PORT-AU-PRINCE — At least 5,601 people were killed and more than 2,000 injured by armed gangs in Haiti last year, the United Nations human-rights office said Tuesday, calling for the restoration of the rule of law to be made a priority.
The death toll by gangs who have taken over Haiti’s capital was an increase of more than 1,000 over the previous year, Elizabeth Throssell, a representative of the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said during a press conference in Geneva.
“A further 2,212 people had been injured and 1,494 kidnapped,” she said.
The figures include at least 207 people killed in a massacre orchestrated by the leader of a powerful gang in the Wharf Jérémie section of Cité Soleil, the seaside slum of Port-au-Prince, in early December. Gang leader Micanor Altes, who goes by the names Wa Mikanò and Monel Felix, shot and slaughtered residents, most of them elderly, after accusing them of using Vodou to make his son ill.
To erase evidence of the killings, gang members mutilated and burned most of the bodies, and dumped corpses into the ocean, the the U.N. said.
A week after the killings, which unfolded during a gang attack in the neighboring Artibonite region, two journalists and a police officer were killed and seven others were wounded during the reopening of the country’s largest public hospital in a gang attack. The attack occurred on Christmas Eve in Port-au-Prince when street gangs fired high-power rifles through a metal gate at the old military hospital located at the back of the presidential palace during the reopening of the Hospital of the State University of Haiti, better known as the General Hospital. The hospital had been forced to close earlier in the year when armed groups mounted a siege on the capital to take down the government. Journalists had been invited to cover its reopening.
The minister of health was fired after the incident, but questions remain over the kinds of security measures requested ahead of the event. The hospital attack came at the end of a year that saw police stations, prisons, medical facilities and the man international airport targeted by armed gangs.
“These figures alone cannot capture the absolute horrors being perpetrated in Haiti, but they show the unremitting violence to which people are being subjected,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk.
In addition to the deaths carried out by armed gangs, hundreds died at the hands of the population because they were suspected of being gang members, or were accused of being complicit with criminal groups. OHCHR said it documented 315 such lynchings last year, including some that were reportedly facilitated by Haitian police officers.
In addition, there had been 281 cases of alleged summary executions involving specialized police units.
The release of the 2024 death toll came as deaths continue to rise in the new year. On Sunday, a Haiti National Police officer was shot to death. Jean Roudy Vilmond’s killing came hours after an entrepreneur, Robenson Rendel, was gunned down by three gunmen on motorcycles in the courtyard of the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in a section of Pétion-Ville.
Türk said Haitian authorities, who have been struggling to restore security amid a rocky political transition, have to work to end the impunity gangs enjoy. “It has long been clear that impunity for human rights violations and abuses, as well as corruption, remain prevalent in Haiti, constituting some of the main drivers of the multi-dimensional crisis the country faces, along with entrenched economic and social inequalities,” he said. “Additional efforts from the authorities, with the support of the international community, are needed to address these root causes.”
Türk also called for a strengthening of oversight within the Haiti National Haitian Police to hold police officers involved in human-rights violations accountable.
Last week, a contingent of military police from Guatemala and an advanced team of eight aviation specialists from El Salvador arrived in Port-au-Prince to reinforce the U.N.-authorized Multinational Security Support mission. The Central Americans are the first security personnel from Latin America, and includes the first women, numbering 19, to join the Kenya-led mission.
While the Salvadorans will be tasked with carrying out casualty and medical evacuations, Guatemala’s military in a post on X said its military police will be engaged in providing security to military installations and doing traffic control.
Godfrey Otunge, the multinational force commander, said the new contingent “will strengthen our fighting power against the gangs.”
He urged countries that have committed personnel but have yet to deploy them to do so. “Haiti urgently needs your support,” he said.
Türk restated the U.N.’s calls for financial support for the struggling security mission, which despite receiving more than $600 million in funds and supplies from the United States continues to be short on cash and equipment.
A vocal supporter of the mission, Türk has also called for the full implementation of U.N. Security Council sanctions against those contributing to Haiti’s destabilization and to enforce the U.N. arms embargo to stop the flow of weapons to gangs. Given Haiti’s ongoing crisis, which has also led to the displacement of more than 700,000 people, he emphasized that countries should halt deportations to Haiti. The country received two deportations flights from the U.S. in December, while Dominican authorities recently announced they had deported more than 276,000 Haitians last year.
“Weapons flowing into Haiti often end up in the hands of the criminal gangs, with tragic results: thousands killed, hundreds of thousands displaced, essential infrastructure and services, such as schools and hospitals, disrupted and destroyed,” Türk said.
“The acute insecurity and resulting human rights crisis in the country simply do not allow for the safe, dignified and sustainable return of Haitians. And yet, deportations are continuing. I reiterate my call to all States not to forcibly return anyone to Haiti.”
By JACQUELINE CHARLES/The Miami Herald