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| Suspended habeas corpus. Source |
The Dominican Republic, in the name of fighting the deadly coronavirus, has now officially become a codified dictatorship.
President Danilo Medina, in a national speech, declared that a state of emergency would now prevail in the Caribbean nation of 10 million souls.
President Medina decreed that habeas corpus -- the right to see a judge after incarceration -- would now be suspended and that the military had free reign to enter the home of any citizen.
Before the outbreak of coronavirus, President Medina was accused of shenanigans and his government was believed to have interrupted the democratic process, cancelling the elections as his party was threatened to lose power.
The BBC reported that: "Opposition politician Luis Abinader said the suspension was 'outrageous and unjustified.'"
And true to Mr. Abinader's words, what is occurring in the Dominican Republic is outrageous and unjustified and shocks the human conscience.
In 2013, with Judgement 168-13, the Dominican Constitutional Tribunal retroactively decreed that anyone born after 1929 was not entitled to birthright citizenship, effectively stripping of citizenship more than 250,000 people of Haitian descent.
Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz wrote in response to Judgement 168-13 to the New York Times: "Such appalling racism is a continuation of a history of constant abuse, including the infamous Dominican massacre, under the dictator Rafael Trujillo, of an estimated 20,000 Haitians in five days in October 1937."
And today, with the declaration of martial law and a state of emergency, those 250,000 human beings who once considered themselves Dominican citizens find themselves in a precarious situation. The Dominican government has placed everyone not deemed Dominican enough into a military database, justifying their decision under the fact that the Netherlands, where the International Criminal Court is located, places illegal immigrants in a database that is accessible to the military, the Dutch Royal Marechaussee.
The coronavirus has now sealed their fate, as the Dominican Republic implements martial law and suspends all economic activity.
Judgement 168-13 affects four times as many Haitians as the Nuremberg Laws did Jews, and it is clear now that President Medina has been handed on his laps the reason to end their history in the Dominican Republic.
By: Miguel Pimentel
