Haiti under state of emergency after deadly prison break
PORT-AU-PRINCE: Haiti’s government on Sunday declared a state of emergency and nighttime curfew in a bid to regain control of the country after a deadly gang assault on Port-au-Prince’s main prison that allowed thousands of inmates to escape.
The curfew will be enforced from 6 p.m. to 5 a.m. in the central Ouest region, which includes the country’s capital, through Wednesday, the government said in a statement, adding that both the curfew and the state of emergency could be extended.
About a dozen people died as gang members attacked the National Penitentiary in Port-auPrince over the weekend, an Agence FrancePresse (AFP) reporter observed.
The attack came as part of a new spate of extreme violence in the capital, where well-armed gangs who control much of the city have wreaked havoc since Thursday.
The gangs say they want to oust Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who has led the crisis-wracked Caribbean nation since the assassination of president Jovenel Moise in 2021.
Only about 100 of the penitentiary’s estimated 3,800 inmates were still inside on Sunday after the gang assault, Pierre Esperance of the National Network for Defense of Human Rights said. “We counted many prisoners’ bodies,” he added. An AFP reporter who visited the prison on Sunday observed about a dozen bodies outside it and hardly anyone inside. Some bodies had wounds from bullets or other projectiles.
In its Sunday night statement, the Haitian government said security forces had “received orders to use all legal means at their disposal to enforce the curfew and detain those who violate it.”
The objective, it added, is to allow the government to “reestablish order and take the appropriate measures to take back control of the situation.”
Economy Minister Patrick Michel Boisvert signed the statement as the country’s acting prime minister.
Henry was in Kenya last week to sign an agreement to deploy police from the East African country to lead a United Nations-backed law and order mission to his nation.
Haiti’s government is notoriously weak: kidnapping and other violent crimes are rampant and gangs are described as much better armed than the police themselves.
Gang members also attacked a second prison called Croix des Bouquets, police said earlier.
Known gang leaders and people charged in Moise’s assassination were among those incarcerated in the main prison, located a few hundred meters from the National Palace, the Haitian daily Le Nouvelliste said.
The prison had been “spied on by the assailants since Thursday via drones,” before it was attacked on early Saturday evening, the newspaper added.
Esperance said it was not immediately clear how many inmates escaped from the second prison, which he said held 1,450 inmates.
Powerful gang leader Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherisier
said in a video posted on social media that armed groups in Haiti were acting in concert “to get Prime Minister Ariel Henry to step down.”
It was not immediately clear on Sunday if the premier had returned to Haiti after his Kenyan trip.
The UN Security Council approved in October an international police support mission to Haiti that Nairobi had agreed to lead, but a Kenyan court ruling has thrown its future into doubt.
Last Friday, Henry signed an accord in Nairobi with Kenyan President William Ruto on deploying the force.
Ruto said he and Henry had “discussed the next steps to enable the fast-tracking of the deployment,” but it was not immediately clear whether the agreement would counter a court ruling in January that branded the deployment “illegal.”
The Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation, Haiti, has been in turmoil for years, and Moise’s assassination plunged the country further into chaos.
No elections have taken place since 2016 and the presidency remains vacant.
Protesters have demanded Henry’s resignation in line with a political deal that required Haiti to hold polls and for him to cede power to newly elected officials by February 7 this year.