"NON BELONGERS"
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
The Providenciales airport offers a primer in the uneasy relations between locals and foreigners on the Turks and Caicos' largest island. Inside the bright-white Customs room, travelers line up in separate categories: ''visitors'' and ''returning residents,'' and ''belongers.'' Visitors are tourists, and returning expatriates and belongers are locals or longtime resident expats. Of course, the signs above don't mention the ''non-belongers,'' the group of people who enter the island through its illegal port: the pristine shoreline. And into that category fall many Haitians. Talk about Haitians in this British dependency was rekindled last week after a 30-foot sailboat carrying about 160 migrants from northern Haiti overturned off Providenciales Island as a Turks police boat towed the vessel. At least 61 bodies have been recovered and 78 survivors were put in a detention center, later repatriated to Cap-Haitien.
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I am amazed. How can a colonized country mistreat free people like this? A little history on the Turks and Caicos Islands for my readers...
Turks and Caicos Islands:
The islands were part of the UK's Jamaican colony until 1962, when they assumed the status of a separate crown colony upon Jamaica's independence. The governor of The Bahamas oversaw affairs from 1965 to 1973. With Bahamian independence, the islands received a separate governor in 1973. Although independence was agreed upon for 1982, the policy was reversed and the islands are presently a British overseas territory.
