Haitian charcoal smugglers ‘don’t confront’ Dominican military
Santo Domingo.- Border Security Corps (Cesfront) director Sugar Puttzi Frugi on Monday said Haitian charcoal smugglers don’t confront the Dominican military during confiscations or destroy furnaces under construction are destroyed.
He said “not against us” but sometimes against forest rangers, because they don’t have without weapons and most of them aren’t military.
According to military reports, since last August to February Cesfront guards have seized 10,175 sacks of charcoal and another large number of furnaces have been destroyed.
The head of the Cesfront referred to a documentary by Colombian filmmaker Juan Mejía Botero that will air on Saturday March 11 at the Miami Film Festival, on the forced displacement, ethnic conflict and State violence in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The documentary starts with the machete killing of Eligio Eloy Vargas, a Dominican ranger at Sierra de Baoruco National Park, a crime that uncovers massive deforestation of the reserve to produce charcoal illegally and also shows evidence of xenophobia at the border.