PORT-AU PRINCE, Haiti – The poor are now targeting the poor in Haiti. Many are afraid to leave their homes, buy groceries or pay a bus fare – deeds that could draw the attention of gangs to kidnap someone with cash, no matter how little.
Many schools are closing their doors this month, not over Covid-19, but to protect students and teachers from a kidnapping-for-ransom epidemic that began haunting the country a year ago. No one is spared: not nuns, priests or the children of struggling street vendors. Students are now organizing fundraisers to raise raffle tickets for free classmates.
Their suffering may only worsen as Haiti brings about a constitutional crisis.
The opposition has demanded that President Jovenel Moïse retire, saying his five-year term ended on Sunday. But the president refuses to resign, arguing that an interim government will hold the first year of his five-year term.
In a defiant, hour-long speech, Mr. Moses insulted his insults.
“I am not a dictator,” he said. Moses said. “My term ends on February 7, 2022.”
When tensions began on Sunday, the government announced the arrest of more than 20 people, claiming they were involved in a conspiracy to overthrow and kill the president. Those detained – on charges that the opposition said they had been tracked down – included a Supreme Court judge and one of Haiti’s police inspectors.
After years of enduring hunger, poverty and daily power outages, Haitians say their country, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, is in the worst condition they have seen, and that the government cannot provide the most basic services.
Many fear that the current political tensions will only exacerbate the country’s paralysis and weak government. On Sunday afternoon, clashes broke out between protesters and police in three different cities across the country.
Haiti is “on the verge of explosion”, a collection of bishops from the country said in a statement late last month.
The right-wing branch of Haiti joined the opposition at the weekend, a diverse group of activists, politicians and religious leaders, and ruled that the term of Mr. Moses Sunday is over.
The United States government on Friday sided with Mr. Moise weighted – an important perspective for many Haitians, who often look to their larger neighbor for guidance on the direction the political wind is blowing.
State Department spokesman Ned Price dismissed Mr Argument’s argument. Moïse that his term ends next February, supported and added that only then ‘a newly elected president should succeed President Moïse. ‘
But Mr. Price also sends a warning to Mr. Moïse on the delay of the election and the decision by decision.
“The Haitian people deserve the opportunity to elect their leaders and restore the democratic institutions of Haiti,” Price added.
Mr. Moïse has been leading by presidential decree since last year, after suspending two-thirds of the Senate, the entire House of Representatives and every mayor in the entire country. Haiti now has only 11 elected officials to represent its 11 million people. For the past four years, Moïse has refused to hold elections.
Mr. Moïse wants to expand his presidential powers in the coming months by changing the country’s Constitution. A referendum on the new Constitution is planned in April, and the opposition fears that the vote will not be free or fair, and that it will only encourage its emerging authoritarian tendencies, denies Mr. Moses.
André Michel (44), a leader of the opposition coalition, the Democratic and Popular Sector, promised that if the president did not resign, the opposition would hold more protest marches and enter civil disobedience.
“There is no debate,” he said. “His mandate is over.”
The opposition hopes to take advantage of the dissatisfaction of the millions of unemployed Haitians – more than 60 percent of the country in poverty – to provoke the protests, which in the past have often turned violent and closed large parts of the country.
Although the president has never been weaker in the presidential palace, he can not even move freely in the capital – observers say he has a good chance of staying in office. A weak and weak resistance is plagued by infighting and can not agree on how Mr. Moses must come to power or by whom he must replace.
The political insecurity sowed feelings of anxiety, with the fear that street demonstrations would become violent in the coming days and plunge the country into a long period of unrest.
Zamor, a 57-year-old driver who would only give his middle name for fear of retaliation, said his daughter was abducted from the street in Port-au-Prince, the capital, last month. He now keeps his three children at home and prevents them from going to school.
“People need to have confidence in the state,” Zamor said, adding that the government “is filled with kidnappers and gang members.”
Before the kidnapping epidemic, Haitians could listen to music on the street with their neighbors, play dominoes, go to the beach, and talk to friends and neighbors about their economic despair. But now the fear of kidnapping is dominated in the streets, hindering daily activities.
“The regime has handed over power to the bandits,” said Pierre Espérance, 57, a leading human rights activist.
“The country is now a gangsterism – what we live for is worse than during the dictatorship,” he said, referring to the brutal autocratic rule of the Duvalier family that lasted almost thirty years, until 1986.
Haitians suspect that the spread of gangs over the past two years by Mr. Moise support is to stifle any disagreement. Initially, the gangs targeted the opposition neighborhoods and attacked protests that demanded better living conditions. But the gangs may have become too big to be tamed and now seem to be working everywhere.
In December, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on close allies of Moses – including the former director general of the Interior Ministry – to provide political protection and weapons to gangs targeting opposition areas.
The sanctions highlighted a five-day attack in May that terrorized neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince. The treasury said gang members, with the cover and support of government officials, raped women and set houses on fire.
The government denies providing support to gangs.
Tourism has come to a standstill, and the great Haitian diaspora in the United States and elsewhere remains away from the country.
“Things have been getting harder since the arrival of Jovenel Moïse,” Marvens Pierre, 28, a craftsman, tried to sell souvenirs on a public square in the capital.
He entrusted his two young children to his mother because she could pay money from abroad and afford to feed it. He said he finds it difficult to sell his products.
“I can easily spend two weeks without being able to sell my stuff,” Mr Pierre lamented. “This morning I had to ask a neighbor for her soap to take a bath.”
Harold Isaac and Andre Paultre reported from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and Maria Abi-Habib of Mexico City. Kirk Semple reported from Mexico City.