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Immigrant Laborers From Haiti Are Paid With Abuse in the Dominican Republic 

The tobacco fields are being planted a little late this year because the Haitian immigrants who work them were driven away by threats of a lynching.

The troubles in this farm town in the country's northwest started in late September, with allegations that a Dominican worker had been killed by two black men. Too angry to wait for a trial, local Dominicans armed themselves with machetes and went out for vengeance.

"Where there are two Haitians, kill one; where there are three Haitians, kill two," said leaders of the mobs that descended on the immigrants' camps, the Haitians here recalled. "But always let one go so that he can run back to his country and tell them what happened."

Several Haitian workers were beaten by the Dominican mobs, said Jacobo Martínez Jiménez, an immigrant organizer. . . .

"The problem is that there is no real justice," said Francisco Cabrera, who rents a few dozen acres of tobacco land here and uses Haitian laborers. He said the police rarely tried to stop attacks on them. "So people take justice into their own hands."

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