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The government of Haiti criticized the “discriminatory comments” from United States presidential candidate Donald Trump and other Republicans on Wednesday.
They frowned at the repeated false allegations that Haitian migrants were consuming pet cats and dogs in Ohio.
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“Unfortunately, this is not the first time that compatriots abroad have fallen victim to disinformation campaigns, been stigmatized and dehumanized to serve electoral political interests,” the government said.
“We firmly reject these remarks, which undermine the dignity of our compatriots and could endanger their lives,” it added.
This week, a number of Republican figures spread allegations that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio were murdering and consuming the pets of local residents. However, the city’s manager stated that these claims were unfounded.
During the televised presidential debate with Democrat Kamala Harris on Tuesday, Trump restated the false claims, attracting millions of viewers from the United States and around the world.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs — the people that came in — they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” the former US president said.
When ABC News debate moderator David Muir debunked the claim to him, Trump insisted that he had seen “people on television say their dog was eaten.”
The owner of X, Elon Musk, has also used his social network to help circulate the baseless claims, which quickly garnered attention in the United States, where two-thirds of households own pets.
Trump has largely appealed to his own base, with apocalyptic warnings about migrant criminals and painting a dark picture of a country in “decline” that only he can save.
In a threatening social media post at the weekend, Trump vowed to prosecute Democratic donors, lawyers and elections officials who engage in behavior he deems “unscrupulous” in November.
He used the debate on Tuesday to double down on his bogus voter fraud claims from 2020.
