Dajabón, Dominican Republic.- “We Dominicans have a responsibility to fulfill with the Haitians, the international community has a responsibility to fulfill with the Haitians and even more the Haitian people have a responsibility to fulfill with themselves,” said the priest Regino Martinez in a mass by the Jesuits to mark the 12th anniversary of Border Solidarity.

The Jesuit priest, in a mass held in the Dajabón’s Nuestra señora del Rosario church, said there are three topics which the Dominican Republic, the international community and the Haitian people must address positively to improve the situation for all.

The prelate, who’s also the director of the movement Border Solidarity, said there are Government officials who don’t even know the border and live and work in the capital “talking nonsense,” citing the case of National Border Council president Radhamés Batista, whom although is a native of a border town, left to live in the capital when he was very young.

Martinez regrets that “it took a visit from the likes of Jimmy Carter” to gauge the poverty and unhealthiness in which most of the Dominican-Haiti border’s inhabitants live under, because our officials fear leaving their air-conditioned offices in Santo Domingo and prefer to speak to the media contradicting reality. “It’s incredible that the ex president of the United States Carter and his wife have better eyes to penetrate into the deepest part of one of the poorest barrios of Dajabón for them to tell us.”