The Chain Gang Blues: The Dominican Republic Grapples With Prison ‘Chaos’
NEED TO KNOW
The Chain Gang Blues: The Dominican Republic Grapples With Prison ‘Chaos’
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Political violence and indiscriminate imprisonment have been common in the history of Latin America and the Caribbean. As Freedom House explained, authoritarian regimes in the region have long thrown opposition leaders, activists, journalists, and other dissenters into prisons to keep them quiet.
The Dominican Republic might be taking that tradition to new levels, however.
More than 60 percent of the country’s total prison population of 26,000 are serving time in jail under so-called “preventive detention” without charges, the Associated Press reported. Officials said that these detentions are necessary because the alleged criminals should not remain at large while prosecutors collect evidence. Still, some detainees have spent 20 years in prison without a court ever having found them guilty of a crime.
“Prisons have become no man’s land,” said the director of the Dominican Republic’s National Public Defense Office, Rodolfo Valentín Santos.
Dominican President Luis Abinader, who was reelected to a second term last summer, has recognized that the country has a problem with incarceration.
Last year, after 11 inmates died at La Victoria prison in a fire and explosion, the president appointed former prisons director Roberto Santana as head of a commission tasked with overhauling and improving the country’s more than 40 prisons.
“We must admit, gentlemen, that we have a situation in all of the country’s prisons,” Abinader said after the appointment.
Human rights officials agree. “The Dominican Republic’s prison system is on the brink of collapse,” wrote the country’s National Commission of Human Rights.
Santana knows this first-hand. He was arrested multiple times under former President Joaquín Balaguer for opposing the government. He spent two years in solitary confinement in La Victoria.
As a result, he’s on a mission. In addition to complaining about mass overcrowding, by more than 50 percent, which he says leads to thousands of inmates sleeping on the floor, he is most critical about the pretrial detentions that are also leading to the dire conditions in the country’s prisons.
“We can’t continue filling prisons with people for stealing a banana,” he said, according to the country’s El Nacional newspaper. “This erratic policy affects democratic coexistence, families, and the prison system itself.”
He added that corruption remains entrenched in the country’s prisons, something widely known yet not addressed.
The country has tried to build more prisons, but corruption forced authorities to halt the construction of a much-touted prison in recent years that was expected to ease overcrowding.
Still, Dominican Today reported that at least four new prisons are to open this year.
Another issue is that backlogged courts with the inability to process paperwork in a timely manner are largely responsible for the length of time people stay in prison without a trial, wrote IR Insider, adding that many prisoners cannot afford the fine the court orders them to pay in exchange for release.
Additionally, “unauthorized arrests,” particularly of individuals suspected to be undocumented Haitian migrants, remain a significant issue, wrote Straight Arrow News.
Thousands of Haitians have fled to the country from the other, poorer half of the island of Hispaniola that the Dominican Republic shares with Haiti.
Last year, the president announced a plan to deport 10,000 undocumented Haitians from the Dominican Republic every week, reported Le Monde.
There is popular support for the crackdown on Haitians, especially as violence has reportedly broken out between nationalist Dominican groups and Haitian communities in the country.
The problem, say human rights officials, is that sometimes Dominican authorities also mistakenly round up Dominican citizens who might happen to resemble their Haitian neighbors.
Writing in the Conversation, Western University professor Masaya Llavaneras Blanco described how she met a mother desperately trying to find her detained son’s identity documents to prove he was a Dominican citizen so that he wouldn’t be detained in the country’s harsh prisons, or worse, deported to a country he had never visited.
“The boy was lucky he had documents at all,” she wrote. “Historically, access to documents among Haitians, Dominicans and specifically Dominicans of Haitian descent has been chronically lacking.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
Farewell To Arms: Iran’s Proxies in Iraq Agree to Disarm
IRAQ
Multiple Iranian-backed militias in Iraq are prepared to lay down arms for the first time in years in an attempt to avoid escalating conflict with the United States, Reuters reported Monday.
Senior militia leaders from groups such as Kataib Hezbollah and Ansarullah al-Awfiyaa told the newswire that their main ally and backer, the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), had given them its blessing to do whatever was necessary to avoid a potential conflict with the US.
The IRGC has not commented on the proposed talks.
“Trump is ready to take the war with us to worse levels, we know that, and we want to avoid such a bad scenario,” a commander of Kataib Hezbollah, the most powerful Shi’ite militia, told Reuters.
The armed groups are part of the Islamic Resistance of Iraq, an umbrella organization made up of 10 Shi’ite armed factions that command around 50,000 fighters and are equipped with long-range missiles and anti-aircraft weaponry.
The group has claimed responsibility for a series of missile and drone attacks on Israel and US forces in Iraq and Syria since the war in the Gaza Strip erupted in October 2023.
The disarmament talks come after weeks of US warnings to Iraq. US officials reportedly told the militias that Washington would launch airstrikes targeting them if Iraq did not rein them in and disband the groups.
Some factions have reportedly already reduced their presence in cities such as Mosul and Anbar while also taking security precautions amid fears of imminent US strikes. Many commanders have reportedly gone into hiding, changing phones, vehicles, and locations.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani is leading the talks, with proposals on the table including integrating fighters into Iraq’s national army or reconstituting the groups as political parties.
The prime minister’s adviser said the government is committed to bringing all weapons under state control through “constructive dialogue.”
Iraq is caught between its American and Iranian alliances, with the militias having grown into a parallel power structure since emerging after the 2003 US invasion.
Former officials cautioned that a failure to rein the groups in now could invite external intervention.
While some factions have agreed in principle to disarm and join the political process, others – including Kataib Hezbollah – have rejected calls to lay down “their weapons with the presence of the (US) occupation on the nation’s soil,” according to the National, a United Arab Emirates-based outlet.
Still, observers noted that the recent shift comes also as Iran’s armed proxies in the Middle East – known as the “Axis of Resistance” – have been dealt major blows since the Gaza conflict began 18 months ago.
At the time, Iranian-backed Hamas launched a surprise attack that killed around 1,200 people and saw more than 250 taken hostage, prompting Israel to launch a major offensive in the Palestinian enclave.
The conflict also dragged in Iran’s other proxies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and the militias in Iraq.
Both Hamas and Hezbollah have suffered severe losses after operations by Israel, while the Houthis have been targeted by US airstrikes, which escalated last month.
At the same time, the fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad – another key Iranian ally – has further weakened Iran’s influence in the region.
Begging For Forgiveness: Protests in Brazil Call For Amnesty For Former Leader Bolsonaro
BRAZIL
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro led a demonstration over the weekend in São Paulo to push for an amnesty law that would drop criminal charges against him and also his supporters who stormed the country’s Congress in 2023 after his successor’s election win, the Associated Press reported.
Speaking to thousands of demonstrators wearing yellow Brazilian soccer jerseys, the former president said he had faith in the Brazilian people and hoped Congress would pass the amnesty law proposed by his supporters.
On Jan. 8, 2023 – a week after Luis Inácio Lula da Silva’s inauguration – Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed key government buildings in the capital of Brasília to protest the election results.
Brazilian prosecutors have charged Bolsonaro with attempting to orchestrate a coup after his election loss to Lula. Investigators also say Bolsonaro and 33 others plotted to poison Lula and kill a Supreme Court judge.
The panel of Supreme Court judges agreed that the right-wing former leader should be tried for involvement in an armed criminal organization and threatening the state’s assets and heritage sites – among other charges.
On Sunday, Bolsonaro denied the charges and said they are part of a campaign of political persecution targeting him and a ruse to disqualify him from the 2026 election, wrote MercoPress.
Bolsonaro has already been barred from running for office until 2030 by Brazil’s Electoral Court for attacking the integrity of the voting system. He said he would appeal the ruling and is preparing to run for president in 2026.
Naming and Shaming: China’s Central Bank Lists Potential Money Launderers
CHINA
China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), is increasing its efforts to crack down on financial crimes by adding a list to its website, publicly naming organizations and individuals it believes may be laundering money, reported the South China Morning Post.
The column under “Risk Warnings and Financial Sanctions” on the Anti-Money Laundering Bureau of the PBOC’s website was blank as of Monday but is expected to feature individuals and entities shortly.
The initiative is seen as an added incentive for individuals and entities to toe the line, analysts said.
As part of its ongoing crackdown on cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, China updated its Anti-Money Laundering Law last year and formed a multi-agency task force to monitor the issue.
The timing of the new initiative comes as China prepares for its fifth evaluation by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the global body that sets anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing standards. It accepted China in 2007.
Aligning national laws with international standards is key to a successful FATF review and has added pressure on Chinese authorities to improve compliance and supervision.
For years, European Union officials and others around the world have complained that Chinese money launderers have been a “growing threat,” laundering the proceeds of a multi-billion dollar European drug trade and other illicit activities.
At the same time, Chinese money launderers have been helping international drug traffickers, like Mexican cartels and the Italian mafia, launder the proceeds of their criminal enterprises, the Financial Times reported last year.
As a result, the Chinese central bank called for improved supervision and transparency as well as better investigative efforts to curb illicit financial transactions, seeing it also as a matter of national security.
In 2023, the bank received 13,000 tips about suspicious transactions and helped the police resolve 1,600 cases of money laundering.
DISCOVERIES
Feline Hitchhikers
How and when domestic cats arrived in China has long been a mystery.
Now, scientists say that cats likely arrived in China in the seventh or eighth century, after hitching a ride with Silk Road merchants – and becoming an instant hit with the local elite.
For a new study, researcher Shu-Jin Luo and her team analyzed the mitochondrial DNA from 22 ancient cat bones across more than a dozen archeological sites in China – the largest known collection of feline remains in the region.
They determined that 14 of the remains belonged to Felis catus, the same species that now curls up on windowsills worldwide. The others came from wild leopard cats (Prionailurus bengalensis), which briefly lived near humans in Neolithic villages before vanishing from settlements around 150 CE, likely because of warfare and environmental upheaval at the end of the Han Dynasty.
Among the domestic cat remains, the team identified a standout tomcat from Tongwan City in Shaanxi province, radiocarbon-dated to around 730 CE. Further genetic analysis showed that the cat belonged to mitochondrial clade IV-B – a lineage rare in Europe and the Middle East but a perfect match for a cat found in medieval Dzhankent (Jankent) in Kazakhstan.
That cat – dating to between 775 and 940 CE – had likely been cared for by Silk Road nomads, and its remains make it the oldest known domestic cat so far discovered along the trade route.
The team also reviewed 33 Tang-era paintings and found that most cats were depicted with white coats, a trait still unusually common in modern East Asian cats. Cats didn’t just win the hearts of commoners – they rubbed whiskers with royalty.
“Cats were initially regarded as prized, exotic pets,” Luo told Live Science. “Cats’ mysterious behaviors – alternating between distant and affectionate – added an air of mystique.”
The resemblance in DNA, paired with the timing and geography, suggests that domestic cats came to China not through local domestication but by tagging along with westward merchants during the Tang Dynasty, when the Silk Road was at its peak.
Zooarcheologist Katherine Brunson, who was not involved in the study, told Science Magazine that “this route makes the most sense.”
Felines were moved in cages and other containers, she added: “You certainly can’t herd them.”