By Opal Tometi, Huffingtonpost, July 7, 2015
Approximately two weeks ago, an estimated 250,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent have been stripped of legal status due to a court decision that denationalizes generations of native and foreign-born Dominicans of Haitian ancestry. The ruling codified as Resolution 168/13 by the Dominican Republic's Tribunal Constitution on September 23, 2013, retroactively removed the citizenship status of Dominicans of Haitian descent, rendering them stateless. This action denies these community members the required documentation to exercise basic civil rights such as: travel, work, voting, public education and housing. In essence, this ruling strips Dominicans of Haitian descent of their human rights and dignity, forcing them off their land, tearing families apart and violently deporting residents without a moment's notice or due process.
U.S.-based national formation the Black Immigration Network stands with the international community in condemning the Dominican Republic's actions. The expulsion of Dominicans of Haitian Descent and Haitian migrants, regardless of immigration status, is unconscionable and wrong. The Black Immigration Network, a national organization of Black immigrants and African Americans, recognizes the racialized realities of the mass deportations and criminalization of black people as a human rights crisis. The policy is in violation of international human rights law, including the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR). The practice of denationalization and deportation is a continuation of the legacy of anti-black racism in the Dominican Republic and must be stopped.
Resolution 168/13 has enshrined and bolstered a social and political climate that puts black people in the Dominican Republic in grave danger. Xenophobic violence including public lynchings of people presumed to be of Haitian ancestry. Raids and arson has plagued this nation for years and is currently on the rise. Already, over 30,000 people have fled to neighboring Haiti, in fear for their lives and uncertain of their status and ability to return to their homes in the Dominican Republic.
The Black Immigration Network (BIN) stands with people of conscience around the globe, international stakeholders, civil society and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to demand the Dominican government immediately halt the removal of denationalized Dominicans and Haitian immigrants, and guarantee that individuals are not arbitrarily, unjustly, and permanently deprived of their civil and human rights.
BIN supports a boycott of all tourism to the Dominican Republic and urges the United States government to use this period to expand the U.S. Haitian Family Reunification Parole Program (HFRPP) in an effort to provide reprieve and justice for those adversely impacted by lagging immigration policies in the U.S. and in the Dominican Republic.
The Black Immigration Network calls for a Week of Action July 27- August 1, in partnership with grassroots activist and organizations to bring attention to this injustice and international solidarity to end this human rights crisis. All Black lives matter, beyond borders -- the time is now for a global movement to stop anti-black racism in the Dominican Republic and promote national reconciliation.
Opal Tometi is the executive director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration & co-founder of Black Lives Matter.
The Dominican Republic's mass Haitian deportation reflects its racist history
By Jason Nichols, The Guardian, June 23, 2015
My children were born in the United States. But since they have a Dominican-born grandfather, they are eligible for citizenship in the Dominican Republic once they turn 18. But as the country gears up to deport some 200,000 undocumented residents of Haitian descent, children who actually live and have roots there may be loaded onto buses and taken from the only home they’ve ever known.
People who support the ruling say that it has been unfair that the Dominican Republic, a poor country in its own right, has had to constantly come to the aid of Haiti and its people. Others view it as an ethnic cleansing similar to the Parsley Massacre, when Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo oversaw the killing of some 20,000 Haitians in the late 1930s. (It’s called that because Trujillo reportedly had troops kill people who didn’t pronounce “perejil” with a Spanish inflection.
Trujillo painted Dominicans as proud but modest campesinos – the hybrid of Spanish conquistadores and native Tainos – and Haitians as superstitious, backward, physically grotesque Africans. Public education in the Dominican Republic for decades under Trujillo was nationalistic and hateful toward Haiti and its people.
But Trujillo himself had a grandmother of Haitian descent, as had generations of both Dominican elites and working people. Ulises Heureaux, president of the Dominican Republic in the 1880s, was partly of Haitian descent. Popular 20th-century presidential candidate Jose Pena Gomez was adopted into a Dominican family and thought to have had Haitian birth parents who fled Trujillo’s death squads. Haitians and Dominicans come in a myriad of shades, and few of either nationality would get a second look if they were manning the grill at an African American family reunion.
Yet anti-haitianismo has always been a political tool for scapegoating social problems. Virtually no Dominican wants to return to the Trujillo era, but his legacy endures, and the current situation cannot be taken out of context of a history of racial animosity that some scholars contend dates back to the colonial period before Juan Pablo Duarte and the Trinitaria founded the republic in 1844.
Current president Danilo Medina, who is overseeing the purge along with Immigration Director Rueben Paulino Sem, passionately denied that his country is racist, citing the fact that 80% of Dominicans are black or mulattos and that they are only deporting people without papers. He states that the Dominican Republic provides public education and healthcare to Haitian nationals.
With all due respect to the president, this argument is one of convenience. Medina is correct that it is an oversimplification to say that the decision of the Dominican high court is simply based on race. But race, which is constructed very differently in the Dominican Republic, certainly plays a role based on testimonies of people of Haitian descent who feel racism is a major reason they are being targeted. In addition, the fact that other nations like Turks and Caicos, Brazil and the Bahamas also have enacted similar laws is no excuse.
Not only, then, is the Dominican Republic taking racist action – even if that isn’t the government’s intention – it is doing so in a way liable to open the flood gates to corruption, bribery and extortion. Dominican officials and newspapers have shown long lines filled with Haitian immigrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent to show that the government is working to get people set up with legal residency. However, what these photos present is a nation that is ill-equipped to handle registering hundreds of thousands of people. Democracy Now reports as of the 17 June deadline for registration that only 300 of an estimated 250,000 eligible people have received residency permits.
The country should institute some form of blanket amnesty or residency for those who have been working in the country and abiding by its laws. That way overburdened Dominican officials could put their focus on securing their borders instead of deporting productive members of society.
And the Dominican Republic must reckon with its racism or risk repeating its history and potentially abusing the human rights of people President Medina refers to as brothers. I hope to be able to continue to provide my children, who have roots in four different countries, stability and opportunity in the nation of their birth. Every child deserves that.