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Haiti mobs dole out vigilante justice
Posted on Mon, Feb. 11, 2008
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The Associated PressPORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti —
Mobs attacked two suspected kidnappers in Haiti’s capital, stoning one to death, local and U.N. police said Monday.A man blamed for kidnappings in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Petionville was pummeled with rocks and killed late Saturday by neighbors in the seaside Cite Soleil slum, said Aristide Rosemon, a Haitian police inspector who oversees the area.
Witnesses told police that the man, who was thought to work for jailed gang boss Evens Jeune, reportedly fired a gun as stone-wielding residents surrounded him on a dark street. The shots caused no injuries.
Vigilante justice is common in Haiti, as corruption and poor policing often lead citizens to take the law into their own hands.
“The people don’t believe in the justice system,” Rosemon said. “Every time a gang member is arrested, he comes back.”
Police were not investigating Saturday’s lynching, he said.
The mob violence follows a fresh spate of kidnappings, with at least 38 people abducted in Haiti this year, including 15 in the first 11 days of February, U.N. police spokesman Fred Blaise said.
On Sunday, U.N. and Haitian police rescued a 27-year-old suspected kidnapper from a mob in downtown Port-au-Prince, Blaise said. He said he did not know whether the suspect was still in police custody.
@DrDave wrote:
Police were not investigating Saturday’s lynching, he said.
Do the police even go into Cite Soleil?
They only began going in recently with the UN. They still do not go alone. This is the first time they’ve been since 2004. Both police stations were burnt down then and the police were forced out. But I really don’t know what they were doing before or to what capacity. I can’t imagine that they did anything. I know they still must be scared shitless every time they go in.
I remember in 2006 talking to a PNH officer as he was sitting in his car outside of Cité Soleil in Aviation. There was a gun shot pretty close to where his head was in the windshield and the look on his face reminds me of when a Haitian radio journalist I was working with in Cite Soleil in Oct. 2007 was nearly killed by the Colonel, this enormous guy with biceps as big as my thighs and aviator sunglasses, sleeveless shirt and an M16. He was a truly bad ass looking guy and has since been killed by the UN.
Kidnappers have become pretty much intolerable to the population and the people will kill them if they are recognized. My girlfriend was asking me if I had heard about anything happening cos she had been told to stay at home and to absolutely not go downtown for a few days but wasn’t told why. And this was the reason why. People were on the lookout for this guy and a few others. When he was found, they lynched him.
The police will not investigate cos there is no need. The people did what they could not do.
On December 20, 2006, a mob attacked the sous-commasariat on Delmas because the police were protecting suspected kidnappers. They tore shit up. They just wanted to kill the guys on the spot and be done with it.
I remember at some point in ’06 or ’07 being downtown at the police headquarters with the the chief of police and during the hour that I was in his office, several kidnappings were reported in the capital, many just a few kilometres away in the marketplace. That’s a lot of freaking kidnappings. That poor guy had way too much on his plate and shit for resources.
Port-au-Prince has pretty much returned to normal. It’s quiet and the elite are back on the streets in Petionville. But there was a time when people were getting kidnapped by the dozen or dozens everyday. It was so pervasive that no one was left unaffected, including me.
The trend now is kidnapping small children and infants and killing them before ransom is received. Pretty grizzly shit. They picked up a bit this month. Maybe 30 or so now, I am not sure.
Forgot to mention that the police were doing their part kidnapping too. Sucks when the people who are supposed to protect you are kidnapping you instead. Mario Andresol has been trying to vet and overhaul the PNH but it’s an uphill battle. During the unelected interim government the police were responsible for a lot of summary executions and other unsavory acts like the soccer massacre in ’05 in Gran Ravine. It was a soccer match for peace sponsored by USAID. The police went in with lame ti machet, the little machete army, and butchered the place while the UN was outside the stadium. Fucked up. I think Reed Lindsay has some footage of it online but it might have been another one of the massacres in that area.
Well, proportionally there aren’t a lot of kidnappers and they’re well hated. I suppose something like growing up with absolutely nothing and having zero prospects for the future would make some think it’s a viable option.
When you grow up in those conditions your capacity to act and think like a human with all the advantages can be quite diminished. So, when some of these guys see people making money kidnapping, they think they can as well.
Not an excuse to kidnap or do any number of other fucked up atrocious things but that’s my take on it.
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