This drama is a new illustration of the safe chaos in which is immersed Haiti, stuck in a deep crisis, six months after the assassination of President Jovenel Moses.
Le Monde with AFP
The violence is rooted endlessly in Haiti. Two Haitian journalists were killed on Thursday, January 6, by a gang, on the outskirts of the PORT-AU-PRINCE capital, six months after the assassination of President Jovenel Moses.
Wilguens Louissaint and Amady John Wesley were caught in a shooting in a zone under armed strips, said the France-Presse (AFP) agency the second, radio listening FM, an online media Based in Montreal, where lives a large Haitian community. A third journalist who accompanied them during their reporting, covering “the safe climate of the area”, could escape, according to the same source.
“We condemn this criminal and barbaric act with the last rigor,” said Francky Attis, General Manager of Radio Listening FM, which also denounces “serious infringement” to the rights “journalists to practice their profession freely in the country “. The online media requires, Thursday night in a statement, to the Haitian authorities to “take their responsibilities in order to create safe conditions favorable to all”.
an endemic political crisis
Haiti has been, for months, under the cup set with gangs, whose right-of-way has extended beyond the disadvantaged neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince. The Laboule Zone 12, where the three journalists had traveled Thursday, is the subject of intense fights between several armed bands who want to make sure it. The path that crosses it is the only alternative land route to reach the southern half of the country, for lack of being able to borrow the totally controlled national road, since June, by one of the most powerful gangs of Haiti.
The endemic political crisis in this poor Caribbean country, still aggravated by the assassination of President Jovensel Moses six months ago, only deteriorate the security situation.
The Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who has been responsible for the assassination of President Moses, said they were targeted by an attempted assassination, Saturday, January 1, when Celebrations of National Day in Gonaïves.
A font under-equipped
At least 950 kidnappings were identified in Haiti in 2021, according to the Center for Human Rights Analysis and Research, Organization based in Port-au-Prince. Under-equipped with criminal groups with a war arsenal, the Haitian police did not organize objects of magnitude against gangs since March 2021.
On March 12, 2021, the police had tried to intervene in a district of the capital known to be used by a gang as a place of sequestration of people removed. Four policemen had then been killed, and their bodies and equipment could never be recovered.
The impunity enjoyed by gang members also reveals the very great weakness of the Haitian judicial system, whose investigations do not succeed in very rare occasions. Iconic, the case of the assassination, in April 2000, from the most famous Haitian journalist of the time, Jean Dominique, has still not been solved. In June 2021, Journalist Diego Charles was killed in the middle of the nights of opposition policy and thirteen other people: the authors of the Fusillade, in the heart of Port-au-Prince, have not yet been identified by the police.
The photojournalist Vladjimir Legagneur is never returned from a report in March 2018 in the poor district of Martissant, in the south of the capital, today fully controlled by the gangs. The police still have not published the results of a DNA test that she had announced to make a few days after her disappearance. Investigations into two other murders of journalists, in June and October 2019, did not succeed in this day.