A gang leader in Haiti who controls a key port in the country’s capital was accused of slaughtering the elderly and Vodou religious leaders in droves during a bloody campaign to avenge his son’s death over the weekend, according to the government and human rights organizations.
Wharf Jeremie gang leader Micanor Altès, also known as Monel Felix and Wa Mikanò, allegedly initiated the mass attack in Port-au-Prince that primarily targeted the local elders after he sought advice from a voodoo priest who accused the elderly in the area of using witchcraft to make his son sick.
“A red line has been crossed,” the Haitian prime minister’s office said in a statement, adding it would “mobilize all forces to track down and annihilate” those responsible, including Altès.
The reports on the exact number of those killed in Port-au-Prince vary. But Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said that at least 184 people were killed in the gang-controlled Cité Soleil neighborhood, which is one of the poorest and most violent areas in Haiti.
At least 127 of the victims were older people, the UN secretary-general’s office said.
However, the Cooperative for Peace and Development, a local rights group, said in a statement on Sunday that its monitoring group only found that 20 older people were killed. The CPD added that local residents had asserted that the true death toll was over 100, though.
The National Human Rights Defense Network, an NGO in Haiti that monitors state institutions and promotes human rights education, later added that the total number of deaths could be much higher. It cited witnesses who said they saw that “mutilated bodies were burned in the streets, including several young individuals who were killed attempting to save residents.”
The CPD said that armed men grabbed well-known leaders in the community and brought them to Altès’ base, where they were all executed. Others riding motorcycles tried to save the victims, but they were all also killed. It is unclear how many were killed during this first part of the massacre.
The rights group also claimed that there is still a ban in place by the gangs preventing anyone from leaving the community “in order to continue to identify (Vodou) practitioners and the elderly with the aim of carrying out the silent killing.”
The CPD said that Altès had targeted practicing Vodous and dozens of elderly women “wrongly accused of witchcraft” in recent years.
Altès controls the coastal communities of Wharf Jérémie, La Saline, and Fort Dimanche. He is widely known for his many alleged crimes, including robbery, extortion, and hijacking trucks and goods, according to a U.N. report earlier this year.
The continued violence has only strengthened the push for a U.-led peacekeeping mission in Haiti. The Kenyan police, backed by the UN, are currently trying to combat the gangs, but are increasingly overwhelmed by the violence.
Port-au-Prince, Haiti, holding a gun. AP
“The crisis in Haiti has reached catastrophic levels with allied criminal groups intensifying large-scale, coordinated attacks on the population and key state infrastructure,” Human Rights Watch said Monday as it called for a U.N. mission.
More than 4,500 people have been reported killed in Haiti this year, according to the UN.
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