Doctors Without Borders suspends its activities in Port-au-Prince following police violence

The non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) announced on Tuesday, November 19, that it was suspending its activities in the capital of Haiti, a country in the grip of chaos, after two of its patients were killed on November 11. . Following “serious threats made against its staff by members of the Haitian police forces, MSF is forced to suspend its activities in Port-au-Prince until further notice”starting Wednesday, the NGO wrote in a press release.

She recalls that she had denounced, on November 13, incidents that occurred two days earlier when one of her ambulances “had been attacked, leading to the execution of at least two patients and an attack on medical staff”. “The following week, police officers stopped MSF vehicles on several occasions and directly attacked staff, uttering death and rape threats”further denounced the press release.

A “In Haiti and elsewhere, we are used to working in conditions of extreme insecurity, but when even law enforcement becomes a direct threat, we have no choice but to suspend our projects”added MSF.

This poor Caribbean country has suffered from chronic political instability for decades. He also has to deal with gang violence, which controls 80% of the capital, Port-au-Prince. These armed groups, accused of numerous murders, rapes, looting and kidnappings for ransom, decided at the beginning of the year to join forces to overthrow the Prime Minister, Ariel Henry.

Corpses of gang members burned in the street

A new head of government, Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, was sworn in on November 11. He promised to “restore security” in the country the day after the dismissal of his predecessor, Garry Conille, by the Presidential Transitional Council, which is at the head of the executive of this country deprived of a president since 2021 and elections since 2016.

On Tuesday, the Haitian police announced that they had killed, with the support of residents of Port-au-Prince, twenty-eight members of armed gangs, after the latter launched an offensive in the capital. Corpses of people, described as members of these criminal gangs, were subsequently burned in a street in Pétion-Ville.

Last week, gunfire at three American airline planes prompted the federal civil aviation regulator (FAA) to ban commercial flights between the United States and Haiti. The Port-au-Prince airport has since been closed.

Added to the violence is a catastrophic humanitarian situation, which last week forced more than 20,000 people to move, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), something never seen before with “such a magnitude […] since August 2023 ». However, there is a multinational police support mission in Haiti. Supported by the UN and the United States, it is led by Kenya, which deployed a little more than 400 men there this summer.

The UN representation in Haiti counted 1,233 murders between July and September, 45% of which were attributable to law enforcement and 47% to gangs, in a country of twelve million inhabitants.