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.”