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((Leonel Fernández, Félix Bautista))

Author Aristy Escuder says Senator Félix Bautista used funds for personal and political expenses

[Translation of an article from Diario Digital of Santo Domingo for May 4. See original here and related articles here, here and here.]

Santo Domingo – Economist Jaime Aristy Escuder has released his long awaited book El Lado Oscuro de la Sun Land [The Dark Side of Sun Land], which reveals previously unknown details about the loan of 130 million dollars attained in a questionable manner for the construction of a series of projects at the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD) but which vanished, with no public explanation of the destination or use of the funds.

The 258-page work explains how the project was developed and how the bureaucratic procedure, which included approval by the president of the republic, Leonel Fernández, was carried out so that then director of the Oficina Supervisora de Obras del Estado [Supervising Office for Public Works], Félix Bautista, could arrange the loan without involvement of the national congress. (more…)

((Hartley with two Haitian sugar cane workers.))

[Translations of three articles, one by the Spanish news agency EFE as published in El Nuevo Diario of Santo Domingo on April 24, two from Listín Diario of Santo Domingo for April 24 and 25. See originals here, here and here. Christopher Hartley is featured in the film “The Price of Sugar;” for more information, go here.]

US investigates priest’s claims of slave labor

Santo Domingo – The United States Department of Labor has opened an investigation in the Dominican Republic into charges by the priest Christopher Hartley, who claims sugar producers are subjecting workers in the industry to conditions of slavery, the US embassy reports. Hartley is currently outside the Dominican Republic but from 1997 to 2006 he worked in the bateyes, workers’ villages set up on sugar plantations, in the San José de los Llanos parish, in the eastern province of San Pedro de Macorís.

The Anglo-Spanish priest has for years made denunciations on the treatment of workers who cut sugar cane, most of whom are Haitian, by large companies.

He has accused them of human trafficking, child labor, racial discrimination and failure to provide health care, as well as of exploitation, fraud and labor abuse. (more…)

[Translation of an article from the Dominican/Haitian website Espacinsular.org for April 10. See original here and related articles here and here.]

Port-au-Prince, April 10 – Without a doubt, this is not the first time Dominican politicians and businessmen have financed electoral campaigns in foreign countries. The best known case in Dominican-Haitian relations is that of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo and Elie Lescot, whom the Dominican dictator managed to bribe, according to [Dominican historian] Bernardo Vega, from the time he was minister of the interior under President Stenio Vincent in 1932 until he helped him become president in May, 1941.

Even more recently, during the last two decades, both Haitian and Dominican candidates, as a result of their connections in social and business circles, have benefited from donations coming from sources on the other side of the island and from the diaspora of both countries. This applies as much to the presidential level as in legislative and municipal elections. (more…)

[Translation of an article by the Spanish news agency Efe as published in El Nuevo Diario of Santo Domingo on April 12. See original here and related articles here and here.]

Santo Domingo, April 12 – The governments of the Dominican Republic and Haiti today denounced a plot organized by a former Dominican colonel to destabilize the presidency of Michel Martelly. The plan was denounced by Dominican Foreign Minister Carlos Morales Troncoso, Haitian Minister of Justice Michel Brunache and Dominican Attorney General Radhamés Jiménez, who attribute the plot to former Colonel Pedro Julio Goico Guerrero, known as “Pepe Goico,” one of the closest collaborators of former Dominican President and current presidential candidate Hipólito Mejía.

“This campaign is based on a false and baseless accusation against the integrity and honor of President Michel Martelly,” the officials said in a brief document read by spokesman for the Dominican presidency Rafael Núñez in a meeting with journalists in which questions were not allowed. (more…)

[Translation of an article from the Dominican/Haitian web site Espacinsular.org for April 2. See original here and related article here.]

Port au Prince, April 2 – Just days after receiving the Dominican government’s highest decoration, the Haitian head of state finds himself implicated in one of the most serious cases of corruption known in the Dominican Republic, the central figure of which is Dominican Senator Félix Bautista.

The results of an investigation made public on the eve of Palm Sunday by prize-winning veteran journalist Nuria Piera on her program “Nuria en el 9,” confirm as facts charges widely circulated in Haiti since last year on the radio program of analyst Michel Soukar and involving leaders in both countries within the framework of the reconstruction of Haiti, devastated in the earthquake of 2010. (more…)

((José Polanco Gómez - Listín Diario photo))

[Translations of three articles, from Noticias SIN for March 10, from Listín Diario for March 1 and from Diario Digital for March 10. See originals here, here and here and related articles here and here.  See related Amnesty International documents here and here.]

Human rights organizations back Amnesty International report on police violence

By Yudelki Guerrero

Human Rights Commissioner Domingo Porfirio Rojas Nina has backed a report by Amnesty International which stresses alarming violations of the rights of citizens of the Dominican Republic, stating that it is indisputable and true.

He stated that there is a sector, which he did not identify, that does not want the country to move forward in human rights matters. (more…)

((Leonel Fernández - Cambio16 photo))

[Translation of an article from the Spanish magazine Cambio16 for February 26. See original here.]

The Dominican electoral campaign, which began officially on February 15, moves along a furrow well sown, and thoroughly irrigated, with reports that affect the government and President Leonel Fernández’s immediate environment. While his wife, Margarita Cedeño, vice presidential candidate for the PLD [Partido de la Liberación Dominicana], has been accused of having bank accounts in Denmark and Switzerland, now the US State Department has revoked the visas of four presidential officials because of their alleged links with drug trafficking and organized crime, repeated human rights violations and illicit enrichment and influence peddling. Involved is Leonel Fernández’s bodyguard, Víctor Manuel Crispín Zorrilla; the chief of military aids, General Héctor Belisario Medina y Medina; police adviser and former chief of the National Police, Rafael Guillermo Guzmán Fermín; and the director of border development, General Manuel de Jesús Florentino y Florentino. (more…)

((Juan Bosch and Joaquín Balaguer meet - Listín Diario photo))

US agencies spied on Bosch, supported Balaguer

[Translation of an article from Listín Diario of Santo Domingo for February 17. See original here and related articles here and here. US troops landed in Santo Domingo on April 28, 1965, four days after an uprising against the coup government that had ruled the country since September, 1963, when Juan Bosch was deposed. The country was still under heavy military occupation in June, 1966, when presidential elections were held.]

By María Isabel Soldevila

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) spied on and intercepted telephone calls of deposed Dominican President Juan Bosch between April and September of 1965, at a time when Bosch was in exile in Puerto Rico, and used its influence to put Joaquín Balaguer in office, according to revelations in a recently published book, Enemies: A History of the FBI, by Pulitzer-prize winner Tim Weiner, a 511-page account based, the author says, on more than 70,000 pages of declassified documents, with no anonymous sources. (more…)

In memory of Haitian-Dominican activist Sonia Pierre

[Translation of an article from AlterPresse Haiti for December 9.  See original here.]

Hundreds of people affected by the policy of denaturalization enforced by the Dominican Central Electoral Board held a demonstration in Santo Domingo on Thursday, December 8, in front of the parliament of the neighboring republic to denounce the condition of legal uncertainty created  by the administration of President Leonel Fernández, according to reports supplied to AlterPresse.

Coming from Puerto Plata, La Romana, El Seibo, Monte Plata, San Pedro de Macorís and the capital, Santo Domingo, the participants condemned a ruling by the Dominican Supreme Court recognizing the Electoral Board’s authority to issue administative writs when Dominican law specifically grants that authority to courts of the first instance.   (more…)

[Translation of an article from Listín Diario of Santo Doming for April 14. See original article here and related article here. The population of the Dominican Republic is approximately ten million, about the same as Los Angeles or New York.]

by Juan Eduardo Thomas

According to a report issued by the Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos (CNDH – National Human Rights Commission), at least 260 people have died so far this year at the hands of the National Police in so-called “exchanges of gunfire.”

The figure includes  recent deaths in Boca Chica, where two youths lost their lives, as well as the youth who was shot to death by a police officer in Villa Faro on Monday, during the labor stoppage called by a group of social organizations.

According to Manuel María Mercedes, president of CNDH, some 429 people had been killed through August 16 of last year, during the tenure of former National Police chief Rafael Guillermo Guzmán Fermín. That same year some 2,155 people died in acts of violence.

Mercedes stated that there is a tendency in the country that should be corrected immediately, in which there are more and more incidents of several people being killed in what could be considered executions.

He cited the cases of Boca Chica, which took place last Sunday, and the supposed attack on a bar in the country in which four individuals lost their lives.

Mercedes reported also that of every five such instances in which a person is killed, a police agent is involved in four of them.

July 11 Protest against government economic policies involved the whole country

[Translations of three articles from El Nuevo Diario of Santo Domingo for July 11 and 12. See originals here, here and here.]

In Capotillo -- Listin Diario photo

Three killed during strike

Santo Domingo, July 12 – According to figures released today by authorities, three people were killed during the general strike held yesterday in the Dominican Republic, which was called by social organizations to demand reductions in the prices of food, medicine and fuel. Two of the deaths were in Santiago, the country’s second-largest city, where 12 people were injured as well and some 20 were arrested, official sources report. Those killed were identified as 24-year-old Edwin Manuel Felipe Abreu and Carlos Luis Alonso Filión, 22 years of age, according the the National Police, who say the latter died last night in a gun fight with police.

According to the police report, Filión died when demonstrators attacked police officers with gunshots and rocks in the Rafey section of Santiago and police responded. (more…)

Constitutionalist heroine is down but not defeated

[Translation of an article from Listín Diario of Santo Domingo for April 25. See original here and related article here.]

By Ramón Pérez Reyes

You would see her during the fighting in April, 1965, a rifle in her hands, making her way through the Constitutionalist commandos doing battle around the Duarte Bridge against the troops coming from San Isidro. At that time she was a 20-year-old who had joined the war like the thousands of other Dominicans who made up the “Army of the Humble” that the poet Federico Bermúdez wrote about. Before her husband taught her to use a Mauser 98K rifle, she would slip through the combat zones to supply the soldiers with grenades or to help soldiers cross the Ozama River after the war had taken them by surprise in the eastern part of the city. (more…)