Airport Protest Targets Dominican Republic Tourism

Tourism is a $4.5 billion industry in the Dominican Republic

By Carla Murphy Dec 11, 2013

An airport protest led by a group of young people of Haitian descent is aiming to hit the Dominican Republic where it hurts: its USD $4.5 billion tourism industry. One image from the early morning prank in a Montreal airport, captured by photographer Darwin Doleyres, shows a white woman in a bikini with red paint or, "blood on her hands," sunning against a blue-skied backdrop. The Dominican Republic denationalizes more than a quarter of a million human beings, the sign below reads.

The small protest is just the latest against the Spanish-speaking Caribbean nation’s high court ruling that could strip citizenship from an estimated 200,000 people. The vast majority are of Haitian descent, and the ruling retroactively applies to children born in the Dominican Republic after 1929. Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which share the same island, have a long and tense history.

Protest images are making the rounds on French and Creole-speaking Twitter under #DroitsHumainsRD.