THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 6, 1994 TAG: 9409060207
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL STATION, CUBA LENGTH: Long : 120 lines
Their pace is furious, but they're used to it, the troops will tell you. If the tents, fuel and food keep coming and the water keeps flowing, they can go on forever, many say.
But the hardening faces of the more than 34,000 Cuban and Haitian refugees camped at this post in southeast Cuba send a different message. And some in the camps - the Haitians especially - speak openly of troubles to come unless the Americans find them new, permanent homes or solve the problems that drove them to forsake their homelands.
Those troubles surfaced briefly on Sunday when some Haitian refugees participated in a rock-throwing protest of a Panamanian agreement to accept as many as 10,000 Cuban refugees after that country had rejected a similar deal for Haitians this summer. Six soldiers were injured.
``The tension is growing every day,'' said Jean Kesnel, the elected leader of one of the Haitian camps.
Kesnel is among more than 14,000 Haitians living in desert-tan tents that U.S. troops have staked into a former airport runway. His camp sits near the entrance to Guantanamo Bay and catches a steady breeze, but under the summer sun, temperatures on the asphalt often soar past 100 degrees before midday.
Two miles and a couple of ridge lines away, 20,000-plus Cubans live in tents erected on a former rifle range and Marine training area. Here, the heat is more tolerable, but everything and everyone is caked in dust stirred up by the trucks that haul food, water and other supplies along the dirt roads.
In both places, the refugees get cots and bedding, medical care and three meals a day. Water is available, but scarce; boredom is abundant.
Not getting enough of anything, anything at all,'' Manis Badio said in broken English as he escorted a visiting reporter to his tent - No. 173 in Haitian Camp 2 - one morning last week.
He was grateful when American sailors plucked him from the Caribbean in June, but after two months on the paving, Badio wants out. As a former activist in an opposition political party, he figures he'd be imprisoned or killed by Haiti's military dictators if he returned home, but he said he's about ready to take his chances.
Sitting on a cot next to Badio, Dieph Fan Fan nodded in agreement. He was never involved in politics back in Haiti, he said, but he happened to be around when military police murdered a friend who was an activist. The cops apparently thought it untidy to leave witnesses. When they couldn't catch Fan on their own, they offered $500 to anyone who would kill him.
Fan said he is slowly going blind. He's been to American doctors at the camp repeatedly, he said, but ``they don't do nothing.''
A United Nations refugee worker who toured one of the Haitian camps with reporters last week described them as well run and humane, much better than most refugee outposts. Unarmed U.S. troops circulate easily through the camps, often bantering with the residents in Creole. Though the camps are ringed by concertina wire, most of the makeshift fence is covered with camouflage netting and is more boundary than barrier; the migrants can scale it easily by stacking their cots to form bridges.
Around all the camps, the Americans have laid out soccer and baseball fields, provided puzzles and other simple diversions and encouraged limited self-government. They say they're recruiting chefs from the migrant ranks as well, apparently hoping that some home-cooking will trigger homesickness and spur requests for repatriation.
Told of U.S. claims, Badio snorted, then walked across his tent to retrieve a paper plate. ``I don't see Americans eat this food,'' he said, showing off a large but untouched helping of red beans and rice. The mixture is cooked until it's so dry it can barely be swallowed, he said. Other Haitians said it's often served at all three daily meals.
After two months at Guantanamo and visits from countless journalists, the Haitians have gained a measure of media savvy. Kesnel, Camp 2's leader, introduced fellow refugee Claud Henri as his ``public relations adviser'' when reporters interviewed him last week. Henri, in turn, displayed a grasp of U.S. immigration laws by suggesting that the Clinton administration should provide asylum to Haitians who fled their homes for political reasons and ``do what they want'' with the rest.
At the Radio Range, a former rifle range for sailors and Marines stationed at Guantanamo, a new camp for Cuban refugees took shape last week under the watchful eyes of guards posted in a nearby tower by Fidel Castro's communist regime.
Most of the 700-plus Cubans in ``Camp M'' by midweek had been picked up by U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships only a day or two earlier. Dozens crowded around visiting journalists, begging for help in getting word of their whereabouts to Cuban-American relatives.
While U.S. authorities said most Haitians now seem to accept President Clinton's insistence that they will not be admitted to the United States, many Cubans appear to believe the president will relent and let them join family members in Florida and elsewhere.
``We're grateful to the U.S. government for what they are doing for us. . . '' said Jorge Martinez Pena, the camp's elected leader. ``We trust in the wisdom and the humanitarian assistance of the U.S.''
With Clinton coming under increasing pressure in the United States to broaden talks with Castro and discuss lifting a 30-year-old trade embargo, some of the Cubans said the president should hold firm.
``Everything the Americans can do to press Castro to leave power would be good,'' said Joe Torres, who was acting as Pena's interpreter. If the embargo is lifted while Castro is still around, conditions in Cuba ``would be just the same'' because the government would claim the benefits of commerce for itself.
While the camps have been growing, so has the number of Americans detailed to Guantanamo to erect and maintain them. The military task force in charge of the camps numbered more than 3,500 last week and more troops were arriving almost as quickly as refugees.
``We're pressing the envelope on everything - water, sewage, food, trucks - everything,'' said Air Force Lt. Col. William D. Sudekem Jr., who runs Camp Phillips, the temporary residence of most task force members.
The Guantanamo base normally is home to about 6,000 Navy and Marine Corps members and their families. With water supplies short and new migrants camps going up near residential areas, the families began moving out last week and giving up their homes to additional troops.
Still, most of the military personnel assigned to the refugee operation are living in tents - albeit more comfortable tents than those given the migrants. The military's structures, with a solid wall at each end, are air-conditioned. ILLUSTRATION: Color Knight-Ridder photo
Cuban Refugee Osvaldo Sene shouts, "Liberty! Liberty!" to reporters
standing outside his camp at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station where
thousands of his countrymen are living in tents.
KEYWORDS: GUANTANAMO BAY CUBA REFUGEES by CNB