PORT-AU-PRINCE -- Nearly 400 Haitian boat
                 people were returned to their Caribbean homeland on
                 Wednesday, less than a week after their bid to escape
                 grinding poverty and political chaos ended early on New
                 Year's Day, less than 2 km off Florida's coast.

                 "We have no work. Hunger is in our bodies,
                 unemployment is in our bodies, poverty is in our bodies.
                 They keep on shooting people every day," said Mr Jean
                 Robert, 26, explaining why he left Haiti.

                 A freighter overloaded with 411 Haitians, Dominicans
                 and Chinese sailed 966 km from Haiti, only to run
                 aground just off Miami's Key Biscayne after trying to
                 elude Coast Guard patrols just after midnight on Jan 1.

                 Four women were taken ashore in Miami for medical
                 treatment but the rest were loaded onto Coast Guard
                 cutters for the trip home. The US Coast Guard said on
                 Wednesday it returned 404 people to Port-au-Prince.

                 The decision to return the migrants to Haiti sparked
                 three days of angry protests in Miami by Haitian and
                 African-Americans, who said the United States
                 immigration policy was racist. -- Reuters

                       Adapted from The Straits Times, 7 Jan 2000.