The violent incidents that took place in Haiti on Monday, supposedly as a reaction to the state visit by Dominican President Leonel Fernandez, will not cause a breach in diplomatic relations, according to sources at the Ministry of Foreign Relations. Although the near-riot caused Fernandez’s visit to Port-au-Prince to be cut short, the Dominican Foreign Ministry said that although the government expects an official apology, relations with the neighboring country will continue as usual. As reported in El Caribe, it was stressed that the President’s life was never in danger.
The Hoy newspaper reports that all the Dominican political parties as well as many prominent citizens have expressed their solidarity with President Fernandez for his attempt to improve conditions for the Haitian people. The Dominican Senate passed a resolution last night that called the incidents “offensive and unjust”. Presidential spokesman Roberto Rodriguez Marchena said that the attacks were the work of “violent groups” that operate in Haiti. And the widely read column “Que se dice”, reports that former police commissioner Guy Phillipe was the organizer of the attacks. At least, that is what was reported in a Haitian radio interview. Phillipe was one of the leaders of the guerilla war that overthrew the government of Jean Bertrand Aristide. During the interview, Phillipe reportedly described how he planned and carried out the riots that cut short the presidential visit. Allegedly, the motive behind it all was the treatment of Haitians in the Dominican Republic.
A DR1 reader reporting from Haiti, wrote to observe that one of the rioters speaking on Haitian TV spoke clearly that the protest was due to the fact that the coup against Aristide was organized in the DR. He speculates that Aristide supporters were behind the violence, and that these were not related to any human rights type complaints.
The “Que se dice” columnist of Hoy asks the rhetorical question of whether the Haitian authorities will do anything about it. And the answer is that with as weak a government as exists in Haiti, there is little chance that anything will come of this. Unfortunately for local bureaucrats, the writer also takes on the attitudes and the lack of preparation regarding Presidential security during the visit. According to the report, there was no Presidential escape route planned, and the newspaper reports of the incidents following the trail of the presidential convoy from the Dominican embassy in Petionville to the Presidential Palace in Port-au-Prince are “eloquent” in showing the very real danger that the Dominican President and his escorts were facing at the time. The editorial calls this proof that the Haitian authorities were in no condition to guarantee the President’s safety, but, what is worse, neither were the United Nation troops that were on station. The writer ends by pointing out that it would be a big mistake to downplay the seriousness of the incident, as is apparently happening, because this could well have been a worst case scenario.