The Dominican Republic rejected a human rights report that accuses the government of discrimination following a controversial court ruling that will strip the citizenship of thousands of people in the country.
Earlier this year, a court decision ruled that citizenship would be revoked for people who were born in the country after 1929. A U.N. backed study estimated that nearly 210,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent would be affected, as well as 34,000 others born to parents of a different nationality. The government insists only about 24,000 people would be affected.
Now, according to The Huffington Post, a report released by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights claims the Caribbean country is deciding people’s nationalities based on private arbitration. Commission President Jose de Jesus Orozco said the organization received nearly 4,000 testimonies and complaints from people affected by the ruling.
The administration of Danilo Medina, president of the Dominican Republic, criticized the report in a statement, calling it a “subjective, partial and unilateral version” of the issue.
The administration sights their constitution by stating: “The government is acting in accordance with our constitution,” the statement read,” And, as such, it will follow the court’s ruling.
On Sept. 23 a decision by the Constitutional Court of the Dominican Rupublic ruled that even those who were born in Dominican territory, if their parents were in the country illegally, should not have citizenship.
“This is absurd. How are they going to take away a document that I already have, that is mine, and give me one as a foreigner when I have never been outside of the country?” said Ana Maria Belique, a representative of a movement to protect the rights of those affected by this new law of the land.
Already, since 2007, a law blocked many Dominicans of Haitian descent from acquiring copies of their birth certificates or national identification cards.
In a CNN report one of those blocked from getting a national ID card was 29-year-old Juliana Dequis Pierre, who then took her fight to the courts.
The high court affirmed that Dequis Pierre did not meet the criteria for citizenship, even though she had been born in the country. The court went further, asking authorities to identify similar cases stretching back to 1929.
Several hundred people, mostly Haitian-American and some Dominicans, protested the decision Oct. 17 in New York.
“I feel this is a disgrace,” public transit worker Charles Joseph said at the action. “The whole world must know what is going on in the Dominican Republic and protest until they overturn this.”
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