Country under violent gang rule, nearly 3,000 deaths

PORT-AU-PRINCE (HCNN/CMC):

Several thousand people have been gunned down in Haiti this year as a result of violence caused by heavily armed gangs calling the shots in the capital’s poor and densely populated slum areas, in complete defiance of the country’s authorities and frail police force, human-rights groups say.

Defenders Plus (Défenseurs Plus), a prominent Haitian rights group, said at least 2,769 people have been killed in the country from January 1 to October 31, while dozens others wounded were admitted to the hospital this year.

“Two thousand, seven hundred and sixty-nine people were killed in the capital’s metropolitan area from January 1 to October 30, 2022,” Antonal Mortimé, head of the human-rights organisation, told HCNN on Monday.

“But this figure does not include a number of people who died in hospitals after being attacked and injured,” he added.

Several rights groups have called attention to an exponential increase in violence in Haiti, and complained about the fact that people do not seem to bother any more about seeing dead bodies on the streets in their neighbourhoods.

“On many occasions, you see corpses lying on the ground, while everyone goes about their normal business, as if nothing had happened,” Mortimé said.

“Therefore, what should have been seen as tragic is considered normal,” the rights advocate told HCNN, adding, “Also, there have been more than 20,000 people displaced, during the past months, just in the capital”.

Mortimé said that 75 per cent of those murdered were gunned down, while the 25 per cent fell victim to mob violence or bladed weapon attacks.

Another rights group, Justice & Peace Commission, known as CE-JILAP in French and linked to the Catholic Church, has, on its part, indicated that they have collected data showing that 863 people were killed, mostly by gunshots, from January to November 2022.

“Eight hundred and sixty-three people have been killed, including 792 by gunshots. Among those killed, there were also 83 women, 11 children and 38 policemen,” Jocelyne Colas, CE-JILAP’s national director, stated over the weekend.

Colas, however, admitted that the figures released by her organisation represent a very conservative estimate of the total number of fatal victims since the beginning of the year.

Human-rights observers say that more than 20,000 people have been displaced over the past few months as a result of gang violence in the metropolitan area of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Police officers often desert their own headquarters, fleeing danger posed by bandits, and leaving thousands in the hands of criminals, acting with complete impunity.