DR embassy calls Hartley foolish

SANTO DOMINGO. The Dominican embassy in Brussels, Belgium called the campaign against the Dominican state, "foolish" yesterday. The attempts of Father Christopher Hartley are aimed at obtaining an international condemnation of the Dominican Republic under the accusation of violating the human rights of Haitian workers.

By means of a press communiqué, Ambassador Alejandro Gonzalez Pons assured reporters that the Catholic priest continues to carry out the negative campaign against the country, and that he wants the Dominican state to be condemned by some international judicial body. "With this campaign, based on distortions and in bad faith, he pretends to impede the free flow of the commercial conditions that are favorable for the Dominican Republic and that are part of the Treaty of Economic Association with the European Union (EPA)", he said.

He said that Father Hartley complains specifically against the sugar sector, trying to stop this sector from benefiting from the opportunities that the demand of the European market offers for Dominican sugar.

In the judgment of Gonzalez Pons, the religious man omits in his complaints the advances in bettering the income and the working conditions and the life of the workers in sugar, cacao, bananas, coffee, rice and construction, "in which thousand of Haitian workers toil, and which amount to nearly a million inhabitants in the Dominican Republic, nearly all of whom are living there illegally."