Written by Harold Isaac
(Reuters) – Around 180 people were killed over the weekend in Haiti’s Cité Soleil district, the Haitian prime minister’s office said on Monday. The NGO said the attack was ordered by a gang leader who suspected the child had been sickened by witchcraft.
The agency said in a statement that “red lines were crossed” and those responsible, including Monell “Mikano” Felix, the leader of the Wharf Jeremy gang accused of planning the attack, “were pursued and eliminated.” We will mobilize all our forces to do so.” .
Many of the victims were said to be elderly.
The National Network for the Defense of Human Rights (RNDDH), a Haitian NGO that monitors state institutions and promotes human rights education, announced on Sunday that at least 110 people, all over the age of 60, were killed in Cité Soleil over the weekend.
He later said the death toll could be even higher, citing witnesses who saw “mutilated bodies being burned in the streets, including several young people who were killed trying to save residents.”
RNDDH said Felix ordered the violence after the child became ill and sought advice from a voodoo priest who had been accused by elderly members of the community of harming the child with witchcraft. The organization announced that Felix’s child died Saturday afternoon.
Reuters could not independently verify the events outlined by RNDDH. Felix did not immediately comment on the accusations.
Cite Soleil, a densely populated shantytown near the port of the capital Port-au-Prince, is one of Haiti’s poorest and most violent neighborhoods.
A strict crackdown on gangs, including restrictions on cell phone use, has limited residents’ ability to share information about the massacre.
The government, plagued by political infighting, is struggling to rein in the growing power of gangs in and around the capital. The armed group is accused of indiscriminate killings, gang rapes, kidnappings for ransom and fomenting severe food shortages.
In October, the Grand Griff gang was responsible for the murders of at least 115 people in Pon Sonde, a town in Haiti’s breadbasket Artibonite region. They claimed that this was retaliation against residents who cooperated with Self-Defense Force groups that were interfering with road toll collection operations.
Call for UN peacekeeping forces
A UN-backed security mission was requested by Haiti in 2022 and approved a year later, but has so far only been partially deployed and remains severely under-resourced.
Haitian leaders are calling for the Kenyan-led multinational security assistance mission to be transformed into a UN peacekeeping force to ensure better supplies, but the plan faces opposition from China and Russia in the Security Council. is stuck.
U.N. Secretary-General Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said the death toll over the weekend was at least 184, including 127 elderly people.
“The Secretary-General reiterates his urgent call to Member States to provide the multinational security assistance mission with the necessary financial and logistical support to successfully support the Haitian National Police.” .
The White House security spokesman echoed the call for urgent international support for the mission, saying the United States was “appalled.”
Dujarric also called for accelerating Haiti’s political transition. Haiti’s interim government says it plans to hold long-awaited elections in 2025 if security is sufficient for free and fair voting.
However, the security situation continues to deteriorate and many countries have yet to fulfill their aid commitments.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk called on countries to step up efforts to stop arms trafficking to Haiti. The United Nations estimates that most of the gang’s increasingly modern weapons are trafficked from the United States.
“These latest killings bring the death toll in Haiti this year alone to a staggering 5,000,” he said.
