HAITIAN ANGER - RAGE AFTER U-17 FOOTBALL TEAM SENT HOME
(Jamaica Observer) - By Corey Robinson
Baugh admits Haitian situation could have been handled differently
THE Ministry of Foreign Affairs will today meet with Haitian officials in an effort to soothe growing anger over complaints that members of the French-speaking Caribbean country’s Under-17 football team were ill-treated after local doctors found that several of them had malaria during the early stages of the CONCACAF championships now on in Montego Bay.
The meeting comes as an Internet petition condemning the incident and calling for a boycott of Jamaica gains momentum.
“Haiti has arranged for three officials who are involved to come to Jamaica to meet with us; myself and Minister (Olivia) Grange,” Dr Kenneth Baugh, minister of foreign affairs and foreign trade, told the Observer yesterday. “The minister of foreign affairs in Haiti is aware of the team [of persons coming]; she and I have had discussions twice, and she has approved the visit. We are anxious to see what the results are going to be.”
According to an Observer source, fears about a potential cholera outbreak escalated after several of the Haitian players, who arrived in Jamaica earlier this month to compete in the tournament, fell ill. Others had symptoms including fever and headaches. Eight of the players were tested and three were found to have malaria. They were slated to be admitted at the Cornwall Regional Hospital, but there were no beds there, the source said.
As a precautionary measure, the team was to be quarantined. But after a day of waiting inside the hospital’s emergency ward, the Haitian coach got angry, left the hospital, and returned to the hotel at which the team was staying, the Observer was told. He was later allegedly handcuffed and forcefully removed from the hotel by representatives from the Ministry of Health, who had quarantined the sick players at the Falmouth hospital between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning last week.
The decision was later made to send them home between Thursday and Friday via private jet.
Yesterday, Baugh described the incident as a “misunderstanding”, and sought to quell allegations of discrimination against the team.
But hundreds of irate Haitians protested in that Caribbean country over the weekend, and The Associated Press reported that Yves Jean Bart, president of the Haitian Football Federation, called on FIFA, world football’s governing body, to sanction Jamaica.
“This is an outrage. They think that all Haitians are diseased,” Bart said during the march Saturday, which drew about 1,500 people. “They have been training for two years, and now they’ve been eliminated. They want to play, they want to win. They forced us to leave, but we will keep practising.”
Jhon Miky Benchy Estama, the Haitian team’s 16-year-old captain, said he was depressed by his experience in Jamaica, his first trip off the island of Hispaniola.
“We all felt very sad because we worked so hard to get there. I think it was very unfair,” he said as he gathered with his teammates after the protest broke up.
Magalie Comeau Denis, one of the organisers of the rally and special adviser to Haiti’s Ministry of Culture and Communication, said she planned to urge Haitians to boycott Jamaican products.
“We won’t allow Jamaica to humiliate us and especially our children,” she said. “It’s a matter of the stigmatisation of Haiti.”
The incident was also widely reported in the international media over the weekend, and on Friday Haitian government officials confirmed that the Chargé d’Affaires at the Haitian embassy in Jamaica, Max Alce, had been recalled for consultation and that on February 17, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had dispatched a protest note to the Jamaican authorities.
Up to late yesterday afternoon, 319 persons had also signed a petition started by a Nadeve Menard on the website Change.org, demanding that the Jamaican Government apologise to the Haitian team, and that the country be barred from hosting the competition until the incident is resolved.
The petition read: “The Haitian delegation, the majority of which was comprised of the adolescent players, was ostracised and humiliated by Jamaican authorities. Such behaviour is not acceptable and is a violation of the delegation’s human rights, as well as a violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. They (Haitians) were not accused of any crime or of being in the country illegally. Please join us in demanding that Jamaican authorities apologise to the Haitian delegation and the Republic of Haiti.”
Most of the comments on the site were written in Haitian creole. However, those in English called for unity among Haitians in their condemnation of the incident.
“How dare you take a child’s dream away. Shame on you! They have rights too,” wrote Michele Duguay.
“We need to make these people stop doing these things to us. I love my country and I will fight for it till I die. Haitians need to start thinking like me now, now, now,” added Fabrice Menard.
But Baugh, even while admitting that the situation could have been handled differently, and that Jamaica could have been more diplomatic, said the team was quarantined only as a precautionary measure until relevant blood tests and other investigations were completed.
He said the quarantine was not only in the interest of Jamaica, but also for the other players’ safety.
“Looking back, the possibility exists that they would have easily misunderstood the intentions, considering the situation that they are coming out of. They have suffered a lot recently and because of that they feel that people discriminate against them. They were young players, and because they were young players they probably didn’t understand the process that was taking place,” said Baugh.
He said Jamaica has been very friendly with Haiti throughout their difficulties.
“There is a difference between how I perceive the Haitians deal with malaria and how we deal with it,” he added. “A case of malaria in Jamaica is actively dealt with, meaning that the person is admitted in hospital, treated, and then tested to make sure he is free before he is allowed to go back home. In Haiti, apparently they give them three days’ treatment, they are ambulatory sometimes, and then they are followed up in that respect. It is a matter of the process and the process can be frustrating at times.”
Baugh added that the team’s doctor in Haiti knew about the malaria cases and had written prescriptions for antimalaria medications, which were to be filled in Jamaica.
However, a pharmacy in Montego Bay declined to fill the prescriptions as the doctor was not registered in Jamaica.
The players arrived in Jamaica earlier this month to compete in the tournament, which will determine the four CONCACAF teams to advance to the 2011 FIFA Under-17 World Cup in Mexico this summer. The team had only played one of its scheduled matches, losing to Costa 0 3-1.
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