Following the alleged murder of a Dominican merchant by Haitian immigrants in the town of Hatillo Palma in the north-western department of Montecristi in the Dominican Republic on 9 May, groups armed with machetes and sticks began attacking people believed to be Haitians.

Properties were looted and set on fire in a number of localities. The Dominican media reported that a number of Haitians were killed during the pogroms.

In the days that followed, hundreds of Haitian immigrants fled the persecution, and crossed the border into Haiti at Dajabon-Ouanaminthe.

Then over the weekend of 13-15 May, the Dominican Army started rounding up people believed to be Haitians and forcibly deported them. As many as 4,000 people have been forced out of the Dominican Republic into Haiti.

More than 500,000 Haitians live in the Dominican Republic, having crossed the porous border in recent decades in search of a living. Many of them are undocumented - living in the Dominican Republic without residency permits. They find work in the host country's tourism, construction, and agricultural sectors.

Right-wing governments in the Dominican Republic have periodically stoked up racial tensions between the peoples of the twin-state island of Hispaniola.

GARR's Lespinasse said that the Dominican Army had deported people who they judged to be Haitian on the basis of the color of their skin. As a result, she said, many black Dominicans had been deported, as well as black Haitians and black Haitian-Dominicans who had the legal right to live in the Dominican Republic.

The Dominican-based Jesuit Service for Refugees and Migrants (SJRM) confirmed that amongst the thousands deported to the Haitian border town of Ouanaminthe were 28 black Dominican schoolchildren who were detained on their way to school, and 39 parents whose deportation meant that their children had been left behind in the Dominican Republic.

SJRM also noted the presence of 12 deportees in their sixties who had lived in the Dominican Republic for over 30 years, and whose children had been brought up in that country and thus had no connection with Haiti.

The SJRM's sister organization, Border Solidarity, denounced the Dominican government for taking advantage of the public outrage over the murder at Hatillo Palma to "expel from its territory people of color...under the pretext of protecting Haitians."

The Dominican Advisory and Legal Research Center (CEDAIL) - an organization set up by the Dominican Catholic Church to help protect immigrants' rights - criticized the "indiscriminate and anti-democratic" repatriations of Haitians.

In a 27 May press release, CEDAIL stated that "interested persons and sectors are taking advantage of a very regrettable deed to feed xenophobia and anti-Haitianism in the country."

Noting that Haitian immigrants do jobs that most Dominicans refuse to consider, the organization said that while the Dominican State had every right to regulate its borders and take measures against immigration, it also owes "a great social debt to the Haitian migrant population, which makes important contributions to the Dominican economy...working under conditions that citizens reject."

At the end of May, a group of Haitian intellectuals launched an appeal for a boycott of Dominican produce and for the voluntary suspension of visits to the country in order to protest against the "unacceptable treatment" of their compatriots, and the "racist character" of the deportations.

An edited version of this article was published by Hardbeatnews on June 3, 2005: www.hardbeatnews.com

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