The twice-weekly bi-national market usually held on Mondays and Fridays in the border town of Dajabon was closed on Monday 26 August, following a protest in Ouanaminthe on the Haitian side of the border. The protestors say that the Dominican Specialized Border Security Corps (CESFRONT) and the Migration Department stopped 400 undocumented Haitians from crossing into the Dominican Republic where they were supposed to be working. The Haitians, including many pregnant women, work as domestic and agricultural workers, in construction and other types of work.
The Immigration authorities claim that Cesfront decided to stop the undocumented Haitians crossing the border as that part of the frontier was closed.
However, the Haitians said that on other occasions when the workers have found the border closed they have come into the country across the river, but this time Cesfront stopped them.
The men spent the night out in the open at the frontier post while the women, most of whom were pregnant, received help from Jesuit priests who let them sleep in the church hall in Dajabon.
Freddy Morillo, president of the United Shopkeepers Association in Dajabon recalled that Migration Director Jose Ricardo Taveras recently met with several people throughout the province and promised to issue licenses to the Haitians who cross into the Dominican Republic to work, within two months.
Morillo criticized the authorities for their actions, and said that they should have consulted with all the interested parties and that they did not take into account the negative effect their actions would have on the local economy. He went on to say that the suspension of the market yet again had caused losses worth millions of pesos to traders from both countries.
Dajabon Retailers Association president Abigail Bueno said that she had spoken to her colleagues in Haiti who said they would stand firm and not go to the market on Monday in protest against the actions by the Dominican authorities, for stopping 400 Haitian workers from entering the Dominican Republic to work.
www.listindiario.com/la-republica/2013/8/26/289707/Fracasa-el-mercado-binacional-de-Dajabon-por-protestas-de-haitianos