In the beginning it was the earthquake of 2010 that plunged the country into extreme poverty, from which it has never recovered. Then the economic crisis, the impossibility of controlling violence in the streets, the assassination of the President and another earthquake in 2021, together with tropical storms and the pandemic, have thrown the population into a situation of continuous humanitarian emergency.
Almost two weeks ago, the announcement by the now former Prime Minister Ariel Henry that elections would take place by August 2025 (while the Prime Minister's term had already expired on 7 February) threw the country into utter chaos. The criminal gangs, which dominate every neighbourhood of the capital and the country's communications, have raised the level of violence with threats of civil war and genocide if the Prime Minister, who was in Puerto Rico at the time, had not resigned. The leaders of the criminal groups launched assaults on the country's main prisons, freeing more than 3,500 inmates and concentrating their attacks in the area around the National Palace and the airport.
“The situation in Haiti is chaotic. There are no words to describe it. We are living in hell” said the Salesians who are still trying to make themselves useful in a country in disarray, and to assist the population subjected to an unprecedented wave of violence.
Haiti is awaiting the deployment of an international security support mission led by Kenya and approved by the United Nations last October. Meanwhile, the country survives amid institutional collapse, the inability of the police and army to deal with criminal gangs, and a population that has nothing to eat.
"We Salesians are currently well, but we cannot carry out any activity since 29 February when this situation began" said the Salesians. Since then, armed gang violence has erupted. "The gangs ransacked police stations and everything they encountered, businesses, shops...", they continue.
In the capital, Port-au-Prince, there have been shootings between the gangs and with the police, and kidnappings are the order of the day. Since January, according to the United Nations, more than 1,200 people have been killed. The country is on the verge of collapse and paralysis, international agencies explain. This instability has already caused about 300,000 displaced people.
Now criminal gangs control about 80% of the territory of the capital, Port-au-Prince, hospitals are unable to treat the wounded, many shops have been looted in recent days and the corpses of the victims remain unburied along the streets around the prisons, where last Saturday the mass escape took place, so much so that there have already been several cases of cholera.
Salesians have been working in Haiti since 1935. Their educational works are distributed throughout the country and each year they take care of over 22,000 children and young people through schools, Vocational Training Centres, youth centres and family homes.
Haiti's future is complex. “We live in fear, because we don't know what could happen from one minute to the next. This is our life in the last days: we ask you to pray and not to forget us", conclude the Salesians of Haiti.
Source: Misiones Salesianas
