Right to civil liberties
On 27 October 2022, Jesús Núñez, leader of the Dominican Republic’s pensioned sugarcane workers, was detained at Las Americas International Airport while en route to Cuba for specialised medical treatment. Nuñez is the main leader of the Union of Sugar Cane Workers (UTC), which is carrying out protests in defence of the right to pensions of thousands of sugar cane workers.
The leader was released on the same day, after being notified that an order from the Santo Domingo Sentence Execution Court of 20 August 2018, prevented him from leaving the country. Until this point, Núñez had never been notified of this judicial measure and had successfully left and re-entered the country on a number of occasions in the intervening period, which suggested the arrest had been made in reprisal for his union work.
In March 2019, the Dirección General de Jubilaciones y Pensiones a Cargo del Estado (DGJP) had filed a complaint against Núñez for alleged fraud to the detriment of the state, association of wrongdoers and impersonation. Núñez believed this complaint was also a reprisal intended to intimidate the sugar cane workers’ movement and deter them from seeking the pensions that had been promised.