Christian Aid has written to the Dominican Republic president, Leonel Fernandez, to protest against the rising tide of violent attacks against Haitian migrants seeking work across their common border.
Mob attacks have claimed the lives of at least ten Haitians over the past two years. In one incident, three young Haitian men were burned to death.
These assaults on Haitians are taking place against a background of mass deportations from the republic by immigration and military officials. Many of these deportations contravene international norms as well as specific agreements between the Haitian and Dominican governments.
All deportations must conform to Dominican laws and international human rights standards, says the letter.
Christian Aid partners have collected testimony from deportees, which indicate a consistent pattern. Numerous cases have been documented in which immigration officials have broken into homes and forced people at gunpoint onto buses giving them no chance to collect documents or inform relatives. When they reach the Haitian side of the border, many have been able to prove that they were in the Dominican Republic legally.
Last week, a bus carrying about 100 Haitian deportees was involved in a serious accident. The injured were taken to hospital for first aid, but were deported immediately afterwards. Some were sent to Haiti in bloodstained clothes.
Christian Aid partner, GARR, the Support Group for Refugees and Repatriated Persons, had to borrow two Red Cross ambulances from the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, to transport the most seriously injured to a hospital in Haiti. The less seriously-injured were transported by pick-up truck.
The letter to the president also highlighted the problem of people trafficking across the Haiti-Dominican border. Because Haiti is so much poorer than the Dominican Republic, Haitians are easy targets for people traffickers promising a better life over the border.
In January, 25 Haitians died of suffocation in the back of an airless and overcrowded truck.
In response to this catalogue of abuses, Christian Aid, along with several other international organisations, is calling for Dominican authorities to fully investigate violent crimes that are being perpetrated against Haitians in their territory.
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
