The corpse of a Haitian man was found hanging from a tree in a public park in the Dominican Republic’s second-largest city Wednesday morning, according the newspaper Listín Diario.
Local police said the killing in Santiago appeared to have occurred during a robbery. But human rights groups and other observers pointed out that the crime comes amid a furious debate over immigration from neighboring Haiti and a decade-long series of legal measures that have stripped birthright citizenship from thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent.
The victim, identified by the newspaper only by his nickname Tulile, worked shining shoes in Ercilia Pepín Park, where his body was found, according to Listín Diario. His hands and feet were bound, according to Dominican daily Diario Libre.
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Marselha Gonçalves Margerin, Amnesty International’s advocacy director for the Americas, said the human rights watchdog was “monitoring the situation” and urged the authorities to vigorously investigate the hanging.
“Amnesty International recalls that authorities have the obligation to thoroughly investigate the case like in any case of allegation of homicide,” Gonçalves Margerin wrote in an email to HuffPost, “but given the particular context going on in the country, special attention should be given whether it was a hate crime based on the origins or racial characteristics of the person.”
