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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The poor are now targeting the poor in Haiti. Many fear leaving their homes, buying groceries, or paying the fare on the bus – acts that can draw gang attention to kidnapping anyone with even little money.
Many schools have closed their doors this month, not for Covid-19, but to protect students and teachers from an epidemic of kidnapping for ransom that began to haunt the country a year ago. No one is spared: neither the nuns, nor the priests, nor the children of street vendors in difficulty. Students are now organizing fundraisers to collect ransoms to free their classmates.
Their difficulties may only worsen as Haiti rushes into a constitutional crisis.
The opposition demanded the resignation of President Jovenel Moïse, saying his five-year term ended on Sunday. But the president refuses to step down, arguing that an interim government has occupied the first year of his five-year term.
In a provocative hour-long speech Sunday, Mr. Moïse mocked his critics.
“I am not a dictator,” Mr. Moïse said. “My term ends on February 7, 2022.”
As tensions mounted on Sunday, the government announced the arrests of more than 20 people, claiming they had been involved in a plot to overthrow and kill the president. Those detained – on charges the opposition said were trumped up – included a Supreme Court judge and one of the Haitian police inspectors general.
After years of famine, poverty and daily power cuts, Haitians say their country, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, is in the worst condition they have seen as the government is unable to provide electricity. most basic services.
Many fear that the current political tensions will only worsen the paralysis and poor governance of the country. On Sunday afternoon, clashes erupted between protesters and police in three different cities across the country.
Haiti is “on the verge of explosion,” a collection of episcopal bishops across the country said in a statement late last month.
Over the weekend, the Haitian judiciary sided with the opposition, a disparate group of activists, politicians and religious leaders, and ruled that Mr. Moïse’s term ended on Sunday.
On Friday, the US government weighed in on Mr. Moïse’s side – an important prospect for many Haitians, who often look to their larger neighbor for direction in which political winds are blowing.
State Department spokesman Ned Price supported Mr. Moïse’s argument that his term ends next February and added that it is only then “that a newly elected president should succeed President Moïse ”.
But Mr. Price also issued a warning to Mr. Moïse about the postponement of the elections and the ruling by decree.
“The Haitian people deserve the opportunity to elect their leaders and restore Haiti’s democratic institutions,” added Mr. Price.
Mr. Moïse has led by presidential decree since last year, after suspending two-thirds of the Senate, the entire lower house of deputies and all the mayors of the country. Haiti has only 11 elected to power to represent its 11 million inhabitants, Mr. Moïse having refused to hold elections for the past four years.
Mr. Moïse is seeking to expand his presidential powers in the coming months by amending the country’s constitution. A referendum on the new constitution is scheduled for April, and the opposition fears the vote will not be free or fair and will only encourage its nascent authoritarian tendencies, says Moïse.
André Michel, 44, a leader of the opposition coalition, the democratic and popular sector, has sworn that if the president does not resign, the opposition will organize more demonstrations and engage in civil disobedience.
“There is no debate,” he said. “His term is over.”
The opposition hopes to tap into the discontent of millions of unemployed Haitians – more than 60% of the country live in poverty – to fuel protests, which in the past have often turned violent and have closed large parts of the country. .
Although the president has never been so weak – locked inside the presidential palace, he is unable to move freely even in the capital – observers say he has a good chance of staying at work. A weak and weak opposition is engulfed in infighting and cannot agree on how to remove Mr. Moïse from power or with whom to replace him.
Political uncertainty has spread terror, with fears that the street protests in the coming days will turn violent and plunge the country into a long period of unrest.
Zamor, a 57-year-old driver who would give only his middle name for fear of reprisal, said his daughter was torn off the streets in the capital Port-au-Prince last month. He now keeps his three children at home and prevents them from going to school.
“People have to trust the state,” Zamor said, adding that the government “is full of kidnappers and gang members”.
Before the kidnapping epidemic, Haitians could listen to music with their neighbors on the streets, play dominoes, go to the beach, and empathize with their friends and neighbors about their economic desperation. But now the fear of being kidnapped is taking over the streets, hampering routine daily activities.
“The regime has delegated power to the bandits,” said Pierre Espérance, 57, a prominent human rights activist.
“The country is now gangsterized – what we are experiencing is worse than during the dictatorship,” he said, referring to the brutal autocratic rule of the Duvalier family which lasted for almost 30 years, until 1986.
Haitians suspect that the proliferation of gangs over the past two years has been supported by Mr. Moïse to quell any dissent. At first, the gangs targeted opposition neighborhoods and attacked demonstrations calling for better living conditions. But the gangs may have grown too big to tame and now seem to operate everywhere.
In December, the United States Treasury Department imposed sanctions on close allies of Mr. Moïse – including the former director general of the Home Office – for providing political protection and weapons to gangs who targeted areas of opposition.
The sanctions highlighted a five-day attack last May that terrorized neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince. The Treasury Department said gang members, with cover and backing from government officials, were raping women and torching homes.
The government denies providing support to gangs.
Tourism has stopped and the vast Haitian diaspora in the United States and elsewhere remains isolated from the country.
“Things have become more and more difficult since the arrival of Jovenel Moïse,” explains Marvens Pierre, 28, a craftsman trying to sell souvenirs in a public square in the capital.
He had left his two young children with his mother because she received remittances from abroad and could afford to feed them. He said he was having a hard time selling his products.
“I can easily go two weeks without being able to sell my stuff,” said Pierre. “This morning, I had to ask a neighbor for her soap for bathing.
Harold Isaac and Andre Paultre reported from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and Maria Abi-Habib from Mexico City. Kirk Semple contributed reporting from Mexico City.
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