Miami Herald - Saturday, December 12, 1992
Andres Viglucci, Herald Staff Writer

Though the camp is crude, they have all a body needs -- food, clothing, shelter, medicine, even cable TV -- everything, that is, except their freedom.

"I lost everything I had. My house. My shop. My husband," said Lise Vilsaint, 32, who fled Haiti when military thugs shot up her house. "Now this is where I live. For all I have seen, I cry every night."

Why Vilsaint and the others are here boils down to one simple reason: most of them carry the virus believed to cause AIDS.

They fled political repression in Haiti to find themselves HIV prisoners, prevented from pursuing asylum in the United States by a rule that bars the entry of people with the virus. They are caught in a legal twilight zone, unable to return home, but unwelcome anywhere else.

The Haitians' plight has become the subject of lawsuits against the U.S. government and condemnation from human rights groups. In a recent report, a group of Yale Law School students and professors labeled the dreary camp an "HIV prison" and described conditions there as "abysmal."

On Friday, a group of reporters visited the camp, which had been virtually cut off from outsiders for months. The reporters, who followed another group that visited Thursday, were allowed in by the federal government after The Nation magazine sued for access.

Camp latrines that advocates and refugees have described as reeking did not smell Friday. But camp residents were hardly reluctant to discuss the shortcomings of life in the camp.

Political banners, bitter and defiant, hung from the side of one of the simple bunkhouses that serve as homes for the Haitians. One was emblazoned with a flaming torch held aloft.

"We are a small people, a black people," said Verdiev Elma, 28, who composed the paeans to liberty scripted on the banners by a camp artist. "We struggle, we fight for freedom, but every time we find obstacles in the road.

"We are living in a futile state. It is liberty we were seeking when we ended here. How can they put human beings in a place like this, in a desert?"

For some refugees, Friday was day number 385 in this sad community, and counting. For the youngest, it was just day one: She was born Thursday night at the nearby base hospital.

Most are healthy. Few show any symptoms of HIV-related disease. But there has been one recent death. An infant girl born in the camp died in a stateside hospital in September from a form of pneumonia common to people with AIDS.

The camp, in an isolated corner of this sprawling base, was one of two established by the government as a processing center for tens of thousands of Haitians who took to the seas after the ouster of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Now its 277 residents, all of whom immigration officials have determined have credible cases for political asylum, are the only ones remaining. They were left behind when more than 10,000 other refugees were flown to the United States to pursue their asylum claims.

At first, the refugees said, conditions and tensions were terrible. The food was bad, the treatment worse. Military police beat some people in a demonstration, and some were put in an open-air punishment camp. In August, refugees rioted and burned down several cabins.

Conditions remain poor, they say. The refugees live in crowded sheetboard or concrete-block houses, with bedsheets hung from the ceiling for privacy. They complain of bites from insects and scorpions.

But most say that since a new administrator, Army Col. Stephen Kinder, took over in September, conditions have improved vastly. Kinder abolished the punishment camp. Now there is a weight room, soccer and basketball teams, a beauty parlor, English lessons and fishing.

"I think we've gained one thing," Kinder said. "They don't look at the military as the enemy. Three months ago that wasn't the case. There was a lot of anger. I think we won their trust."

Yet many refugees say conditions aren't the real issue. The mere existence of the camp is.

"That they gave us washers and driers means nothing," said Zamore Black, 26. "That is not what we are seeking."

So far, 16 refugees, including several pregnant women, have been flown to the United States for medical treatment, and one 7-year-old who can no longer be treated at the camp has received permission from immigration officials for U.S. hospitalization.

But the Bush administration has refused appeals for humanitarian parole into the country for the Haitians -- including four whose stateside transfer has been requested by the military because their condition is rapidly deteriorating. Kinder said he will try for permission again.

In the camp, the refugees pin their hopes on President-elect Bill Clinton, who has promised to lift the HIV ban.

CAPTION: PHOTO Dorismond Fenol (REFUGEE HAITIAN); photo: Joseph Miller, left, and some of his military buddies take time off to play with Haitian refugee children next to a boat used to flee Haiti (REFUGEE HAITIAN GUANTANAMO).

AEGiS presents published material, reprinted with permission and neither endorses nor opposes any material. All information contained on this website, including information relating to health conditions, products, and treatments, is for informational purposes only. It is often presented in summary or aggregate form. It is not meant to be a substitute for the advice provided by your own physician or other medical professionals. Always discuss treatment options with a doctor who specializes in treating HIV.

Copyright ©1980, 1992. AEGiS. All materials appearing on AEGiS are protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under U.S. copyright and other laws and are the property of AEGiS, or the party credited as the provider of the content. .