Salesians Bemoan Hellish Violence and Chaos in Haiti
(ANS – Port-au-Prince, Haiti – March 14, 2024) – Armed gang violence dominates Haiti. The situation of instability that the country has experienced since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021 has degenerated in recent days, when Prime Minister Ariel Henry announced his commitment to hold elections before August 2025. Since then the situation has worsened, with assaults on prisons, mass escapes of dangerous criminals, shootings at and attempted assaults on the National Palace, damage to the port and airport, and finally, under pressure from criminal gangs, also the resignation of the Prime Minister.
The country was plunged into extreme poverty by
the earthquake of 2010, from which it has never recovered. Then came the
economic crisis, the impossibility of controlling violence in the streets, the
assassination of the President, and another earthquake in 2021, together with
tropical storms and the pandemic. All these disasters have thrown the
population into a situation of continuous humanitarian emergency.
Almost two weeks ago, the announcement by Prime
Minister Henry that elections would take place by August 2025 (while his term
had already expired on February 7) threw the country into utter chaos. The
criminal gangs, which dominate every neighborhood of the capital and the
country’s communications, have raised the level of violence with threats of
civil war and genocide if the Prime Minister, who was in Puerto Rico at the
time, had not resigned. The leaders of the criminal groups launched assaults on
the country’s main prisons, freeing more than 3,500 inmates, and concentrated
their attacks in the area around the National Palace and the airport.
“The situation in Haiti is chaotic. There are
no words to describe it. We are living in hell,” said the Salesians, who are
still trying to make themselves useful in a country in disarray, and to assist
the population subjected to an unprecedented wave of violence.
Haiti is awaiting the deployment of an
international security support mission led by Kenya and approved by the United
Nations last October. Meanwhile, the country survives amid institutional
collapse, the inability of the police and army to deal with criminal gangs, and
a population that has nothing to eat.
“We Salesians are currently well, but we
cannot carry out any activity since February 29, when this situation began,”
said the Salesians. Since then, armed gang violence has erupted. “The gangs
ransacked police stations and everything they encountered, businesses, shops,”
they continue.
In the capital, Port-au-Prince, there have
been shootings between the gangs and with the police, and kidnappings are the
order of the day. Since January, according to the United Nations, more than
1,200 people have been killed. The country is on the verge of collapse and
paralysis, international agencies explain. This instability has already displaced
about 300,000 people.
Criminal gangs control about 80% of the
capital, hospitals are unable to treat the wounded, many shops have been looted
in recent days, and the corpses of the victims remain unburied along the
streets around the prisons, where last Saturday the mass escape took place, so
much so that there have already been several cases of cholera.
Salesians have been working in Haiti since
1935. Their educational works are distributed throughout the country, and each
year they take care of over 22,000 children and youths through schools, vocational
training centers, youth centers, and family homes.
Haiti’s future is complex. “We live in fear,
because we don’t know what could happen from one minute to the next. This is
our life in the last days: we ask you to pray and not to forget us,” conclude
the Salesians of Haiti.
Source: Misiones Salesianas
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