ARTICLE - CHILDREN USED AS "HUMAN SHIELDS"

TRAFFICKERS USE CHILDREN AS "HUMAN SHIELDS" AT HAITI-DOMINICAN BORDER
(Dominican Today) -

SANTIAGO - The authorities heightened security checks along the northern border with Haiti to deal with the increasing traffic of undocumented Haitians, alarmingly, many of them children “used criminally as human shields,” official sources quoted by EFE affirmed today.

The Border Security Guard (Cesfront) said that at least 55 children have been rescued in the last five days as they were being taken to Santiago. At dawn Saturday, 17 Haitian children were rescued when they were transported on a vehicle on the highway that links the country’s second biggest city with the border zone.

Felix Manuel Ureña, 10th Army Battalion commander in northwest Dajabón, affirmed Monday that a public transport bus was detained with a group of Haitians. 24 were arrested, while the others escaped.

Civilian and military border authorities quoted by the news source elnacional.com.do say the new modality used by the human traffickers who operate in Haiti and the Dominican Republic merits concern. “They are now taking them from one place to another on motorcycles. They take up to six children, many of them newborn, driving at fast speeds and then the military can’t do anything (...) because they criminally take innocent children and use them as human shields.”