Following the assassination of a 65-year-old Dominican farmer who lived in the Savica neighborhood of Neiba (Baoruco province in the southeastern part of the Dominican Republic), whose body was discovered on Monday, the population accusing the Haitians of being behind the murder, killed the same day at knifepoint a young Haitian aged 20 years in retaliation, triggering a panic in the Haitian community of Neiba, a rural town of about 30,000 inhabitants.

In the night of Monday to Tuesday, nearly 300 Haitians left the city hastily to Haiti, some sought protection in military barracks to be brought early Tuesday on the border of Malpasse by the Dominican migratory authorities.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Refugee Support Group (GARR) welcomed 48 Haitians fleeing Neiba (17 women, 7 men and 24 children) to their premises in Fond Bayard, Ganthier. Our compatriots said they were afraid for their lives "Rumors circulated in our neighborhood that Dominican civilians armed with machetes and knives would kill us. I escaped with my three children to save our skin," testified a mother exhausted by the trip.

Unfortunately, just as in Haiti when a population is not well educated, popular justice is blindly applied to the simple public clamor, whether justified or not, as was also the case in the Ortega community in Moca in 2015, when more 300 Haitians had been driven out after the destruction of all their possessions https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-13568-haiti-social-murder-of-a-dominican-more-than-300-haitians-expelled-from-ortega.html

While condemning this double murder, the , GARR invites the Dominican authorities to continue investigations to identify the perpetrators and urges the Haitian authorities to contact the Dominican Government in order to take measures to protect the Haitian community living in Neiba.

TB/ HaitiLibre