BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – DOMINICA’S Prime Minister the Hon. Roosevelt Skerritt has condemned the Dominican Republic Government’s threat to deport hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent to neighbouring Haiti.
Speaking recently to the nation on national television, PM Skerritt said CARICOM is taking the issue very seriously.
“The first point in regards to the Dominican Republic and Haiti is a matter which CARICOM has taken very seriously. It’s a matter we have engaged on with the Dominican Republic authorities as late as the meeting in Brussels in June with the authorities present.”
He pointed to a law that was passed in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean country which had and continues to affect the target group.
“What has happened is that you have people of Haitian descent who were born in the Dominican Republic, who by a decision of the Supreme Court denied them, strip them of the right to citizenship of the Dominican Republic.”
Skerritt explained that the Dominican Republic Government had taken steps to regularise the target group but, he claimed, the time given to do so was inadequate.
“We have gotten commitments from the DR Government that they had taken action to regularise those people, but the timeframe which they gave and the onerous request making of the applicants made virtually impossible for the vast majority of those citizens to apply for their citizenship. So the DR has taken the decision to deport tens of thousands of Dominican Republic citizens back into Haiti with no address in Haiti, with no family links in Haiti...”
PM Skerritt also explained that the DR Government had also deprived many children the right to education, noting that “they have thrown the children out of university, out of school...they are not allowed to attend school”.
He stressed that the action taken by that government is not of an immigration nature but a human rights issue.
“What we have been saying at the CARICOM level is that this is not an immigration issue. This is not somebody in your country who doesn’t have papers and the person is not regularise, he doesn’t have a work permit and therefore you want to deport him.
“We believe and we maintain that this is a human rights issue, and Amnesty International and the International Human Rights Court have all ruled and given their opinions on this matter.”
From a humanitarian standpoint, PM Skerritt said that as citizens of the world “we must be cognisant of these issues and to raise our voice in condemnation that it is unbecoming of any society to render thousands of people stateless”.
Hypothetically, he compared the Haitians situation with citizens of the Dominican Republic living in other countries.
“What if the Unites States should do them the same thing, for example, and to say that anybody from DR let us strip you of your green card or your citizenship and send you back to the DR? Or what if it happens to Dominicans living anywhere in the world who were born in those countries? So we have to speak out on those issues.”
The Prime Minister disclosed that the commitment which was given to CARICOM Heads of Government by the Dominican Republic authorities at the EU-CELAC Meeting “is totally contrary to what is happening this week. I believe that CARICOM should take an even stronger position on this matter at our next meeting in Barbados and make our voices resonate even louder”.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister of St. Vincent and The Grenadines, Dr. the Hon. Ralph Gonsalves, also condemned the action taken by the DR Government.
According to Caribbean360, Dr. Gonsalves said refusing citizenship to the people in the Dominican Republic and subjecting them to deportation is a “stain” on Caribbean civilisation.
“What is happening in the Dominican Republic is simply unacceptable,” he said. “It is unacceptable to have a public policy in relation to citizenship, grounded in ethnicity or your national origins.”
The condemnation was also voiced in Trinidad and Tobago by the political party, Congress of the People.
“The mass deportation of persons who have lived, worked and owned property in that country of their birth not only deprives them of their rights, but, will also worsen the humanitarian situation in Haiti,” said the political party’s leader Prakash Ramadhar.
“We must all do our part to maintain the pressure on the government of the Dominican Republic to permanently halt the threatened deportation. As a Caribbean nation, we must join with our CARICOM and international neighbours to demand that Dominican Republic government take all political, legislative and other measures to restore the citizenship rights of these Dominicans.”
Ramadhar said his party had written to the CARICOM Secretariat calling on calling on that body to take all steps necessary in concert with the United Nations and other international human rights bodies as well as all governments to continue the strongest measures to force the government of the Dominican Republic to meet its obligations to respect the rights of its citizens and right the terrible wrong it has perpetrated.
And in St. Lucia, Caribbean360 reported that a non-governmental organisation, Raise Your Voice (St. Lucia), has urged Prime Minister Dr. Kenny Anthony and Minister for External Affairs Alva Baptist to lead the way at the next CARICOM Heads of Government meeting in Barbados to “ensure that CARICOM becomes a more vocal advocate for these victims who are being persecuted by the Dominican Republic”.
“We believe that without CARICOM’s effective involvement, this situation will create a devastating, humanitarian crisis in the Caribbean region similar to those in the Middle East and Europe, and we therefore urge our leaders to ensure that the UN Secretary-General who is slated to be present at the CARICOM meeting do all in his power to put an end to this heartless action by President Danilo Medina Sánche of the Dominican Republic. No state should have the power to brand groups of existing citizens stateless, and no other states should acquiesce in their pretensions to do so,” Caribbean360 reported the organisation as saying.
It is reported that up until 2010, anyone born in the Dominican Republic was automatically given citizenship. However, a constitutional change had denied citizenship to children who were born in that country of undocumented parents.
This was followed by an amendment to the Constitution in September 2013, whereby citizenship was denied to anyone born in that country since 1929, if his or her parents had been “in transit”, which is affecting not only the migrants’ children, but their grandchildren and, in some cases, great-grandchildren as well.
