Refugees Challenge Haiti Dictatorship

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BERNARD Sansaricą plans to invade Haiti and end the vicious dictatorship of Jean Claude Duvalier (called Baby Doc, a rather cuddly name for a particularly grisly gangster).

While the press have found the somewhat Heath Robinson nature of the planned invasion the source of some mirth, it does put the spotlight • On the extreme corruption and brutality of the Reaganbacked regime (members of Sanvaicq's family • were mass ared by Duvalier).

This is a source of some em varrassment for the US, as is the detention of 3,200 Haitian refugees in the US.

The refugees are being held in camps like Krome Avenue Detention Facility, an ex-missile base with no recreation facilities, until their claims for potical asylum are processed by immigration authorities. The prospects even then are bleak - most will be deported back to Haiti.

Art Brill, spokesperson for the US Justice Department, says of these people, many of whome made the perilous sea-crossing in horrendous conditions, "They are illegal aliens'.

Rumours

Conditions in the camps are appalling. Reverend Jerard Jean-Juste. head of the Haitian Refugee Centre, says of the Krome Ave camp near Miami: "The camp is like a concentration camp. Haitians are dying little by little • But the detainees are fighting back. Claude Duralier On Christmas Eve: 650 of the 711 detainees began a hunger strike. A few days later, 500-plus demonstratassembled outside. Ors after rumours that several hunger strikers were ill and being refused medical treatment. A riot began after they were refused entry to see their fellow Haitians.

Riot police and security guards came under a hail of bottles and rocks: 200 Haitians managed to break through, and in the ensuing battle 200 acres of the Everglades were set fire and 101 prisoners escaped.

There has been resistance in other camps. ton.

At Fort Allen. Puerto Rico, three guards were injured in a rock-throwing riot by 200 demonstrators and 100 Border Patrol guards were immediately added to the camp's security force. At the Brooklyn Detention Centre, 35 Haitian women are still on hunger strike cut short this drive by the working class to collectively take over the running of society. The Party and the bureaucracy could not simply be pushed off the political scene: their dominance could not be whittled away quietly.

Inadequate

Talk of 'reform', 'easing out the Party', or leaving the Party intact while revolutionising the rest of society, became hollow when the PUWP, despite all its overtures, concessions and manoeuvres, point blank refused to become simply a fifth wheel in Polish society.

The question was simply and brutally, as Kowalewski says, who has power? The workers, or a bureaucratic minority?

Unprepared, with events rapidly overtaking it, and having worked and struggled for months with inadequate ideas and conceptions about how to transform society, the ten million strong workers movement has been overwhelmed. But the lessons will not be lost. was all a lost cause. We had the feeling that they were sent by the government.

Stupsko tawala §Elbag Koszalmn.

czecin •G úazia • Z.:I Góra POLA itbus Kalısi • łódź Agnica Częstochowa .y K.ei murzyçh:

Opint HOSLOYAKIA beshe Brno inz renounced our memberst of Solidarity.

port Suw DiSt (v! • •Pror Sedice Ostrava@ Ow o-ilachut or Barra Košice aU:é:

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Socialiss Organiser no. 68 January 14, 1983 Page 5 Worla News

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