Santo Domingo. – The National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH-RD) denounced this Thursday before the General Directorate of Migration (
DGM) human rights violations against Haitians, Dominican-Haitians and black people in the Verón–Punta Cana region and surrounding areas, practices that they described as “cruelty without limits and ethnic cleansing.”
The president of the CNDH, Manuel María Mercedes, accused the migration and public health authorities of maintaining a pattern of systematic abuse.
“What is happening in Verón, Punta Cana is a silent extermination against the vulnerable population. The detachments and detention centers have become true spaces of torture and death,” declared Mercedes.
The organization assured that under the management of Colonel Wander Peña Matos in Migration, acts have been committed that threaten the life and dignity of people.
“They are killed at point-blank range, executions are passed off as exchanges of gunfire, and people are even thrown from their homes. We are facing state terrorism against the poor and against black people,” emphasized the human rights leader.
Among the complaints filed are: Summary executions and police violence, disguised as “shootouts”, arbitrary arrests, including people with papers in the process of renewal or asylum seekers recognized by the UN, systematic extortion, with charges between 11,000 and 200,000 pesos to return seized vehicles, deaths in Migration custody, such as those of Ellen Frances Hulett (Ukrainian-American), Gedilia Lonzandieu (Haitian), Mary Milem (23 years old) and Delouise Estimable (32 years old), inhumane conditions in the Haina Jail, where detainees are held for days without water or food and hospital negligence in Verón, Punta Cana, with abusive charges of up to 3,500 pesos daily, which has caused deaths of children and adults due to lack of medical attention.
Mercedes warned that the silence of the authorities constitutes complicity.
“We are facing a machinery of abuses where state violence mixes with hospital indifference. Each death and each abuse has those responsible and we are not going to be silent,” he affirmed.
The CNDH announced that it will take these complaints to international organizations, demanding an independent investigation and sanctions against those responsible.
