According to the Executive Branch legal advisor Cesar Pina Toribio, the article that appeared in the New York Times about the alleged abuse of Haitian citizens working in the DR has the sole purpose of harming the country’s image. He stated that any abuse situation that may have arisen is to be considered an “isolated incident” as it does not reflect the attitude of the Dominican people or official policy. Minister Marino Vinicio Castillo said the report by Ginger Thompson was “insulting, untrue, and perverse”. Meanwhile, Foreign Relations Minister Carlos Morales Troncoso has sent a letter to the New York Times in which he accuses Thompson of distorting the truth. He emphasizes that there is no policy of abuse or discrimination against Haitians in the DR, and cited as proof of this “the liberty and security in which hundreds of thousands of Haitians move about, work or live in the national territory”.
According to the Ministry of Foreign Relations, last year 334,135 Haitian citizens or people of Haitian origin were treated in the country’s hospitals. Of that total, 85,000 – about 25% — received treatment in medical centers near the border. According to statistics, the province with the highest number of Haitian patients was Valverde, with a total of 35,504. The Ministry also reports that there are 18,171 students in Dominican schools who are Haitian or of Haitian descent. The data was collected for the reply to the Inter-American Human Rights Court that sentenced the DR to pay US$20,000 in damages in favor of two Haitian girls and their mothers.
The New York Times article also generates some comment in today’s editorial columns. Hoy in particular is emphatic in its condemnation. It describes the content as the product of the reporter’s “morbid imagination” and says that the article “dirties the NYT’s prestigious reputation with its lies and infamy”. While accepting that some elements of the article are correct, like the mafia controlling the influx of illegal workers, and that fact that these are often victims of abuse, as well as the practice of employing them in sectors like construction, it dismisses out of hand that there is the systematic attitude of discrimination and persecution of Haitians by Dominicans that the journalist describes. It asks why the article did not focus on the problems created for the Dominican Republic as a result of this migration from Haiti. Diario Libre describes Morales Troncoso’s letter as “one of the best presentations of the Dominican Republic’s case, by portraying the problem’s social dimension and impact on the national budget”.