Tensions high as slain Haiti head buried

CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti (AFP) — Haiti said farewell Friday to its slain president Jovenel Moise under tight security at a state funeral marred by an eruption of gunfire outside the venue, highlighting the instability of the impoverished Caribbean country.

Just over two weeks after the 53-year-old Moise was shot dead in his home in Port-au-Prince in the early hours of 7 July, he was interred in Cap-Haitien, the main city in his native northern region.

In an open-air funeral lasting several hours, Moise's coffin was draped in the red, white and blue Haitian flag and the presidential sash, and surrounded by flowers. Military guards kept watch, and soldiers performed the national and presidential anthems.

What crime did you commit to deserve such punishment?

One by one, representatives of the government and foreign diplomats stopped to pay their respects to Moise's widow Martine — who was seriously wounded in the attack that killed her husband, and required treatment in the United States.

She had her arm in a sling and wore a black hat and a mask bearing a photo of her late husband on one side.

"What crime did you commit to deserve such punishment?" she asked in an emotional eulogy, calling Haitian politics "rotten and unfair" and insisting her husband had tried to clean it up before being "savagely murdered."

"Overnight, he found the whole system lined up against him," the widow said, nevertheless noting she was not seeking "revenge or violence."

Despite her praise, the late president was not a popular man — many people accused him of failing to make progress on the country's many woes.