Trapped in Haiti
Canadians caught amid violent Haiti protests
MONTREAL — A team of 26 aid workers with a missionary group from Quebec are among more than 100 Canadians trapped in Haiti after protesters blocked major highways across the Caribbean country in an effort to pressure President Jovenel Moise to resign.
The Canadian embassy in the country has been closed since Wednesday amid violent street protests that have claimed several lives over the past week. Protesters are angry about skyrocketing inflation and the government’s failure to prosecute embezzlement from a multi-billion dollar Venezuelan program that sent discounted oil to Haiti.
Michel Bougie, vice-president of an evangelical Christian foundation that has been present in Haiti for 20 years, said his team had been scheduled to return home on Wednesday but “they can’t move.” His foundation’s medical clinic is located in a walled compound in the village of Tiverny, about 200 kilometres west of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
“All the roads in the country are blocked,” Bougie said in Montreal. “It’s really a well-concerted effort to literally paralyze the country with the goal of destabilizing the government.” Bougie said his team of doctors, nurses and other personnel are safe despite the violence.
“The village itself isn’t in danger,” he said. Every March his La Bible Parle foundation sends a group of junior college nursing students to intern at the medical clinic.
Other Quebecers are stuck in a hotel, unable to make it to the Port-au-Prince airport because of the protests. The only highway linking the all-inclusive Royal Decameron Indigo Beach resort to the airport is considered extremely dangerous, and people are staying off it.