The world is in flux and much of the news is negative.
War, terrorism, violence, nuclear meltdown, melting ice
poles, inexplicable animal deaths, humans mistreating
other humans. In the Dominican Republic, a law has
stripped the citizenship of non-resident Haitians born in
the D.R., leaving thousands stateless and without rights.
How could a country act in this manner? Should you care?
We're all on Planet Earth together; though of different
classes, races, religions and countries, we are all human
beings striving for a decent life. People deserve respect
and a country that so unfairly targets a group ends up
soiling its image before the world stage.
The opinion piece below, by author Myriam Chancy,
offers a synopsis of the situation for those unfamiliar
with the issue. For a longer version of the piece go to
www.myriamchancy.com
As individuals we may not be able to right a wrong, but
as consumers we have the power of the pocketbook
to express our opinion.
Tourist boycott of D. R.?
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©tropicalparadise.net
The Dominican Republic:
troubled paradise |
Are you Haitian?
By Myriam J. A. Chancy
The implications of the ruling of September 23 (2013) by the
Constitutional Tribunal of the Dominican Republic, stripping
citizenship from the offspring of non-resident Haitians born in
the DR, where nationality is conferred by place of birth, are only
beginning to be understood by the international community with
the OAS, Amnesty International, and the governments of Trinidad
& Tobago, Guyana, St.Vincent and the Grenadines, openly
condemning the violation of human rights it represents.
Hanging in the balance
are the lives of nearly a
quarter of a million
Dominicans of Haitian
descent–of all ages
who have been rendered
stateless by the ruling, in
what has been deemed a
human rights crisis in the
making.
Upon closer examination, what
becomes clear is that the ruling
does not respond to an immigration crisis precipitated by the
devastating earthquake in Haiti of 2010; neither is it an effort
to quell the flow of migrant labor from Haiti into the Dominican
bateyes or cane fields.
The ruling of the Constitutional Tribunal came in response to a suit
brought against the State by 29 year-old Juliana Dequis (Pierre) in
2008 when the Central Electoral Board refused to issue her
state-issued ID.
A
cedula is needed in the DR for everything from registration in
schools, medical care, insurance, marriage licenses, to travel, and
is acquired by presenting a state-certified copy of one’s birth certificate.
According to an October 2010 report by the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights, the Electoral Board began to turn
away requests by Dominican Haitians for
cedulas as early as in the
1980s, with escalating demands of proof of parental identity for
Dominican Haitians culminating by 2000 in claims that Haitian
parents were “in transit,” and therefore not eligible to register
their Dominican-born children.
In 2004, the constitutional definition of “in transit” was redefined to
include all individuals without legal residency. In 2007, one year
before Dequis applied for and was refused the renewal of her
cedula, the Electoral Board passed a law annulling the citizenship
of individuals born in the DR whose parents did not have legal
residence.
In 2010, 14 days to the day after the Haiti earthquake, and while
Dequis’ case continued in legal limbo, a new constitution was
passed in the DR denying citizenship to children born in the
DR of illegal immigrants.
When the Constitutional Tribunal passed down its ruling September
23, it also stated that the ruling it applied to Dequis was to be equally
applied, retroactively, to all Dominicans of Haitian descent in a
similar legal situation, going back to 1929, in violation of international law.
This ruling effectively suspends the citizenship of nearly a quarter of
a million Dominicans.
Although individuals of other ethnicities and nationalities may be
affected by the ruling, it is estimated that, of those affected, 83% are
of Haitian descent.
The year 1929 sends a clear message as it coincides with the rise to
power of Raphael Trujillo, the general turned dictator who ruled the
DR from 1930-1961.
It also coincides with the first border treaty between Haiti and the
Dominican Republic. That border treaty was only ratified in 1936
and, in 1937, Trujillo (himself a quarter Haitian) ordered the massacre
of Haitians (and black Dominicans) in border zones still in dispute in
1935, after a land survey of 1930 favored Haiti’s access to more land
under the accord than had been provisionally agreed upon.
The current ruling affects four generations of Haitians including those
as old as 84 years of age who have known no other country than DR.
It also makes the persecution of Dominicans of Haitian descent
socially and legally permissible.
Finally, rather than regularize their legal standing in the DR, as the
Electoral Board claims is its objective, it renders them not only
stateless but
de facto stateless, a legal definition for which there
are no protections in international law.
At the same time, Dominican Haitians refused their
cedulas, cannot
leave the DR (as a Dominican Haitian seeking to marry an
American in Florida recently found out), ensuring that they remain
in a state of perpetual servitude and third-class status.
What is the purpose of this debasement?
For one, it perpetuates the myth of needing to maintain the DR’s
“whiteness” against foreign migration when the majority of its
population is mixed.
Second, it allows the DR to continue to uphold unjust and
exploitative working conditions while denying citizenship
to laborers.
Third, for those Dominican Haitians several generations removed
from an undocumented Haitian parent, grandparent, or great-
grandparent, it effectively renders them incapable of making any
claims or contributions to the DR’s economic development.
Fourth, it denies these individuals and all their progeny of their
rights to education, health care, and insurance.
These measures therefore not only create civic death but
institutionalize its attributes: poverty, illiteracy, lack of identity,
in short, non-being.
Given the gross violation of human rights this ruling represents
and the history it invokes, we should be willing, Haitian or not,
to stand with Dominicans of Haitian descent in their on-going
struggle for their human rights, and as citizens of the country of
their birth, but even more than this, to stand as Haitians in
acknowledgement of what the Haitian struggle has stood for
since 1791, long before there were Haitians and Dominicans,
and when there were slaves: the right to liberty, personhood,
and freedom in the Americas.
Myriam J. A. Chancy, Ph. D. is Professor of English,
specializing in Caribbean Studies. She is the author most
recently of From Sugar to Revolution: Women’s Visions of
Haiti, Cuba & The Dominican Republic (2012), and of
The Loneliness of Angels (2010), winner of the
2011 Guyana Prize for Literature, Caribbean Award 2010.
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If one keeps loving faithfully
what is really worth loving,
and does not waste one's love
on insignificant and unworthy
and meaningless things,
one will get more light by and by
and grow stronger.
--Vincent Van Gogh
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© 2013 Lorraine Blasor all rights reserved
bread but is a pathetic tasteless
