Category: haiti

Jacqueline Charles reports, for Miami Herald, on the closed border between Dominican Republic and Haiti.

“What is fundamental in all of this is the color of the skin, which shows that even… the Black Dominican population is in danger,” said [Edwin] Paraison.

But the fear that anyone who is of a darker hue can be arrested and detained because authorities think they are Haitian isn’t isolated to Black Dominicans. Last November, after the country launched mass deportations of Haitians, the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo warned African-American visitors they could be mistaken for being Haitian and be detained and deported to Haiti.

Dominican officials rejected the U.S. criticism and said the travel alert had negatively affected tourism. Testifying before a congressional committee four months later, Secretary of State Antony Blinken defended the warning.

[…]

“… there is a reality that exists, it’s racism. But the authorities don’t acknowledge it and they hate it when people talk about it,” she said. “And when you speak about it, you become the person who is in danger, who is targeted.” That means, she said, the Dominican Republic remains unable to tackle the issue of racism.

“Cristina is not the first Dominican who has been confused with being Haitian and then sent to Haiti,” she said. “But what has made this case even more grave is that she is someone who suffers from mental problems and the authorities did not take this into consideration. It shows how Dominican immigration works.”

Crisis!

The constitutional mandate of Haiti’s de facto ruler, Prime Minister Ariel Henry — which some viewed as questionable from the start, as he was never technically sworn in — ended more than a year ago.

The country has had no president since its last one, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in 2021. Its Senate is supposed to have 30 members, and its lower legislative chamber should have 119; all of those seats are unfilled. Haiti’s elected mayors were all reappointed or replaced in 2020.

And last week, its 10 remaining senators departed office after their terms ended, leaving behind a nation’s worth of elected offices that now sit empty after years of canceled elections.

The country of 12 million people last held national elections in 2016.

Rampant inflation has sent the cost of food and gas spiraling; food insecurity is so widespread that about 40% of the population do not have enough to eat. And the disasters have combined to keep thousands of the country’s schools closed, meaning millions of Haitian children have lacked steady education and meals since the beginning of the pandemic.

via NPR.