Tough times on the plantation

>> >> Montreal group wants Canadian action for Haitian workers in the Dominican Republic

by RINA CALABRESE

While protesters made a ruckus outside the recent Organization of American States (OAS) conference in Windsor, Ontario, it was the silence inside that proved disquieting for Perard Joseph. Despite a 1999 report by the OAS denouncing the slave-like working conditions of Haitian migrant workers in the Dominican Republic, the issue was never formally raised at the conference.

"We're very shocked that Canada, which claims to defend human rights, did not even bring it up," says Joseph, president of the Comite quebecois pour la reconnaissance des droits des travailleurs haitiens en Republique dominicaine (CQRDTHRD).

Since last winter CQRDTHRD--a Montreal-based human rights group--has lobbied the Canadian government to intervene by bringing this issue before the General Assembly of the OAS in Windsor, where OAS delegates met from June 4-6.

The OAS estimates there are 500,000 Haitians living in the Dominican Republic (the two Caribbean nations are situated on the same island) as seasonal workers, long-term residents, and Dominicans of Haitian origin. Only five per cent have legal status. Haitian children born in the Dominican Republic are not entitled to citizenship because the government considers Haitian workers "foreigners in transit." This means less access to education and health care--and perennial insecurity. According to the OAS's Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, thousands of workers are forcibly deported back to Haiti every year.

Since 1915, migrant workers have crossed the border into the Dominican Republic to harvest the sugar cane fields. But it hasn't been a sweet deal for what now amounts to four generations of Haitian workers residing there. According to the OAS report, the cane cutters live in overcrowded camps that lack electricity and proper sanitation. Moreover, armed guards are hired to ensure they don't flee the plantations. "It's really a system designed to keep the workers in slavery," says Joseph. "That's not an exaggeration."

In 1998, CQRDTHRD presented the OAS's Inter-American Commission on Human Rights with a list of recommendations designed to improve conditions for Haitian workers. But the only way for these recommendations to be applied, says Joseph, is for a nation member to present them to the OAS General Assembly or the Permanent Council. "I was expecting that would happen in Windsor," he says, "and I waited until the closing conference. But it wasn't mentioned at all."

Michael O'Shaughnessy of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade says the Canadian embassy in the Dominican Republic's capital of Santo Domingo spends 25 per cent of its local development funds to help the migra-tory Haitian workers.

He also says Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy had "informal" discussions with the foreign affairs ministers of Haiti and the Dominican Republic at the OAS conference, encouraging them "to continue their efforts to find a mutually satisfying solution to this problem through open dialogue."

But local Haitian activists claim that, with no consensus between the two countries on how to deal with the problem--and no outside pressure put on them--the miserable conditions for Haitians in the Dominican Republic are unlikely to be addressed anytime soon. :

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