During the night of June 27, from about 7 p.m. until 2 a.m., bandits with automatic weapons from Port-au-Prince’s Simon neighborhood killed eight people and wounded 10 in neighboring Pele.
When Haïti Liberté arrived at about 7 a.m., we found four young men shot dead: Joseph Guerbison, Joudain Lener, Eugène Dadou, and Eximond Dors. Pele residents said that the assailants had left the area with several people as prisoners. Later we learned that four people from Pele had died at the hospital from gunshot wounds.
Up to 10 Pele residents were wounded by the gunfire, and many homes in the shanty town were also damaged and shot up.
Armed assailants from Pele had gone on a similar killing and shooting spree in the Simon neighborhood in 2014.
The neighborhoods of Simon and Pele, in the capital’s Delmas section, are jammed next to each other in the crowded settlements that grew on the old military airport across from the capital’s Mazda car dealership. Gang violence has flared often between them on several occasions over the past two years, claiming more than 50 lives and wounding several dozen people, including infants and pregnant women. Several cars and houses have also been burned in the violence.
As booming gun battles erupted on June 27, most of the population—men, women and children—huddled to sleep in front of the Cité Soleil police station to escape the violence.
Many have questioned where the gangs on both sides of the conflict have found the money to purchase new weapons and lots of ammunition.
While this kind of violence and criminality is on the rise, the police claim that there is greater public security these days. Police spokesman Garry Dérosier always offers a false picture of the terrible reality people are living in Haiti’s shantytowns.
Despite lots of talk about development and improving people’s living conditions, nothing serious is done in reality. They just spend lots of money to create nice spectacles to make people dance on top of the worsening poverty and humiliation they endure every day.
The poor are not dogs. Some people say they are not innocent. But, in reality, most of the residents of poor neighborhoods are indeed innocent and honest hardworking people who don’t have the economic means to escape the hell they are living in.
Understand this: The gang members, also called “legal bandits,” are young men between the ages of 15 to 27 who, growing up in poverty, never had a chance to develop a profession or their intellectual capacity. Often it is rich people who tempt them with money, then manipulate and arm them. Sometimes, they even work in conjunction with the police. Sometimes the police arrest one of the bandits, then the corrupt judiciary or government officials free them in front of everybody, while hundreds of innocent people are kept behind bars for years without trial.
The Martelly government’s slogan—Haiti is Advancing—is a terrible lie. What is advancing under this regime is criminality, impunity, injustice and immorality.
