Port-Au-Prince, Oct 18: At least two persons were killed and dozens injured during an anti corruption protest in Haiti on Wednesday.
An anti-corruption campaign that started on social media saw its biggest street protest yet when tens of thousands of Haitians took to the streets across the Caribbean country on Wednesday to demand an accounting for nearly $2 billion in allegedly misused funds from an oil program sponsored by Venezuela that was supposed to be used to rebuild the country after its devastating 2010 earthquake.
Haitian National Police spokesman Michel-Ange Louis-Jeune said at least two people were killed during the tension-filled day and several others were wounded by gunshots including five people in Cap-Haitien, the country’s second largest city. The wounded were taken by police to a local hospital.
Early in the day, a Port-au-Prince police officer was injured when a rock was thrown and hit his head at Pont-Rouge near Cité Soleil. Police responded by firing shots in the air and were videotaped scrambling on the ground for cover. The officers had been providing security for Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, who was visiting the site with members of his government to lay a wreath, as is customary, to commemorate the death of founding father Jean Jacques Dessalines.
When the violence erupted, the president, who had been met by crowds of protesters and some supporters, had departed in his motorcade. He was flown by helicopter to Marchand Dessalines, the city that Dessaline founded and Haiti’s first strategic capital after independence, Miami Herald reported.
The protests — which took place on the 212th anniversary of the assassination of Dessalines, a slave-turned-revolutionary hero who declared Haiti free from French rule in 1804 — extended all the way to Miami. About 100 protesters gathered in Little Haiti, holding up signs depicting Moïse and convicted drug trafficker Guy Philippe side by side, while singing a refrain in Creole —“corner the thief” — to the sounds of beating drums.
In Haiti, where the protests drew a crowd, that included many young people fed up with the country’s governance, rising cost-of-living and lack of jobs, the chant was the same. Donning black-and-white T-shirts with the Creole words Kot Kòb Petwo Karibe a, or “where is the PetroCaribe money,” some protesters also demanded an international audit of the government’s books. They chanted, “Arrest the accusers” and called for Moïse’s resignation.
While he didn’t address the protests directly, Moïse did mention corruption several times during his hour-and-six-minute speech, saying he was committed to cracking down on it. But other than some members of his administration removing fake employees from their payrolls, Moïse hasn’t shown any great commitment.
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