Haitians Hope Repatriation Rumors Don’t Become Fact : Refugees: They pass time at Guantanamo Bay as U.S. officials and legal activists debate whether to admit them.

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba —  Jean Smith Mezar’s past includes a desperate escape from Haitian soldiers who he believes will kill him if he returns home. His present is spent idly playing cards and sleeping under an olive-drab tent put up by American armed forces. And his future is an unclear expectation that rumors are about to become fact.

“I hear some people say we are going to be sent back to Haiti,” Mezar said last week, his eyes misting at the thought of leaving this place. “But I am not going back to my country. I will tell (U.S. officials) to send me to any other place. But not back to Haiti.”

Mezar, one of 6,975 Haitians encamped here, said he has family in the United States, and nothing would please him more than to join them. But since fleeing Haiti more than two months ago, he has gotten no closer to his mother and brother in New York and cousins in Miami than a little-used airfield at the southeastern tip of Cuba.

Since Sept. 30, when a military coup ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and toppled the nation’s first democratically elected government, Guantanamo Bay has become a holding zone. It is neither home nor refuge for Haitians who fled their country’s feared military rulers. Instead of washing ashore in Miami, these Haitians who took to the sea in boats found themselves being plucked from their rickety vessels in the ocean.

As Bush Administration officials and a network of legal activists--both sides unknown and unseen by this emerging Haitian community--debate whether the people here can enter the United States, Mezar lives from day to day, fretting over what will happen to him next.

“Only one thing I know,” he said in halting English as he swept a thin arm toward the razor-wire fences and military personnel standing guard. “I’m not powerful enough to know what is going to happen to me. I want to know, what are they going to do with me?”

Just what may become of Mezar could become clearer shortly after Wednesday, when a federal judge in Atlanta hears the latest round of arguments over how the government should deal with the Haitians housed at Guantanamo Bay. Activists working on the Haitians’ behalf are expected to argue that the captives here should receive legal representation while they are being held by the American military.

If the Haitians are granted access to lawyers, then their claims for political asylum may gain a measure of legal standing that would allow their claims for refugee status to proceed in U.S. courts.

The Administration is expected to argue that the Haitians are, in the language of the State Department and military officials, “migrants” who have no rights under American laws. The Administration does not want the Haitians on American soil, preferring to send them back to Haiti or to a third country.

“If we lose our case on Jan. 22, they could begin repatriating the Haitians on Guantanamo immediately,” said Cheryl Little, a lawyer with the Haitian Refugee Center, the Miami-based organization that spearheaded the lawsuit.

Haitian activists, granted a brief visit to the camp in November, say they have been denied further access to the Haitians. Without direct contact, lawyers cannot provide legal assistance or monitor conditions at Guantanamo Bay. They also complain that Administration and military officials have refused to provide social and relief groups with a roster of those at the camp.

“I don’t see a problem with them giving us the names of people who are there,” Little said. “That would at least be of some comfort to family members who are calling us, frantic for some word about their relatives.”

Marine Brig. Gen. George H. Walls Jr., commander of the Joint Tactical Force overseeing the Haitian encampment here, said last week that a census of the Haitian population would be made available to his superiors “in a week or so.” He said such a list would be accompanied by a photograph of every person in the camp; military leaders plan to make the information available to appropriate relief organizations, such as the United Nations and Red Cross.

As for the treatment of Haitians at Guantanamo Bay, he said his men are doing as fine a job as can be expected under such conditions.

“These folks came here with the expectations of going to Miami or somewhere other than here,” Walls said. “This is not where they want to be, and we have no idea of keeping this as a permanent situation.”

Officials said there are 6,600 military personnel, including the 1,700-member tactical force, keeping the base and Haitian camp running. While they did not offer precise figures for what the government is spending, one official said that the bill to taxpayers runs about $500,000 per day. Walls said the Navy alone spent at least $3.8 million through the end of 1991.

For the Haitians under the military’s care, daily life in this temporary encampment appears more and more like living in a town, albeit one surrounded by concertina wire. Without knowing much about the American legal wranglings, most Haitians at Guantanamo have settled into a monotonous routine of waiting.