By Milo Milfort |
Port-au-Prince (EFE) bandas in the Bel-air area, in the heart of Port-au-Prince, a few meters from the National Palace.
The conquest of new territories is the reason for this situation, which forces the inhabitants to flee en masse from their neighbourhoods, some of them considered peaceful, and settle in camps without any basic social services.
According to the NGO Red Nacional de Defensa de derechos humanos (Rnddh), these new conflicts, which broke out at the end of February, have caused more than 60 deaths and 50 disappearances, aggravating the already critical situation in Haiti at all levels.
Hundreds of houses have been burnt down and people have lost their possessions accumulated over decades.
“I lost everything I had on Tiremasse street (Bel-air). They burned my house down,” Marie-Ange Jules, 75, disabled and mother of 7 children, told EFE.
Displaced and forgotten by the State
In the displacement camp located in Post-Marchand, not far from the main public square in Port-au-Prince, Champ de Mars, a short distance from the conflict zones, adults of all ages live together, some with disabilities, children and even newborns. born.
They say they feel forgotten by the authorities, who do nothing to create a climate of peace in the poor neighborhoods.
They come from Bel-air, Delmas 24, Rue Tiremasse and Solino. Here, in order not to lose their place, the displaced place sheets on the ground to mark their territory.
“You have to come at night to see the actual number of people here. We slept like sardines,” an elderly woman told EFE.
To feed the displaced, people from the diaspora are used, artists whom the youth committees of the Poste Marchand neighborhood, created to manage the spontaneous camps, ask for help.
mothers mourn their children
Dressed entirely in white, Yvonne Pierre (pseudonym) is inconsolable. They took her only child and killed him alive by cutting him to pieces on Friday, March 3.
Pierre raised his son “alone, without a father. I have spent all my money on it. I have gone through many calamities and humiliations to be able to raise him,” says this distraught woman, whose story everyone in the shelter knows.
“It was the fighting that brought me here. I lost my son in the fighting,” says Géralda, 67. She was unable to continue the interview. “Every time I talk about it, things come to mind,” she adds, crying.
unmitigated atrocity
Jimmy Cherisier, aka Barbecue, the ex-policeman who leads the armed coalition known as the G9 – is known for an atrocity that flirts with the unthinkable, according to those displaced by this and other urban wars.
Old women thrown into pools of fire, houses set on fire with people inside, people dismembered… No one is saved. And the rage of the gangs knows no bounds.
“How far can we go with this situation? There are no authorities in the country who can help us. It is as if there was a plot to destroy us”, continues Yvonne Pierre.
This week, in a statement announcing the provisional closure of one of its hospitals in another zone of armed conflict, Doctors Without Borders said that the number of victims is increasing in its emergency center located a few kilometers from Bel-Air, which receives up to 10 times more gunshot wounds every day than the average.
“Since the fighting resumed in Bel-air, on Tuesday, February 28, we have received many children, women and the elderly, collateral victims of the fighting,” explains its medical officer, Dr. Frandy Samson.
According to him, it is difficult to say how many injured there are in other parts of the city, since some are “terrified and prefer not to leave their neighborhoods.”
They denounce police complicity
Several displaced persons affirm that National Police tanks have participated in the conflicts together with certain armed groups. In fact, according to Yvonne, her son, after his death, was burned by men in a police tank that was supposed to provide security for the population.
“Through the tanks, the Haitian State allies itself with the bandits to sow pain in the country. The ruthless and soulless come in tanks”, points out the woman, who does not receive any psychosocial support.
According to the human rights organization Rnddh, the two parties to the conflict are supported by fragments at the state level.