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News from the Dominican Republic as of
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Outrage in Dominican Republic in response to international campaign over Haitian workers
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| Published on Saturday, September 12, 2009 | Email To Friend Print Version
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SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic -- Different sectors in the Dominican Republic have reacted with outrage about what they value as "a persistent, unfair and slanderous" defamation campaign the English-Spanish priest Christopher Hartley Sartorius has waged in relation to the treatment given to Haitian workers in sugar industries.
The Dominican Ambassador in Belgium, Alejandro Gonzalez Pons, has stated that Father Hartley's campaign is "foolish," and pretends to "condemn this country in some international legal-political court under the accusation of violating human rights."
"With this campaign, based on distortion and bad intentions, he wants the European Union to impose sanctions on the Dominican Republic under the European Economic Association, better known as EPA," said Gonzalez Pons.
Last August, while visiting Santo Domingo, Haitian presidential candidate Senator Rudolph Henry Boulos thanked the authorities and people of the Dominican Republic "for the acceptance, protection and well treatment" of the immigrants of his country which total, as he said, almost two million. The Dominican population, according to the latest census, is about 9.5 million.
In a statement to Listin Diario, a local newspaper, the president of the Federation of Dominican Sugar Settlers, Bernardo Diaz, said that all the complaints that the priest has made in Europe have affected sugar exports to this market, which nowadays totals 30,000 tons.
El Nuevo Diario, another independent newspaper, published an article on August 28 accusing Hartley of "preaching over the years a gospel of hate" against the Dominican Republic.
"As a consequence of this hatred campaign of Christopher Hartley Sartorius," the newspaper said in an article signed by Ramon A. Cabral, "hostility has sprout[ed] everywhere and confrontations are frequent," as it has occurred already in different communities near the border, where citizens of both countries have collided, leaving behind dead and injured people.
The sugar industry in Dominican Republic is employing fewer Haitians workers each year and the dependence on foreign labour will tend to disappear as the mechanization of the harvest continues. Moreover, it is estimated that in the highest period of the harvest, the sugar industry employs only 12,000 workers, mostly Haitians. | | | | Reads : 1116 | | | |
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