While unemployment, abject poverty, unsanitary conditions, food insecurity, and other scourges gnaw at the daily life of the urban poor and the peasantry, growing insecurity, violence, and organized crime are also afflicting them.
In Cité Soleil, Haiti’s largest slum, soldiers of the United Nations occupation force known as MINUSTAH terrorize law-abiding residents for no good reason, while violent gang members make peace among themselves. The Haitian government and ruling class use violence to preserve their privileges. They use MINUSTAH, the National Police of Haiti, and “legal bandits” (as today’s brigands are called after a Sweet Micky song) to sow mourning in Haiti’s poorest families.
It is in this context that, for the past two weeks, residents of poor neighborhoods like Simon-Pele, Delmas 2, St. Martin, Solino, Bel-Air, and Fort-National have been going through hell.
On the Saturday night from June 27 to 28, Simon-Pele, a poor neighborhood between Cité Soleil and the Airport Road, “legal bandits” killed a dozen people of which four were identified by name: Joseph Guerbuisson, Jourdain Lener, Eugène Dadou, and Eximond Dors.
In Delmas 2, at the Zone Three intersection, on the night of June 29 to 30, gunmen killed many people in the area, including Josué Pierre Domon, Solution, William Célestin, a man known only as Zo Mò (Dead Bones).
The people of Delmas 2 blame gang leaders working for a presidential candidate who financed a group known as “Base 117″ to cause panic in the area after Dr. Maryse Narcisse, the presidential candidate for the Lavalas Family Political Organization passed through the area on June 27, on the occasion of the “Perpetual Relief” (Sécours Perpetuel) patronal feast.
In Solino on the night June 30 to July 1, “legal bandits” murdered three members of one family on Caravelle Street: Walnas Joseph, a charitable man and owner of a small private lottery (borlette) in the area; his son, Johnson Joseph; and his nephew, Franz Joseph. The latter two victims were finishing their secondary studies exams, but the cowardly bandits ended their lives before they could finish.
The “legal bandits” don’t always get away with murder. On June 24 in the southeastern town of Côtes-de-Fer, four heavily armed bandits broke into in the shop of a man known as Henry. They robbed him and killed him but did not live to enjoy the fruits of their crime. Local peasants captured them and carried out “expedited justice,” putting them to death.
Approaching elections also seem to be feeding the violence. On July 5, Wilkenson Bazile, a technician employed by the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) was shot dead as he went to a supermarket in Delmas 32 with two children around 7:30 p.m. Bazile took care of the technical and logistical affairs in the office of his cousin, the CEP member Jaccéus Joseph.
“We have no interpretation of what happened, “ said CEP spokesman Frantz Bernardin. “We leave it to the courts and the police to do their job, and we await the first results of the investigation for further information.”
Jaccéus, for his part, was not so sanguine. He said, “The assassination of Wilkenson looks like an execution since the bandits did not try to rob him.” He added that “in view of the threats to which I am subject and the assassination attempts that I’ve endured during my presence in the CEP, I do not take this event lightly.”
Haiti’s nightmare was summed up this week after a tragedy. On July 4, gunmen murdered Claude Delatour in the middle of Pétionville in broad daylight. One of Claude’s brothers eloquently expressed the outrage many feel in the face of the wave of insecurity that now engulfs Haiti.
“I wonder how much of Claude we should put in the ground before wrath and indignation overwhelm us and force us to mobilize against these bandits who are not hiding anymore to do their dirty work,” he said.
“For all those who knew him, Claude was a man, as I said, without malice. He practiced his profession with integrity and lived among his people simply. But in our country, now in the hands of bandits of all kinds, to live simply as a free man is no guarantee of longevity. Thus, Claude now rests somewhere in an ice drawer, a lifeless body. We can no longer burst out laughing at a joke of Dominic, our beloved sister. We can no longer laugh to see Domi upset by our childish antics.”
“How can we continue to live in this shit? As [singer] Beethova [Obas] said: ‘if we live, we are not people.’ ‘Life is a celebration in tears,’ says Jean d’Ormesson. We live and cry all at once. Or rather, some laugh while others only know how to drown in their sorrows. How much is a life worth? A million, a billion dollars? In that case, Steve Jobs would still be alive. Life has no price! It must be protected against all odds. How are we to understand our indifference in the face of these repeated barbaric acts by shameless murderers? How can we accept without doing something that these cowards kill right before our eyes and then get on a motorcycle or in a vehicle, praying to God that we do not notice, that they get away safe and sound? Has solidarity disappeared in our country? Has it become an empty word?”
“I know that I’ll sleep again one day. I also know that I will continue to live by thinking of my brother Claude. But I want that there be no further Claudes. I’m tired. Tired of counting my murdered friends. Tired of reading in the newspapers that unknown gunmen are committing a crime and just walking away.”
“Some societies celebrate life, even when they are faced with terrorism. We celebrate the banality of life by killing on credit, to buy a jalopy or to get rid of a competitor. Will we all perish as cowards by bullets or come together to address this scourge?”
That is the anguished cry of indignation and revolt of a citizen, a victim, who sees what is happening in Haiti. Insecurity is just one of the plagues debilitating Haitian society as those in power take care of everything except improving the lives of the Haitian people.
