The Tribune

By MACLOLM STRACHAN

AS we look towards the start of the new year, we all might be looking for signs of hope and optimism for the year ahead – few such signs are visible as we look towards our neighbour, Haiti.

We lament the murder total we have seen in The Bahamas this year – as we should – but it is as nothing compared to the carnage being wrought on the streets of Haiti.

In one series of attacks alone, between December 6 and 11, dozens of older people and religious leaders were killed by a gang there.

The Wharf Jeremie gang took people from their homes and from a place of Vodou worship, interrogated them and executed them. The gang members used machetes and bullets.

Just before Christmas, the UN revised the total number of people killed in that period of time to “more than 207”.

The UN secretary-general’s special representative in Haiti, Maria Isabel Salvador, said that “we cannot pretend that nothing happened”.

She said: “I call on the Haitian justice system to thoroughly investigate these horrific crimes and arrest and punish the perpetrators, as well as those who support them.”

What was the crime these people supposedly committed in the eyes of the gang? The son of the gang’s leader, Micanor Altés, died from an illness – and he accused people in the neighbourhood of causing it.

The Cooperative for Peace and Development, a human rights group, said: “He decided to cruelly punish all elderly people and (Vodou) practitioners who, in his imagination, would be capable of casting a bad spell on his son.”

After the executions, the UN say the gang tried to cover up the evidence. They burned the bodies, or cut them up and threw them into the sea.

UN figures say that more than 5,350 people have been killed in Haiti this year as gangs carve up territory and battle it out with both authorities and each other.

In a semblance of an attempt to get back to some measure of normality, the Haitian government last week announced the reopening of Port-au- Prince’s biggest public hospital.

The Health Minister, Duckenson Lorthe, sent out the invites to journalists to attend – who duly showed up, only to walk into one of the worst attacks on the Haitian media in recent memory.

With little security on show, and the health minister absent without explanation, gang members burst into the hospital and opened fire on reporters assembled there.

Two journalists and a police officer were killed.

After the attack, gang leader Johnson “Izo” Andre, part of the Viv Ansanm group of gangs, posted a video claiming responsibility.

In the video, he said that the gang coalition had not authorised the hospital’s reopening.

The health minister was fired. His replacement is temporary until someone else can be found.

Back in October, former Prime Minister Perry Christie had spoken with hope about the future of Haiti. He talked of the prospect of elections by February 2026.

Things have not looked good for those prospects since that time, with another change in prime minister in November, and turbulence surrounding the transitional council that is ostensibly in charge at present.

I say ostensibly, because really it looks like the gangs are in charge.

The government has no control over large areas, including of the capital. The ports and highways are often the centre of conflict, and the airport recently saw a plane fired upon.

After the attack on older people, the government talked of persecuting those to blame for the “unspeakable carnage”. But how much ability they have to back up that statement is open to question.

Prisoners have been broken out, there seems little likelihood of an election being organised any time soon, and if gangs can dictate to the government when a hospital can or cannot be opened, it speaks loudly to who really is in charge.

Photographer Jean Fregens Regala, a survivor of the shooting at the hospital, told the Associated Press: “I was hiding behind by the gate to put myself somewhere safe but other journalists were rushing to go inside the hospital and there was non-stop shooting. If I had rushed and ran, or ran inside the hospital to hide, I am sure I would be among the victims.”

He added: “We began calling for help, for just aid, for the victims that were bleeding heavily. There was no doctor or nurse around. While the hospital was about to reopen, it had no medical supplies available for giving first aid to the journalist victims and the other victims.”

Medics lacked gloves so used plastic bags on their hands as substitutes to treat the victims.

The photographer said that police told journalists they had not been aware of the reopening.

The country’s interim president, Leslie Voltaire, sent sympathies to the victims in a national address last week. But sympathy doesn’t bring change or justice.

With Bahamian forces being deployed in an attempt to assist Haiti and to bring stability, alongside troops from other nations, it is hard not to see this is trying to put a band-aid on a gushing wound.

Quite what the mission goal is for our deployment remains unclear in public, and the numbers are few enough that it will not make a substantial dent in the control of the gangs, who are said to control 85 percent of Port-au-Prince.

If Haiti continues to be in meltdown, it will only be bad news for the region. Those gangs need funds, they will make it through crime. More guns. More drugs. More tentacles of crime stretching out to other nations. A rogue nation on our doorstep.

Finding a solution in the year ahead must be a crucial goal for nations throughout the region. Implementing it will be no easy task – and there seems little appetite for the scale of intervention that might be required.

2025 is a crucial year for Haiti. But we should make no mistake of its importance to us all.