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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWill Washington Repsond to this Humanitarian Crisis?
Makes you damn proud to be an American, doesn't it? There is something seriously wrong with our government when no action is taken after 550 former peace corp workers and 3 former directors write our SOS.
The End of U.S. Complicity In the Dominican Republic
The exodus is in large part the consequence of a 2013 ruling by the Dominican Constitutional Court that effectively stripped some 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent of their citizenship, thereby creating the largest stateless population in the Western Hemisphere. Since then, thousands of ethnic Haitians have resettled on the Haitian side of the border, including the family of 28-year-old Molene Charles, which lives in a squalid settlement with 700 other families in Anse-à-Pitres. Their home in the Dominican Republic, the AP reported last week, was burned to the ground by locals.
Such grim reports contrast sharply with the initial assessments of U.S. officials. In July, during a visit to the Dominican border town of Pedernales, just two miles from Anse-à-Pitres, U.S. Ambassador James Brewster, who had posed for photos with the heads of the Dominican army, border patrol, and migration directorate, praised the Dominican security forces and denied that Santo Domingo was violating human rights.
In the face of U.S. inaction, more than 550 former Peace Corps volunteers and three former country directors for the Dominican Republic wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry on August 7, urging the United States to cut off its security assistance to the Dominican Republic, worth some $17.5 million since 2013, until Santo Domingo improved its record.
Washington has strong economic ties with Santo Domingo and is the Dominican Republics largest trading partner. Indeed, many of the Haitian workers whose descendants now face expulsion were brought to the Dominican Republic to work in its sugar industry, which has deep connections to the United States, the largest importer of Dominican sugar. In 2013, U.S. exports to the Dominican Republic totaled $7.2 billion.
The $17.5 million in aid that the United States has provided to the Dominican Republics security forces over the past two years has included weapons and training for Santo Domingos border patrol agency, CESFRONT...
Indeed, many of the Haitian workers whose descendants now face expulsion were brought to the Dominican Republic to work in its sugar industry, which has deep connections to the United States, the largest importer of Dominican sugar. In 2013, U.S. exports to the Dominican Republic totaled $7.2 billion.
State Department human rights reports have also documented extrajudicial killings and torture at the hands of Dominican security forces, actions that clearly constitute gross human rights violations; its 2013 report, for instance, noted that Dominican police and migration officials had beaten a 31-year-old Haitian immigrant named Jean Robert Lors to death.
Tens of thousands of ethnic Haitians face a worsening human rights catastrophe, but Washington has so far settled on little more than an expressed commitment to observing the crisis.
Observers fear the situation will become dire as refugees languish without adequate access to food, water, and medicine.
Indeed, Santo Domingo has staunchly defended its record, even hiring a prominent U.S. lobbying firm to argue that its actions reflect viable immigration policies. (Some people will do anything for a buck.)
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/dominican-republic/2015-08-20/end-us-complicity-dominican-republic
Read on, now it really gets good. Who cares about the truth when lies and distortion will sell - bring in the lobbyists and public relations firm.
http://sentinel.ht/politics/articles/international/6436-dominican-government-hires-pr-firm-to-rebuild-reputation
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (sentinel.ht) - More than a million dollars for Steptoe & Johnson to lobby the U.S. Congress is not enough for the Dominican Republic. It has reached out to MWW, a public relations and reputation building company for a contract through early next year.
According to a document filed with the US Department of Justice, MWWs work for the Dominican Republic also includes messaging, media training, and developing and implementing a plan to engage analysts and US opinion leaders "to craft the reputation of the Dominican Republic and influence official decisions."
JustAnotherGen
(31,828 posts)JustAnotherGen
(31,828 posts)These stateless people at at severe risk.
Dominican townspeople told us they wanted what happened in 1937 to happen again to Haitians, camp resident Amboise Henri, 47, said outside a shelter made of cardboard and branches that houses his wife and three children.
What happened in 1937 was a massacre of thousands of Haitians living along the border ordered by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. Dominican soldiers were ordered to use machetes and knives to carry out the massacre. Trujillo wanted it to appear that Dominican peasants perpetrated the killings to protect their land and livestock. This was not to appear to be the systematic massacre that it was.
As Wucker describes in her book, Trujillo's successor Joaquín Balaguer also downplayed the events and claimed they were the product of a popular uprising. The events of 1937, which enemies of the Dominican government have tried to depict as a massacre of innocent Haitians, were instead the crystallization of the heart of our country, Wucker quotes Balaguer as saying.
Skwmom
(12,685 posts)JustAnotherGen
(31,828 posts)I'm one of the hosts of the African American group - you shoud post it back there.
How sad I have to type this but - I can multi task. I care about and want to bring to the US tens of thousands of refugees from the middle east and North Africa. I can also demand Booker, Menendez, and Lance push to remove foreign aid to DR and whisper about it to my friends as they make winter vacation plans.
Since my husband is being told by his government he cannot travel to Thailand - we had to cancel our Christmas trip. He suggested DR two weeks ago . . . I countered with this (there were follow up articles 8/20 I've been watching it) - we are going back to Costa Rica instead.
I'm sharing this because as a journalist - you need to know, as do your peers that we are reading - and we care.
I also have a dear friend back home in Rochester that made her way with her family from Haiti, to Sicily, to Brooklyn in the 1980's. Unfortunately not much has changed about the US since then . . . And we won't be rescuing these people. Their boat and plane to America is a long journey which takes several years.