PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, July 24,2015 (AMG) – A group of prominent organisations in Guadeloupe has issued a statement urging Guadeloupeans to boycott products from the Dominican Republic. The campaign is in response to the Dominican Republic’s plan to deport en masse Dominicans of Haitian descent, many of whom have never lived in Haiti.
Background:
Leaders in the Haitian diaspora have been calling for a boycott of the Dominican Republic ever since the 2013 court ruling that retroactively stripped as many as several hundred thousand Haitian-Dominicans of their citizenship. Calls for a boycott of Dominican imports have been growing in Haiti since the beginning of the year, gaining increased momentum in February when a Haitian shoe shiner was lynched in Santiago.
When international media put a spotlight on the looming deportations the DR planned to begin in June, an international campaign to boycott tourism in the Dominican Republic gained steam on social media, using the hashtag #BoycottDR.
The Guadeloupean coalition now joins the list of groups calling for a boycott. The group, which calls itself the Collective for the Respect of Human Rights in the Dominican Republic, includes among others: one of the country’s prominent labour unions, several human rights organisations, and the Guadeloupe section of Amnesty International.
The Collective’s statement declares: “No Caribbean people can rest indifferent to this situation. If this denationalisation is effective, other countries of the world will follow in its steps.”
It remains unclear if the pressure from boycotts will have any impact on Dominican politics. The DR government reports that, 40,000 people have ‘voluntarily’ left the country in recent months, a dubious characterisation, given the climate of fear that has been created by the Court’s ruling and the militarisation of the government’s deportation programme.
David,
What a onesided commentary, why don’t you try telling the whole story, if you don’t know it, ask Daniel Supplice, the former Haitian ambassador to the DR.
Here read this : http://acento.com.do/2015/actualidad/8269611-impactantes-revelaciones-sobre-rd-y-haiti-en-carta-de-supplice-a-martelly/
I must say that the Dominican Republic is allowed promote its immigration laws because those laws conform to international norms. Most countries grant citizenship through two concepts. The first concept is jus soli also known as birth right citizenship which means granting citizenship unconditionally to any person born in that country, but the concept of jus soli is the exception not the norm. According to the Center for immigration studies only 30 out of 196 countries on earth grant birth right citizenship(http://cis.org/birthright-citi…. All other countries are ruled by anther concept, the concept of Jus sanguinis the principle in law according to which children’s citizenship is determined by the citizenship of their parents. Jus sanguinis is what governs citizenship in all of Europe, all of Africa, with the sole exception of Botswana, and most of Asia, and Haiti. Now the issue was concerning people who had papers that indicated they were Dominican yet this issue was resolved with the law 169-14 in which any person with Dominican documentation would keep their status as Dominicans. After this process began a process of giving documentation to people that were not in the civil registry with the decree 327-13, In which people did not have to prove that they were born in DR but rather that they were a fabric of Dominican society, this was to resolve the problem of many people who did not have any form of identification whether it be a birth-certificate, passport, or any form of identification, the undocumented immigrant were allowed to prove they were a part of Dominican Society through various forms including pay stubs, rent receipts, school diploma/transcripts, a letter from your congregation, or a letter from your neighbors, not all of these documents were required rather a combination, there are the similar standards one must pass to obtain a drivers permit in New York city. The the article by the Haitian newspaper Haiti Libre (http://www.haitilibre.com/en/n… displays the documentation problem faced by Haitians. In the article is a quote by the Haitian president Martelly in which he says “How can the State create programs for its people without having an idea of the quantity of people living in the country?” As a result a program to ID Haitian citizens began a program that had essentially no standards due to the fact that Haitians do not have documents to prove their identity, the ID Haitian citizens were granted were based solely on their word as to what was their Age, Name, and Place of Birth. This affects the Dominican Republic in the sense that Haitian immigrants have no way to prove where they were born. In my opinion the resolution to give anyone with proven ties to Dominican society legal status was a fair choice, and not in line with racist policies but rather laws that conform to international standards of the control of undocumented immigrants. Many people say these laws are racist because they would like to see the Dominican Republic give amnesty to anyone born in the Dominican Republic which would be something that would be unacceptable in any country on earth, specially considering the circumstances, in terms of the problems of personal identification within the community that mostly immigrates to the Dominican Republic. I believe instead of continuously writing about the world event in the history of Domincan-Haitian relations we most focus on the bright spots, because I always wonder why we weren’t called racist when we in 2012 built a university in Haiti (The Universite Roi Henri Christophe), or when we allowed all aid entering Haiti, in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, to enter through Dominican Ports since Haiti’s main port had been completely destroyed. I believe instead of promoting HATE, we must promote investments to build the Haiti and Dominican Republic of our Dreams,
Thank You,
It would be nice to be able to read the article by Rocio that disputes the view of David.
Copy and paste the URL into GOOGLE TRANSLATE.
Impactantes revelaciones sobre RD y Haití en carta de Supplice a Martelly http://bit.ly/1KqMYFe
The International Distortion of the Dominican Dilemma …. http://bit.ly/1Gj6r2v
Thank you – mési anpil – David Kroeker Mausfor. Keep up the good work! We appreciate this coverage of the statement by the Guadeloupeans urging, as we do at the Free Haiti Movement and Ezili Network, for boycott, sanction, divestment. Boycott of DR products, services, trade and tourism. Legal genocide, civil apartheid, ethnic cleansing are unacceptable in the 21st century. The Dominican Republic’s racist denationalization law raises up the painful specter of Rafael Trujillo massacre of 20,000 to 30,000 Haitians. But they ultra far right wing DR politicians and corrupt rulers are blithely trying to past off their whitening, massive disenfranchising and ethnic cleansing brutality as “immigration policy.” No doubt, this act of state violence, this Nazi denationalization must continually be exposed and denounced until the emboldening of violence against dark-skinned peoples, STOPS. We say this, in the name of the late great, Sonia Pierre. We-Haitians with papers and access who defend Haiti, welcome the solidarity of the world’s conscious folks, including this statement where Guadeloupeans are urging boycott of DR products. The corrupt DR oligarchs’ and the KKK-type mob-mentality choruses of denial of racism is similar to the strategic and hollow US denials of police brutality and unequal treatment of Blacks in the United States. The facts, though, are clear. For more info, see, “No to civil genocide, ethnic cleansing and expulsions in Dominican Republic” at http://goo.gl/gCkfUy ; How Big Business Fuels Haitian-Dominican Tensions at http://goo.gl/JPxgBB and the Ezili’s interview on Drybones at http://goo.gl/3MkDYH or the three videos at our youtube channel on the DR matter – https://goo.gl/nH3GBv. Again, keep reporting developments like this Guadeloupean statement to inform, Mr. David Kroeker Mausfor. Much appreciated.