Washington D.C – Across the Dominican Republic, over 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent are languishing in limbo following an inhumane ruling retroactively stripping them of citizenship, and the violence and intimidation that has followed. Now, hundreds of thousands have fled and many of them reside in squalid refugee camps along the Haitian border.
To coincide with Dominican Independence Day on February 27th, the Black Alliance for Just Immigration and #Rights4ALLinDR coalition sent a letter to Secretary Kerry signed by over 200 members of the Dominican and Haitian diaspora, legal scholars from universities across the United States, and community organizations at the forefront of social progress denouncing the Department of State’s inaction on the human rights crisis in the Dominican Republic.
The signatories stress that, in the time of the global Black Lives Matter movement, the State Department’s concern for human rights can not solely extend to the plight of certain segments of Dominican society while callously dismissing the pernicious impacts of institutionalized racism and political scapegoating faced by people of Afro-descent there. Given the lack of noticeable progress on the issue at the State Department and in Congress even as the human rights situation becomes more dire, the signatories ask for a meeting with Secretary Kerry directly to discuss policy changes that address these issues in the Dominican Republic.
Copies of the letter in English and Spanish are available here.
Carl Lipscombe, Policy & Legal Manager, Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI).