Haitian Voodoo Priest Triggers Gang-Murder of 184.
Posted by Ed Folsom, December 10, 2024.
(Ralph Tedy Erol/Reuters, via CNN)
What initially really struck me in this story was the odd assessment of UN High Commissioner Volker Türk.
This past weekend, Haitian gang leader Micanor Altes, aka Wa Mikanò, aka Felix, and his acolytes murdered least 184 people in the Wharf Jérémie district of the nation’s capital, Port-au-Prince. The gangsters carried out the killings after a Voodoo priest convinced Altes that elderly people in Wharf Jérémie had used witchcraft to cast a spell on Altes’s son, who recently fell ill and died. Altes’s murder victims were mostly over the age of 60, although they also included younger people who got in the way while trying to save the older ones.
The victims were shot, stabbed with knives, and hacked with machetes according to various reports. Many were burned in the streets. This caused UN High Commissioner Volker Türk to assess that, “We need to stem the flow of arms into Haiti.”
Violence is rampant in Haiti, where gangs now rule Port-au-Prince, if not the entire country. A UN-backed multinational policing force, led by Kenya, operates in Haiti to very little effect.
The nation is currently ruled by a nine-member transitional council, formed in April of this year after Prime Minister Ariel Henry found himself locked out of the country by gang violence. Henry left Haiti to seek support for an African coalition to impose order. While he was gone, the disorder grew to the point that he couldn’t return. He resigned his post in April.
The transitional council has been plagued by a bribery scandal involving three of its members and recent moves to replace Prime Minister Gary Conille, whom the council previously installed. The country has no Parliament and no democratically elected leader.
Last month, a Spirit Airlines flight from the U.S. was struck by bullets while landing at the Port-au-Prince airport. Post-flight inspections of Jet Blue and American Airlines planes determined that they also were hit by gunfire around the same time. This caused the FAA to halt all flights to Haiti for 30 days.
Haiti is an entirely failed nation of more than 11 million people not far south of us – not just a disaster waiting to happen but already a disaster. How will the world effectively help them to help themselves where they live?
