By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

A LOCAL activist said the ongoing harassment and “inciting of violence” against Haitians in The Bahamas needs to be addressed.

Equality Bahamas director Alicia Wallace said the Haitian migrant community is “systematically targeted, scapegoated and blamed” for a range of issues that result from white supremacy, capitalism, and colonialism.

Ms Wallace’s comments come after Lincoln Bain and several of his supporters were stopped by police on Saturday when they went to a shanty town off Bacardi Road and tried to tear down illegal structures in the unregulated community.

Mr Bain documented the incident in a live Facebook video from the shanty town on Saturday.

In the video, Mr Bain and his supporters could be seen walking from home to home through the community, knocking on doors and instructing residents to leave the property.

Many have accused the Coalition of Independents leader of xenophobia, particularly towards the Haitian community. Ms Wallace showed great concern about Mr Bain’s actions when contacted to respond to the event.

“Mr Bain and his followers are using what has been called xenophobia, but is certainly internalised racism and specifically anti- Haitian sentiments, to shift attention from the failed systems to the people who are made most vulnerable by those systems,” she said.

She added: “The immigration crisis we face is that white migrants, called expats, are treated much differently than black migrants, from work permit applications and paths to permanent residency to wages and working conditions. It is that the Department of Immigration is confusing, hostile, and inefficient, and those involved in the policing of borders are inept or corrupt.

“The greater crises we face today are the cult of personality and the disregard for human rights. It has become too easy for wrongheaded individuals to deceive and mislead others by targeting an already at-risk group to be blamed for shared circumstances.

“Human rights are not understood, insufficiently promoted, and regularly trampled upon by people in positions of power and by citizens who are emboldened by the lack of conviction of the government in upholding and promoting them.”

She added that everyone needs a place to live and has the right to legal protection.

“There are processes, and the considerations beyond the letter of the law, and one group circumventing these processes without significant consequence does not bode well for us,” she said.

In an interview with The Tribune on Sunday, Mr Bain insisted the group’s actions were lawful and police had no right to stop them.

He claimed the shanty town dwellers were squatting on Crown land given to a retired civil servant named Justina Curry for farming. He said Ms Curry had pleaded with the government to help her reclaim the land, adding they had papers to prove she had the legal right to the property.

This incident comes as the Davis administration has reconvened a shanty town task force following the lifting of a Supreme Court injunction that had previously banned government from demolishing shanty town homes.