The government of the Dominican Republic is continuing to push back against criticism of the worsening human rights abuses in the country’s justice system. The Abinader government is now attempting to deflect attention away from the internationally condemned human rights violations committed by the Public Ministry. Its allies are taking a similar approach.
Make no mistake – the facts cannot be whitewashed. The Dominican Justice Initiative is dedicated to documenting and raising awareness of the human rights violations in the DR’s justice system.
Here are the facts the Dominican government does not want you to know:
The Dominican Republic’s Attorney General is not independent.
The Dominican Republic is one of the few democracies in the world where the chief public prosecutor is appointed unilaterally by the President without any confirmation by the legislature or an independent judicial body. Questions about the Public Ministry’s independence have even arose in comments from Attorney General Miriam Germán Brito herself when she recently announced her resignation.
Germán, who is praised in the op-ed as a respected jurist, revealed that she often first learned of statements put out by her own office only when she read them in the Dominican media. That is a textbook definition of an office without any independence: other people spoke for her repeatedly on important matters without her knowledge or consent.
The Attorney General has failed to end human rights abuses committed by the Public Ministry.
The U.S. Department of State and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) have called out the Dominican justice system under the current government for its extensive violation of human rights over several years. According to the latest State Department human rights report for 2023, the current DR government “did not take credible steps to identify and punish officials who may have committed human rights abuses.”
In a July 22 article in El Nacional, Dominican political scientist Rafael Andújar said “the independence of the Public Ministry is not real” because Germán was named “only and exclusively to prosecute” members of the opposition.
International human rights lawyer Víctor Mosquera Marín wrote in Americas Quarterly that the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) condemned the Public Ministry after “prosecutors appointed by President Luis Abinader “persecuted” and arbitrarily imprisoned a senior opposition figure, former Attorney General Jean Alain Rodríguez Sánchez.”
Such human rights abuses are “widely practiced” by the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for the Prosecution of Administrative Corruption, known as PEPCA, Mosquera wrote. Their use of preventive detention has “a political dimension”, Mosquera added, because PEPCA “wields extensive and discretionary powers in its investigations and prosecution efforts, openly conflicting with international human rights standards.”
The Dominican government’s use of preventive detention violates the rule of law.
The National Human Rights Commission of the Dominican Republic (CNDH-RD) reported that over 80% of the inmates in Dominican prisons are being held under preventive detention orders often without charge or trial. This violates international agreements and standards on human rights, due process and the right to a defense. Even Attorney General Germán criticized the excessive use of preventive detention by the Public Ministry, despite never having taken action to stop it.
The U.S. State Department’s 2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Dominican Republic found that “arbitrary arrests and detentions without judicial authorization remained a problem” and the justice system places inmates under “harsh and life-threatening conditions in old-model prisons, such as overcrowding, violence, physical abuse, and poor living and sanitary conditions.” Indeed, Chairman Michael McCaul of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee expressed concern to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in a letter that U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents may be under preventive detention orders in the Dominican Republic.
The human rights abuses are real and they must end.
It is unfortunate that the Dominican government refuses to acknowledge and address the widely reported and universally condemned abuses in its justice system, and instead seeks to repeatedly whitewash the facts. Given the insurmountable evidence of serious human rights violations and the increasing scrutiny from international human rights monitors, it is time that the Dominican government to stop denying and downplaying the facts and accept responsibility for ending these abuses immediately.