(Photo report) Haiti: Cries to the beloved country

“The world needs to see this, it’s hell here,” says Walgens Pierre Jean, 33, who lives in the ruins of the old Rex theater in Port-au-Prince, destroyed by the earthquake. 2010.

1,068 people are crowded there in unsanitary conditions, chased from their neighborhood of Carrefour-Feuilles by the Grand Ravine gang who seized this strategic position in the south of the capital.

The country has continued to disintegrate since the assassination of the President of the Republic, Jovenel Moïse, on July 7, 2021. His successor, the Prime Minister, Ariel Henry, suspected of being linked to the perpetrators of the crime, manages the temporary work in fragile conditions. For several months, there has been neither Parliament nor Senate, due to lack of elections. Gangs are proliferating. Coming from armed militias set up by political factions, they have escaped all control and are now spreading fear in the capital, multiplying murders, kidnappings and rapes.

In April 2023, the Bwa Kale self-defense movement attempted to resolve the problem through popular vengeance, with the population chasing and sometimes lynching members of armed gangs. But their influence now affects the province. The population is leaving the country en masse, helped by visas issued by the United States, which accentuates the brain drain. The international community does not dare to get involved, for fear of reliving the disaster of the UN mission (Minustah) between 2004 and 2017. And the future consequences seem ever more dramatic: agricultural production, which supports many Residents in the provinces are suffering the repercussions of the blockade of the capital by gangs. A food crisis is beginning to emerge, aggravated by the country’s fragility in the face of global warming.