Georgetown, July 14 (teleSUR-RHC)-- The Regional Cultural Committee of the Caribbean Community – CARICOM – has called on the regional bloc to urge the Dominican Republic put an end to the policies behind the mass deportation of Haitians in a move to prevent a humanitarian crisis in the region and avoid similar immigration policy spreading to other Caribbean nations, the organization announced Monday.
CARICOM's Regional Cultural Committee condemned the “gross denial” of the basic human rights of Haitian-Dominicans taking place in the Dominican Republic, saying the organization “views with abhorrence” the forced expulsion of Haitian descendants, forced into a position of statelessness by racist policy, and recent reports of lynchings of Haitian-Dominicans.
The committee urged CARICOM to pressure the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean nations to immediately halt all “overtly racist policies disguised as state foreign policy,” such as the immigration policy in Dominican Republic putting tens of thousands of Haitian descendants in a precarious situation on the brink of deportation.
“The lessons of history as seen in circumstances such as Nazi Germany, South Africa under Apartheid Law and Legal segregation in the Southern states of the U.S., demonstrate clearly the immediate danger of such state endorsed violence against members of our Caribbean family,” the Regional Cultural Committee said in a statement released Monday.
The recommendation also called for national dialogues on humanitarian, immigration, and citizenship issues to engage Caribbean diaspora communities. The call for increased pressure on Dominican Republic to rethink its regularization plan that has forced massive out-migration of Haitian descendants comes as an Organization of American States (OAS) delegation visits Haiti to assess the human rights and migration situation after wrapping up activities in the Dominican Republic.
Tens of thousands of Haitian-Dominicans face mass deportation after a recently imposed government deadline for some half a million stateless Haitians, stripped of citizenship retroactively in a 2013 court decision, to register with authorities.
With few permits granted, the regularization plan was essentially a mass deportation order for Haitians and many Dominicans of Haitian descent, flaring deep and racist tensions between the neighboring Caribbean nations.
