PORT-AU-PRINCE — A human rights organization has reported that 195 people were shot and killed by bandits in Haiti in March. Among the victims are 10 women, six girls, four boys, a newborn, three policemen, a soldier and a student.
“We call it [a] catastrophic month,” said Camille Occius, general coordinator of the Organization Citizens for a New Haiti (OCNH). “We find that no one is spared from bandits in any sector.”
Most of the killings, 172, happened in Haiti’s West Department, home to the gangs ravaging entire communities around the country’s capital. Occius said eight were killed in the South-East, seven in Artibonite, four in the South and two in the Center department of Haiti.
The figure is a significant jump from the 55 killings recorded in February, when two soldiers of the Armed Forces of Haiti and two National Police of Haiti (PNH) agents were among the victims.
These cases of killings continue to occur as the country becomes further repressed by gangs that terrorize residents of the capital region and beyond. From Port-au-Prince, Pétion-Ville, Cité Soleil, Bel Air, Martissant and Canaan and now more frequently in provinces such as Liancourt 7 police officers were killed in January. For the first three months of the year, the United Nations recorded 531 people killed and 300 injured and 277 cases of kidnapping.
Gangs also caused residents fleeing bullets to flee to other departments, with more than 160,000 people abandoning their homes, the human rights groups said.
Nearly 400 kidnapped in three months
As for kidnappings, the Center for Analysis of Research in Human Rights (CARDH) reported that for the first three months of the year, 389 people were abducted. The figure is 173% than in 2021 and 72% higher than 2022 for the same period. That is, 141 kidnappings in 2021 and 225 in 2022.
Among the abducted in 2023 are 29 foreign nationals, such as the Florida couple Jean-Dickens Toussaint and his wife, Abigail Michael Toussaint whose kidnapping went viral last week.
CARDH said several reasons may explain this increase among them new alliances between gangs. For example, Haut Bel-Air became an ally of Gran-Ravin and Village-de-Dieu and Ti Makak became an ally of the Vitelhomme gang. For CARDH, there is also the electoral context, the struggle in the police hierarchy and the need to compensate for a financial loss due to sanctions.
“This police force is under-equipped and incapable of securing the citizens and the city,” the organization said in its report. “Faced with the inability of the police to protect the population prey to the cruelty of the gangs, international cooperation should get out of its posture of promises, meetings for assume its responsibility to protect.”
Gang violence and kidnapping has also had an impact on the humanitarian life of the Haitian population. In March, the World Food Programme (WFP) pointed out that 4.9 million people now struggle to feed themselves in Haiti. WFP Haiti Director Jean-Martin Bauer said that in the poorest neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince, the epicenter of violence, families live under the control of armed groups, which set restrictions on the movement and access to food, water and sanitation.
Many are calling on the Haitian government to do a better job of protecting its citizens.
“We recommend equipping the National Police of Haiti with sophisticated equipment and the establishment of a very dynamic intelligence system on violence,” Occius said. “We want a humanitarian response from the state in favor of the people.”
