Close to 200 people were killed in brutal weekend violence in Haiti’s capital, the United Nations said on Monday December 9, with reports that a gang boss orchestrated the slaughter of voodoo practitioners.
The killings were overseen by a “powerful gang leader” convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, according to civil organisation the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD)
“He decided to cruelly punish all elderly people and voodoo practitioners who, in his imagination, would be capable of sending a bad spell on his son,” a statement from the Haiti-based group said
“The gang’s soldiers were responsible for identifying victims in their homes to take them to the chief’s stronghold to be executed,” it added.
UN rights commissioner Volker Turk said over the weekend that “at least 184 people were killed in violence orchestrated by the leader of a powerful gang in the Haitian capital”.
“These latest killings bring the death toll just this year in Haiti to a staggering 5,000 people,” he told reporters in Geneva.
Both the CPD and UN said that the massacre took place in the capital’s western coastal neighbourhood of Cite Soleil.
Haiti has suffered from decades of instability but the situation escalated in February when armed groups launched coordinated attacks in the capital Port-au-Prince to overthrow then-prime minister Ariel Henry.
Gangs now control 80 percent of the city and despite a Kenyan-led police support mission, backed by the US and UN, violence has continued to soar.
The CPD said that most most of the victims of violence waged on Friday and Saturday were over 60, but that some young people who tried to rescue others were also among the casualties.
“Reliable sources within the community report that more than a hundred people were massacred, their bodies mutilated and burned in the street,” a statement said.
More than 700,000 people are internally displaced in Haiti, half of them children, according to October figures from the UN’s International Organization for Migration.
Voodoo was brought to Haiti by African slaves and is a mainstay of the country’s culture. It was banned during French colonial rule and only recognised as an official religion by the government in 2003.
While it incorporates elements of other religious beliefs, including Catholicism, voodoo has been historically attacked by other religions.
Kenya has deployed about 400 officers since June to lead the MSS, which is meant to comprise around 2,500 personnel from about 10 countries, but the force has been hobbled by funding and staffing shortfalls.
Only a handful of officers from the other countries have arrived in Haiti, and a pledge in October by President William Ruto to send another 600 officers the following month did not materialise.
This is due to various challenges including ongoing violence on the ground that has grounded operations at the main airport in Port-au-Prince.
The additional troops are ready to be deployed anytime, officials said.
Gang violence that has killed thousands across Haiti over the past two years has worsened recently, with armed groups spreading last month into some of the last parts of the capital Port-au-Prince that were not already under their control.
The UN-backed mission receives funds voluntarily from donor countries through a trust fund.
However, the failure by donor countries to fulfill their promises has led to logistical challenges for the Kenyan officers in the Caribbean nation.
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