Three stowaways arrested at Pt Lisas

While fighting intensified and the death rate continued to rise in Haiti’s civil uprising yesterday, four nationals of the Dominican Republic (DR)  fearful of the bloodshed spilling over in their twin state island, sought refuge in Trinidad as a transit point to stow away to the United States. As the men made their move and stowed on board the MV Fortunia which was scheduled to sail for Houston, Texas yesterday morning, they were caught during a last minute security check. The three — Mario Terez Yan, 36,  Agripino Diaz Almanzar, 34, and Joel Reez, 16, of  the Dominican Republic — were taken into immigration custody and then transferred to the Couva Police Station. They will later be taken to a State prison until their deportation.

Yan had travelled from the DR to Venezuela to Trinidad via a pirogue and waited at the Point Lisas docks since November 26, 2003. Almanzar had been hiding out in Trinidad since October 16, 2003, while Reez arrived on December 31, 2003. During the search of the Fortunia yesterday morning the three men were found hiding in the hatch of the vessel. Yan made a dash for freedom but was held some distance away on Atlantic Avenue, Point Lisas. The three stowaways were wearing hard hats and other gear of the local dock workers who off-load containers.  Police believe that for the aliens to be in hiding for so long without detection and dressed as local workers they had to be receiving help from Trinidadians. Their plan was to remain in Trinidad until they could board a vessel leaving for the US. Initially the men were thought to have been Haitians, fleeing their country’s violence and looting, but further checks revealed that they were from neighbouring DR, and wanting  to avoid any spill-over of violence.

The latest reports coming out of Haiti is that  President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has appealed to Haitians to stop the looting and violence in the panic-gripped capital where plundering continued,  but his followers lifted barricades where they had hijacked cars and robbed people as rebels advanced. Rebel leader Guy Philippe said in an interview yesterday that while his forces converge near the capital, he will hold off attacking for a day or two in response to US appeals. Philippe, speaking with The Associated Press from his base in Cap-Haitien, Haiti’s second-largest city that the rebels captured last Sunday, said he had read the US appeal on the Internet and had not been contacted directly by US officials. Aristide’s appeal, broadcast on state television Friday night, appeared to have some effect. Roadblocks were lifted late yesterday morning, though shops remained
shuttered.

The US Embassy of the United States, which has rebuffed Aristide’s pleas to urgently send a small peacekeeping force to Haiti, late Friday urged Aristide to tell his followers to halt their attacks. The embassy also asked the rebels to halt their advance. “Looting is bad,” Aristide said. But at the city’s seaport yesterday looters were hacking into about 500 containers of US aid. Outside the city’s Canape Vert Hospital, the body of an executed man was sprawled, shot in the head with his hands tied behind his back. Two other men were found killed execution style Friday near the National Palace, bringing the toll to at least six in the capital since Friday. Despite the anarchy, Aristide urged the government’s 46,000 employees to go back to work tomorrow and called for schools to reopen. He said his resignation, suggested earlier by the United States and France, Haiti’s former colonial ruler, was “out of the question” and called on Haitians to be on the alert for a possible rebel attack on the capital. “Our duty as a people is to be on guard so they do not catch us by surprise,” Aristide said. “We can put up barricades at night to ensure they don’t attack us.”

However he urged his followers, who have erected fiery barricades across the city, to “let cars by so they can go about their daily activities” during the day. Aristide loyalists robbed drivers for the US and French embassies early yesterday, witnesses said. They said the French Embassy driver also was beaten. Attacks against members or employees of the international community have increased since US Secretary of State Colin Powell and French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin suggested Aristide cede power for the good of his Caribbean nation of 8 million people. Looting continued, with people taking large bags of lentils donated by the US Agency for International Development and held at a warehouse by the port. Looters were seen yesterday wearing stolen hospital gowns and carrying machetes. Radio Vision 2000 suspended broadcasts after assailants shot at the building early yesterday morning. Some journalists have been targetted by pro-government thugs who perceive reports as biased against Aristide. At least two journalists have been killed in the last three years; nearly a dozen have gone into exile, fearing for their lives. Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected president, said that for him to resign would irreparably hurt Haiti’s democracy. His term ends in February 2006.

Some 2,200 US Marines were put on alert as Pentagon officials weighed the possibility of sending troops to waters off Haiti to guard against any flood of refugees and to protect the estimated 20,000 Americans in the Caribbean country. Aristide has pleaded for a small contingent of foreign peacekeepers to quell the uprising that has killed more than 80 people since it began in the country’s north earlier this month. “I have the responsibility as an elected president to stay where I am,” Aristide said. “My life is linked to 8 million people.” The international community — led by the United States, France and Canada — has insisted that Haiti’s government and opposition reach a political settlement before foreign forces intervene.