JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

PM monitoring Dominican Rep, Haiti situation

by

20131106

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she will mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and will con­sult Cari­com's sec­re­tary gen­er­al Ir­win La Rocque and the Cari­com Bu­reau on the best way for­ward to find­ing a res­o­lu­tion to the mat­ter.She made the com­ment af­ter UWI-based arts group Jou­vay Ay­i­ti vis­it­ed her St Clair of­fice, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day to de­liv­er a pe­ti­tion with over 800 sig­na­tures from the Caribbean and its di­as­po­ra call­ing for trade and oth­er em­bar­goes to be placed on the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

The group has added its voice to glob­al calls con­demn­ing the Sep­tem­ber 25 rul­ing by the Do­mini­can Con­sti­tu­tion­al Tri­bunal which ren­dered many Do­mini­cans of Hait­ian de­scent state­less.The group donned J'Ou­vert-like cos­tumes, such as moko jumbies, dev­ils and book­men, dur­ing yes­ter­day's ac­tion and al­so de­liv­ered the pe­ti­tion to the Do­mini­can Em­bassy at Queen's Park West, Port-of-Spain, be­fore end­ing at the PM's of­fice.

In a re­lease to the me­dia last evening, the of­fice said the PM ac­knowl­edge re­ceipt of the pe­ti­tion "in sup­port of Do­mini­cans of Hait­ian de­scent, fol­low­ing the Sep­tem­ber 2013 rul­ing of the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court of the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, which strips Do­mini­can cit­i­zen­ship from im­mi­grants en­ter­ing the coun­try since 1929 and that of their off­spring.

"Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar has not­ed with great con­cern the is­sues raised in the let­ter. She recog­nis­es the dif­fi­cul­ty and un­cer­tain­ty that those per­sons in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic whose sta­tus and rights have been cast in doubt now face."Equal­ly, the Prime Min­is­ter re­spects the sov­er­eign in­de­pen­dence of the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and of its Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court," the re­lease said.The rul­ing, ac­cord­ing to Jou­vay Ay­i­ti's pe­ti­tion, has out­raged the in­ter­na­tion­al rights com­mu­ni­ty.

The group's di­rec­tor, Rawle Gib­bons, de­fined the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic's rul­ing as out­ra­geous and said a dan­ger­ous prece­dent had been cre­at­ed.Cari­com, he said, had a pri­ma­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to re­spond to the is­sue, adding a "weak kind of state­ment" had been made but that was late and in­ef­fec­tu­al.How­ev­er, Dr Jose Serulle Ramia, am­bas­sador for the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic to Trinidad, said claims that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300,000 Hait­ian de­scen­dants would be de­port­ed from the coun­try in the wake of the rul­ing were false.

In­stead, he said, the Hait­ian de­scen­dants have been giv­en two years to reg­u­larise. He in­vit­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar to send a del­e­ga­tion to ob­serve the reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion process. De­por­ta­tion, he said, was on­ly ap­plic­a­ble to those en­ter­ing the coun­try now in an il­le­gal way.

Asked about calls for the coun­try's ap­pli­ca­tion to Cari­com/Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank to be re­viewed and a trade em­bar­go placed on the coun­try, Ramia said Caribbean coun­tries were like broth­er and sis­ter and should not act like en­e­mies. He said those pro­pos­als were against the sol­i­dar­i­ty of the peo­ples of the Caribbean.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored