Members of a gang murdered at least 180 people this weekend in Cité Soleil, one of the communes in Haiti most affected by misery and violence, as confirmed this Monday by the United Nations. The leader of a criminal gang ordered the massacre after accusing the victims, most of them over 60 years old, of having made his son sick through witchcraft rituals, according to the National Network in Defense of Human Rights (RNDDH, for its acronym). in French).
The leader of the armed group known as Wharf Jeremie, Monel Mikano Félix resorted to the advice of a voodoo shaman, who blamed the elders of the area for causing the illness of the child, who died on Saturday afternoon. The gang members, according to the humanitarian organization, murdered at least 60 people on Friday and another 50 on Saturday with machetes and knives.
The residents of Cité Soleil, a densely populated marginal neighborhood next to the port of the capital, Port-au-Prince, survive suffocated by the tight control of organized crime, which for years has replaced the State in large territories of the Caribbean country. The ban on using mobile phones has prevented more information about the massacre from being gathered.
Monel Mikano Félix is one of the most prominent gang members along with former police officer Jimmy BBQ Cherizier has been banned from entering the neighboring Dominican Republic since 2022. Last October, the United Nations estimated that the Wharf Jeremie gang had about 300 members. The group has also operated in other areas of Port-au-Prince such as Fort Dimanche and La Saline, which in November 2018 was the scene of the massacre of at least 71 civilians in a raid that ended with the burning of hundreds of homes. Authorities then blamed the attack on Barbecue, who was still wearing a uniform and badge.
The massacre last weekend is the umpteenth example of horror in a country in the grip of crime. In October, at least 115 people were massacred in Pont-Sonde, a town in Haiti’s breadbasket Artibonite region. Another gang, Gran Grif, took responsibility for that atrocity, a retaliation against neighbors who were working with a self-defense group against extortion operations.
The Government, split in two by internal political struggles, has been trying for years to stop the advance of armed gangs in the capital and its surroundings. The Haitian authorities had requested in 2022, after the assassination of Jovenel Moïse, international security and support for the local police, but the mission approved by the United Nations in 2023 operates at half throttle and lacks resources.
Haitian political leaders have called for converting the UN mission into a peacekeeping force to ensure its continuity, but the plan has stalled due to opposition from China and Russia in the Security Council.
