25350: Wharram - news - 3,500 Haitians forced out (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

> From Bruce Wharram <bruce.wharram@sev.org>


http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/caribbean/ny-wohait104298118jun10,0,6
496196.story?coll=sfla-news-caribbean

> From Newsday
3,500 Haitians forced out
Dominican Republic soldiers accused of killings, beatings and separating
families in sudden deportations
BY MICHAEL DEIBERT
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

June 10, 2005

OUANAMINTHE, Haiti -- The Dominican Republic carried out a massive expulsion
of Haitians living in a remote region last month, forcing thousands to leave
behind family members, possessions and jobs, according to UN officials and
humanitarian aid workers.

At least 3,500 Haitians living in a broad swath of northwest Dominican
Republic were sent back to Haiti. Many were transported on buses under
military control and taken by armed soldiers to the border post of Dajabon,
where they crossed the bridge over the Massacre river to this Haitian town,
humanitarian aid workers here said.

It was a "massive and unexpected influx," said Javier Hernandez, a regional
head of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti.

"People arrived, children without their mothers and their fathers ...
parents without their children," said Sister Yolande Duverger at the Sisters
of Saint John the Evangelist convent in Ouanaminthe. She estimated that
2,000 expelled Haitians had slept in and around the town's Notre Dame church
during the first days of the expulsion.

Statements by Dominican officials, including the president, former New
Yorker Leonel Fernandez, indicated the deportation had top-level approval.
Asked in mid-May about the expulsion, Fernandez described it as an issue of
"sovereignty." Officials at the Dominican Republic diplomatic missions in
New York and Washington declined to comment yesterday.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees formally protested to the Dominican
government on May 17 and demanded the expulsions not be repeated. "We were
very disturbed by the reports of human rights abuses and family
separations," said Janice Marshall, senior regional protection officer in
Washington.

While many of the Haitians lacked residence papers, officials of the British
charity Christian Aid said those caught up in the operation included a
significant number in the Dominican Republic legally. Many reported their
documents had been torn up by soldiers before they were forced back into
Haiti.

Aid workers on the Haitian side of the border said the expulsions began
after the May 8 murder of Dominican businesswoman Maritza Nuñez in Hatillo
Palma, 166 miles northwest of the capital, Santo Domingo, for which four
Haitian immigrants were blamed.

Lissaint Antoine, director of the Jesuit Service for Refugees and Migrants
in this muddy frontier town, first saw Haitians filtering across the border
after the murder. Quoting expellees, he said the people of Hatillo Palma
began protesting the presence of Haitians and the provincial governor
ordered that 400 of them be expelled. Haitians also were forced from the La
Vega, Monte Christi and Santiago districts.

He said the number rose on May 11 and reached its height on May 13, when
eight buses arrived at the border full of Haitians.

There were numerous reports of violence against Haitians, including murders
and house-burnings. "We had a woman who stayed for three days [who] said
that her husband had been killed," Antoine told Newsday. Separately, two
brothers, 13 and 14, told the Jesuit mission official that Dominican
civilians armed with machetes had killed their parents.

Sister Duverger said she heard other accounts "... of men who said their
wives had been killed, women who said their husbands had been killed." Aid
workers also said the military roughed up the Haitians. "The Dominican army
tore up many people's papers at the border," Duverger said. "A lot of people
looked like they had been beaten up."

Louis Amelice, the caretaker at her church, concurred. "They said the army
had destroyed their documents so they couldn't return," he said. Dominican
border guards indirectly confirmed that anti-Haitian violence coincided with
the expulsion.

An immigration officer in Dajabon said Dominican authorities did not
intentionally expel Haitians with Dominican papers, that when the Haitians
"saw what was going on in Hatillo Palma, they fled back to their country.
Mothers went back with their children. They went back voluntarily." Another
officer said bluntly, "We have too many Haitians in the Dominican Republic."
The officers declined to give their names.

Haitian-Dominican relations often have been tense because of their economic
and cultural differences. Although they are close in population, with 8.1
million Haitians and 9 million Dominicans, Haiti is 95 percent black, and 80
percent of the population lives in poverty. The Dominican population is 89
percent white or mixed, with 25 percent impoverished. About 500,000 Haitians
live in the Dominican Republic, many doing the jobs locals disdain.

Haitians still recall vividly the fall of 1937, when Dominican dictator
Rafael Trujillo, motivated by factors that have never been satisfactorily
explained, instigated a pogrom in which Dominican soldiers and police
massacred 15,000 to 20,000 Haitians throughout the country. The attacks
occurred at a particularly furious pace in the region where today's unrest
is centered.

ONE ISLAND, TWO WORLDS

HAITI

POPULATION: 8.1 million

RACIAL GROUPS: 95% black, 5% mixed and white

LANGUAGES: French, Creole

LITERACY: 53%

GDP PER CAPTIA: $1,500

% IN POVERTY: 80%

LIFE EXPECTANCY: 53 years

DOMINICAIN REPUBLIC

POPULATION 9 million

RACIAL GROUPS: 73% mixed, 16% white, 11% black

LANGUAGES: Spanish

LITERACY: 85%

GDP PER CAPTIA: $6,300

% IN POVERTY: 25%

LIFE EXPECTANCY: 67 years

SOURCE: CIA WORLD FACTBOOK

Copyright © 2005, Newsday, Inc.