Deaths, protests in Haiti as Venezuela aid scandal increases calls for president to go
Jacqueline Charles ( The Miami Herald
Thousands of angry Haitians marched in protest in Port-au-Prince on Sunday, decrying corruption and stepping up calls for the resignation of President Jovenel Moïse, who has been implicated in two government audits on the misuse of billions of dollars in Venezuelan aid meant to help the country’s poor.
Though the protest started off calm, tensions mounted later in the day throughout the country. Protesters vandalized buildings with rocks, blocked roads, doused a former government official in the city of Jacmel with gasoline and tried to burn down a supermarket near one of the symbols of the graft: an old, abandoned movie theater that received, what critics say can best described as a $5 million paint job.
Police Spokesman Michel-Ange Louis-Jeune said a preliminary tally shows there were at least two deaths from gunshots, four injuries also from gunshots and 12 arrests were made. Reports of vandalism, which including rock throwing and setting vehicles and two buildings aflame were also reported.
Some opposition groups have said that the number of arrests are far more than what police are reporting. Concerns have also been raised about possible police repression after a video circulated on the WhatsAPP messaging platform showing a Haiti National Police officer stoning a protester with rocks as he laid face down in the hills above Petionville not far from Moïse’s Pelerin 5 residence.
The incident triggered immediate calls for an investigation despite the insistence of Petionville Police Commissioner Paul Ménard that “the video is not from today.”
As proof, Ménard in a Miami Herald interview pointed to the dirt road, saying the road near the president’s home is asphalted. But people familiar with the neighborhood said the incident is about 200 meters from the road leading to Moïse’s residence, and it is a dirt path.
“We are asking the [director general of the Haiti National Police] to launch an immediate investigation on the matter,” Sen. Patrice Dumont said. “This was an attempted murder if the person did not die.”
In a communique to the press, Police Chief Michel-Ange Gédéon said police were instructed not to use excessive force and he has instructed his inspector general’s office to launch an investigate into the incident.
The mounting tensions in Haiti come as opposition senators, political parties and the grassroots anti-corruption group known as Petrochallengers, promise to keep the pressure going until Moïse steps down from power. Some groups have called for a general strike on Monday and Tuesday.
“We are telling the people to ‘hold on.’ The fight isn’t easy,” Sen. Antonio “Don Kato” Cheramy said at a press conference on the Champ de Mars not far from the presidential palace. “Don’t let go.”
Moïse has not made any public statements since the corruption audit was released. But in private “Our country is shamefully trapped in corruption at the highest level of society,” the Episcopal Conference of Haiti said. “Unabated corruption has become an endemic evil, a messy swamp, a degradation, an organized robbery. It has become a real social plague that is clogging our institutions, makes politics ill, threatens democracy and social peace, and thus seriously undermines, both from an ethical and an economic point of view, the development of our country.”
Without naming any names, the bishops said those implicated in the recent court of auditors report and a previous one issued in January, should “repair the social injustice” by submitting themselves to “the justice of their country, if it is the price to pay to restore the moral authority of the state and its leaders.”
The May 31 audit is the second installment of a three-part investigation into how Haiti managed billions of dollars in savings from the Venezuelan oil program between 2008-16. Among the most damning accusations, millions of dollars in aid money were mismanaged and embezzled during the administration of former president Michel Martelly, 2011-1016. This includes $5 million that
the Private Sector reiterated its appeal for dialogue, while a group of politicians from various political parties began circulating a transition plan focused on reforming the constitution, political parties structure and fiscal operations.
Business leaders noted that five months after they first asked the president, parliamentarians and opposition to urgently work toward “a sincere dialogue,” they have noticed a “total failure, the worsening of the economic and social situation, the unacceptable insecurity, the lost of control of the geographical departments by the public powers and so many other problems known to all.”
“The country is nearing a cliff,” the pro-business Economic Forum said in its statement.
Business leaders said while they recognize the collective responsibility of all Haitians in Haiti’s failure and that Moïse and the parliament inherited a dysfunctional country, they have, through bad decisions, “contributed to dragging the country even further into crisis and proven that they are part of the problem and not part of the solution.”
Memorial for the three Haitian Kids killed by a drunk driver.
A Memorial for 3 very Young Ayisyen boys with Promising Lives.
2 of the boys were sent from Ayiti without their immediate family for a better opportunity here in the states. The parents of the 2 boys are still in Ayiti and could not be assisting at the Memorial.