The situation in Haiti it continues to get worse. The port of the capital has stopped in the face of the resurgence of gang violence which forced the authorities of the Caribbean country to prolong the state of emergency in Port-au-Prince. The criminal gangs, who control most of the capital and the roads leading to the rest of the country, are attacking for several days i sstrategic initiatives of the country in the absence of challenged Prime Minister Ariel Henry, whose resignation they ask for together with a part of the population. According to the latest news, Henry is stuck in Puerto Rico.
The country, currently without a president or parliament, it has not held elections since 2016 and Ariel Henry, appointed by President Jovenel Moïse shortly before his assassination in 2021, was expected to step down in early February. The head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinkenspoke to Henry about the “urgent need to accelerate the transition to broader and more inclusive government (…) that has the breadth needed to lead the country through an election period,” a senior US official said.
Meanwhile, Haitian authorities have issued a “decree declaring that state of security emergency throughout the western department“, which includes the capital, “for a period of one month” and have decreed a new night curfew until Monday. Simultaneously, Caribbean Port Services S.A.the operator of the capital’s port, announced the suspension of its activities due to “disturbance of public order”, citing “malicious acts of sabotage and vandalism” since March 1st.
Escape of prisoners and growing violence bring Haiti to its knees
And first state of emergencyaccompanied by a curfew – difficult to enforce – had already been declared on Sunday 3 March, after which armed gangs had attacked the prisons, causing thousands of prisoners to escape. In fact, on the evening of Saturday 2 March, at least a dozen people were killed after gang members attacked the capital’s main prison. “Many bodies of prisoners have been counted,” he told AFP Pierre Esperanceexecutive director of the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights (RNDDH), explaining that the following day only about a hundred prisoners remained in the national penitentiary of Port-au-Prince out of approximately 3,800 before the attack by the armed gangs.
Between strategic infrastructures targeted from gang violence in recent days there are also law courts e police stations. According to a tally by the National Union of Haitian Police Officials (Synapoha), since the coordinated gang attacks began, 10 police buildings have been destroyed and two civilian prisons have been attacked and emptied of their inmates.
While authorities and schools remain closed, many residents are trying to escape from violence.
Many health facilities “are closed or have had to drastically reduce their activities due to a worrying shortage of medicines and the absence of medical personnel,” the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned, referring to a health system “close to collapse ”.
An influential gang leader, Jimmy Chérizier called “Barbecue”, warned that if the Prime Minister Henry if it were not resigned and the international community had continued to support him, the country of around 11 million inhabitants would have been “heading towards a civil war which would have led to genocide.”
The leader was unable to return to Haiti, prevented in particular by the lack of security around the international airport.
Ariel Henry was still in Puerto Rico on Thursday morning, where he landed on Tuesday, a spokesperson for the US Caribbean territory’s border police told AFP.
Urgent request for international intervention to stop the chaos
The association National Network for the Defense of Human Rights in Haiti (RNDDH) ha denounced the inaction of the Haitian state, accusing him of having “resigned”. “The streets of the capital and the entire western department are given over to armed bandits. And the Haitian people are simply abandoned to their fate,” he wrote.
To fight gangs, the United Nations Security Council approved the sending of one in October multinational security mission led by Kenya, which plans to send 1,000 police officers. But its delivery was delayed by the Kenyan justice system and an apparent lack of funds. No date has been set for the mission’s arrival.
The UN Secretary-General is “very concerned about the deteriorating security situation,” his spokesperson said. Antonio Guterres “Calls on the Government of Haiti and other political actors to rapidly agree on measures to advance a political process towards the restoration of democratic institutions through the holding of elections,” he added Stéphane Dujarricreiterating the importance of the expected deployment of the international security mission led by Kenya to “prevent the country from falling further into chaos”.
“We urgently need to do more,” the senior U.S. official said Thursday Brian Nicholsstating that the crisis in Haiti required “an international response, in the same way the international community is responding to challenges in Ukraine or Gaza.”
Thursday 7 March, the NGO Doctors Without Borders published aMortality survey in Haiti over the last 10 yearsrevealing “extreme levels of violence suffered by residents of the Cité Soleil slum in Port-au-Prince”, with “almost 41% of deaths related to violence and a crude mortality rate of 0.63 deaths per 10,000 people per day” between August 2022 and July 2023. “MSF had already observed similar mortality rates in 2017 in camps in Raqqa, the Syrian city that was once a stronghold of Islamic State group,” according to the NGO, which announced that it had intensified its presence in Port-au-Prince to deal with the influx of wounded.
© Agence France-Presse