30151: Karshan (news) Women Criminal Deportees - March 8, 2007 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: MKarshan@aol.com

We Must Also Stand for the Rights of Women Criminal Deportees Sent  to Haiti
from the United States

by Michelle Karshan*

March 8, 2007 -- On this international day honoring women  and reflecting on
their conditions and rights, it is important to note the  treatment of women
who are deported to Haiti from the United States after having  served their
sentences for crimes they committed there.

Women who have been convicted of crimes in the United States have already
served their sentences for violating any of the various laws in the U.S. 
ranging
 from child neglect to drug possession or worse. These women are wives,
mothers,  sisters, etc. and some left Haiti more than twenty years ago and have 
no
remaining close relatives there.

Once deported back to Haiti as Criminal Deportees they are taken into
custody by the Haitian government.  Although they have not violated any  laws 
in
Haiti, the women are immediately put in illegal and indefinite  detention,
without any due process, in Haiti’s police station holding cells. The  police
station holding cells are approximately 10 x 10 feet and usually hold at  least 
a
dozen to two dozen other prisoners at the same time, do not contain  beds, 
mats,
sinks, or toilets.  And, most striking, is that they  are not provided any
food, clean water, or medical care.

If they have no family to help them, they go hungry or depend on fellow
prisoners to share food and water with them.  Further, when criminal  deportees
who are sick are deported from the United States, they are provided  with two
weeks worth of medication.  After two weeks they are left with no  medication,
which could be detrimental to their health and they could die as a  result.

In January 2007, I was contacted by the United Nations Human Rights Office
in Haiti requesting that my program, Alternative Chance/Chans Altenativ, visit
two deported women who were being held in a police holding cell at the DCPJ
police administration building. The United Nations advised us that the two
women  were each complaining that they had heart conditions, were without
medication  and had no access to doctors or any health care personnel 
whatsoever. We
attempted to visit these two women but were denied access by the Haitian
police.

In 2000, one such woman, Claudette Etienne, a mother of two small children,
was deported from Florida, and died after four days in detention at the Delmas
 62 police sub-station. Claudette had no family in Haiti and had only
received  scraps of food from one concerned police officer.  However, Claudette 
was
not provided with any clean water or meals, and, when she got dysentery and
quickly dehydrated, the police refused to transport her for emergency medical
care or even to seek medical attention for her at the police station. When
Claudette was finally transported to the General Hospital, she died a short 
time
 thereafter.

Women criminal deportees are also placed in holding cells together with men
and are subjected to sexual harassment and assault by other prisoners, or the
police themselves. Police officers manning these police stations often
abandon  their posts at night leaving the prisoners locked in with no 
assistance in
the  event that there is an emergency or an assault by another prisoner.

The prisons and police stations have become increasingly more dangerous  over
the past few years. On July 1st, 2005, an armed commando attacked the
Petionville prison that houses both men and women and severely beat female
prisoners there.  One woman was so badly beaten that at first it was  thought 
that she
was dead.  Armed commando attacks on prisons and police  stations, violence
and uprisings, and a recent escape at a police station  resulting in injuries,
have become regular occurrences putting women prisoners  at greater risk.

Therefore, any discussion of women’s rights and conditions should also  inclu
de the plight of women criminal deportees from the United States.

The task of addressing security concerns while also respecting women’s
rights can be a difficult one, but must be taken on.

And, it would behoove the United States to take on this task as well and
reconsider the deportation of thousands of women who are forced to leave their
children behind, sometimes in the hands of strangers -- placing their children
at great risk.

* Michelle Karshan is the founder and Executive Director of Alternative
Chance/Chans Altenativ, a self-help, peer counseling and advocacy program for
Criminal Deportees in Haiti which was founded in 1996. Ms. Karshan can be
reached at _altchance@aol.com_ (mailto:altchance@aol.com)

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