By EARYEL BOWLEG
Tribune Staff Reporter
ebowleg@tribunemedia.net
A LOCAL activist said the ongoing harassment and “inciting of violence” against Haitians in The Bahamas needs to be addressed.
Equality Bahamas director Alicia Wallace said the Haitian migrant community is “systematically targeted, scapegoated and blamed” for a range of issues that result from white supremacy, capitalism, and colonialism.
Ms Wallace’s comments come after Lincoln Bain and several of his supporters were stopped by police on Saturday when they went to a shanty town off Bacardi Road and tried to tear down illegal structures in the unregulated community.
Mr Bain documented the incident in a live Facebook video from the shanty town on Saturday.
In the video, Mr Bain and his supporters could be seen walking from home to home through the community, knocking on doors and instructing residents to leave the property.
Many have accused the Coalition of Independents leader of xenophobia, particularly towards the Haitian community. Ms Wallace showed great concern about Mr Bain’s actions when contacted to respond to the event.
“Mr Bain and his followers are using what has been called xenophobia, but is certainly internalised racism and specifically anti- Haitian sentiments, to shift attention from the failed systems to the people who are made most vulnerable by those systems,” she said.
She added: “The immigration crisis we face is that white migrants, called expats, are treated much differently than black migrants, from work permit applications and paths to permanent residency to wages and working conditions. It is that the Department of Immigration is confusing, hostile, and inefficient, and those involved in the policing of borders are inept or corrupt.
“The greater crises we face today are the cult of personality and the disregard for human rights. It has become too easy for wrongheaded individuals to deceive and mislead others by targeting an already at-risk group to be blamed for shared circumstances.
“Human rights are not understood, insufficiently promoted, and regularly trampled upon by people in positions of power and by citizens who are emboldened by the lack of conviction of the government in upholding and promoting them.”
She added that everyone needs a place to live and has the right to legal protection.
“There are processes, and the considerations beyond the letter of the law, and one group circumventing these processes without significant consequence does not bode well for us,” she said.
In an interview with The Tribune on Sunday, Mr Bain insisted the group’s actions were lawful and police had no right to stop them.
He claimed the shanty town dwellers were squatting on Crown land given to a retired civil servant named Justina Curry for farming. He said Ms Curry had pleaded with the government to help her reclaim the land, adding they had papers to prove she had the legal right to the property.
This incident comes as the Davis administration has reconvened a shanty town task force following the lifting of a Supreme Court injunction that had previously banned government from demolishing shanty town homes.
Comments
mandela 1 year, 2 months ago
A question, so, what are Haitians doing to Haitians in Haiti? Killing each other, there's no Bahamian here killing or wanting to kill Haitians. We need control at the highest level. A wise PM once said something like, if Bahamians are too lazy, laid back, and passive to fight for and to keep their Bahama Land, they don't deserve to have it. Point Blank
SP 1 year, 2 months ago
Could it be these supposed "intelligent" Bahamians that always shouting support for Haitians but never support our own people are "not our people"?
SP 1 year, 2 months ago
Equality Bahamas director Alicia Wallace claims that the Haitian migrant community is “systematically targeted, scapegoated and blamed” for a range of issues that result from white supremacy, capitalism, and colonialism is 100% pure steaming horse nanny.
The Haitian migrant community makes themselves targets because they are the single largest group of migrants contributing to Bahamians suffering unemployment, inadequate healthcare, poor education, and shortages of social services. Their way of living is culturally unacceptable, (very nasty), and other social ills!
Whereas Ms. Wallace is correct that everyone needs a place to live and has the right to legal protection, everyone is also accountable to be subjected to the letter of the law and processes, all illegal migrants from anywhere automatically compromise themselves by entering the country illegally in the first instance. Everything these people do in the country is in breach of the letter of the law because they have no right to be here, and they should be treated likewise.
It is beyond ludicrous to suggest illegal migrants should be treated equally to individuals that went through the proper processes to enter a country. If this were so, why would anyone bother to do things properly?
Under the enormous cost and strain of supporting illegals, The Bahamas is well on the way to buckling and becoming another failed state as is Haiti, and for the exact same reasons. Systemic corruption, mass unemployment, lack of health care, inadequate education, poor infrastructure, shortage of social services, out-of-control serious crime, etc.
Illegals, firstly Haitians because of their huge numbers are the biggest of offenders, are making life unbearable for Bahamians. Low-skilled jobs that should be reserved for undereducated Bahamians have been occupied by Haitians, Asians, Latinos, and others leaving crime as the sole solution for survival.
I stand with Bahamians! The Bahamas needs to purge itself of ALL illegals.
DEDDIE 1 year, 2 months ago
Haitians have been the lowest hanging fruit for a lot of activists anxiously waiting to become politicians. The biggest land grab in the Bahamas was by the Grand Bahama Port Authority (Fifty thousand acres plus) and the I-group (ten thousand acres) in Mayaguana but no one is protesting them. All the Shanty towns combine doesn't add up to one thousand acres.
SP 1 year, 2 months ago
Lowest hanging fruit my ass. Your Haitians are the single biggest parasites in the Bahamas and Turks Islands!
The Grand Bahama Port Authority and the I-group in Mayaguana did not enter the country illegally, plunder every public resource, or steal the chances of the average Bahamian to make a living.
You Haitians have broken every law in the Bahamas with impunity thanks to political corruption, destroyed the way of life for untold thousands of Bahamians, and now want to play the victim.
Time longer than rope. You Haitians have long since run out of rope with Bahamians and now you are out of time!
GodSpeed 1 year, 2 months ago
Send them back
pileit 1 year, 2 months ago
I think miss Wallace is right, we're all just overreacting out of blind hatred. Yes Bain is a grandstanding moron, but this doesn't mean that worried Bahamians do not have cause. Let her open up her back yard for a couple desperate immigrant families who are simply looking for a better life, since that is the humane thing to do. What her address is so I could send some plywood down that way? Lead by example.
ExposedU2C 1 year, 2 months ago
THEY INVADE OUR COUNTRY, DESTROY THE BAHAMIAN WAY OF LIFE, MILK OUR PUBLIC TREASURY FOR ALL IT IS WORTH WITH THE HELP OF OUR CORRUPT POLITICAL LEADERS AND THEN THEY HAVE THE TEMERITY TO CRY OUT THAT THEY, AND NOT THE BAHAMIAN PEOPLE, ARE THE VICTIMS. WELL MONKEY!!!
As I have said time and time again, no one today loves Haitians more than roly-poly Davis, except possibly lime-green Fwreddy Boy Mitchell.
SLOP and the PLP political hierarchy learned a long time ago that the more the Bahamian people become impoverished and dumbed-down with a D- education, the easier they can be manipulated and have their constitution rights trampled on.
Roly-poly Davis sees lower class Bahamians as moaning and groaning suckers who are unable to do anything about their miserable existence under our corrupt two-party political system.
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