The Behrend beacon. (Erie, Pa.) 1998-current, April 28, 2000, Image 6
page6,Theßehrendßeacon. April 28. 2000 V Tw-_ . _. World News Polls show support for Elian's return to father by William E. Gibson and Tim Collie The Sun-Sentinel, South Florida April 23, 2000 WASHINGTON In the immediate aftershock of Saturday morning’s raid in Little Havana, a majority of Ameri cans appeared to support the federal government's decision to wrest Elian Gonzalez from his Miami relatives. Early polling results and other signs of public reaction in the calm of Eas ter Sunday indicated that most people continue to support Elian’s return to his father, although many were appalled by the disturbing scenes of gun-wielding marshals swarming around the Little Havana home. From church pulpits in South Florida and across the country, ministers cited Elian’s story, some to decry the show of force during his abrupt removal from Miami, some to celebrate his return to his father, but most to pray for a time of healing and reconciliation. In the aftermath, many people said the change of custody should have oc curred long ago before it became a flashpoint. Some blamed the Miami relatives for refusing to cooperate with Attorney General Janet Reno’s demand that they release the boy. Others agreed with the return of Elian to his father but wondered why the government had to resort to armed marshals to carry it out. The prevailing public reaction threatens to undermine the Cuban-ex ile cause of clinging to Elian, though that cause is still backed by a signifi cant number of Americans and by Re publican leaders on Capitol Hill. At the same time, Reno and the Clinton administration faced a new round of tear-streaked fury from the Miami relatives who cared for the boy for five months. Defensive and angry, family members appealed for public support at a press conference in Wash ington on Sunday. “I want to address everybody that has been looking at this from afar and doesn’t know,” said Georgina Cid, one of Elian’s cousins in Miami. "We’ve ne,ver been violent. We've always tried to negotiate. We’ve always tried lobe good. We’ve always tried to give love Sexual slaveiy trade flourishing by Peter Finn The Washington Post April 23. 2000 PRISTINA, Yugoslavia The traf ficking of East European women into sexual slavery, one of the major crimi nal scourges of post-Communist Eu rope, is becoming a serious problem in Kosovo where porous borders, the presence of international troops and aid workers, and the lack of a working criminal justice system have created almost perfect conditions for the trade, U.N. police officers, NATO-led peace keepers, and humanitarian workers say. In the past six months, U.N. police and peacekeeping troops here have rescued 50 women Moldovan, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, and Romanian from brothels that have begun to appear in cities and towns Kosovo, a province of Serbia, the dominant re public of Yugoslavia. Police and aid workers fear hundreds more, lured from their impoverished homelands with the promise of riches, may be liv ing in sexual servitude. “These women have been reduced to slavery,” said Col. Vincenzo Coppola, regiment commander of the Italian Carabinieri, a police force with military powers in Kosovo that has rescued 23 women on raids of broth els in Pristina and Prizren. According to police sources and aid workers, the women and some as young as 15 were transported along a well-established organized crime network from Eastern Europe to Macedonia, which borders Kosovo to the south. There, they were held in motels and sold to ethnic Albanian pimps in auctions for $ 1,000 to $2,500. The pimps work under the protection of major crime figures in Kosovo, of ficials said, including some with links to the former rebel fighting force, the Kosovo Liberation Army. The women were stripped of their passports as soon as they left their homelands and were then frequently held in unheated rooms with primitive sanitary conditions in Kosovo and to Elian, and we’ve always tried to love our cousin and our family in Cuba. All we’ve wanted was for this family to reunite "I think that people have to see us, people have to support us,” Cid said. “We are here. We are Americans. We live in this country. Don’t let any Cu bans come to this country and tell us what to do. We need you.” While federal officials took a breather from the traumatic episode, Elian and his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, remained secluded at their temporary housing inside the well guarded gates of Andrews Air Force Base just outside of Washington. Gleeful over a lunch of black beans and rice and playful in the anus of his father, Elian spent a quiet Easter, ac cording to his father’s attorney, Gre gory Craig. And while his Miami rela tives, bearing Easter candy, were turned back by a sentry, Elian got a visit from the Easter Bunny, who distributes treats to children living on Andrews Air Force Base. The elder Gonzalez has insisted on time alone with his wife and two sons after five months of separation from Elian, Craig said. “We’re trying to re-establish some normal routine,” Craig said. “They needed the down time. The relatives have got to respect that.” Gonzalez has agreed to remain in this country while the custody case re mains under appeal. Speculation turned to a remote retreat along the Wye River in eastern Maryland as a likely site for the Cuban family to settle during the court action. While Elian settled in with his fam ily, life returned to near normal in Mi ami, where the action shifted from pro tests in the streets to exile leaders plan ning a general strike for Tuesday. “We’re asking Cuban Americans not to go to work on Tuesday, and when our bosses ask us why, we’ll say it’s because of Elian,” said Jorge A. Acosta, leader of Agenda Cuba. But the demonstrations and all the attention surrounding the Cuban boy’s case have produced a backlash else where, particularly in the black com munity. At Greater Mt. Olive Missionary in Kosovo forced to have unprotected sex, some times up to 16 times a night for no pay ment, according U.N. police officers who spoke to the women and requested anonymity because of U.N. regulations limiting their ability to talk to the me dia. Police, peacekeepers, and aid work ers here have been slow to respond to the problem. The undermanned U.N. police force is hard-pressed by a vari ety of criminal activities, and there are limited humanitarian resources to pro tect the women once they seek sanctu ary. Moreover, officials here said, the trade has flourished because of a lack of applicable law on trafficking or prostitution and because some coun tries with military forces here have tended to dismiss the activity as simple prostitution. German peacekeepers in southern Kosovo, for instance, have taken a benign view of the phenom enon in part because prostitution is tol erated in Germany; international aid workers are trying to convince them that these women are victims. “It’s not classic prostitution,” said one international aid worker who has interviewed the rescued women and is working on a draft U.N. regulation to punish people involved in the slave trade. “They are not paid. They are never paid. Of the 50 women we have seen, not one has received a single deutschemark. And they are often held in horrendous conditions.” According to authorities, the women were told that before they could keep any of their earnings, they had to pay off the pimps for their purchase price. Often, however, they found themselves fined for infractions such as not smil ing at customers, so there was no way they would ever have enough money to complete the payoff. The women said that if they protested, they were beaten. A number of the women appear to have contracted sexually transmitted diseases, officials said, and interna tional groups are attempting to get them treatment either in Kosovo or when they return to their homelands. Baptist Church in Delray Beach, Fla., the Rev. Lenard C. Johnson told his congregation more recognition than we do in recog nizing a savior that died for the whole world. Look at how many Haitian folks who drowned at sea and their children made it in, and they sent them right back.” More typical was a message from the Rev. Brian O’Reilly, who said at the St. Juliana Catholic Church in West Palm Beach: “We pray for the people in Miami at this time of confusion and heartbreak. We ask that God will con tinue to bless them.” Public opinion and political conse quences have long been an important factor in the handling of Elian’s case. Though convinced she had the legal au thority to seize Elian, Reno waited many weeks to force his removal from Miami in hopes of avoiding the kind of dis- turbing scene that played out on Saturday. The imme- diate reaction spread dismay with the fed- eral tactics in the early morning raid, yet majority support for Reno’s deci- sion to take ac- tion at long last. A clear ma jority, 57 per cent, approved of removing Elian from the Little Havana home to reunite him with his father, according to a CNN-Gallup poll, while 37 percent disapproved. Two-thirds of men but just less than half the women in the poll supported the action. But 40 percent of those polled said ABOVE: Elian Gonzalez sits with his father Juan Miguel Gonzalez, his stepmother Nercy Carmenate Castillo, and six-month-old half-brother, Hianny, at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Sunday, April 23,2000. Oklahoma City, Columbine communities linked by tragedies by Larry Fish Knight-Ridder Newspapers April 19, 2000 OKLAHOMA CITY (KRT) At 9:02 a.m. Wednesday, April 19, it was five years since the bombing of the federal building here; the memo rial to its 168 victims was to be dedi cated on this anniversary. Beside scarring Oklahoma City and the nation forever, the experience made this city’s survivors and help ers reluctant pioneers in publicly dealing with grief. It made them, in one survivor’s words, into “new people,” for better or worse. And it served to bind them in sympathy with those suffering in the aftermath of the massacre at Col umbine High School which marked its one-year anniversary Thursday, April 12. The Oklahoma City Survivors As sociation has reached out to those in Littleton, Colo., in several ways, among them a gift of a “survivors’ tree” that is now planted in the park next to Columbine High. (Oklahoma City has a similar tree.) Last week, one of the group’s leaders wrote an open letter to Denver’s newspapers, and placed a copy of it on the me morial fence outside the bomb site. “Dear Denver, families, and oth ers affected by the tragic events of 4-20-99,” Paul A. Heath’s letter be- gan. “ ... Oh! how we wish we had a secret recipe that would guarantee each of you and ourselves the expe rience of an ever-present joy of those we loved that were taken from us by these unnecessary acts of violence.” The two tragedies are linked by more than their April anniversaries and the random nature of both crimes. The federal trials of Okla homa City bombing defendants Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were moved to Denver in 1997, and during the months that each trial lasted, survivors and witnesses grew close to many who offered support for them there. As Littleton continues to grieve, many who were directly touched by the Oklahoma bombing have offered what they can. They understand government agents used too much force in removing Elian, while 36 per force. A majority, 54 percent, said the government did all it could to settle the situation without using force, while 38 percent disagreed. “It’s unfortunate they had to use force, but they [the family] brought that on themselves,” said Michelle Smith, 29, of Fort Lauderdale, in a commonly expressed response. “They called [Reno’s] bluff, and that’s what she had to do.” The poll results and range of reac tions indicated some disenchantment with both the government and the Mi- ami family. “Most people thought the boy should be returned to his father, but the man- ner in which it was done bothers a lot of people,” said Peter Feaver, a politi cal scientist at Duke University and ex ecutive secretary of the Triangle Insti tute for Security Studies, a foreign policy think tank. “This was viewed not as strong leadership, but strong- what it means to be mourning a deeply intimate process in the public eye. Heath was a psychologist working in the Veterans Administration office on the fifth floor of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, and has become one of the most visible and active members of the survivors association. He was standing behind an inte rior wall one of the few that with stood the blast and was virtually unhurt. Some of his coworkers were killed. Last week, seated on a curb across from the building site now a strik ing memorial occupying nearly a full city block Heath said that much of what he and other survivors went through applies to families in Colo rado. “First of all, the acknowledgment no one can feel what any other per son feels when they lose a person they love is such an important con cept,” Heath said. “Let people feel what they feel.” Robin Finegan is another link be tween the cities. A native of Okla homa City, she moved to Denver 13 years ago and became head of a rape crisis center there. When the Okla homans came to Denver to testify or watch the bombing trials, she was there to provide counseling and sup port. Those directly affected by the bombing and the school shootings have some things in common with rape victims, Finegan said. But the high public profile makes a big dif ference. At first, she said, Oklahoma City and Columbine survivors found com fort in the national and international outpouring of support. But where obsessive media and public interest “becomes detrimental,” she said, is when the survivors begin to tell their stories, conflicts arise. Did the po lice act quickly enough? Should somebody have been able to prevent the tragedy? And the constant attention, Finegan said, “takes a private grief and loss and makes it a public grief and loss.” ABOVE: Elian Gonzalez plays with his father, Juan Mil Gonzalez, in their temporary apartment at Andrews Force Base in Maryland, Sunday, April 23, 2000. V * ' -*/• handed “People blame With Elian no longer in their care, both sides,” he said, Miami relatives resorted to stalking o “but only one side gets elected." Certainly Republi can leaders, who called on Sunday for congressional hear ings into the matter critical of Clint administration's handling of the case. ‘This administra- tion has never once, not once, done something in the boy’s best interest,” said Florida’s Republican Sen. Connie Mack. Saturday’s raid, while controversial, succeeded at least in asserting the at torney general's authority while put- Suddenly, people everywhere are aware of what those affected are feel ing, and in one way or another they make judgments. The mourning pro cess is laid bare. "We treat them as if we have a right to have a public opinion on how they act and feel and what they say,” the counselor said, “as if we were vot ing on the Broncos' stadium.” In both Oklahoma City and Col umbine, many have found comfort in working toward a goal. Some have embraced causes such as gun control or working to lessen violence or in memorializing the dead and in jured. At Columbine, efforts have been geared to replacing the library where most of the 13 murders occurred, and placing a memorial the design is yet to be chosen in the adjacent park. Oklahoma City’s memorial, its de sign chosen by the survivors associa tion and built and endowed with al most $29 million in government and private funds, has replaced the Murrah building with a grassy slope overlooking a shallow, black-bot tomed reflecting pool. The gateways or arches at each end of the block are inscribed with the times 9:01 and 9:03 a.m.; the large space between them symbolizes the world-altering moment when the blast went off. The most striking feature is on the sloping lawn, where 168 stylized chairs symbolize each life lost. Nineteen of the chairs, smaller than the others, represent the chil dren. Even before the completion of the memorial, which is to be run by the National Park Service, up to 800 visi tors have visited each day since the bombing. The survivors insisted on one touch in the otherwise sleek de sign of the memorial. A portion of the original chain-link fence erected around the explosion site where visitors have affixed poems, teddy bears, T-shirts, and countless other memorabilia will remain. Many of the poems and messages, protected by plastic lamination, have been written and posted by Heath, a former president of the survivors as JGRAPH COUR'i OF GREGORY CRAIG'S OFF' ting the government firmly in chai side the gates of Andrews Air Ft, Base in frustration, unable to def Faster candy to the hoy. While still seeking redress in courts, the futility desperately tried Sunday to turn public opinion in til cally and simply to protect the child whose mother brought him here to a country of freedom,” l.a/aro Gonzalez, the boy’s great uncle, told reporters in Washington. "What's happening?" he implored. "It’s time for everyone to be concerned. What are we, just wallpaper ’ It's too much, what’s happened to this family.” Sun-Sentinel writers Rafael Olmeda, C. Ron Allen, and Rafael Lorente eontrib nled to this report. social ion who says lie never wrote much of anything before the blast. Now, he says, he realizes that many people think he devotes too much energy to things surrounding an event five years past. "Even my family thinks I’ve in vested too much time in making sure that the story gets told,” he said. Like many survivors. Heath said, he had to work through feelings of guilt, but he said he overcame them. "I know who blew up this building, and it was not me,” he said. “As soon as I got that into my head, I was fine.” He said that with Wednesday’s dedication of the memorial, and the creation of the nonprofit Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism to be housed in a nearby building, he thought he would be able to spend more time on other things. Oklahoma City’s experience con tains another possible lesson for Col umbine. After five years, the emo tional toll may continue to rise. Project Heartland, a program de signed to offer mental health services to those affected by the bombing, still counsels a couple of hundred clients a year, although its purpose has been to provide short-term counseling, not long-term guidance. The toll is sometimes more delayed than any one expected, director Gwen Allen said. Oklahoma City’s first-year anni versary was the peak for counseling survivors and their families, Allen said. What is now taking place, and what she expects will be the case at Columbine, too, is that years later the rescuers police, firefighters, para medics, and others who saw horrific things and were unable to save ev eryone begin coming in. Heath, the psychologist, said that everyone involved in the bombing, the school shootings, or any other ca tastrophe has to come to grips with a new reality. “Closure is the wrong word,” he said. ”... The way I’ve experienced it with myself and others is that you become a new person. It’s up to you as to what kind of new person you become.”