Police in Haiti storm main airport to protest

‘History will remember they did nothing to protect the lives of these agents who serve their country’

HAITIAN police forced their way into the capital’s main airport to protest against the recent killings of officers by increasingly powerful armed gangs.

Officers in civilian clothes first attacked prime minister Ariel Henry’s official residence and then descended on the Toussaint Louverture International Airport, as he was arriving back from a trip to Argentina.

Mr Henry was stuck in the airport while outside, streets were barricaded, schools were shut and air traffic was disrupted. A vehicle carrying the Bahamian chargé d’affaires was stopped and commandeered, with weapons also taken. Mr Henry eventually made it back home, pursued by demonstrators.

The protests came just a day after six officers were killed in Liancourt, a town in the north of Haiti. Four of them were dragged out of the station and executed in the street, Jean Bruce Myrtil, police commissioner, told local radio. Last week, four police officers near the capital were killed by the Vitelhomme gang.

Fourteen police officers have been killed by armed gangs since the beginning of the year, according to the National Union of Haitian Police Officers. A total of 78 have been killed since Mr Henry came to power in 2021, said Haitian human rights group RNDDH – an average of five a month.

RNDDH said the prime minister and Frantz Elbe, the head of the national police, are “responsible for each of the 78 lives lost during their reign”.

“History will remember they did nothing to protect and preserve the lives of these agents who chose to serve their country,” it added.

Haiti, the poorest nation in the Americas, has been gripped by a worsening political and economic crisis.