#Bibby_Stockholm en 2023... des bateaux au large de la #Jamaïque pour « accueillir » des #réfugiés_haïtiens qui demandaient l’asile aux #USA en 1994...
The likely agreement would allow the United States to anchor or dock large ships in a Jamaican port or at least close to shore, the officials said.
►https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/06/01/jamaica-will-help-us-process-haitians/2a40705d-253a-48e7-8e53-f523e156d07b
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JAMAICA WILL HELP U.S. PROCESS HAITIANS
The United States has reached an agreement with Jamaica to set up a facility on the Caribbean island to process Haitian refugees, according to officials close to negotiations that have been taking place between the two nations for several days.
The agreement is likely to be announced today in Kingston, the officials said. This is the first time another government has offered to help the Clinton administration share the burden of handling those who flee Haiti’s military regime by taking to the sea, most of them seeking political asylum in the United States.
Aside from providing a diplomatic boost to the administration’s efforts, Jamaica has helped resolve logistical problems that have bedeviled U.S. officials for weeks.
The United States asked Jamaica to consider hosting a refugee facility last week and since then U.S. and Jamaican officials have been engaged in almost continuous discussions, here and in Kingston.
The likely agreement would allow the United States to anchor or dock large ships in a Jamaican port or at least close to shore, the officials said. The ships would be used to house Haitians picked up by the Coast Guard and would serve as a processing center where their applications for refugee status would be heard and adjudicated. U.S. officials could be housed on land along with all facilities needed to support the ships.
President Clinton’s special advisor on Haiti, former House member William H. Gray III, was to arrive in Jamaica yesterday afternoon and begin meetings with top Jamaican officials today. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott is due to begin a visit to Kingston Thursday.
A formal agreement on a processing facility could be announced during these meetings, officials said, and the first Haitians could be brought to Jamaica as early as the beginning of next week.
“We are encouraged by the progress that has been made in the talks and we are hopeful progress will continue and that we will be able to say something more on this soon,” a senior U.S. official said. In recent weeks Clinton repeatedly has emphasized his desire to pursue a policy on Haiti with international and especially regional support.
He was able to win such backing for tighter economic sanctions against Haiti, which went into effect on May 21. But it has proved more difficult for Clinton to get help with the other half of his Haitian dilemma, the handling of boat people.
After protests by civil rights groups and refugee advocates, Clinton on May 8 ended a policy of automatically returning all Haitians picked up at sea without giving them a chance to seek the shelter of refugee status.
Instead he promised to set up facilities that would let the Haitians apply for refugee status, which entitles them to permanent resettlement in the United States. Clinton insisted, however, that most boat people were likely to be rejected and sent back.
Although it has held discussions with a number of governments in the regions, the only expression of support the administration had received thus far was an agreement with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to cooperate on handling the boat people.
Last week the United States sought permission to locate a processing facility on the Turks and Caicos Islands, a British dependency, but has yet to receive a response.
►https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/06/01/jamaica-will-help-us-process-haitians/2a40705d-253a-48e7-8e53-f523e156d07b
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Jamaica to Let U.S. Anchor Ship Off Coast
Jamaica agreed today to let the United States anchor ships in its waters so American officials can hold shipboard hearings to determine whether fleeing Haitians qualify for refugee status.
The Jamaican decision represents a diplomatic victory for the Clinton Administration, which promised last month to provide individual hearings for Haitian boat people rather than forcibly send them back without hearings. Later, the Administration realized it did not have a suitable place to conduct such hearings.
The Clinton Administration has been eager to find processing centers in third countries because fleeing Haitians who are processed in the United States often remain for years even if their asylum applications are rejected because Federal courts can permit them to stay until their appeals are exhausted.
The Administration has been under pressure to set up the shipboard processing as soon as possible because it has been in the embarrassing position of continuing to summarily repatriate Haitians without interviews even though President Clinton announced on May 8 that he was abandoning this policy.
[ The United States Coast Guard returned 63 fleeing Haitians to Port-au-Prince Wednesday, the third group repatriated in a week, Reuters reported. That brought to 1,439 the number of refugees brought back to their homeland since Washington said it would halt the practice. ] Ship Heads for Kingston
After the United States and Jamaica announced their agreement, Administration officials said they hoped to have a large American ship anchored in Kingston harbor within several days to begin interviewing Haitian emigrants.
“They’d like to start this at the beginning of next week,” said Barbara Francis, the United States spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which is working with the Clinton Administration on setting up the processing.
The plan is for a 1,000-bed Navy hospital ship to arrive in Jamaica this week so it can begin processing what American officials expect to be a steady stream of fleeing Haitians. In light of a recent United Nations decision to tighten the trade embargo against Haiti, Administration officials fear an accelerating exodus.
About 300 Americans will work on the hospital ship, including Immigration and Naturalization Service officials who will conduct hearings and Navy personnel who run the ship.
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In addition, about 10 employees of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees will work on the ship to provide training for the American hearing officers and will counsel the Haitian applicants. U.S. to Cover All Costs
Christine Shelly, a State Department spokeswoman, said the United States will cover all costs connected to the shipboard processing.
Jamaica has not asked Washington for any payment for allowing American ships to anchor in its waters, but Jamaican officials have conveyed their displeasure that the Clinton Administration has not appointed an Ambassador to Jamaica and is cutting economic aid to the island.
Under the Administration’s plan, Coast Guard cutters will pick up Haitian boat people in the Caribbean and take them to Kingston Harbor. Haitians who are found to have a well-founded fear of persecution in their homeland will be transported to the United States, or perhaps another country. Those whose claim of persecution is declared to be not well-founded will be taken back to Haiti.
“We would hope they would go not only to the U.S., but that other countries would step forward to accept some of them,” an Administration official said concerning those granted asylum. Hope for Turks and Caicos
United States officials say they still hope that the Turks and Caicos Islands, a British-ruled group of small islands off the Bahamas, will agree to allow Washington to set up processing centers there.
The legislative council of those islands is scheduled to meet on Friday to consider Washington’s request.
Turks and Caicos officials have offered the United States an uninhabited island, but Washington is concerned about the lack of docking facilities and potable water on the island.
The United States sent a second ship to Jamaica today. That ship, a leased, 700-bed Ukrainian cruise ship, will be anchored in Kingston to handle the spillover from the Navy hospital ship, or it will be anchored off the Turks and Caicos Islands, officials said. -------------------- Haitian Files Suit
A Haitian refugee who was chopped with a machete and left for dead in her homeland filed a $30 million lawsuit in Brooklyn yesterday against a far-right political group in Haiti.
The refugee, Alerte Belance, who now lives in Newark, N.J., sued the Haitian Front of Advancement and Progress in Federal Court for an attack last fall that cost her a right arm and left her with deep gashes on her neck and across her face.
Her suit is based on a ruling that allows some victims of human rights abuses committed abroad to seek redress in an American court.
▻https://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/02/world/jamaica-to-let-us-anchor-ship-off-coast.html
#USA #asile #migrations #bateau #réfugiés #Etats-Unis #externalisation #procédure_d'asile
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Sur la #Bibby_Stockholm :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/997047
►https://seenthis.net/messages/1000870
Et la métaliste autour des #îles qui sont utilisées (ou dont il a été question d’imaginer de le faire) pour y envoyer des #réfugiés :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/881889