T U E S D A Y APRIL 9, 2002
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD Volume CXXXVII, No. 46
An independent newspaper serving the Brown community since 1891
www.browndailyherald.com
Racism another problem outside U.S., Dominican expert says BY MARISA PLUMB
Syracuse Professor Silvio Torres-Saillant spoke Monday night in Sayles Hall about misconceptions of race in the Dominican Republic. Focusing on the denial of basic rights to children of Haitian immigrants, he attributed racism in the Dominican Republic to the larger problem of associating race with nationality. When immigrant families move to the United States, the children they bear on U.S. soil automatically acquire full rights of American citizenship, he said. But in the Dominican Republic, Torres-Saillant said, no one is guaranteed complete protections of government, even after spending a generation in Dominican society. The government refuses to issue children of Haitian immigrants birth certificates, seriously limiting their educational possibilities, he said. Torres-Saillant pointed to findings from the Dominican Republic’s Human Rights Watch, showing that even people of Haitian descent who possess proper papers of citizenship still face deportation from the country. Authorities simply don’t take time to verify the grounds for deportation, he added. The term deportation, Torres-Saillant argued, is a misnomer — Haitians of Dominican descent are often not so much deported as exiled from their home country. The problem exists when people in the Dominican Republic don’t consider children of immigrants to be Dominican because they don’t fit an ethnic representation synonymous with Dominican nationality, Torres-Saillant said. Just as some individuals think a person in the United States whose parents speak Spanish is not American, people in the Dominican Republic often exclude people from their conception of citizenship if their parents speak Creole, he said. This dangerous mode of thought denies citizens of different races equal rights, he said. Schools in the Dominican Republic only accept students of certain ethnic and racial backgrounds, he said. Torres-Saillant organized a conference in New York and the Dominican Republic to address the challenge of diversity in a democratic nation. The Dominican Republic probably has the most ethnically mixed population in the Caribbean, Torres-Saillant said, and if it doesn’t offer equal protections to all citizens, the democracy will quickly break down. Torres-Saillant said U.S. citizens of Dominican descent are proactive in stamping out racism in the United States because, in the Dominican Republic, there is little vocal opposition to discrimination, he said. U.S. citizenship teaches political discontent, and U.S. citizens in the Dominican Republic should use these lessons to assert, “how can they do that?” Torres-Saillant said. The Dominican Republic also faces see DOMINICAN, page 4
Newscom
A Palestinian boy looks at an Israeli checkpoint Monday in Ramallah.Watson Institute for International Studies Research Associate Jarat Chopra and three colleagues escaped the besieged West Bank city on Monday.
Chopra escapes West Bank siege, arrives in Jerusalem BY SETH KERSCHNER
Leaving behind what he called a “humanitarian disaster,” Research Associate Jarat Chopra of the Watson Institute for International Studies and two colleagues escaped to Jerusalem Monday after 11 days trapped in the besieged West Bank city of Ramallah. Chopra, a consultant to the British government, traveled to the Middle East with legal advisors Diana Buttu and Amjad Aatallah as part of an international team to study peace between Israel and Palestine. Chopra, Buttu and Aatallah spoke with the media via telephone at a press conference in the Watson Institute Monday afternoon. The three internationals escaped Ramallah Monday following the Israeli army’s lifting of a 24-hour curfew. “Despite all the efforts of the various consulates, they had not managed to get us out,” Chopra said. They were lucky that a member of the peacekeeping party had contact with an Israeli general, he said. When Chopra, Buttu, and Aatallah arrived at the military checkpoint, they called the Israeli general on a cellular telephone and handed the phone to border guards. The general then authorized the guards to let Chopra, Buttu and Aatallah cross the border, and only then were they permitted to leave, Chopra said. The escape came on the same day that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed to continue the Israeli army’s offensive in the West Bank, though army forces were reported to be withdrawing from at least two areas, Tulkarm and Qalqilya. After crossing the border, Chopra said he was “shocked by normalcy of life only a few feet away.” But in Ramallah, conditions were dire and not improving, he said. “We left behind a humanitarian disas-
ter,” he said. “No food is allowed into the city. Garbage has not been collected. Dead bodies lie on the streets and in buildings.” Chopra said there is “fear of a cholera or typhoid epidemic in Ramallah” because of the rotting corpses and contaminated water. The Israeli military is not allowing medical supplies into the city, he said. “Israel has declared (Ramallah) a closed military zone and as a result has been firing at any cars in the street, including ambulances and cars belonging to the Red Cross,” Buttu said. The conditions are such that relief agencies are unable to provide food or assistance to residents of the city. Uriel Masad, spokesperson for the Red Cross in Israel, told The Herald that Israeli authorities are making it difficult for medical supplies to reach Ramallah. “Hospitals are running out of oxygen cylinders and blood,” he said. “There is enough in the (rest of the) West Bank to supply all the hospitals.” The infrastructure of Palestinian government has also been drastically affected. The Palestinian Authority has been “methodically dismantled” by the occupying Israeli military, Chopra said. There is “no Palestinian governance,” he said. Chopra compared the “methodical destruction” of the Palestinian government in Ramallah to the situations he witnessed in East Timor and other war zones. He described the “fairly methodical destruction of things like roads and buildings … (the) education ministry was one of the first (buildings) to be gutted.” But Chopra said the war zone in Ramallah is different from any of the other war zones he has been in.
From soup to nuts, Oxfam simulates effects of world hunger on Monday page 5
BY MARION BILLINGS
After two weeks holed up in a house in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Watson Institute for Internal Studies Research Associate Jarat Chopra said Monday that the events he witnessed have drastically altered the elements of a possible Israeli-Palestinian peace. What Chopra termed the Israeli army’s “systematic destruction” of the Palestinian Authority’s infrastructure creates a new need for governance reconstruction on the Palestinian side — an added challenge that will make resolution more difficult, he said. Chopra, an international law, security and peace operations expert, traveled to Ramallah two weeks ago as a consultant to the British government and was a member of an international team studying peace between Israel and Palestine. With the destruction of Palestinian Authority compound and ministries and the Israeli army’s demolition of roads and buildings, the restoration of a functioning infrastructure now becomes a “new element that will have to be addressed by (U.S. Secretary of State) Colin Powell” in his upcoming visit to the Middle East, Chopra said. Powell is slated to meet with United Nations, Russian and European Union officials on Wednesday before traveling to the region in an attempt to forward negosee PEACE, page 6
see CHOPRA, page 6
I N S I D E T U E S D AY, A P R I L 9 , 2 0 0 2 Hoffman, students collaborate on ‘Early College” program for high schoolers page 3
Escaped experts say Mideast peace talks must take new tactic
TO D AY ’ S F O R E C A S T ‘Red-green avante-garde’ could end marginalization of humanities, lecturer Jost Hermand says
Stephen Beale ‘04 says campaign finance reform does nothing for politics’ good name
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Brown baseball splits double-headers against Columbia, Penn, going 2-2 page 12
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