#1031: DOMINICANS MARCH AGAINST "HAITIAN INVASION" (fwd)

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

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.