From the Reconocido Movement, we issue our strongest condemnation of the government of Luis Abinader for its political responsibility in the arbitrary detention of our national coordinator, Franklin Dinol, on the morning of October 12 in the province of El Seibo. Around 6 a.m., our colleague Dinol was detained in public by agents of the National Police, who, using the illegal and unconstitutional method of racial profiling, proceeded to demand his documents without reasonable suspicion of any wrongdoing. When Dinol presented his Dominican ID, the repressive agents claimed it was fake and that our colleague was Haitian. Dinol was handcuffed and taken to the El Seibo police station.

Using language typical of henchmen in the government’s immigration crackdown operations, these police agents disrespected our colleague with numerous racial epithets. At the police station, agents took his cell phone and threatened him with severe beatings. He was also taken to a detention cell with individuals held for common crimes, something explicitly prohibited by Migration Law 285-04 for immigration detentions. Dinol suspects he was taken to this overcrowded, unsanitary cell so that he would be attacked by the other detainees.

In response to widespread public outcry over this illegal, racist procedure by the National Police—an organization with a record of numerous crimes against humanity that the government has tried to whitewash through a so-called police reform—our colleague was finally released.

Upon his release, a senior police official told Dinol that Dominicans should cooperate with immigration enforcement operations because they had “a detention quota to meet,” and he was warned that he was fortunate not to have been beaten for his alleged “arrogance” or charged with unspecified offenses. However, Dinol had not interfered with the officers’ actions in any way. This conduct by the authorities demonstrates their racist brutality and utter disregard for the rule of law.

The detention of Franklin Dinol, a respected national social leader with an exemplary record in defending human rights and mentoring new generations of Dominicans of Haitian descent, is just one among thousands of such cases happening weekly. This once again reveals the racist and brutal nature of the migration policy implemented by the government of Luis Abinader, which began in late 2021 and escalated on October 2 with the announcement of a quota of 10,000 expulsions per week, in direct violation and defiance of the national Constitution, Migration Law 285-04, and the human rights treaties and agreements signed by the Dominican state.

It has once again been proven that the government has suspended the rule of law and, in practice, imposed a state of exception, eliminating the presumption of innocence and replacing it with a presumption of guilt for Black people, regardless of their documentation. The protocol under this racist plan is to detain all Black people and take them to detention centers—some akin to concentration camps, like the so-called Haina Detention Center—to “verify” their documentation, effectively assuming that documents held by Black people are fake until proven otherwise. This illegal, arbitrary method echoes the worst moments in our country’s history.

We alert the Inter-American Human Rights System to this attack on the protective measures issued by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in January 2014. Precautionary measure 408-13 mandates that the Dominican government take necessary steps to “preserve the life and personal integrity of members of the Reconocido Movement” and ensure that the movement can carry out its human rights defense activities without violence and harassment. It has become customary for President Abinader’s government to challenge international institutions’ recommendations, but this case constitutes a blatant violation of the IACHR’s precautionary measure.

This is neither an isolated nor an accidental case; it is the foreseeable and long-warned consequence of the racist persecution policy unleashed by the government, including hate speech that portrays Black people—both Haitian immigrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent—as an alleged economic burden to the Dominican state, or worse, a supposed threat to national sovereignty and security. As a result of this state policy at the highest level, and especially with the enforcement of a quota of ten thousand expulsions per week, a veritable horde of police, military, and immigration agents are now pursuing and attacking Black people in the streets, in their homes (often without a warrant), and near hospitals and schools. We demand the government end its ethnic cleansing policy, cease the mass deportations that frequently affect Black Dominicans, whether or not of Haitian descent, as well as Haitian immigrants with valid documentation. This also includes massive violations of the human rights of undocumented Haitian immigrants, whose administrative status in no way authorizes the government to infringe on their human rights or deny them the right to an individual case assessment with full access to legal defense.

Finally, we announce that we will proceed to denounce this serious attack on our organization before all relevant national and international bodies.