More than 5,600 people were reported killed in Haiti last year as a UN-backed mission led by Kenya struggled┬аto contain rampant gang violence, officials said Tuesday.
The number of killings increased by more than 20 per cent compared with all of 2023, according to the UN┬аHuman Rights Office. In addition, more than 2,200 people were reported injured and nearly 1,500 kidnapped, it said.
“These figures alone cannot capture the absolute horrors being perpetrated in Haiti, but they show the unremitting violence to which people are being subjected,” Volker Turk, UN┬аhigh commissioner for human rights, said in a statement.
Among the victims were two journalists and a police officer killed when gunmen opened fire on a crowd that gathered on Christmas Eve for the much-anticipated reopening of Haiti’s biggest public hospital, which gangs had earlier forced to close.
Overall, gang violence has left more than 700,000 Haitians homeless in recent years, with many crowding┬аinto makeshift and unsanitary shelters after gunmen razed their homes.
“I saw family members being murdered, and there was nothing I could do to save them,” recalled Garry Joseph, 55, who now lives in an abandoned government office with hundreds of others who fled their neighbourhoods. “Everybody was running for their lives the night we had to leave.”
Last year’s victims also included more than 200 people killed in early December in a gang-controlled slum, many of them older Haitians, after a gang leader sought to avenge his son’s death, which he suspected of being caused by witchcraft,┬аaccording to the UN. It was one of the biggest massacres reported in Port-au-Prince, the capital, in recent history.
At least 110 people were killed in Haiti’s Cite Soleil slum when a gang leader targeted elderly people he suspected of causing his child’s illness through witchcraft, the National Human Rights Defense Network says.
Among others killed last year were 315 suspected gang members or people associated with them who were lynched and more than 280 people killed by police in alleged summary executions, the UN┬аsaid.
Turk is calling for more logistical and financial support for the UN-backed mission that began in early June.
About 400 police officers from Kenya are leading the mission and were joined days ago by some 150 military police officers from Central America, the majority from Guatemala. Several other nations have sent a handful of personnel or pledged to, but the overall number remains far below the 2,500 officers expected for the mission.
Commercial flights suspended┬а
In another blow to Haiti’s stability, Sunrise Airways announced Monday that it would temporarily suspend flights to and from Port-au-Prince, 85 per cent of which is controlled by gangs. It said that the decision was based on circumstances out of its control, adding that the safety of passengers and crew members were a priority.
That leaves the country’s main international airport without any commercial flights for the third time this year.
“There is nowhere you can go,” Joseph said, noting that gangs also control all main roads entering and leaving Port-au-Prince and randomly open fire on public transport. “Nobody is safe in this country, especially in Port-au-Prince…. Everybody is just counting their days.”
In November, the airport in Port-au-Prince closed after gangs opened fire and struck three planes, including a Spirit Airlines plane that was mid-flight, injuring a flight attendant.
While the airport has since reopened, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration in December extended a ban on U.S. flights to Haiti’s capital until March 12 out of safety. The incident also sparked Canada to update a travel advisory to warn against all travel to Haiti due to the threat of gang violence, and Air Transat suspended all flights to and from Port-au-Prince until the end of April.┬а
Rony Jean-Bernard, a 30-year-old former moto taxi driver now living in a crowded shelter, said gang violence has forced him to rely on handouts.
“I’m living on bread and sugar most of the time,” he said, noting that government officials stopped handing out free meals at his shelter about four months ago.
“Every day is like darkness. I can’t see where life is taking me with this government in place that is making promises that things will get better. I hear that every day.”
As violence keeps surging, Turk called on all nations to halt deportations to Haiti.
“The acute insecurity and resulting human rights crisis in the country simply do not allow for the safe, dignified and sustainable return of Haitians. And yet, deportations are continuing,” he said.
Under the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, some 27,800 Haitians were deported, according to Thomas Cartwright of Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that tracks flight data.
Meanwhile, the neighbouring Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, deported more than a quarter million of people to Haiti last year as part of an ongoing crackdown on migrants.
