Haiti

COMMENTARY 

This Sunday marks the 10th anniversary of the apocalyptic 2010 earthquake that destroyed much of Haiti and killed as many as 200,000 people. There’ll be a lot of soul-searching about why the country has made so little recovery progress a full decade later. But if we want to understand that sad, infuriating state of affairs, we’re observing the wrong anniversary.

A former Haitian government prosecutor is calling the attempted arrest of the widow of late Haitian President René Préval and the director of an independent power provider, illegal and harassment.

“There is nothing technical here. It’s all political,” said Jean Danton Léger, an ex chief prosecutor who currently represents the company Société Générale d’Énergie SA (Sogener), one of three independent power providers in Haïti that produces then sells electricity to state-owned Electricité d’Haïti (EDH) under a 2005 contract.

It started around noon, when male detainees inside a prison for men and women north of Haiti’s capital heard there was no charcoal or propane gas to cook their food, and began violently protesting prison conditions and attempting to escape.

By the time it was over and the jail break had been stopped by Haiti National Police, at least one inmate was dead, several others had been injured and 10 female detainees, including a 15-year-old teen girl and 62-year-old woman, had been gang raped, two Haiti-based human rights groups said.

One man needed a hernia operation that he could not afford. A young girl came to seek help for her 3-year-old cousin whose skin was inexplicably covered with sores. And a mother of four needed help with a chronic allergy reaction.

They all took the chance to travel miles away from home to the Haitian Coast Guard base Killick on Thursday in search of medical care from the U.S. Navy ship Comfort, the floating U.S. naval hospital that arrived Monday. It was a rare calm following two months of sustained protests, burning tires and impassable barricades.

Amnesty International is calling on Haitian President Jovenel Moïse to guarantee the rights of Haitians who are taking to the streets to protest against his government, and to put an end to the use of excessive force by his security forces.

The human rights organization said Thursday that it has verified multiple instances of “security forces under the command of President Jovenel Moïse” using unlawful and excessive force, and it must end.