Haiti: "The trivialization of violence and cruelty"

Text by: Stefanie Schüler Follow

Haitians have been confronted for a few days with images of rare cruelty: the United are macabre staging of bodies, mutilated and filmed by armed gangs in Port-au-Prince.

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The others are filmed and published by police officers who beat up citizens, including a journalist. Haiti seems to be sliding "  millimeter by millimeter  " toward practices that many believed were over, warns Frantz Duval, editor of the Haitian daily Le Nouvelliste .

RFI: On the front page of the newspaper Le Nouvelliste this Thursday: violence in all its forms. The 3rd district of the capital Port-au-Prince is particularly affected. There, the gangs kill each other and stage mutilated bodies. Acts described as real "  barbarism  " by your newspaper. What are the reasons for this renewed violence?

Fratz Duval : Gangs in the southern districts of Port-au-Prince have been at war for several months, even several years. Sometimes it's a hidden war, sometimes it's bloody. Currently, reprisals are staged, filmed and published on social networks. This weekend we saw young armed men butchering rivals they had killed.

This war is waged to control territories, markets, bus stop stations or even the cemetery of Port-au-Prince. In short: it is a question of obtaining control of areas which can ensure the entry of money.

Le Nouvelliste denounces " a monumental ineffectiveness of the authorities " to regain control of the situation, the first victims of which are the inhabitants of this area, completely left to their own devices.

Absolutely. For years, the announcements of the authorities have followed one another and are similar, whether it be disarmament, appeasement or takeover. But these announcements are not followed by facts. The numerous commissions created to ensure peace, justice and security have failed to do their job.

A few days ago, the Haitian Minister of Justice and Public Security, Lucmane Délille, asked the residents of Village-de-Dieu to leave this sensitive area within 72 hours: "  After this time, we will not be responsible of what could possibly happen to them. The state has a monopoly on legitimate violence. The state will act. We ask for the cooperation of the people, because they will be released soon,  "said the minister.

This is again a government announcement without follow-up. It was strongly denounced by human rights organizations which feared a massacre. But the government simply did not act.

It's not just gang violence. There is also the violence of the authorities. The day before yesterday, a 64-year-old resident of Pétion-Ville was tied up with his arms and legs behind his back, dragged into the dust, beaten up, then, his body covered in blood, transported to court, then to prison. All by police and in the presence of a justice of the peace in a land conflict case.

Absolutely. Once again, the scene was filmed by the very people who committed these acts of violence before being published on social networks. This means that the perpetrators of these acts of violence against a citizen, the police, were comfortable, sure of not being prosecuted. We are witnessing the trivialization of violence, the trivialization of cruelty, the trivialization of life in general. It is a shift, millimeter by millimeter, towards a return of bad practices. This is what the editorial in Le Nouvelliste denounces this morning .

The Prime Minister has given the Minister of Justice one month to investigate. The same Minister of Justice asked the High Council of Justice to investigate the justice of the peace who brought the police on the ground and who let the police do when they committed acts of violence. 

These facts recall the darkest chapters in Haitian history. 

In the past, Haiti has experienced this type of wrongdoing. We were, however, out of this situation. The violence had remained, but official cruelty no longer existed in Haiti. There, in two weeks, we had two cases: last week the journalist Georges Allen was beaten by police officers who had filmed this attack. And this week, a citizen, in the context of a land conflict, was beaten, tied up, arrested, injured, brought to court, then to prison and only then to hospital.

This is very worrying, especially since everything is filmed by the police and published on social networks. These kinds of images will have repercussions throughout Haitian society. It is proof of total impunity for those who commit the most reprehensible acts.

Then of course we also talk about the Coronavirus. There are currently 108 patients screened out of 1091 tests carried out. What worries the experts is that there are almost as many deaths as cured. Twelve Haitians died as a result of Covid-19, 15 are considered cured. This makes a case fatality rate much higher than in other countries of the region.

Scientists are surprised at the apparently very slow progression of the virus in Haiti. The country did not have many screening tests at the start of the epidemic. Today, doctors are finding that patients refuse to be tested for symptoms because Covid-19 has become something to be ashamed of.

No one wants to be stigmatized as a carrier of the virus. The statistics are therefore probably not a reflection of the reality on the ground. However, the available figures show that there are almost as many dead as people cured of the coronavirus. Scientists are concerned about a case fatality rate of around 11% and many unidentified cases of Covid-19 in the country with very high community transmission.

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