Refugee Camps in Anse-a-Pitres (September 19, 2015)
Southern Haitian Coast at Anse-a-Pitres (Photo by John Carroll–September 19, 2015)
As most of us know nothing is as simple as it seems. Most things are not usually black or white. There is some gray and maybe even some blue. The same is true of the relationship between Haiti and the Dominican Republic which occupy one island in the Caribbean.
But I want to be clear about something that is “black and white”. There is a grave human rights violation occurring on the Haitian-Dominican border right now. People I have visited in the refugee camps just outside of Anse-a-Pitres, Haiti are being treated like animals. Many of these folks have told me that no one cares about them. And they are right.
Their essential rights to protection, food, water, and medical care are not being upheld. They are held captive to their daily need to survive and they are not viable members of any society except their camp society where they exist day-to-day.
This is all a man-made disaster and has been created on both sides of the Haitian-Dominican border. Both Dominican and Haitian authorities are guilty of serious human rights violations. And the deaths and the misery of the people imprisoned in these camps are on their shoulders.
I have posted on these camps located in south-eastern Haiti here, here, and here.
“Since the middle of June, more than 60,000 Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent have fled the Dominican Republic under the threat of deportation. The exodus is in large part the consequence of a 2013 ruling by the Dominican Constitutional Court that effectively stripped some 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent of their citizenship, thereby creating the largest stateless population in the Western Hemisphere.” (foreign affairs.com)
During my conversations with many individuals in these camps I asked them, “What can anyone do for you?” Their answer was: “Give me a piece of land where I can grow crops to feed my family.” They would gladly use their hoe and their pick ax and their back muscles to make this happen.
These folks were not living a high-life during their decades in the Dominican. They worked very hard in the fields and as domestics for Dominican families. And If their lives would have been better in Haiti, they wouldn’t have left in the first place. (Many of these deportees have lived in the Dominican for decades…without “proper papers”.)
Julia Harrington Reddy, a senior legal officer with Open Society Justice Initiative, described the Dominican Republic’s court ruling and treatment of Dominican Haitians as a “civil genocide.”
“It’s really going as far as you can go without killing them,” Reddy said. “You essentially make people disappear… In this case, although no one is going out to shoot these people, in a systematic way, taking away their nationality is a way of extinguishing all of their rights and effectively extinguishing them as a social and political force.” (USA Today)
But I would go further. I think we are in fact killing them. We are killing them through wanton neglect. I have heard of five who have died recently due to this camp situation and, just as importantly, I have looked into the eyes of these people and can see they are slowly losing their “force”.
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So who are these folks in the camps? Are they really people?
Anse-a-Pitres Refugee Camp (Photo by John Carroll–September 19, 2015)
Adriana (above) is a 32-year-old lady who told me that she and her six kids and husband have lived in the camp since mid-June. They have no legal papers. I asked her if she was beaten or physically hurt in any way in the Dominican. She said that she had not been physically hurt in any way, but she had heard that if Haitians did not leave the Dominican soon, they would be killed. So she and her husband determined it was time to go.
Anse-a-Pitres Refugee Camp (Photo by John Carroll–September 19, 2015)
This man is 61 years old and told me he lived in the Dominican Republic for 29 years. When I talked to him the other day he was holding his head in pain. The heat and sun are relentless and a little boy right next to him was loudly scraping a few grains of white rice with a metal spoon from the bottom of a big steel bowl. The noise which toxic and was making this man’s headache worse. And so he yelled at the boy to be quiet. A neighbor lady a few feet away joined in and threw a stick at the little boy who happily hopped away with his bowl.
This gentleman told me he has a brother two hours up the mountain from the camp in Thiotte but they have no room for him or his family. So he is stuck in hell holding his head. (Many Haitians left Haiti decades ago and have no one to come back to. Their village may have been flooded or their original blood families have left their village for one reason or another and are lost to the refugees.)
Anse-a-Pitres Refugee Camp (Photo by John Carroll–September 19, 2015)
This man, with the blue hat above, lived and worked in the Dominican for 37 years. He is 47 years old now. (I blotted out his face.) He has no legal papers either. He told me that he sneaks back and forth across the border EACH day from the camp to work in the Dominican fields for a little cash and then sneaks back to the camp at night. He said he is very afraid to do this but he has little choice.
Other camp members run back across border in the morning and cut limbs off of trees on the Dominican side and carry them back to the Haitian side where they turn them into charcoal to sell for a few cents. (They of course would not need to cut down Dominican tree limbs if there were any tree limbs left in Haiti to cut down.)
Dominican Border Guard, Pedernales, DR (Photo by John Carroll–September 19, 2015)
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After being in the camps in the mornings, I crossed the border into the Dominican town of Pedernales in the afternoons. It took me a total of five minutes to cross the river and have my passport stamped by the Dominican Aduana. I felt guilty entering the Dominican so easily knowing that some people in the camps risk their lives to slip across the border each day to make a couple of bucks.
My main reasons for going to Pedernales were to check out the city and compare it to Anse-a-Pitres. Also, I wanted to see their hospital, and use an internet cafe to post. (I had no Wifi in Anse-a-Pitres.)
As I walked into Pedernales, I saw why Haitians cross the border. The streets were paved, clean, and much less chaotic than on the Haitian side. For selfish reasons, I didn’t really want to return to Haiti.
The local hospital in Pedernales is Dr. Elio Fiallo Hospital and was not far from the town square. I took a quick tour and it didn’t seem bad. And they are actually building a new hospital next to the existing one. During the last three decades I have never seen one State run hospital in Haiti that was as nice as this isolated border town hospital.
Two Haitian women (below) were having their sick babies examined in the Emergency Room of Dr. Elio Fiallo Hospital. The hospital does not charge undocumented Haitians.
Dominican Hospital in Pedernales (Photo by John Carroll–September 19, 2015)
As I walked down the streets of Pedernales women of Haitian descent were selling their wares. (They sure looked illegal to me but I did not ask to see their papers.) No one was bothering them or even paying much attention.
One afternoon I stopped in at a local restaurant in Pedernales for a cold Presidente. A Haitian man named Tito (made up name) in his mid-twenties was working there. He smiled a lot and was light-skinned and I actually thought he was Dominican when I first met him. But his fluent Haitian Creole and stumbling Spanish give him away.
Tito is obviously highly intelligent and stated that he had been in the Dominican for two years and told me that he is undocumented. He cooks, cleans, and trims the shrubbery. It was obvious to me that the restaurant staff liked Tito a lot. He is paid 80 dollars US every two weeks.
Tito has a an undocumented Haitian wife with a new 3 month old baby girl. The baby was born in a city near Pedernales in the Dominican. I asked Tito the “status” of his baby…in other words is she legal or illegal and thus potentially deportable with Tito and his wife. He smiled and told me that even though both he and his wife are illegal, when the baby was born he simply paid off the doctor. He gave the doctor 400 pesos which is equivalent to about nine dollars US. And the good Dominican doctor “declared” her a Dominicana. All was good.
Tito went on to tell me that he occasionally sneaks back and forth across the border on market day (Monday and Fridays). Market days are highly chaotic in the river bed along the border and therefore much easier to cross into the Dominican. In January of this year Tito got caught by the Dominican guards as he was sneaking across. But a simple phone call by him to his boss at the restaurant was all he needed to do. His boss drove quickly to the border and paid off the guard. He needed Tito to get back to work at the restaurant.
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Anse-a-Pitres Refugee Camp (Photo by John Carroll–September 19, 2015)
So what do I think is the answer to this deportee problem in Haiti? I usually deal with patient problems one-on-one. I don’t feel totally comfortable trying to discern what to do with 1,400 people in camps in Anse-a-Pitres or with 60,000 refugees up and down the Haitian-Dominican border. Many expert opinions are needed. And implementation of good plans need to happen.
Here is what I would do:
I would boycott tourism in the Dominican Republic until the Dominican Republic quits deporting these black people of Haitian descent. Many people are leaving voluntarily because they are not keen on being killed in the Dominican if they stay.
I would quit funding the Haitian government so they can have 35 million dollar elections that are a sham and not supported by the vast majority of Haitians. The people in the camps, in Soleil, and in the rural provinces know that the Haitian government will do nothing for them. Ever.
I would not flood these camps up and down the border with doctors and nurses flown in from everywhere on earth. Too much money and time would be spent without adequate return. (Providing potable water is much more important. If cholera struck here, it would be very bad news.)
I would close the camps here in Anse-a-Pitres. The old ladies would leave first and the women and children would follow. The man who owns the land where the camps sit wants his land back. He should get his cactus, rocks, and dirt back as soon as possible.
Where would the refugees go? The refugees would be adopted into Haitian homes. The Haitian Catholic Church supported by Caritas Internationalis and many other Catholic organizations from around the world would provide the finances. And each Haitian home would be given a certain amount of money each month to care for these displaced people. These host families would provide shelter, treated water, food, and protection. The kids would go to school. Please remember that Paul Farmer gave his Haitian tuberculosis patients money to come to his clinic to get their tuberculosis medication. And they did it and many survived their tuberculosis. That didn’t seem like rocket science to me, but it sure worked. As usual money speaks.
If any other countries wanted to step up and accept these folks, that would be just fine. (Many of these refugees already speak Spanish.) How about Cuba? How about Venezuela? How about Mexico? How about many countries in Central America? How about the United States/Canada? (John Kerry just announced that the US will accept 85,000 refugees in 2016. How about a few from Anse-a-Pitres?) Would some people refuse to leave the camps? Sure. Some are working on their papers right now so they can go back to the Dominican legally. That is fine if they want to stay as long as the landowner does not pitch them out.
We can’t just keep taking photos and counting heads as the people in the camps continue to wilt away. The people in these camps are pushing me to arrive at solution(s). The misery on their faces is not fun to see. I didn’t write about “sustainability”. Shame on me. But camps like these in Anse-a-Pitres are not “sustainable” and are not even providing day-to-day basics.
According to a wise Canadian friend of mine who has spent decades in Haiti: “Haiti has been a grand success. The rich are still rich and the poor are still poor. It worked out just as planned.”
And according to Nick Kristof of the New York Times, “It’s irresponsible to throw up our hands and say there’s nothing that can be done (with the refugee problems around the world). He added, “Then, almost certainly things will get worse.”
Refugee Camp, Anse-a-Pitres (Photo by John Carroll–September 19, 2015)
John A. Carroll, MD
www.haitianhearts.org
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By John Carroll, MD
I am a physician from Peoria who gets to live my dream in Haiti.
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3 replies on “Refugee Camps in Anse-a-Pitres (September 19, 2015)”
Manny Reynoso
says:
On the one hand you recount people’s hyperbolic reasons for leaving the D.R. On the other you witness Haitians in D.R. going about their business with no one brothering them. Yet you want to boycott the D.R. and hurt poor Dominicans. How about a little critical thinking here Doc. How about some fairness.
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