¹ Juan O. Tamayo, Border Barriers: A Dominican crackdown on illegal immigration keeps desperate Haitians out, expels thousands already in, Miami Herald, February 6, 2000; David Abel, Haitians see hope across the border; Dominican Republic’s hardships still better than life in homeland, Houston Chronicle, January 9, 2000 at A26, cited in Petitioners’ March 28, 2000 Spanish version of the Report on the Situation of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian Descent in the Dominican Republic, and Reply to the Dominican Government Response to the Commission.

² Plus de 3000 haitiens déportés e la République Dominicaine vers Haiti pendant ces deux dernières semaines, www.infohaiti.com, 1 de septiembre de 2000; J.Jesús Aznarez, Soldados Dominicanos Maltratan y Deportan a Votantes de Origen Haitiano [Dominican Soldiers Mistreat and Deport Voters of Haitian Origin], El País, May 15, 2000; Dominican Government Admits Confiscation of Blacks’ Voting Cards, EFE, May 15, 2000.

³ Près de 4.000 haìtiens rapatriés en deux semaines de la République Dominicaine, www.infohaiti.com, January 25, 2001; Fior Gil, Autoridades migración repatrian haitianos ilegales con énfasis en Pediguenos, Hoy, January 25, 2001.

⁴ Conservative estimates place the number of Dominicans of Haitian descent and Haitian workers residing in the Dominican Republic at approximately 700,000, or almost 12% of the of 8 million people in the Dominican Republic. Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Report on the Situation of Human Rights in the Dominican Republic, OEA/Ser.L/V/II.104, Doc. 49 rev. 1, ¶ 350 (1999).

⁵ Americas Watch/National Coalition for Haitian Refugees, A Troubled Year: Haitians in the Dominican Republic, October, 1992.

⁶ Decreto No. 233-91, Gaceta Oficial, Núm. 9810, Año CXI, de 30 de junio de 1991, pág. 3. This decree was not repealed until October of 1996.

⁷ Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, Report on the Situation of Haitians in the Dominican Republic, 1991 Annual Report to the OAS General Assembly, February, 1992. See also A Troubled Year, supra note 5.

⁸ 1999 IACHR Report, supra note 4, ¶332. For a detailed, narrative description of the shameful events of this period, see Michel Wucker’s excellent study, Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians and the Struggle for Hispaniola 115-140  (1999).

⁹ 1991 IACHR Report, supra note 7. The IACHR found that the 1991 mass expulsions by the Dominican Republic were in flagrant violation of numerous rights enshrined in the American Convention, including articles 20(3), 2(5), 22(6), 8(1), 17 and 19.

¹⁰ 1999 IACHR Report,  ¶329.

¹¹ Id. ¶¶ 325, 329.

¹² 1999 IACHR Report, supra note 4, ¶ 326.

¹³ Id. ¶ 327.

¹⁴ Id. ¶ 328.

¹⁵ Id.

¹⁶ Id. ¶ 366. There is reason to believe, as the Commission suggests, that the Dominican authorities engaged in the policy and practice of mass expulsions are committing crimes against humanity. Article 7(1)(d) of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court recognizes that the “[d]eportation or forcible transfer of population,” when committed as a part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against civilians, is a crime against humanity. Nor is this new law: mass deportations as crimes against humanity have deep historical roots reaching back to the Second World War. See Roy Gutman, Deportation, in Crimes of War:What the Public Should Know (1999).

¹⁷ See Request for Precautionary Measures filed on behalf of the Haitians and Dominico-Haitians residing in the Dominican Republic subject to deportation and expulsion, November 17, 1999, at 2. This is the first pleading filed by Petitioners in what subsequently became Case 12.271..

¹⁸ March 2000 Pleading, supra note 1, at 2.

¹⁹ Carta de Hernando Valencia Villa, Secretario Ejecutivo Adjunto, a Lic. Eduardo Latorre, Secretario de Estado de Relaciones Exteriores, de 22 de noviembre de 1999.

²⁰ Plus de 3,000 haitiens déportés, supra note 2. This article is an annex to Petitioner’s 2001 Record and Documents, supra note 3.

²¹ Près de 4.000 haitiens rapatriés, supra note 3.

²² See 2001 Record and Documents, supra note 3, at 2.

²³ Estadísticas para noviembre, Dirección General de Migración, Secretaria de Estado de Interior y Policia, December 30, 2000; Estadísticas para diciembre, Dirección General de Migración, Secretaria de Estado de Interior y Policia, December 30, 2000.

²⁴ See Id. According to these official statistics, the average rate of expulsions for the first eight months of 2000 was around 675 a month; for the last four months, that rate increased to approximately 2150 a month.

²⁵ Red de Encuentro Dominico Haitiano: Jacques Viau, Politicas Migratorias en los Primeros Meses de Gobierno [Immigration Policy in the First Months of the Government], Report Presented during a Seminar in Santo Domingo on the Dominican Republic’s Migratory Policies, November 10, 2000 [herinafter “Políticas Migratorias”]; See also Plus de 3,000 haitiens déportés, supra note 2.

²⁶ See supra ¶¶ 60-68.

²⁷ A few examples: during the weekend of September 23-24, 2000, members of the Dominican military and Department of Immigration captured more than 60 people who were subsequently expelled. Poursuite des Repatriements et Renforcement de la Présence Milltaire à la Frontière avec Haiti[Continuation of the Repatriations and Reinforcement of the Military Presence along the Border with Haiti], Sept. 27, 2000, annexed in 2001 Report and Documents, supra note 3. On December 6, 2000, the Dominican Department of Immigration reported that, in the span of one day, they had arrested 91 Haitians in Santo Domingo, 349 Haitians in Mao, Valverde, and 19 in Santiago in simultaneous ‘operations.’ They were all immediately deported.. Furthermore, on January 25, 2001, the Dominican Department of Immigration reported that hundreds of Haitians had been rounded up in the streets of Santo Domingo the morning before, while simultaneously others were taken in Santiago, Sosua and Puerto Plata., Autoridades migración supra note 3.

²⁸ Amnesty International and the Human Rights Clinic of Columbia Law School submitted separate reports to the United Nations Human Rights Committee’s periodic review of the Dominican Republic’s third report on compliance with the ICCPR.: Summary of Amnesty International’s concerns, submitted to the Human Rights Committee in March 2001, and The Situation of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian Descent in the Dominican Republic, submitted March 20, 2001, by the Columbia Human Rights Clinic, respectively. Human Rights Watch is currently working on its own book length report on the human rights situation in the Dominican Republic that will address the most serious abuses arising from the Dominican authorities' policy and practice of mass expulsions.

²⁹ Concluding observations of the Human Rights Committee: Dominican Republic of April 26, 2001. CCPR/CO/71/DOM, ¶16.

³⁰ Id.

³¹ Id. ¶ 17.

³² Apresa y Deporta Cientos de Haitianos [Arrest and Deport Hundreds of Haitians], El Siglo, March 15, 2000.

³³ Interview with General Trajano Moreta Cuevas, Director of the Office of Migration in the Department of the Interior and Police, and Fidelina Méndez, Subdirector for Haitian Affairs in the Office of Migration, Santo Domingo, February 9, 2001 (transcript on file with Petitioners).

³⁴ Id.

³⁵ Id., lines 240-41.

³⁶ Id., lines 296-97.

³⁷ Id., lines 240-41.

³⁸ Between March 29 and April 2, 2000, a group of researchers made up of representatives of the Columbia University School of Law Human Rights Clinic, the Center for Population and Development Studies at Harvard University (CPDS), the Support Group for Refugees and Repatriated Persons (GARR), and the Platform of Haitian Human Rights Organizations (POHDH) met in Anse-à-Pitre, Haiti, with dozens of victims of the Dominican Republic’s expulsion policy. The Anse-à-Pitre Committee for Support and Defense of Repatriated Persons’ and Refugees’ Rights, a local organization, gathered these persons for interviews; most had been expelled during the 1999 wave of mass “repatriations.” The investigation carried out by the research group led by the Columbia University School of Law Human Rights Clinic includes both qualitative analyses of the deportation experiences of the thirty people interviewed. In addition to the interviews, the group collected written and video testimony from the expulsion victims, including several Petitioners, in an effort to document the arbitrary policies described in this paragraph. The themes that emerged from this study, reflected here, empirically confirm the aberrant nature of the practice of collective by Dominican officials that the Inter-American Commission identified in its 1991 and 1999 reports.

³⁹ Políticas Migratorias, supra note 25. Another stark example of the racial discrimination underlying immigration officials’ selection of victims is that of Pedro Leonel Espinal, a young black Dominican student from Gurabo. Immigration officials picked him up and detained him because they mistakenly “took him for being Haitian,” due to the color of his skin; when Mr. Espinal protested, the official hit him in the head with a revolver. El Listín Diario, on October 22, 2000, published a photo of Mr. Espinal with the caption “Beaten for Being Black!”  See also Angel Perarlta, Un militar hiere a un estudiante negro que quería deportar a Haití, Listín Diario, January 30, 2001.

⁴⁰ See 2001 Record and Documents, supra note 3. See also supra Part II.B., Facts with Respect to Specific Petitions and supra note 38.

⁴¹ See 2001 Record and Documents, supra note 3. See also supra Part II.B., Facts with Respect to Specific Petitions and supra note 38.

⁴² Constitution of the Dominican Republic, art. XI [hereinafter “Const. Dom. Rep.”]

⁴³ “We can affirm [as a matter of law] that the descendants of Haitians (legal and illegal) who are born in the territory of the Dominican Republic are ipso facto, by the mere fact of their birth, attributed Dominican nationality through the application of Art. 11 of the Dominican Constitution.” Carmen Amelia Cedeño-Caroit, El Estatuto Jurídico de los Haitianos y sus Descendientes Nacidos en República Dominicana (1991) at 108; 1999 IACHR Report, supra note 4, ¶ 353.

⁴⁴ 1999 IACHR Report, supra note 4, ¶ 353.

⁴⁵ Cedeño-Caroit, supra note43, at 72-78. The purpose of “in transit” exception is to avoid the conferring of nationality “by accident.” Id. at 78.

⁴⁶ 1999 IACHR Report, supra note 4, ¶ 352.

⁴⁷ Id. Furthermore, there are no administrative tribunals or bodies in place to help the descendants of Haitians establish their Dominican nationality. No Hay Tribunales Para Determinar La Nacionalidad [There Are No Administrative Courts to Determine Nationality], Hoy, November 20, 1999.

⁴⁸ 2001 HRC Concluding Observations, supra note 29, ¶18; IACHR 1999 Report, supra note 4, ¶363. The Foundation for Institionality and Justice (“FINJUS”), a respected human rights organization in the Dominican Republic, maintains that Haitians residing in the Dominican Republic are not “in transit” and that persons born in the Dominican Republic of Haitian descent have a right to Dominican nationality and official papers. Manuel Azcona, La FINJUS Dice Que Los Haitianos Nacidos Aquí Son Dominicanos [FINJUS Says That Haitians Born Here Are Dominicans] El Listín Diario, November 13, 1999.

⁴⁹ 2001 HRC Concluding Observations, supra note 29, ¶18.

⁵⁰ 1999 IACHR Report, supra note 4, ¶¶350-60. See also Silvio Cabrera, Denuncian Despojar Negros de sus Cédulas [Stripping of Cédulas from Blacks Denounced], El Nacional, April 14, 2000, at 1.

⁵¹ Interview with Ramón Morel Cerda, President of the Junta Electoral Central, Santo Domingo, February 8, 2001. Representatives of the International Human Rights Clinic, University of California, Berkeley, interviewed Mr. Morel Cerda, and confirmed that the requirements for inscription into the civil registry, which as a practical matter make the registry of the children of undocumented Haitian workers impossible, are not founded in law. See also 1999 IACHR Report, supra note 4¶ 354—356.

⁵³ 1999 IACHR Report, supra note 4¶ 354—356.

⁵⁴ See supra Part II.C.2. The Pattern of Expulsions and Deportations: 1998-2001.