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#1031: DOMINICANS MARCH AGAINST "HAITIAN INVASION" (fwd)
From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>
Santo Domingo, Nov 20 (EFE) -- Dominican nationalist groups marched
Saturday here to protest what they call an "invasion" by illegal Haitian
immigrants.
The marchers left from the Panteon Nacional in the colonial quarter of
Santo Domingo, chanting "death to the traitors," carrying signs and
demanding the expulsion from Santo Domingo of "illegal Haitians and their
children."
"We have noted how the international community, which intervened in
Haiti five years ago to restore its incipient democracy and to foster the
integral progress of Haitians at present shows ... an irresponsible trend
to abandon the land of Toussaint L'Overture to its fate, failing to
fulfill its commitments," said protest leader Jose Joaquin Perez.
Other spokesmen for the demonstrators said that theirs was not an
"anti-Haitian" stand, but that they were calling on the United States,
Canada and the European Union to "fulfill their commitment to democracy,
progress and the development of Haiti."
Former Foreign Minister Victor Gomez Verges, who on Friday announced
that the Christian Social Reformist Party would participate in the march,
said that the demonstration was a "show of patriotism" by good Dominicans.
The march, called under the slogan "Reassertion of the Dominican
Identity," came on the heels of complaints by the Inter-American Human
Rights Commission of the "physical abuse, human rights violation and mass
deportation of Haitians" by Dominican authorities.