HAITI’S GOVERNMENT HAS condemned “discriminatory remarks” made by US presidential candidate Donald Trump and other Republicans, who spouted debunked claims that Haitian migrants were eating pet cats and dogs in the state of Ohio.
“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.
Last night, Trump repeated the bogus claims in his televised presidential debate with Democrat Kamala Harris, which was watched by tens of millions of people in 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.”
Several Republican figures this week circulated claims that Haitian migrants were killing and eating the pets of residents in Springfield in Ohio.
The claim, which has been made about Haitian immigrants in the city, is not the first time this group has been targeted by the American right.
Trump has a long history of blaming immigrants for things that they have not done and has previously singled out people from Haiti, which he famously referred to as “a shithole country”.
Despite Trump’s assertions, the story that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, have been taking and eating people’s pets is false, and comes from an extremely dubious origin.
According to local news sources, the story began on a local Facebook group, where one poster said that their “neighbour’s daughter’s friend had lost her cat” and later found it in a Haitian neighbour’s garden as it was being prepared to be eaten.
Local police as well as city and county officials were quick to point out that there was no evidence to support this claim, and the town’s mayor denounced the story as false.
The story also bears some similarity to an actual news story about an Ohio woman who was accused of stomping a cat to death and eating it.
However, there is no indication that the woman charged was an immigrant and that incident was said to have occurred in Canton, a city on the other side of the state, more than 200 kilometres away.
Nevertheless, in recent days the claim quickly spread around pro-Trump social media and was soon echoed by influential commentators, including Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, who encouraged people to spread the false claim despite acknowledging that there was no evidence and the rumours could be false.
“It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false,” he tweeted, before following up by saying, “don’t let the crybabies in the media dissuade you, fellow patriots. Keep the cat memes flowing.”
Additional reporting by Shane Raymond
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