Santo Domingo.- Dominican-American Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Junot Diaz is “targeting” intellectual authors to protest against the deportations of migrants from the Dominican Republic, where he “found a state of terror” it its capital Santo Domingo, denverpost.com reports.
The author’s statement forms part of a wave of Dominican Republic-bashing from abroad, from leaders with no apparent knowledge of the reality on the eastern half of Hispaniola.
Diaz called for a boycott over items such as sugar “to strip power from the governments and corporations benefiting from a policy that they say targets black migrants.”
“The Dominican government says it will deport non-citizens who didn’t submit applications to establish legal residency before a June 17 deadline,” the denverpost.com said.
The author of the novel "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" said he found the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo in "a state of terror" last week just as the deadline passed, with the government’s critics receiving death threats and taking their families into hiding.”
The outlet, quoting an AP report, says Diaz “linked the deportations to violence against blacks in the U.S., including the mass shooting of nine people last week at a South Carolina church, as well as migrant surges at Mexico’s border with the U.S., across the Mediterranean into Europe and in Asia.”
“But the Dominican government is vulnerable to political pressure from travel boycotts and protests wherever Dominican officials make trade trips," he said.
"I’ve been working on targeting all the intellectual authors of this, not only identifying them but also boycotting and finding that way to interrupt their access to their easy privilege here in the United States," said Diaz, according to AP. "There’s a lot of us who are putting a lot of money in these corrupt human beings’ pockets, and questions have to be raised at a personal level and at an organizational level."