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Haitian-Dominican activist Sonia Pierre recovering from heart surgery

By Associated Press

Tuesday, January 9, 2007 - Updated: 04:17 PM EST

HOUSTON - A Dominican human rights activist was recovering Tuesday from heart surgery, an operation that came about after a fortuitous medical examination in Sen. Edward Kennedy?s Capitol Hill office, the doctor who arranged the procedure said.

Sonia Pierre?s heart condition was discovered in November, when she was in Washington to receive the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award honoring her for her work fighting discrimination against Haitian descendants.

While in Kennedy?s office, Pierre agreed to an examination by Dr. John C. Baldwin, a cardiac surgeon and member of the board of directors for the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, which gives the annual human rights award. Baldwin, chief executive of the Boston-based CBR Institute for Biomedical Research Inc., an affiliate of Harvard University, said he?d been asked by the family to inquire about Pierre?s health.

?She told me she was having a lot of trouble with shortness of breath,? he said. ?I listened to her heart, with her permission, and determined she needed immediate attention.?

Baldwin immediately thought of his native Texas, where he once headed the department of surgery at Methodist Hospital in Houston and which is much closer to Pierre?s home than, say, hospitals in Boston or New York.

Baldwin said Methodist agreed to do the surgery Monday as a charitable case, though a Methodist spokeswoman said she was prohibited by federal law from commenting on such matters.

Baldwin said he too was restricted on what he could say about Pierre?s case, but he noted she was doing well Tuesday. He said Pierre, who?s in her early 40s, could be heading home in as soon as a week.

Pierre, who was raised in a migrant worker camp, began as an activist three decades ago at age 13, when she was arrested for leading a march to demand rights for sugar cane cutters.

More recently her group, the Movement for Dominican Women of Haitian Descent, has fought to secure education and citizenship for ethnic Haitians living in the Dominican Republic.

Pierre, one of 12 children raised in a one-room portion of a dirt-floor barrack, was praised by RFK officials as a fearless and big-hearted advocate for an oppressed minority in the Caribbean nation. An estimated 500,000 to 1 million ethnic Haitians live in the Dominican Republic, many in isolated village slums.

Haitians fleeing poverty provide cheap labor for the Dominican economy, particularly during the sugar cane harvest, Kennedy noted at the awards ceremony. Many face abuse, harsh living conditions and the constant threat of deportation, he said.

?Because of Sonia, this neglected, impoverished, downtrodden community has greater rights and greater hope for a future where equality and justice are not just ideas, but reality,? the senator said.

Pierre is the 23rd recipient of the award given in honor of the former senator, U.S. attorney general and presidential candidate who was assassinated in 1968.