The Tribune

 EDITOR, The Tribune

 Other than the fact that both are located in the Caribbean, The Bahamas and the Dominican Republic have very little in common. Situated on the eastern part of Hispaniola, the official language of the Dominican Republic is Spanish. Only 15.8 percent of the population is black.

Approximately 85 percent of the Bahamian population is black. The Mestizo/Indio represents the largest ethnic group in the Dominican Republic, making up 58 percent of the population. Mulattos and whites comprise 12.4 and 13.5 percent respectively. The current president of the country is Danilo Medina.

While The Bahamas enjoys a healthy diplomatic relationship with Cuba, Haiti and other CARICOM member states, I am not aware of any diplomatic relations between our country and the Dominican Republic.

If we don’t have any, now is the time to pursue one, considering the large numbers of Dominican fishermen who poach in Bahamian waters. These foreign fishermen are becoming more aggressive and more desperate.

The recent shootout between Royal Bahamas Defence Force (RBDF) HMBS Madeira crew members and Dominican poachers in the southern Bahamas underscores this disturbing fact, and is another attack on the sovereignty of The Bahamas. This latest attack isn’t the first time RBDF officers have been fired at by the Dominicans.

I understand that the HMBS Madeira had suffered $250,000 in damages after being rammed by a Dominican vessel in 2016. I believe the Dominican government should be held partially culpable for the actions of its rogue citizens.

Maybe the Minnis administration should give serious consideration to seeking United Nations intervention in the event the Medina administration is unwilling to act.

Bahamian fishermen have complained for years about being shot at by hostile Dominican poachers. The situation will not improve anytime soon unless urgent action is taken in order to protect our marine resources. The Dominicans have nearly depleted their fishery resources by over exploitation. According to Dominican Today, the fishing production in the country totalled 18,000 tons in 1996; 11,104 tons in 2006 and 8,944 tons in 2015.  

So in a span of just 19 years, their fishing production has declined by over 9,000 tons. Ironically, this information was reported during the Dominican Republic’s Third National Report to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change.

This decline has coincided with many Dominican fishermen abandoning the trade. Interestingly, Dominican Today also stated that due to the country’s inability to meet the demands for seafood in touristic areas, most of the seafood is imported.

The question now is, where from? I have a strong hunch that some of this seafood being consumed by tourists in the Dominican Republic is being imported from The Bahamas by Dominican poachers.

 In 2012 a group calling itself The Bahamas Commercial Fishers Alliance (BCFA) lobbied the then Christie administration to better enforce fishing laws by repealing the policy of granting permits to Dominican fishermen who were married to Bahamian women.

With a language barrier between them and their Bahamian spouses, why are Dominican men marrying these women? With Dominican women being hailed as some of the most beautiful in the Caribbean, these marriages to Bahamian women look all the more suspicious.

Bahamian fishermen are convinced that these Dominicans are using marriage to Bahamian women as a loophole. Marrying Bahamian women is their shrewd way of circumventing the system. Consequently, these marriages are nothing more than marriages of convenience.

If these allegations are true, it is deeply troubling that there are Bahamians out there who are willingly facilitating the poaching of our marine resources, which will eventually deprive future generations of Bahamians of conch, grouper, snapper and other seafoods.

To Bahamian fishermen, these marriages have treason written all over them. They believe that these Dominicans are collaborating with their counterparts back home. At the rate the Dominicans are going, they will wipe out the fish stocks in the southern Bahamas within 20 years. And after they’re done with that area, they will move on elsewhere.

One way to prevent this is to heed the suggestion put forward by the BCFA. On an unrelated note, the government of the Dominican Republic has expelled thousands of its citizens who are of Haitian descent over the past three, four years, leading to allegations of racism and xenophobia by human rights activists.

My purpose in mentioning this is to point out the fact that the Dominicans look out for their own interests. It’s time for the Bahamian government to do the same when it comes to our marine resources.

The Minnis administration should move expeditiously in repealing the work permits of the Dominican fishermen who are married to Bahamian women. Like many of their counterparts back home in the Dominican Republic, let them take up another trade.

It is unfortunate that Bahamian women have been caught up in this mess. But our national security is at stake. We have to bolster it.

KEVIN EVANS

Freeport, GB 

October 17, 2018