The Dominican Republic is set to begin what some are calling “ethnic purging,” placing the fate of hundreds of thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent into limbo. Half a million legally stateless people could be sent to Haiti this week, including those who have never stepped foot in Haiti and don’t speak the language. In 2013, a Dominican constitutional court ruling stripped the citizenship of children born to Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic as far back as 1929, retroactively leaving tens of thousands without citizenship.
However, only 300 of the 250,000 Dominican Haitians applying for permits have reportedly received them. Many have actively resisted registering as foreigners, saying they’re Dominican by birth and deserve full rights. Dominican authorities have apparently organized a fleet of buses and set up processing centers on the border with Haiti, creating widespread fears of mass roundups.
The Dominican Republic’s decision to denationalize hundreds of thousands of people has sparked an international outcry. Haitian President Michel Martelly has denounced it as “civil genocide.” The United Nations protested the ruling, and the U.S. State Department voiced measured disapproval. Meanwhile, Dominican-American writers Junot Díaz and Julia Alvarez, Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat and American writer Mark Kurlansky have united to express their shared condemnation of the decision.
Edwidge Danticat talking:
we’ve often had deportations from the Dominican Republic to Haiti, but this is the first time that they will be done with a law behind them that actually, since the law—this constitutional court decided to strip citizenship from that large number of people, has really made life much harder for Dominicans of Haitian descent, but also migrants who are on the island. So, this law not only now gives the Dominican government the power to deport mass amounts of people, but also creates an environment, a civil environment, that’s really hard for people, because, you know, others might feel now that we’ve had an increase of violence against Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent, because it seems like a state-sponsored open season on people who are not only—who are considered Haitians by the way they look, primarily, or by their Haitian-sounding name.
Hispaniola is shared by—the island—by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. And we share a history of colonialism and occupations, and at some point it was split between the French and the Spanish. And after the Haitian independence, there was a shift, where Haiti—and there was a—the whole island was under one rule, post-independence. And then, Dominican Republic, in 1822, there was a separation. But there are all these historical scars, where, you know, we, on the Haitian side, remember the massacre of Haitian cane workers in 1937. And then these things are brought up. But there’s also, for Americans, a common occupation of both Haiti and the Dominican Republic at the turn of the century, and both sides of the island have been marred, really, by the corporate—this other kind of occupation of the sugar industry that goes back to the beginning of the 20th century.
there are so many things that are—that seem very arbitrary about this decision, 1929, one can only guess. 1929 was the beginning of the Depression here, and maybe there was a—the Gulf and Western and these other companies that were part of the sugar plantation complex, maybe there was a [inaudible], and then they actually—Haitian workers were always brought to that side, and suddenly, when the sugar industry pulls out, they are left hanging. But 1929 seems very bizarre in terms of deciding that people are in transit since 1929. It boggles the mind to think that you can be in transit in a country for 86 years. I mean, there’s that several generations of families that have lived in the Dominican Republic, that made their lives there, that risk now being deported.
there are several organizations in the Dominican Republic that are speaking out, because this issue is sometimes presented as an immigration issue. But a large number of people who are affected by this will be Dominicans of Haitian descent. And so, they’re—but often these voices are drowned out by the ultranationalist voices who use this issue to scapegoat the—and use this issue as a way to divide people and to further their causes.
The reality is that a very large number of people can be affected by this, and this is happening in our region. And, of course, I have a personal connection to it, but I think it’s something that should concern everybody who cares about justice and human rights. And it sets also a very dangerous precedent for—in terms of moving large numbers of people who happen to be migrant or citizens elsewhere in the region.
You’ve always had people who have been very sympathetic to this cause within the Dominican Republic. Again, it’s important to stress that we are talking also about Dominicans of Haitian descent, people whose families will be separated. And sometimes this issue is always presented, sort of a Haitian migrants—and there are Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic, but also this law will affect people, Dominicans of Haitian descent, or—who can just be picked up because they have a Haitian-sounding name or because they look Haitian or black. And so, I think it’s important that this conversation is had. And the Dominican diaspora, along with the Haitian diaspora, has also been very active and vocal, especially since the law was passed, and continues to speak out, to bring attention to this issue.
people are so ill-informed about the situation that I think it’s—it is important for us to reach for the analogies that we had. It’s as if the United States said, “Yes, everybody who has been here since 1930, you have to prove you’re a citizen. You have to go back to the place where you come from to get a birth certificate from there.”
I think we also have to remember that this is not the first time that we’ve had these deportations. There were somewhat large-scale deportations in the 1990s, and they also happened to coincide with elections in the Dominican Republic. And often as elections are coming up, you know, and parties who are in power want to keep their power, you always have in the Dominican Republic this population that you can easily scapegoat. But this is the time that it’s gone—this is the first time that it’s gone this far, where, as this action is happening, it’s also a way of—it seems to be cleaning out some voter roll—you know, the voter rolls and people who could possibly be voting. And it’s something that we have seen before, but never on this large a scale.
I think what needs to happen now is, first of all, awareness. I thank you for covering it, because the general U.S. media, in general, has been very silent about it. And so, for people to really inform themselves about what’s happening, to write to your congresspeople. And also, we are subsidizing, as Americans, the sugar industry in the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic gets the largest ration of sugar subsidies, and [inaudible] to the U.S. So, you are—we are all implicated in this. So, make sure that this—that your voice is heard. Make sure you call your congresspeople, because lives depend on it.
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Edwidge Danticat, acclaimed Haitian-American novelist. Her latest book is called Claire of the Sea Light.
— source democracynow.org