The streets of Haiti’s capital stink from all the uncollected corpses. When the stench becomes bad enough, residents sometimes come out to burn the corpses, despite the risk of being killed in the process.
So many people have been killed that the three million residents of Port-au-Prince are afraid to venture outside. It’s the result of a war by gangs to take control of the country as its corrupt and dysfunctional government has collapsed.
Once, Haiti had a functioning government. But it was run by the military, and U.S. president Bill Clinton sent troops to remove it and restore “democracy,” meaning rule by a violent left-wing demagogue, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Earlier, Aristide had incited mobs to kill his enemies through “necklacing” after being elected president by misguided Haitian voters. His violent and erratic behavior led to his overthrow by the military.
Ever since the military government of Raul Cedras was removed by Clinton, Haiti has gotten steadily more chaotic and violent, despite billions in foreign aid.
Aristide, who Clinton put back in power, loved the violent practice of necklacing. As Wikipedia explains,
Necklacing is a method of extrajudicial summary execution and torture carried out by forcing a rubber tire drenched with petrol around a victim’s chest and arms, and setting it on fire….This form of lynching was used in Haiti…It was used prominently by mobs allied with Jean-Bertrand Aristide to assassinate political enemies. Aristide himself allegedly showed strong support for this practice, calling it a “beautiful tool” that “smells good”, encouraging his Lavalas supporters to use it against wealthy people as well as members of the Lavalas party who were not as strong in their fervor.
The streets of Port-au-Prince reek with the stench of the dead. It’s a grisly new marker of the violence and dysfunction in this beleaguered Caribbean nation of 11 million people. In the absence of a functioning state, violent armed gangs have taken control of more than 80 percent of the capital, the United Nations estimates. Gunfire crackles at all hours. Residents who dare leave their homes stumble across bodies that have been left where they fell.
Port-au-Prince reached a high of 92 degrees on Friday. The smell of decaying corpses, human rights activists say, has driven some people from their homes. Others have taken it upon themselves to move or burn the bodies. Because who else will?
Even before the past week, public services in the city were sharply limited. Trash piled up in its slums; cholera had resurfaced. The gangs terrorized the population with systematic rape, indiscriminate kidnapping and mass killing, all with impunity.
Then attacks on two of the city’s largest prisons last weekend freed thousands of inmates, including some of the country’s most notorious criminals. Now the gangs, reinforced by returning comrades, have attacked the city’s airport and main port. They’ve torched at least a dozen police stations.
Intense fighting erupted Friday night between the gangs and police in the Champs de Mars, the largest park in downtown Port-au-Prince. Gangs threw Molotov cocktails at the interior ministry headquarters and fired gunshots at the presidential palace….The prime minister, traveling abroad to rally support for an international police force, was unable this week to return to the country. The gangs are in control.
One morgue director said he has received 20 calls in the past week from residents asking him to pick up bodies. Four calls came in on Friday, Lyonel Milfort said. He has refused all of them. With gangs barricading the streets, Milfort said, venturing out has been impossible. Other morgues have come under attack, he said, and he doesn’t want to risk the lives of his staff. “It’s heartbreaking to go around and see bodies being eaten by dogs and see the corpses covered with sheets.”
Romain Le Cour, a political scientist, says the unretrieved bodies reflect “extremely high levels of violence, extreme pressure on the population and a feeling of hopelessness and abandonment.”
On March 3, Jonathan Lindor passed by three corpses lying side by side in the road. Each had been bleeding, apparently from bullet wounds. All were barefoot. In Haiti, it’s not unusual for a killer to remove victims’ shoes after shooting them. He returned to the area on Wednesday. Neighbors, unable to bear the stench, had burned the remains. Another witness said the group eventually placed the remains in a ravine.
“The smell is intolerable,” Lindor said. “We don’t know who can pick them up, so people don’t have any other choice than to burn them.” Lindor had seen bodies burned on the streets of his city before, including during last year’s Bwa Kale movement, when large vigilante groups hunted down and killed alleged gang members. But he had never before seen conditions this dire, with an absent government leaving citizens to clear the streets of corpses themselves.“You cannot sleep in peace,” Lindor said.
