Organizations demand a halt to praises for dictator Trujillo

SANTO DOMINGO. – A group of organizations today called on Dominican republic’s Minister of Justice to enforce the law by halting the statements lauding the dictator Rafael Trujillo (1930-1961), considered one Latin America’s bloodiest dictator.

The statement signed by more than 12,600 people was delivered by members of the Federation of Patriotic Foundations and the Dominican Resistance Memorial Museum, to mark International Day of Human Rights.

The initiative, part of the "Operation Never Again" began in November to maintain "respect for the victims and the right to the truth", according to organizers, who accuse Trujillo’s grandson, Ramfis Dominguez Trujillo, of using public forums and the media to defend the dictatorship, which ended May 30, 1961, with an execution.

They demand enforcement of Law 5880 of 1962 which bans praises to Trujillo’s dictatorship and a court ruling in 2010 that prohibits the Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina open an office in the country and make "any activity in praise of the Trujillo Era," as the period is known.

Resistance Museum director Luisa de Peña stressed that Trujillo’s dictatorship "has been one of the region’s fiercest" and that" and the crimes committed in that era haven’t found a sentence of justice."

"Hundreds of families they miss their dead and missing and suffer the consequences of that system," De Peña said in the presence of Mayobanex Vargas, a survivor of a failed expedition by Dominican exiles to overthrow the dictator in 1959 and declared a "national hero."