The cruelty of DR policies re Haitians

A look at Dominican Republic-Haiti relations
By Fred Grimm
fgrimm@MiamiHerald.com

DUVERGE, Dominican Republic -- The sunny, happy Dominican Republic of international tourist promotions seemed a bit less cordial on the road out of Haiti. Along the way, soldiers brandishing black assault weapons manned 11 military checkpoints.

On a rural stretch of Highway 46, about 50 miles into the Dominican Republic on the road that leads from the Haitian border, soldiers waved our van to the side and a captain peered into the passenger window. He studied my passport and managed to convey, with a withering expression, that this was damn serious stuff.

Just behind him, the Dominican army had erected a simple but forbidding reception center for unwanted interlopers. A crude corral had been fashioned from long sticks and strung with barbed wire. No more than a dirt-floor cattle stockade, it was an apt symbol of the D.R.'s attitude toward Haitian immigrants.

About 40 dark-skinned men languished inside the roadside compound, penned like animals.

The captain waved me through (later, I was told that a 500-peso bill folded in my passport would have expedited my passage through his checkpoint). I fell outside the category of particular concern along the Dominican Republic. I wasn't Haitian.

Even as the Dominican Republic sends truckloads of relief supplies into earthquake-stricken Haiti, the army has continued a months'-long crackdown against Haitians suspected of crossing the border from the opposite direction.

The effect last week seemed nearly schizophrenic. ``The people of the Dominican Republic have really gone out of their way to be generous in the relief effort and to reach out to Haiti,'' said Monika Kalra Varma, director of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights.

At the same time, Varma said, the D.R. has adopted Draconian, downright cruel policies against Haitians suspected of crossing the 241-mile border illegally.

In December, the Dominican congress approved a constitutional amendment clearly aimed at its 800,000 residents of Haitian descent. When the amendment is finalized, the children of illegal immigrants born in the D.R. will no longer be classified as citizens. Varma said the denial of citizenship not only applies to children of illegal immigrants, but also to subsequent generations. Most ethnic Haitian newborns were already recorded in the D.R.'s so-called ``Book of Foreigners,'' and given a pink birth certificate, rather than the one offered to children from Hispanic families.

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