International human rights organization Amnesty International issued a complaint on Wednesday, 24 February 2016, pointing to delays in the application of the law for the normalization of the status of Haitians in the Dominican Republic and the enactment of the law that eliminates the ban on abortions.
In its annual report on human rights around the world, the organization criticizes the lack of legislation to protect the rights of women and the LGBT minority, and highlights that there were “152 homicides at the hands of security forces between January and September 2015”, going on to say that “Many homicides took place in circumstances that might have been illegal.”
AI recalled that by the end of last year the Dominican Congress had not yet approved a comprehensive police reform bill. The DR also showed a 6% increase in the number of homicides between January and September 2015 compared to the same period in 2014.
The NGO said that “there has been no progress in the investigation into the disappearance of three men n Gabriel Sandi Allstar, Juan Almonte Herrera and Randy Vizcaino Gonzalez n who were seen for the last time when they were in police custody in July 2009, September 2009 and December 2013, respectively.”
The human rights organization says that dozens of Dominicans of Haitian descent were detained arbitrarily and threatened with being deported to Haiti as “irregular” immigrants, although in the vast majority of cases, the authorities set them free after verifying that they had been born in the Dominican Republic, as reported in El Nuevo Diario.
