A few days after the right-wing PRM government defended the systematic violation of the human rights of the Haitian immigrant community, in response to complaints from Dominican organizations and Amnesty International, a new savage crime by the DGM shocked the country. This happened in Verón, Punta Cana, where all kinds of racist crimes were carried out, including beatings, robberies and shootings, as part of the mass and arbitrary detentions of Haitian workers and their families in view of their expulsion. On April 5, DGM henchmen broke in, devastating the community, terrorizing the population in the manner of the Banda Colorá and the Paleros of Trujillo. During an illegal raid, like the hundreds that are carried out every week, they sexually abused a 14-year-old girl.
The government issued a statement attempting to wash its hands of the crime. However, just a day before the crime, Minister of the Presidency Igor Rodríguez affirmed that the government would not take into account the opinion of Amnesty International because its policy of mass deportations was based on a supposed exercise of sovereignty. If searches without a judicial decision and illegal detentions of minors had been eliminated, in accordance with Law 285-04 and what the country’s organizations have been demanding for years, this aberrant crime would not have taken place.
“They brutally raped her, we and her family members are suing the immigration unit, especially the people who not only committed this act, but after leaving her torn and sad, they return the search, take her to Benedicto and threaten her. They tell her if she says anything they will kill her “, explained Santiago Molina, of the National Commission for Human Rights of the Dominican Republic (CNDH-RD), officially denouncing the crime to the PGR. Molina told the EFE agency that rapes of Haitian women and girls by agents are common but go unreported out of fear. The impunity granted to the DGM by the PGR subordinate to the government has worsened the situation.
On social networks, the frequency of reports of racist crimes committed by repressive agents has increased, including assassination attempts with firearms or the alleged murder of a baby in Los Platanitos, Higüey. All this after the government refused to take into account requests from Amnesty International and other organizations, which could indicate an escalation of racist violence of a retaliatory nature and for the purposes of electoral propaganda, to attract the support of far-right sectors.
As in the bloodiest war contexts, Haitian and Haitian-origin women and girls are being abused as part of the DGM’s campaign to terrorize this hard-working community. The government’s rampant racism is accompanied by the silence of the self-proclaimed “progressive” sectors represented in Congress. However, this has sparked outrage in popular communities where injustice is recognized towards the Haitian migrant population and their descendants, as well as any black person racially profiled as “suspicious” by the authorities. In March, transportation agents and other community workers repelled an attack by DGM thugs in Cristo Rey, National District, with stones and bottles when agents beat a Haitian worker.
Thousands of “isolated cases”?
The government’s response to the undeniable racist and criminal violence of the DGM is to affirm that these are isolated cases, as the Dominican Ambassador to the OAS, Josué Fiallo, recently declared during an audience of the IACHR in November 2023, during which he had to recognize the expulsion of more than 2,200 pregnant women between 2021 and 2023.
Sexual violence is less documented than other human rights violations and often goes unreported. However, in September 2023, the case of Haitian Stephy Graph became known, who, after being arrested for an alleged false visa, was sexually assaulted by law enforcement agents at Las Américas International Airport (AILA). The PGR has not released information about this case or whether any convictions or trials are pending.
Black Dominican Cristina Martínez Lorenzo, arrested on September 20, 2023 for racial profiling during a DGM operation at San Cristóbal Hospital, was illegally exiled. Taking advantage of her mental health, the officers arrested and banned her. Her relatives reported that she had been sexually abused and may have been pregnant. There are also no known criminal charges or convictions in this case.
The right-wing PRM government has continued a policy of racist persecution that seeks to maintain high levels of oppression and exploitation of the Haitian immigrant community, for the benefit of Dominican and other country-based capitalists in the Dominican Republic, both in agro-industry as well as in the economy, construction and the service sector. At some point, the Dominican state will have to answer to the world of apartheid regime that it is building to deprive Haitians and Dominican immigrants of Haitian origin of all their political, economic and social rights.
Socialist Workers Movement of the Dominican Republic
12 Avril 2024
