HAITIAN MASSACRES

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 41, 12 November 1937, Page 11

HAITIAN MASSACRES

Dismay At Dominican Brutality

“ONE OF MAJOR CRIMES IN HISTORY” Washington, November 10. Letters received from a netural observer containing Haitian massacres have aroused dismay in official quarters because of i the' unspeakable brutality depicted, and fears that the trouble is not yet at an end. Referring to the incident as one of the major crimes in history, the writer, who is a journalist, declares that possibly 5000 men, women, an'd children were destroyed. Babies were impaled on bayonets, and adults corralled and beaten to death with clubs, and quartered with machetes and sharpened hooks- Dominican soldiers themselves were horrified in many cases, and refused to carry out the slaughter. The orders were that they were to be made drunk. The commander of one group of Dominicans was himself executed because he revolted at the horror of hundreds of bodies being thrown into the sea or burned in great pits.

Haiti is being over-populated, and the Dominicans claim that the Haitians have infiltrated the Dominican Republic, accepting starvation wages anfl creating wide unemployment.

It was reported that at least 2700 Haitians, principally women and children, were killed in a series of attacks by soldiers and civilians from the Dominican Republic since October 5, and that 3000 residents of Haiti were driven out as the result of resentment at the heavy influx of Haitians seeking work across the Dominican frontier. An armed conflict between the two countries was prevented only by the intervention of American diplomatic officers. Santo Domingo originally formed portion of the Black Statp of Haiti, the people of the whole island being united under one Government independent of European Powers. The Spanish first held the place, after which control passed to the French, and freedom from French rule came in 'the early part of the nineteenth century. Subsequent foreign attempts to re-enter the field were checked. In 1869 the Dominican Republic, which had been founded in ratified, a treaty of annexation to the United States, but the United States rejected this. Santo Domingo had a population of 1,478,000 in 1935, while Haiti, with half the area of Santo Domingo, has a population estimated at 3,000,000. The foreign trade of the two countries is of almost similar proportions, but whereas Haiti depends on coffee, which in 193334 was 71 per cent, of all exports, and has cotton as its next important article of foreign commerce, Santo Domingo ships sugar, cacao, tobacco and copra.