UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk has called on the Dominican Republic to cease forced deportations of Haitian migrants and people of Haitian ancestry amid a growing human rights crisis in Haiti, to which the country's president responded with a statement that the Dominican Republic would only step up deportations.
The Dominican Republic deported an estimated 60,000 Haitians and people of Haitian ancestry between Aug. 1 and Oct. 31.
The current wave of deportations is the latest development in a saga that began in 2014, when a Dominican Republic high court stripped citizenship from people descended from Haitian migrants.
“The Dominican Republic is getting more aggressive in its anti-Black policies,” said Boston City Councilor Kendra Lara, whose parents are from the Dominican Republic. “The military is actively seeking out and deporting Black women who are pregnant so they would not have children in the Dominican Republic.”
“You have generations born without papers,” said former Massachusetts state Rep. Marie St. Fleur, who is Haitian American. “They’re not Haitian, because they weren’t born there. But the Dominican Republic won’t give them citizenship.”
Read more here.
