Dear Editor,
While we are beating the drums of war in respect of the rejection by Trinidad of some of our less than typical examples of Jamaica's finest citizens and a threat to boycott all imports from Trinidad -- except fuels of course -- the raw and brutal experience of racial and cultural prejudice being practised by the Dominican Republic appears not to excite either our passions or our intellectual curiosity.
The Dominican Republic has openly flouted human rights principles, while paying only lip service to the polite requests for dialogue made by its putative Caricom brethren and continues to deprive Haitians of their citizenship, livelihood and, as it is reported, their very lives, while exporting a wide range of products into our country on a duty-free basis by virtue of administrative waivers as a Caricom affiliate.
Indeed, some of those products being imported, such as rum and coffee, cocoa, banana and plantain chips, pvc pipe, barbed wire, and dog food, may very well have been made using exploited Haitian labour and by virtue of the low cost of that labour and the privilege of free entry are putting workers in Jamaica out of business.
If we want to arrange a boycott, logic and mutuality of interest should dictate a temporary boycott against goods from the Dominican Republic until that country demonstrates that it is really a part of the Caribbean Community and subscribes to our ideals and aspirations as people of a common history.
Howard Mitchell
Attorney-at-Law
Dom Rep's actions need more than talk
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While we are beating the drums of war in respect of the rejection by Trinidad of some of our less than typical examples of Jamaica's finest citizens and a threat to boycott all imports from Trinidad -- except fuels of course -- the raw and brutal experience of racial and cultural prejudice being practised by the Dominican Republic appears not to excite either our passions or our intellectual curiosity.
The Dominican Republic has openly flouted human rights principles, while paying only lip service to the polite requests for dialogue made by its putative Caricom brethren and continues to deprive Haitians of their citizenship, livelihood and, as it is reported, their very lives, while exporting a wide range of products into our country on a duty-free basis by virtue of administrative waivers as a Caricom affiliate.
Indeed, some of those products being imported, such as rum and coffee, cocoa, banana and plantain chips, pvc pipe, barbed wire, and dog food, may very well have been made using exploited Haitian labour and by virtue of the low cost of that labour and the privilege of free entry are putting workers in Jamaica out of business.
If we want to arrange a boycott, logic and mutuality of interest should dictate a temporary boycott against goods from the Dominican Republic until that country demonstrates that it is really a part of the Caribbean Community and subscribes to our ideals and aspirations as people of a common history.
Howard Mitchell
Attorney-at-Law
Dom Rep's actions need more than talk
-->