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30382: Pierre (Comment)





From: Kawonabo1500@aol.com

The following is a letter to the Editor formulated by the Batay Ouvriye
(Workers' Struggle) Solidarity Network(Caribbean Life, April 11, 2007 issue) in
response to a letter to the Editor by Concerned Dominicans (CD)  in the March
21, 2007 issue of Caribbean Life newspaper. Corbetters are  getting the
full-length letter. An abridged version of the letter went to the  editor.
M. Pierre
April 3, 2007

To Mr. Kenton Kirby, Editor
We  are responding to the letter to the editor by Concerned Dominicans (CD)
in the  March 21, 2007 issue of Caribbean Life. We don’t know who the letter
was referring to at all. There was no reference in the letter to any statements
that  could help identify the author of the articles and what they said. The
reader  has no idea what the Concerned Dominicans are talking about or what
they are answering to. In ‘Stop Spreading Hate about the D.R.’, the authors,
Concerned  Dominicans (CD), generated nothing but hatred and ill-will.
We prefer to take a different approach, a  working-class and progressive
approach to look at the common problems that we share on both sides of the Island
of  Haiti and the Dominican  Republic. We have a very long history on this
island originally called Hayti, Quisqueya or Bohio by the Aboriginal People
before the Europeans colonized the land in 1492. However, as Haitian
Progressives, we would like to address some assertions made by the Concerned Dominicans
(CD) in their letter to the editor. We will respond to them point by  point.
1)      (CD): “…the Dominican government does not have any moral obligation
nor  consideration of any kind toward the citizens of Haiti.”
(R): The Dominican  Republic is a signatory to International  Conventions
requiring countries to commit to respect the human rights of all  citizens and
immigrants living in their territory. According to the U.N.  International
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, “… the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims that all  human beings are born
free and equal in dignity and rights and that everyone is  entitled to all the
rights and freedoms set out therein, without distinction of  any kind, in
particular as to race, colour or national  origin.”
(_http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/cerd.htm_
(http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/cerd.htm) ).
So far, the Dominican government has not lived up  to this commitment when it
comes to Haitian Immigrant Workers on Dominican soil.  It prefers to bow down
to the xenophobic hysteria of the reactionary  ultra-nationalist fascist
factions of the Dominican ruling classes against the  Haitian Immigrant Workers
and Dominicans of Haitian Descent. They promote the  most extreme forms of
racism and hatred toward Haitian Workers and Dominicans of Haitian Descent as, for
instance, the way they are treating Human Rights  activist, Sonia Pierre,
Director of MUDHA, right now in the Dominican  Republic where they threaten to
nullify her  Dominican citizenship.
2) (CD):     “The  Dominican Republic and  Haiti have been divided as two
countries over 540 years ago.”
(R): The Island was divided in 1697 by the Treaty of Ryswick when  Spain
ceded the Western Third  of the island to France which  became Haiti. The other
part remained as a Spanish colony. It wasn’t the Dominican Republic, then. That
was  310 years ago and not over 540 years.
3)      (CD) “Let  me inform you, 60 per cent of the Haitians who are living
in the  Dominican  Republic are illegal.”
(R): Immigration advocates in the United States are saying ‘No One is illegal
’ in favor of all  immigrants living in the United States. That includes
Haitians, Mexicans, Dominicans and others being deported to their country of
origin. If we win this struggle, many Dominicans would love that as would all
other immigrants actually living in the United States. Therefore, we also say No One is illegal’ in the Dominican Republic or Haiti or anywhere else around
the  world. We stand for Cross-border Solidarity on this Planet. The illegal
status  only applies to workers and not to capitalists because they can go
wherever they  want around the world and stay there as long as they want. They
give themselves  the right to jump from country to country to rob, pillage,
pilfer, steal, and  exploit the workers and natural resources as they please.
Workers should have the right to go anywhere around the world to live and work.
4)      (CD): “Furthermore, all Haitians are getting free medical care for
HIV/AIDS and  other diseases. Do you know that 50 per cent of the HIV/AIDS in
the  Dominican Republic are coming  from Haiti? Do you know that many Haitian
women have their babies in city hospitals although they do not pay, they get
free medical care?”
(R): This is a ridiculous and quite inaccurate statement having absolutely no
 scientific basis. Nobody has come up with an exact origin for the HIV/AIDS
virus. Yet, it is spreading around the world like wild fires. People get the
virus through sex and intra-venous injections. Opportunities for such contacts
 exist everywhere because people travel around the world. In other words,
Dominicans travel around the world and the Dominican Republic is one of the big
destinations of  tourists around the world. So therefore, the sources of
HIV/AIDS in the  Dominican  Republic are vast. You cannot target  Haiti as the
scapegoat in the  spreading of the virus in the Dominican Republic at all. This
statement is simply too outrageous and out of place.
5) (CD): “Furthermore, many Haitian children are receiving free education
…However,  many Haitians are committing crimes, stealing from farmers, and
some are killing  and raping children…”
(R): According to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, “… in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations has proclaimed that
 childhood is entitled to special care and assistance.”
(_http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/crc.htm_ (http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/crc.htm) ). Yet, very
few children are receiving an  education in the Bateys. They are used to work
on fields in the worst case of  Child Labor in the Dominican  Republic.
Moreover, the overwhelming majority  of Haitian Immigrants in the Dominican
Republic are excellent  workers who simply want to work and live in peace. As a
matter of fact, the whole Dominican economy rests on the Haitian cheap labor as those workers are indispensable to the economy. They work in agriculture and in
construction.
As for your charge of killings and raping, we do  not know to what extent and
how true this is but in every society, and  community, there are some
criminal elements. However, you cannot over-generalize their actions to include “many ” Haitians. That’s untrue, inaccurate and unacceptable. Remember, it was in
1937, Dominican dictator Rafael Leonidas  Trujillo barbarically massacred and
murdered 30,000 Haitian Workers in the  Dominican  Republic. He was part of
the reactionary and  fascist sector of the Dominican ruling classes that
targeted the workers to  spread hate and xenophobic hysteria against Haitian
Immigrants in the population  in the Dominican  Republic.
Recently again, in 2005-2006, Haitians Workers  were victims of widespread
violence, and lynching in the Dominican  Republic. Three young Haitians were
burned  alive for doing nothing.
As thousands of Haitian Immigrant Workers are  violently deported to Haiti
daily, thousands more are recruited across the border in a human trafficking
trade to replenish the low-wage labor supply in the Dominican  Republic. Very
often, the workers are deported  without getting paid their salaries. So the
deportations are also used to steal  the workers’ earned salaries. The
reactionary and fascist Dominican ruling classes want the workers to remain ‘illegal’
to justify the extreme exploitation  and eventual racist deportation of these
workers. The workers are not only  underpaid, they are exploited to their
very bones by the Dominican Bourgeoisie.  What they get in return is xenophobic
hysteria, disrespect, oppression, violence  and humiliation.
6)      (CD): “Let me inform you that the first evil and bad people are the
Haitians and  the government.”
(R): If this is not “Spreading hate and racism”, we don’t know what is. Yet,
we  want to give the Concerned Dominicans the benefit of the doubt. It is
unfortunate that they feel that way even though they probably didn’t really mean
 it that way. To us, the Dominican and Haitian Peoples are very good and
hard-working. They are brothers and sisters sharing the same island, our land.
We, the People, should not let ourselves be  influenced by the racist,
reactionary and fascist ruling classes’ prejudice against workers to push us to
talk nonsense. They are trying to divide us  because they want to keep us under
their reactionary, cruel and brutal  domination. They do not want to see
Dominican and Haitian workers get united. So they want to maintain and continue to
feed on this controversy over “illegal  immigrants” for so long as we allow
them.
We have the obligation to promote  cross-border solidarity between Dominican
and Haitian Workers. The border should  remain open so that Dominicans and
Haitians can come and go freely to work, shop and live together. The Haitian and
Dominican capitalists/bourgeoisie come and go  as they please across the
border. Workers should be able to do the same. Let’s us not be the fools fighting
and killing each other while the bourgeoisie on  both sides of the island
unite themselves to oppress, exploit, and kill us  all.
These revelations are not meant to smear the  Dominican  Republic. No, not at
all! We know, the racist  and fascist Dominican ruling classes like to use
this to rally nationalist  Dominicans. Our intention is to spearhead a call for
dialogue among Progressive  Haitians and Dominicans to address our common
issues in an intelligent and  civilized way.
Dominican and Haitian Workers have only One  Future: They have to lead and
transform the whole island into a Workers’ Paradise without exploiters and live
peacefully  forever. If the Concerned Dominicans agree with these ideas,
please contact us  so we can discuss our differences and work together for the
betterment of our  Island.
Batay Ouvriye  (Workers' Struggle) Solidarity Network
_bosolidarity@yahoo.com_ (mailto:bosolidarity@yahoo.com)





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