Worldwide outrage over denationalisation of Dominicans of Haitian descent

Sentence No.168-2013 (PDF) [es], dictated by the Dominican Constitutional Court, has turned the international community on its head.  The polarisation within the country has also become more palpable, and debates seen in social media networks and the press haven’t taken even a minute’s rest.

The Court’s decision to strip the citizenship from everyone born in the country to immigrants with an illegal status since 1929 has left at least 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent stateless.

Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa, published the controversial article “The Pariahs of the Caribbean” [es] in El País in which he compares the sentence to Nazi laws against the Jews.  He also highlights the complexity of the Dominican State in this undocumented migration process:

International organisations Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have also denounced the Constitutional Court’s decision.

Economist and historian, Bernardo Vega, has made claims about the topic for the program El Despertador [es] where he reiterated that:

After scrutinising the country’s history from before the First World War to the present day, he strongly concludes that the Dominican Republic is knowingly responsible for these irregularities.

On the other hand, the historian Rosario Espinal’s article Matanza Electoral [es] [Electoral Slaughter], airs a different perspective. Published in her blog and in several nationally circulated newspapers, the article asserts that the drastic measures taken by the Constitutional Court respond to political interests and not to a racist war.  In her words:

[Image credit: Facebook page of the “Reconocido” [Recognized] campaign.]

Whatever the reason for this sentence, unrest has spread. On the 4th November, the coalition Dominicanos y Dominicanas por el Derecho de la Región Enriquillo (Dominicans for the Rights of the Enquillo Region) congregated and marched in the bateyes zone (rural communities situated in the outskirts of the sugar-producing district), reaffirming their rejection of the denationalisation of Dominicans of Haitian descent. A myriad of NGOs and social activists have also demonstrated against the sentence.

Meanwhile, a neo-nationalist movement has repeated again and again slogans such as “Death to the traitors” and “Them over there, us right here” in an act celebrated in the Altar de la Patria, [es] (the Altar to the Motherland) on the 5th November.  Those responsible for said demonstration have advocated for national sovereignty on the basis of the premise that “later there won’t be a motherland” if the decision is not defended.

#YouDon’tDoThat: Strip the Nationality from Thousands of Dominicans” [Image credit: Facebook page of the “Reconocido” campaign.]

The position of president Danilo Medino has not been able to calm the waters; far from pronouncing himself as being against these measures, he has held diplomatic meetings with dozens of ambassadors in which the scope of the sentence has been explained.

For now, we can only wait and see if international pressure, and rioting in this country, manage to push the different political entities into amending the damage caused by the fateful sentence No.168-2013

This article was translated by Erin Walton and originally published on Global Voices.