MARSH HARBOUR, ABACO οΎ— Last Thursday was an extraordinary day in Bahamian-Haitian relations in Abaco. The day began with a combined force of immigration, police, and defence force officers taking into custody dozens of suspected illegal Haitian immigrants throughout the Marsh Harbour area. Thirty-four were deported.
Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Local Government V. Alfred Gray also visited Abaco that day to observe the destruction of citrus canker-infested fruit trees at Bahama Star Farm, under way since the previous Friday.
Mr. Gray met with workers still living on the closed and quarantined farm, mostly Haitians or Haitian-Bahamians, who, with their families number over 200, to assure them that the government would assist them with food and utilities until they could be processed by immigration in an orderly way to determine who were entitled to remain in The Bahamas, and who would have to be repatriated to Haiti.
On Thursday evening, Mr. Gray presided over a community meeting in Marsh Harbour at the Anglican parish hall, attended by over 50 residents of mixed ethnic backgrounds, to inform them of the government’s plans to contain citrus canker throughout the island, including testing trees on residential property.
Much of the meeting focused on discussions about the growing tensions between Bahamians and Haitians, especially with respect to the building of illegal communities, the regularizing of the status of persons born here of Haitian parentage, and what to do about those who are here illegally.
Passionate voices were raised on both sides, with Mr. Gray appealing to Bahamians to be sensitive and humane, while trusting his government to move decisively to solve the problems with an “action plan” they were putting in place.
One of those speaking out was Katie Etienne, 20, a resident of Bahama Star Farm who was born in The Bahamas but does not yet have her Bahamian citizenship documents.
“If you must hate me because my parents were Haitians, and I’m sorry but I love my parents, then keep it to yourself because I don’t want to hear it anymore,” she said, in a moving cri de coeur, or cry from the heart, to those in the audience who consider themselves native Bahamians.
Ms. Etienne said the only time she had ever been to Haiti was a few years ago, when she went there to wrap up the affairs of her mother, who was killed in a plane crash while on her way from The Bahamas to Haiti.
“I don’t know any other country but The Bahamas,” she said. “But during the whole time I was in school, from I was five until I was 18, if you sit next to a Bahamian, they would start saying things like, “Haitians stink; why don’t you go back to Haiti?”
Ms. Etienne has been a de facto interpreter for Creole-speaking farm workers and English-speaking Bahamian officials, including Mr. Gray when he met with the workers earlier that day, since the farm closed in early January.
She said she was so accustomed to being spoken to in a derogatory manner by Bahamians that, when North Abaco Administrator Donald Cash and NEMA Coordinator Jack Thompson spoke to her after the farm’s closure about how things were and how they could help, she was pleasantly taken aback, but slightly suspicious of their motives.
“This is different,” she said.
By By RICHARD E. FAWKES, The Freeport News
