Capital Port-au-Prince a ‘city under siege’ as US Marines reportedly evacuate embassy staff
Photo: iStock Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and the Caribbean’s most populous nation, may ‘have fallen’ to criminal gangs this weekend, with the United States Marine Corps reportedly evacuating embassy staff from the capital, Port-au-Prince, according to the Miami Herald newspaper.
According to The Guardian, “US defence officials told the newspaper (Miami Herald) that the middle-of-the-night operation (by US Marines to reinforce embassy security and evacuate non-essential staff) had been conducted via helicopter at the request of the state department.”
News agency AFP quoted Philippe Branchat, the International Organization for Migration’s chief in Haiti as saying:
Haitians are unable to lead a decent life. They are living in fear, and every day, every hour this situation carries on, the trauma gets worse. People living in the capital are locked in, they have nowhere to go. The capital is surrounded by armed groups and danger. It is a city under siege.
Meanwhile, Ayibopost, a Haitian portal, reported on March 10 that “in Port-au-Prince, the police are on their knees”.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, had on March 6, 2024, warned that the world was ‘running out of time’.
The latest offensive by armed gangs, which have been growing in strength since the powerful earthquake of 2010 devastated the country, began on February 29. The gangs, attempting to topple the government of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, began to storm and ransack hospitals, prisons and police stations and also attacked the port and airport of the capital, The Guardian reported.
In early March, the gangs stormed two of Haiti’s biggest prisons — one in Port-au-Prince and the other in nearby Croix des Bouquets — the BBC reported.
“More than 4,500 inmates are now known to have escaped, among them prominent gang members as well as those arrested in connection with the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse,” according to the UN.
Turk had warned that Haiti’s health system was on the brink of collapse, with hospitals often not having the capacity to treat those arriving with gunshots wounds.
Schools and business were closed. Children were increasingly being used by gangs, he added.
“Economic activity is asphyxiated as gangs impose restrictions on people’s movements…The reality is that, in the current context, there is no realistic alternative available to protect lives. We are simply running out of time,” noted Turk.
Haiti occupies one-half of the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, with the Dominican Republic occupying the other.
The country, whose name comes from Ayiti as its Taino natives called it, was visited by Christopher Columbus during his first voyage in 1492. Columbus founded the first European settlement in the Americas, La Navidad (‘The Nativity’ in Spanish), in Haiti.
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The area known today as Haiti ultimately came under France, as its colony of Saint-Domingue. Haiti later became the first independent country of Latin America and the Caribbean, the first free black republic in the world and the second republic in the Western Hemisphere after the US.
This happened as a result of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) under the leadership of Toussaint Louverture, who did not live to see a free Haiti, although he set in motion its eventual independence.
The country was forced by France to pay 150 million francs in the immediate aftermath of its freedom as ‘reparations to French slaveholders’. It took Haiti 122 years to pay the debt.
In the 20th century, the US occupied the country for 19 years and continued to meddle in its internal affairs thereafter by allegedly supporting the Duvalier Dynasty of Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier and overthrowing Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
The country has still not recovered from the 2010 earthquake. A string of unpopular leaders have held power since 2010 and none has run the course. They also maintained armed gangs as their private militia which then turned rogue, giving rise to the gangs that have now reportedly overtaken Haiti.
In 2021, the Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in his bedroom. His successor, Ariel Henry, can now be overthrown at any moment, according to The Guardian.
The unrest has seen 362,000 Haitians internally displaced — more than half of them children, the International Organization for Migration stated on March 9. More than 160,000 people are currently displaced in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area alone, it added.
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