Haiti and the Dominican Republic share an island, Hispaniola.
Until recently, the Dominican Republic considered all
persons born in the country to be citizens, but in 2013, the Dominican
Constitutional Court retroactively revoked citizenship for children born to
foreign parents as early as 1929. Tuesday was residents’ last chance to
petition for naturalization to regain citizenship (albeit a lesser form).
The ruling is expected to primarily affect persons of
Haitian heritage, who have been targeted for expulsion previously. Applying the
ruling as far back as 1929 meant that families who had been citizens for two or
more generations lost their Dominican Republic citizenship and couldn’t turn to
Haiti for a new home. A foreign-born person of Haitian descent is eligible for
Haitian citizenship only if one parent is a natural-born Haitian citizen.
The Dominican Republic’s only attempt to mitigate the
effects of the ruling has been a 2014 law allowing those who had previously
been considered natural-born citizens to apply for naturalized citizenship,
provided they had the documents to prove they were born in the Dominican
Republic. Residents of Haitian descent have alleged that registration workers
have illegally denied qualified applicants and even confiscated the documents that
applicants provided. Even if the registration process weren’t drawing
criticism, it would be of little help to many longtime Haitian residents of the
Dominican Republic. According to the 2010 Dominican Republic census, 41 percent
of all foreign-born Haitian residents live in rural areas, where their
natural-born children are much less likely to be entered into the civil
registry or to be issued an official birth certificate. Dominican officials
began refusing to grant copies of birth certificates to the Dominican-born
children of Haitian immigrants in 2005. This was in violation of the American
Convention on Human Rights. After years
of protests and legal haggling, the Dominican government began allowing
Dominican-Haitians to get copies of birth certificates again, but the process
was badly flawed. Thousands of Dominican-Haitians have gotten no response from
application submissions even after nine months
The final deadline to register for naturalization passed
Tuesday, persons of Haitian descent are waiting to see what the government
decides to do. The U.N. estimates that 210,000 residents of the Dominican
Republic are now stateless. In a 2002 report, Human Rights Watch described what
happened to Haitians who were expelled from the Dominican Republic in previous
deportation waves: late-night raids, forced busing across the Haitian border
and abandonment in what was, to them, a foreign country with only the clothes
on their backs. The Dominican government recently opened seven deportation
centers near the Haitian border, and gave them the Orwellian name of
"welcome centers”. The Dominican government has also requested 36 large
passenger buses "be made available for continued use". 2,000 police
and military officers and 150 inspectors had received special training for
deportations. Andrés Navarro, the foreign minister, says they will wait until
August to start deporting.
Once stateless people have been pushed out of their former
home, they have no unique claim on any country in the world, which can wind up
meaning that no nation offers them a new place to settle and be citizens. For
example, hundreds of Rohingya Muslims have been in limbo after escaping Myanmar.
Although they have been given shelter in temporary camps, they have no new
nation to belong to. If the Dominican Republic expels its newly stateless
residents, they may also find that they have nowhere to legally live. Where
will these people live in Haiti? Most of them have never been to Haiti. Haiti
can't even house all of its own people. Dumping a quarter of a million people
on the border of the poorest nation in the hemisphere will quickly lead to a
public health disaster. The Pope has berated the Dominican Republic's Catholic
bishops for being silent on the potential catastrophe.
About a quarter of a million people have been made
stateless. They will have no homes, no passports, and no civil rights. There
are several reasons for this, but the primary reason is racism and xenophobia.
racism in the DR is much worse than racism here in the United States. The idea
of being black in the DR is wrapped up with being Haitian, and then takes on a
xenophobic quality. The thing is, 90% of Dominicans would be considered 'black'
by American standards. So there is a huge difference between being considered
moreno (brown) and negro (black). To Dominicans, the supposed distinctions are
clear: Dominicans are European. Haitians are African. Dominicans are Christian.
Haitians practice voodoo. Being mistaken for being Haitian means being denied
job opportunities, public education, bank accounts, and health care. In other
words, being black in the DR means being a second-class citizen with no legal
protections. And now it means being stateless.
Dominican hatred of Haitians extends back to 1822, when
Haiti invaded and conquered the Dominican Republic and promptly freed the
slaves. In 1912, the Dominican government passed a law limiting the number of
black-skinned people who could enter the country. However, the racism peaked
under dictator Rafael Trujillo. He was known for wearing makeup in order to
make himself look more white. In 1937 he ordered the Parsley Massacre (Trujillo’s
men forced residents with dark skin to pronounce the word for parsley, perejil.
If they could not roll the r like a Spanish speaker, they were executed), also
referred to as El Corte (the cutting) by Dominicans. It is unknown how many
Haitians died in those five days, but it was in the tens of thousands. President
Joaquin Balaguer, Trujillo's right-hand man, and the dictator that the United
States installed in 1966, claimed that the Haitians were trying to invade and
that their secret weapon was "biological." As Balaguer put it,
Haitians "multiply with a rapidity that is almost comparable to that of a
vegetable species."
The Dominican Republic ratified its free-trade agreement with
the United States in 2007, and since then the country has experienced growing
rural and urban immiseration, even as its economy, praised by The Economist and
Wall Street investors, has expanded. A “third of the country’s total population
lives in poverty, and almost 20 per cent are living in extreme poverty.” In the
cities, the number of poor people has doubled since 2000, from 1.2 million to
2.4 million, according to the World Bank. Such misery fuels populist
nationalism. The elite powers in the Dominican Republic, its judges who passed
the ruling, the law professors who provided juridical support, the politicians
and the wealthy who use racism to deflect popular discontent—those who don’t
suffer but benefit from the global economy—are driving the current wave of
anti-Haitian xenophobia.
The World Socialist Movement challenges fellow-workers who cannot see beyond the
existing divisions of the world, and who believe in punitive measures against people from other countries. Workers of the world unite!
Sources
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-dominican-republics-revocation-of-citizenship-creates-200000-stateless-people/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/16/dominican-republic-haiti-deportation-residency-permits
No comments:
Post a Comment