Photo: Clarens Siffroy Agence France-Presse Police officers control the perimeter of the police station burned the day before by armed gangs, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, March 6, 2024.
France Media Agency in Port-au-Prince
5:00 p.m.
- Americas
The port of Haiti's capital was at a standstill on Thursday amid a surge in gang violence that forced authorities in the poor Caribbean country to extend a state of emergency to Port-au-Prince.
Criminal gangs, who control most of the capital as well as the roads leading to the rest of the territory, have been attacking strategic sites in the country for several days in the absence of the contested Prime Minister, Ariel Henry, whose release they are demanding. resignation just like part of the population.
Caribbean Port Services S.A., the operator of the capital's port, announced Thursday that it was suspending its activity due to “disturbing public order”, citing “malicious acts of sabotage and vandalism » suffered since March 1.
The official journal had earlier published a “decree establishing a state of security emergency across the entire extent of the West department”, which includes the capital, “for a period of one month”.
A new nighttime curfew has also been declared until Monday.
A first state of emergency and a curfew — difficult to enforce — had already been declared on Sunday after the attack on prisons by armed gangs which resulted in the escape of thousands of inmates.
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“Hell for all of us”
Among the strategic infrastructures targeted in recent days by gang violence are also courts and police stations.
A new police station was set on fire Wednesday evening in Port-au-Prince, Lionel Lazarre, general coordinator of the National Union of Haitian Police Officers (Synapoha), told Agence France-Presse, but the police had time to leave him before the attack.
An influential gang leader, Jimmy Chérizier known as “Barbecue”, assured Tuesday that if Prime Minister Ariel Henry did not resign and if the international community continued to support him, the country was going “straight towards a civil war that will lead to genocide.”
The leader, who should have left office at the beginning of February, was abroad and has still not managed to return to Haiti, prevented in particular by the lack of security around the international airport .
Thursday morning, Ariel Henry was still in Puerto Rico, the border police spokesperson for this American Caribbean territory told AFP.
The health system in Haiti is “close to collapse,” the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned on Thursday.
“Many health facilities are closed or have had to drastically reduce their operations due to a worrying shortage of medicines and the absence of medical staff,” OCHA said.
While administrations and schools remain closed, many residents try to flee the violence, their meager effects under their arms.
“Abandoned”
The association National Network for the Defense of Human Rights in Haiti (RNDDH) denounced the inaction of the Haitian state in the face of this violence.
“Government officials have resigned,” she wrote in a report dated Wednesday.
“The streets of the capital and the entire West department are given over to armed bandits. And the Haitian population is simply abandoned to its fate,” adds the association, which deplores the fact that the police have “abandoned the streets.”
Among its recommendations: “Do everything possible to regain control of the national territory as a whole.”
For this, the UN Security Council gave its agreement in October to send a multinational security mission led by Kenya, which wants to dispatch 1000 police officers. But its deployment is delayed by the Kenyan justice system and a glaring lack of funding. No date has been given for the arrival of the mission.
The NGO Médecins Sans Frontières published Thursday a survey on mortality in Haiti for more than 10 years, which “reveals extreme levels of violence suffered by residents of the Cité Soleil slum in Port-au-Prince,” with August 2022 to July 2023 “nearly 41% of deaths related to violence and a crude mortality rate of 0.63 deaths per 10,000 people per day.”
“MSF had already observed similar mortality rates in 2017 in the camps of Raqqa” – a Syrian city, former stronghold of the Islamic State group – assures the NGO, which announced on Wednesday that it was strengthening its presence in Port-au-Prince to respond to the influx of wounded.