(Port-au-Prince) An upsurge in violence caused by armed gangs in Haiti worries the Office of Citizen Protection as two infants were shot dead in less than a month in the country.
France Media Agency
"For several months, bandits have controlled the national territory," lamented Wednesday in an interview with the AFP Renan Hédouville, protector of the citizen.
"As we speak, the bandits are protected by certain political authorities, by certain authorities of the central power, while the population is taken hostage, abandoned to itself," he said. he adds.
Clashes between rival gangs have claimed several innocent lives since the start of the summer in Port-au-Prince, the capital. And the main provincial roads are regularly blocked by armed bands who hold passengers to ransom and divert goods.
From January to June, at least 243 people were victims of armed violence in Port-au-Prince only, according to the Haitian Episcopal Commission Justice and Peace.
Perpetrated three weeks apart, in mid-July and early August, the shooting murders of two infants, aged eight and four months, aroused great emotion among the population, but no official reaction .
"It is the complete silence of the authorities, the very complacency of these authorities in relation to these crimes," protests Renan Hédouville, who says he has received no response to the letters sent to the president and to the first minister to alert them to this security crisis.
At the end of June and the beginning of July, two peaceful demonstrations organized in the capital to denounce this climate of insecurity had been forcefully repressed by the police.
Gang members then marched through the streets of downtown, showing off their guns and firing regularly in the air.
No police unit intervened to interrupt this march, broadcast live on social networks by some participants.
"This anarchy will have disastrous consequences on the functioning of society", warns Renan Hédouville.
"If the authorities become complicit in the bandits who terrorize the population, they [...] will sooner or later be accountable to national or international bodies", says the director of the Protection Office. of the citizen of Haiti.
In a statement released Wednesday, the US embassy in Port-au-Prince reiterates "the need for the government of Haiti to investigate and prosecute those responsible for these acts of gang-related violence."
