28067: Kawonabo: Response (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Kawonabo1500@aol.com

In a March 3, 3006 AP article, Jonathan M Katz said, "Haiti and the Dominican
Republic share a 243-mile border on theCaribbean island of Hispaniola.
Tension[s] have surged between the countries over what to do about as many as 1

million Haitian workers who cross the border to work in the Dominican Republic,

often illegally."

    When the article stipulates quite frivolously that 1 million Haitian
workers cross the border to work in the Dominican Republic often illegally, it
is
promoting gross disinformation and gross negligence. The article is omitting
the essential character of what is really happening. The Haitian workers are
victims of a veritable human traffic on both sides of the border where
unscrupulous former and newer Haitian and Dominican authorities are engaging in

systematic recruitment of workers for the Dominican cheap labor market.

    Those authorities are extracting millions of dollars from the workers for
the right of passage to the Dominican Republic. Once on Dominican soil, the
workers are used, abused and exploited to the last blood drop, and then
brutally deported back to Haiti most of the times without pay. Upon their
return,
those same unscrupulous individuals take more money from the workers whose
belongings and sometimes children were left back to have them cross the border
again
to the Dominican Republic in a revolving door cycle all over again. What
people must realize is that this traffic is a well-orchestrated thing that has
the
blessings of both the Dominican and Haitian governments and the ruling classes
 on both sides of the Island to satisfy the needs of the Dominican labor
market. The "illegal" status of the Haitian workers serves in practical terms
the
interests of the Dominican ruling classes.
    A diverse group of Haitian, Hispanics and American Progressives,
including the Grassroots Haiti Solidarity Committee, the Batay Ouvriye
Solidarity
Network, the Internationalist Group, have taken action to protest the brutal
and

violent treatment and deportations of the Haitian workers in front of the
Dominican Consulate at 1501 Broadway at 43rd and 44th streets, 5:00 to 6:30 pm,

every first Friday of the month. This is part of a strategy to build a movement

to stop the Dominican government in its poor and dehumanizing treatment of our
working-class brothers and sisters in the Dominican Republic. Please join us.
Contact bosolidarity@yahoo.com , info@grassrootshaiti.org .
Tel: 718-284-0889.
Mario Pierre