Kevin Mo

Overview and Background:

There have been many times in human history when genocidal acts have taken
place and killed and displaced millions of innocent people. This paper will review the
possible genocidal acts conducted by the Dominican Republic in the late 1990s and
early 2000s with the expulsion of the Haitian people. The Dominican Republic has
gained a reputation in history for its anti-Haitian racism due to its previous dictator
Rafael Trujillo and the 1937 massacre he conducted against the Haitian people (Katz
2018, par. 3). These radical and anti-Haitian ideas created by Trujillo allowed right-wing
politicians in the 1990s to claim all people of Haitian descent were just visiting the
Dominican Republic, no matter how long they had been living there (Katz 2018, par. 5).
This allowed the government to not issue Haitian children birth certificates and even
destroy the ones that they already had (Katz 2018, par. 5). Another event in 2005 where
a Dominican woman was murdered close to the border of Haiti caused mass
deportation as well as locals to ransack houses belonging to those of Haitian descent
(Paulino 2007, 265). These violent actions toward the Haitian people are inhumane and
against the basic rights, we have as human beings. This paper will determine if the
crimes committed by the Dominican Republic can be classified as Genocide through the
frame of the UN and Weiitz or war crimes/ crimes against humanity under the Rome
Statutes.

Analysis:

First, we thought we look at if this was actually a genocide based on the Convention on
the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. Article II of this document says “In the
present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;

2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its
physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”(United 1948)

These comments in the article show that this was a genocide. This is a genocide
because in the top part of the article it says “any of the following acts”, this means that it
does not have to be all of them committed to be considered a genocide. In this situation
there were killings and murders of the Haitian people who were there. There was also
harm physically and mentally to this group as well. The Haitian people had to live in
constant fear of being harmed and having their homes ransacked and having their
valuables being stolen from them. The mental aspect was also there when the
Dominican Republic decided not to issue birth certificates to babies and destroy ones
that already existed. This just added on to the stress of people who had their life set up
there and taken care of because their child was born there. In a way they were also
trying to prevent births by not issuing these certificates because the whole point for
someone giving birth in the Dominican Republic is so they can grow up a citizen and
live a better life then what their parents had. But since there were no certificates being
made there, there would be no need to try and give birth there. Finally, they were
transfering groups out of the Dominican Republic and back to Haiti. They wanted their
nation to be Haitian free and that was part of their utopian vision.

We then wanted to see if this was a war crime or a crime against humanity. There are
many factors that go into whether something is a war crime or not. This situation does
not fit into what is classified as a war crime. This does not meet all the requirements.
The major ones it does not fit into is that there was no war to begin with it was just the
Dominican Republic against the haitian people and it was very one sided the Haitians
did not have a chance. The reason it is not is because there was also no imprisonment
and people were being treated wrong but no one was captured and kept in jails. These
acts can be considered a crime against humanity. This is a crime against humanity
because it is directed at a specific population or group. There was murder and people
were being forced to leave and not return. These acts also caused a great deal of
suffering and pain to the Haitian people. These actions were also planned out and the
people carrying out these acts were very aware of what they were doing.

All this lead to this being a genocide and a crime against humanity. The people of the
Dominican Republic knew what they were doing. Their utopian vision was to not have
Hatians on their island and wanted to have their own ideas and thoughts of how to
control their nation. They did not anyone from the outside dictate how their nation would
be run.