Worrying reports have been emerging all week from this troubled Caribbean nation, which cannot find peace even with dozens of Kenyan and neighboring troops trying to help wrest pieces of hope and sovereignty from criminal gangs. In recent days, the Puerto Rican authorities rescued about 30 Haitians who were abandoned by smugglers on the uninhabited Monito Island, victims of new failed attempts to flee a suffocating crisis by risking anything. Unfortunately, we are talking about a recurrent dynamic. Also in September, another thirty Haitians were found on Monito Island in the same condition.
Last Monday the first group of abandoned migrants, 14, including four accompanied minors, was reported. “There are safe, orderly, and legal paths to immigrate to the United States. There is no need to risk their lives crossing the Mona Passage at the hands of ruthless smugglers just to reach our coast and face the legal consequences of illegal entry,” a Border Patrol agent said referring to a dangerous sea strait that separates Puerto Rico from the Dominican Republic. On Wednesday, authorities rescued 14 other migrants, three minors among them.
More than five million Haitians have suffered severe food shortages, going 1 to 2 days without food, while hundreds suffer famine-levels of hunger, according to a recent report reviewed by AP. “This is one of the highest proportions of acutely food insecure people in any crisis around the world,” said a U.N. official. Violence is the mother of all such empty stomachs. The capital's main port remained closed this week due to renewed insecurity, a bad signal in an already high-inflation-level environment. One mother said she sometimes goes to a clinic to ensure that her 1-year-old child receives a peanut butter mix. “I can rarely get a meal a day,” another mother said. “My [son] looks at other people eating all the time, and he starts crying, `Mommy, I'm hungry.'”
The school year got off to a cracking start, with many schools turned into camps for people displaced by the unstoppable violence. The country's ad hoc prime minister promised to “put in place everything necessary to create the [...] conditions for allowing [all children] access to education.” “There must be no disparity in education,” he also stated. Unfortunately, Garry Conille's abilities to solve the problem are limited. He admits as much when blaming the gangs for the situation, rather than pointing to the authorities' inability to ensure the continuity of the educational process. Meanwhile, the shadow of corruption increasingly covers the emerging Transitional Presidential Council.
In the early hours of Friday, the first reports of a deadly attack by the so-called Grand Grif gang against the population of Saint-Marc, a commune of Pont Sonde in the agricultural department of Artibonite began to spread. A newborn baby was among the dead, whose bodies lay sprawled in the streets, many shot in the head. The United Nations reported that 10 women and three infants were killed, with many houses reduced to ashes. The killing was indiscriminate, with more than 70 fatalities.
“[Criminals] were left to shoot anybody, everybody was running everywhere. They were walking, shooting people, killing people, burning people, burning homes, burning cars,” describes an activist. The grim picture experienced by the people of Saint-Marc was probably the result of revenge by Grand Grif for its alleged support to a self-defense group that protected it from extortion. The government deployed security forces including personnel from the Kenyan-led multinational security mission to Artibonite to try to restore order. Displaced people number in the thousands amid growing discontent over the dire situation in the country.
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