Yet another possible cover-up surrounding a deadly pathogen mysteriously affecting the Dominican Republic, this time in the province of Hato Mayor. According to Listin Diario, the Dominican minister of husbandry, Bolivar Toribio, said that it is not exactly known how the information leaked that 2,000 pigs had died after succumbing to the swine flu.
Given the speed with which the Dominican government has worked to deny this supposed rumor, it is likely that national security has now trumped public safety, and the technocrats in Santo Domingo are working overtime to keep quiet what is already evident: the Dominicans have been experimenting with biological weapons, and the proverbial Pandora's Box may have just been opened.
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| Right on cue, as feared just months ago. Yournewswire |
Since a 2013 unappealable decision by a top Dominican court which denied citizenship to over 250,000 people of Haitian descent born within the country's borders, the island has often been portrayed as an international pariah -- with President Danilo Medina complaining that this image was the hardest thing with which he had to deal during his first term -- and as such the government in Santo Domingo has found itself on the defensive end not just from the international media and human rights organizations, but particularly from ultra-nationalist forces demanding that international expectations be damned and that protective measures be enabled.
If international pressure makes a people yield, it has instead emboldened the Dominican masses, with many clamoring for the military to take an extra-hard line when it comes to deporting every single person of Haitian descent. With ultra-nationalism comes fear of foreign conspiracies, and those foreign conspiracies have, according to rumors not worthy of rebutting by the minister of husbandry, alleged that the Dominican government is actively developing biological weapons, to be used in the event that the Organization of American States authorizes yet another military intervention by Washington.
As Abreu Report wrote this past April, the apprehension of a Russian national at Punta Cana airport with a batch of insects with the potential to disrupt the delicate ecosystem of some Dominican forests led to the Dominican paranoia machine going into overdrive, and reports of the CIA and the Soviet Union releasing invasive pests and unleashing viruses pervaded the consciousness of many members of the far right.
As we wrote in April, the Dominican media ran reports of the CIA unleashing Newcastle disease and swine flu in Cuba as part of its plot to destabilize the communist government of the Soviet-allied Fidel Castro, fueling fears that Dominican immigration policies would lead international powers waging similar attacks against the Dominican people.
And now, weeks later, every Dominican paper is denying a rumor that should have never been printed, sending a clear message to the people the country is indeed possibly suffering attacks with biological agents.
