Strong contradictions between diplomatic representatives and the official line of the Dominican government towards Palestine and Haiti
The extremism of the official line of the PRM government, in particular its anti-Haitian agitation and its support for Israeli apartheid as part of its genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, has generated in recent months public contradictions with liberal and moderate members of his diplomatic service. The most recent case was the speech given by Andrés L. Mateo, permanent delegate of the Dominican Republic to the 219th session of the Executive Board of UNESCO, on March 18. He said the “spectacle of extermination” in the Gaza Strip had left him “terrified”. “(We) are overwhelmed by the helplessness and death of a people cornered and mercilessly massacred,” did he declare. At the end of last year, the Dominican ambassador to the Spanish state, journalist Juan Bolívar Díaz, called for the abandonment of policies that promote hatred against Haiti, to which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded. responded by releasing a press statement ordering foreign services not to make statements to the media without prior authorization from the ministry.
Although, in Mateo’s case, he also said he condemned “terrorism” in general, his condemnation of the extermination of the Palestinian people was never the official position of the Dominican government, and Mateo’s speech is not not reviewed on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the Permanent Mission to UNESCO. The position expressed on this issue by President Abinader and Foreign Minister Roberto Álvarez is very different. On October 7, 2023, the Dominican President tweeted: “ I express my strong condemnation of the Hamas terrorist attacks against the people of Israel. This escalation of violence prevents the peace solutions we all want. We hope that diplomacy will be preferred to war. “The Dominican government condemns the terrorist attacks perpetrated by Hamas against Israel, which left more than a hundred dead and hundreds injured. Our support and solidarity with Israel in these difficult times”declared the Chancellor.
In the following months, as the number of victims of the Israeli genocidal campaign exceeded 35,000 victims, most of them boys and girls, the Dominican government issued no condemnation of the Zionist state. On the contrary, the chancellor declared in November that he “(understands) the decision taken by Israel, which implies the continuation of attacks against Hamas, until the release of the hostages “, without referring to the fact that Israeli attacks have focused on the civilian population, nor mentioning the thousands of Palestinian hostages who are languishing in Zionist prisons, imprisoned for years, suffering constant torture and humiliation. In bodies such as the UN and CELAC, the Dominican government has voted or signed declarations and resolutions with majority support calling for humanitarian pauses in Israeli attacks or calling for a ceasefire, but without condemning Israeli actions, before which the International Court of Justice admitted a complaint from South Africa, recognizing the plausibility that Israel would commit genocidal acts.
The Dominican state has recognized the Palestinian state since 2009, but maintains a strategic alliance with the Zionist apartheid state that includes delivering water management design to the Israeli state-owned Mekorot, the training and repressive advice to the national police and the purchase of Israeli weapons equipment dating back to the dictatorships of Trujillo and Balaguer. In 2023, Abinader’s government dedicated the Santo Domingo International Book Fair to the Zionist apartheid regime, sparking widespread national and international condemnation.
Dissent against official anti-Haitianism
Since 2021, the Dominican government has implemented a policy of mass expulsions against the Haitian working community residing in the country, with hundreds of thousands of expulsions, including pregnant women, children separated from their families and Dominicans from Haitian origin. Discourses that present Haitian immigrants as a threat to Dominican security and sovereignty, or as an economic burden, are characteristic of the right-wing PRM government. In September, the government began implementing a series of aggressive measures, such as closing the border and mobilizing troops, in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the construction of a Haitian irrigation canal in the binational Dajabón River, also known as the Massacre River. . . In its defense of this policy, the Foreign Office has reached extreme historical denial and revisionism. During an appearance before the Senate in October 2023, the chancellor declared that in the colonial city of Santo Domingo “there was no slavery” and that the origins of the Dominican people are “totally different” from those from other Caribbean countries and that in the country there would be no racism or racist policies.
The Dominican Ambassador to the Spanish State, Juan Bolívar Díaz, opposed this official orientation, publishing statements a month later in which he assured to maintain the same positions as before entering the government. “I continue to support the positions that I have always supported, I will not decline in my preaching that Dominicans and Haitians must understand each other, that we must use more constructive, less dramatic language, seek and promote solutions in Haiti because we don’t. We will do without Haiti. “ Haiti will continue on this path and we cannot follow policies that promote hatred and confrontation. »
Bolívar Díaz recognized that the bilateral trade relationship is largely beneficial for the Dominican Republic and that Haitian workers make a fundamental contribution to the agricultural and construction sectors and are a pillar of economic growth, which is why the speeches of hatred and stigmatization We must make an effort to moderate it” and prevent reaching levels of confrontation such as those between the State of Israel and the Palestinian people.
These moderate statements have generated intense and virulent public controversy, with attacks from those who defend the official government line. The PRM deputies attacked the ambassador. One of them, Soraya Suárez, asserted that Bolívar Díaz “should be ambassador of Haiti and not of the Dominican Republic, to love Haitians more than Dominicans,” while representative Kenia Bidó criticized Bolívar Díaz with arguments diametrically opposed to those of Suárez, claiming that the government was in fact defending ” the best interest of Haitians. Although dated October 26, it was immediately after Bolívar Díaz’s statements that the instructions from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the heads of diplomatic and consular missions were made public to consult “their vice-ministry in charge” and to wait a response before making statements to the press. , also notifying the Communications Department “ for advice, monitoring, control and feedback.
What the two cases demonstrate, that of Andrés L. Mateo and Juan Bolívar Díaz, is the tension between the extremist official line of support for the Palestinian genocide and racial persecution and the exacerbated anti-Haitian, and a sector of liberal intellectuality which, despite its differences, was co-opted by the PRM government and did not reach the breaking point, as happened in the government of Hipólito Mejía, predecessor of the current Perremeísta government, when the then chancellor, Hugo Tolentino, resigned in protest against Mejía’s support for the US invasion of Iraq.
Socialist Workers Movement of the Dominican Republic
21 mars 2024
