign the orders, or like Henry II, simply express the wish to be rid of turbulent priests, journalists or human rights agitators.
The Guatemalan government has just admitted its responsibility for the 1991 slaughter of an American anthropologist. She had angered the then government by reporting that the government was massacring civilians, indigenous Mayas, in what it called a counter-insurgency campaign backed and financed by the United States.

In Haiti, on January 24, 1991, the family of 24 year-old youth leader, Yvon Desanges, found his body just outside their gate. They knew him by the clothes he was wearing, his face too badly mutilated to be recognised. There was a rope around his neck. His hands were tied. His eyes had been gouged out. His tongue had been cut out. He had been stabbed so many times it was impossible to count the wounds. He had been shot several times. His abdomen had been slit so that his guts spilled out onto the street.

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http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/html/20040425T000000-0500_58952_OBS_BLOOD_SOAKED_BUREAUCRATS.asp

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2. seemslikeadream

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