A march was planned for Saturday afternoon in Montreal to denounce the decision of the Dominican Republic to deport Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian origin who live on its soil.

The event was planned for 2 p.m. at Toussaint-Louverture Park in the Quartier des spectacles. A few hundred people were expected to participate.

Cathia Cariotee, spokesperson for Unissons-nous / Let’s Unite, said several thousand descendants of Haitians became stateless in 2013 when a constitutional judgment stripped Dominican citizenship from the children of Haitian immigrants. Since then, about 288,000 of the 458,000 people affected have managed to naturalize.

Since July, tens of thousands of people have been deported to Haiti and neighbouring countries where many of those deported had never set foot before.

Unissons-nous was established to attract the attention of Quebecers and other Canadians to the situation. The ad-hoc committee encourages a boycott of the Dominican tourism industry. It also asks the Haitian government to put in place measures to accommodate the flood of deportees.