Gangs strangle Haiti’s capital as deaths, kidnappings soar
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — It was about 6 a.m. when Venique Moise flung open the door of her house and saw dozens of people running — their children in one hand and scant belongings in the other — as gunfire intensified.
Minutes later, she joined the crowd with her three kids and fled as fires burned nearby, collapsing homes. Over the coming hours and days, the bodies of nearly 200 men, women and children — shot, burned or mutilated with machetes by warring gangs — were found in that part of Haiti’s capital.
“That Sunday, when the war started, I felt that I was going to die,” Moise said.
Gangs are fighting each other and seizing territory in the capital of Port-auPrince with a new intensity and brutality. The violence has horrified many who feel the country is swiftly unraveling as it tries to recover from the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moise and the United Nations prepares to debate the future of its longtime presence in Haiti.
Experts say the scale and duration of gang clashes, the power criminals wield and the amount of territory they control has reached levels not seen before.
Gangs have forced schools, businesses and hospitals to close as they raid new neighborhoods, seize control of the main roads connecting the capital to the rest of the country and kidnap victims daily, authorities say.
Gangs also are recruiting more children than before, arming them with heavy weapons and forming temporary alliances with other gangs in attempts to take over more territory
for economic and political gain ahead of the country’s general elections, said Jaime Vigil Recinos, the United Nations’ police commissioner in Haiti.
“It’s astonishing,” he said, noting that gang clashes are becoming protracted, ruthless affairs. “We are talking about something that Haiti hasn’t experienced before.”
At least 92 civilians and 96 suspected gang members were killed between April 24 and May 16, with another 113 injured, 12 missing and 49 kidnapped for ransom, according to the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The office warned that the actual number of people killed “may be much higher.”
Gangs also gang-raped children as young as 10 and set fire to at least a dozen homes, forcing some 9,000 people to flee and seek temporary shelter in churches, public parks and shuttered schools, U.N. officials said.
Bruno Maes, UNICEF’s representative in Haiti, said that one growing concern is the lack of access to basic things like water, food and medicine because people remain trapped in certain areas while gangs continue to fight, noting that malnutrition
is on the rise, affecting 1 in 5 children in the Cite Soleil neighborhood alone.
Staff at hospitals and clinics report they’re being stretched thin, with Doctors Without Borders noting that it treated nearly 100 people for gunshot wounds from April 24 to May 7.
Prime Minister Ariel Henry has remained largely quiet amid the escalating gang violence, while Frantz Elbe, Haiti’s new police chief, said dozens of gang members have been arrested and another 94 killed in clashes with police since he took over the department six months ago.
About 1,700 schools have shuttered amid the spike in gang violence — leaving more than half a million children without an education — with the directors of some schools unable to keep paying gangs to ensure students’ safety, the U.N. said.
The ongoing violence and kidnappings have prompted hundreds of Haitians to flee their country, often a deadly move. At least 11 Haitians died and 36 others were rescued when their human smuggling boat overturned near Puerto Rico this month. Dozens of others have died at sea in recent months.