29537: Archer (news) Sonia Pierre honored with RFK Memorial Human Rights Award (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Merrie Archer <merriea@hotmail.com>

This was a moving ceremony yesterday about one of the most courageous women 
activists I have the privilege to know.  I'm hoping that Monika from RFK will 
also share her speech with the list.
Merrie

STATEMENT BY SENATOR EDWARD M. KENNEDY AT ROBERT F. KENNEDY MEMORIAL HUMAN 
RIGHTS AWARD CEREMONY

(AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY)
  The Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award is one of the many good works of my 
brother’s foundation. It serves as a reminder to all of us of the vital 
importance of human rights and the many challenges we face at home and abroad 
to protect those rights.  It also reminds each of us of the power of an 
individual to make a difference in the lives of many.

It’s a privilege to present this year’s award to one of those individuals, 
Sonia Pierre.  Sonia has devoted her life to the cause of equality and justice, 
two of the most fundamental human rights.  My brother believed very deeply in 
those rights.  As he once said, “We must recognize the full human equality of 
all our people - before God, before the law, and in the councils of government. 
We must do this not because it is economically advantageous - although it is; 
not because the laws of God and man command it - although they do command it; 
not because people in other lands wish it so. We must do it for the single and 
fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do.”


Bobby saw this challenge firsthand in the United States, in the plight of farm 
workers in our fields, and in the struggles of African Americans for equality. 
He saw it also in the history of immigrants from Ireland, Italy, and Poland, 
and he spoke of the “painful slowness [by which] the United States extended and 
enlarged the practice of freedom to all of our people.” He spoke out for the 
“thousands every day denied their full and equal rights under the law” and 
dedicated his life to do what it took to make equal opportunity a fact, not 
just a goal.

We see that issue still playing out in the current immigration debate.  We’ve 
long welcomed immigrants as members of our communities, but for decades we have 
denied them legal status.  They’ve been victims of an unfair system—living in 
fear of deportation, exploited at their worksites, unable to create the better 
futures they hope for and dream about.  Some in power would like to close our 
borders and isolate America, violating the very principles on which America was 
founded.  Surely we can enact an immigration reform bill that protects our 
borders, without denying opportunity and basic dignity for all immigrants in 
the United States.

Sonia Pierre has similarly fought for the rights of a people long denied 
equality.  Her story is the story of the people of two countries, joined by 
history and geography but separated by economic circumstances: Haiti and the 
Dominican Republic. Haiti remains the least-developed country in the Western 
Hemisphere and one of the poorest nations in the world. It ranks 154th out of 
177 countries in the Human Development Index of the United Nations. It ranks 
last on Transparency International’s index of corruption. Two-thirds of all 
Haitians depend on agriculture for their livelihood.  They work mainly in 
small-scale subsistence farming.  Deforestation and frequent natural disasters, 
especially hurricanes, highlight the peril of that dependence.

By contrast, sharing the same island, the Dominican Republic has had economic 
success – it was one of the fast growing economies in the world in the 1990’s, 
expanding at an average rate of nearly 8 percent a year from 1996 to 2000. 
Only a quarter of its citizens live in poverty, compared to 80% in Haiti. The 
boundary separating the two nations is stark – the brown, deforested lands of 
Haiti end at the green forests of the Dominican Republic.

The contrasts between these two countries create an unequal dynamic. Haitians 
fleeing perennial poverty supply cheap labor for the Dominican economy, 
particularly during the sugar cane harvest. They fill jobs that even the 
poorest Dominicans won't do. As a result of this constant cross-border 
migration, approximately 650,000 Haitians live in Dominican territory, where 
they face discrimination, abuse, harsh living conditions, and the constant 
threat of deportation.

It is for the equal rights of these people, many of whom have lived in the 
Dominican Republic for decades, that Sonia has dedicated her life.

She was born to Haitian parents in 1963 in one of the settlements for sugar 
cane cutters in the Dominican Republic.  She grew up facing first hand the 
social, economic, legal and cultural barriers that prevent Haitians and 
Dominicans of Haitian descent from enjoying their basic human rights.

Her father died when she was two years old. Her mother was a cane cutter, an 
unusual profession for a woman because of the immense physical stamina 
required.  She raised Sonia and her eleven other children in a one-room portion 
of a barrack with a dirt floor.  Because of the respect her mother had earned 
among sugar workers, Sonia and her sisters did not have to endure the rape and 
physical abuse that was commonly inflicted on the migrant community by the 
authorities.

There was no school for the children, but when Sonia was nine, she and a 
hundred other children began to attend two hours of classes a day, offered by a 
local resident.  When she was older, she walked several miles each day to 
attend the nearest school. She refused to be silent in the face of obvious 
repression.  At 13, she was arrested for speaking at a demonstration on behalf 
of Haitian migrant laborers in the Dominican Republic.  The demonstration 
lasted five days and actually led to improved conditions for some of the 
workers.

At 16, Sonia helped found the Dominico-Haitians Cultural Center. She later 
studied social work in Cuba before returning to the Dominican Republic to fight 
for the rights of her people there - Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian 
descent.

Her community needed a champion.

Immigration of Haitians to the Dominican Republic has occurred for generations, 
but these workers and their descendants are treated as illegal and subjected to 
abuse and rejection by the Dominican authorities and population.

In fact, the Dominican Constitution grants citizenship to “all persons born in 
the territory of the Republic with the exception of those born of diplomats or 
those in transit.” But government policy discriminates against Haitians.

Children born in the Dominican Republic to Haitian immigrants confront enormous 
difficulties in obtaining a birth certificate that will allow them to attend 
public schools and have all the political and social rights of Dominican 
nationals.  Even documented Dominicans of Haitian descent face serious 
discrimination in voting or obtaining the social, health and education services 
available to Dominican citizens, and may also be deported after arbitrary 
round-ups by authorities.

Living conditions are deplorable, with precarious housing and no running water 
or electricity. My brother Bobby’s grandson lived in the country when he served 
in the Peace Corps, and he remembers the barns with a family living in each 
stall, and without electricity, running water, or bathrooms.

The situation is especially harsh for women and children. Women are paid less 
for field work and cannot obtain legal status, because the State Sugar Council 
recognizes only male Haitian migrant workers in its temporary foreign worker 
program. Children in the sugar mill towns are also victims of abuse and 
exploitation, and the lack of official status prevents the community from 
accessing education, health care and other public services.

Sonia saw all of this first hand.  She lived it.  And she devoted decades of 
her life to their search for equality and justice. In 1983, she founded a 
movement dedicated specifically to the empowerment of women in the community.

The work of her organization, called MUDHA consists of five main programs: 
education about human rights, assistance in obtaining birth certificates, 
provision of legal representation, medical assistance, and early childhood 
education. It provides education for an average of 175 preschool, first and 
second grade children each year, and has substantially improved the health of 
women and children in the settlements.

MUDHA has helped more than 5,000 children obtain birth certificates over the 
past 10 years.  It has also been very successful at raising international 
awareness of the injustices facing the community. MUDHA was a petitioner in a 
landmark case before the Inter-American Court for Human Rights, which for the 
first time in the court’s history upheld human rights laws prohibiting racial 
discrimination in nationality and citizenship. The Court also ordered the 
government to admit all children to its schools, and end the rampant 
discrimination in education.

So far, this government has refused to comply, but the case has brought 
increased international awareness to the plight of the community.

Sonia has also strongly opposed the random and arbitrary deportation of 
Haitians living in the Dominican Republic, which are estimated to reach 45,000 
a year.

Lily Serrat, of the organization Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees, said of 
Sonia: “I am a better person today for having met, worked, and traveled this 
road with Sonia Pierre.  With certitude, I can affirm that Sonia is one of the 
most selfless, courageous and compassionate human beings of my 
generation…Before [seeing her work], I knew of no one who took a firmer stand, 
no one who risked more, no one with that laser-like focus in dealing with the 
issues that affected these disenfranchised, mistreated, and voiceless groups of 
people: the Haitian cane cutters and their Dominican Haitian descendants…In 
life, we have many heroes and heroines, Sonia is very near the top of my list 
of heroines.”

Her colleagues compare her to a Nobel Peace Prize winner and call her a hero. 
One said, “Sonia never held anything back in promoting the human rights of our 
communities.”

Sonia has personally affected the lives of thousands of her people.  She has 
given voice to their struggles, won landmark legal victories for them, and 
created new networks to meet their basic needs.  Because of Sonia, this 
neglected, impoverished, downtrodden community has greater rights and greater 
hope for a future where equality and justice are not just ideas, but reality.

Her struggle is captured in an excerpt from the Dominican poet Pedro Mir’s 
famous poem, There is a Country in the World, which he wrote about the sugar 
cane cutters in these words:

Some will think that in this fluvial country in which earth blossoms,
and spills over and cracks like a bursting vein,
where day has its true victory,
the farmers will go amazed with their spades
to cultivate singing
their strip of ownership.
This love will shatter its solitary innocence.
But no.
 . . .
There is a country in the world where a farmer, cut down,
withered and bitter dies and bites barefoot his defeated dust,
lacking enough earth for his harsh death.
Listen closely! Lacking earth to go to sleep in.
It is a small and beleaguered country.
Simply sad, sad and grim, sad and bitter.

Sonia overcame immense personal hardship to become the voice and the champion 
for hundreds of thousands of others.  Her courage gives us all hope.  As they 
say in Creole, kenbe fem - "keep the faith.”

Eventually, because of Sonia, there will be equality and justice for all.  She 
has been unique in her vision of a Dominican Republic that embraces its entire 
people equally. And for all of us, she is a model for what it means to make a 
difference.

It is an honor now to join Ethel in presenting Sonia Pierre with the Robert F. 
Kennedy Human Rights Award for 2006.

  ###

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