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25581: Minsky: (news): We paid 30G to save my niece NYDaily News (fwd)




From: Tequila Minsky <tminsky@ix.netcom.com>


NYDaily News
We paid 30G to  save life of my niece
July 5, 2005
By LESLIE CASIMIR   DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER


Violence after President Aristide’s exile continues.
Six weeks ago, a Brooklyn doctor got a chilling phone call from relatives in Haiti: His 72-year-old brother-in-law had been kidnapped, and if the captors didn't get $200,000 overnight, they would kill their hostage.

"I was in shock. Where were we going to get that kind of money?" said the 56-year-old doctor, who asked that his name not be published. "Every day I hear Haitians are getting kidnapped, but I did not expect this to happen to my family."

The wave of abductions - which Haitian authorities blame on supporters of exiled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Haitian-born criminals deported from the U.S. - has left New York's Haitian enclaves reeling.

Since Aristide's government was toppled last year, violence has claimed more than 700 lives and there are six to 10 reported kidnappings a day.

"This is the most important issue right now for Haitians," said Ricot Dupuy, director of Radio Soleil D'Haiti in Brooklyn.

In the case of the doctor, who lives on Long Island, he withdrew $10,000 from his savings, other relatives took out home equity loans and cash advances and one flew to Port-au-Prince with the cash.

After four days of negotiations with the abductors, the family was able to bring the ransom down to $58,000. The brother-in-law, a university administrator, was released.

Two weeks later, the doctor's niece was kidnapped.

"Around here, we are all sad and feeling powerless," the doctor said. "There's nobody to call, nobody to ask for help. Haiti now is in a free fall."

Felix Augustin, Haiti's counsel general to New York, said six New Yorkers have asked him for help and money for the ransoms. But there is not much he can do, except take down the relatives' names and contact Haiti's national police.

"These are very scary stories - no one is safe," Augustin said. "One person told me they beat their relative to make him cry out loud so that the relative can hear this on the phone."

 Loved ones know their relatives' torment is real.

Beatings and miserable conditions are a given, and a Brooklyn woman's daughter still being held captive was gang-raped by her kidnappers.

A 30-year-old medical biller who lives in Queens Village said her best friend from childhood was lucky. Her kidnappers only kicked her, she said.

"We tried our best to help - it's heartbreaking. Me and my mom and a couple of neighbors and our church came up with $2,500," said the woman, whose 34-year-old friend was released.

"We had to pay $200 to wire the money. ... I pray to God it never happens again. I have aunts, uncles, cousins over there."

A 56-year-old woman from Flatbush, Brooklyn, was cooking dinner on a Wednesday evening last November when she and her husband got the call that her toddler great-niece had been kidnapped in Port-au-Prince.

The ransom for the 2-year-old was $30,000, down from the original asking price of $75,000. The woman, a school bus monitor who takes in only about $350 a week, said she collapsed.

 "It's not a death in the family, but it might as well be," she said.

She immediately withdrew her meager savings and borrowed from friends but only could come up with $2,000. A brother and four Miami relatives came up with the rest.

"I live to pay bills and each month, I already send $150 to my relatives in Haiti so that they can eat and pay for their houses," the woman said last week as she sat surrounded by photos of her great-niece in her living room.

"We thought there would be change in Haiti. Now my heart skips a beat every time someone calls from Haiti. If they kidnap my family again, I will die - where am I going to get the money?"

Originally published on July 5, 2005