SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A photographer slain in a drive-by shooting. An 80-year-old patient executed in a hospital surgery room. A couple decapitated as they closed their small store for the day.
A new report released by a Haitian human rights group details the horrific violence unleashed this year by gangs who kill, rape and maim with impunity amid a political vacuum.
“This year it’s much worse, and it’s all about the gangs. They have much more power, and they occupy more space,” Pierre Espérance, executive director of the National Human Rights Defense Network, said Thursday.
The group seeks to hold those responsible accountable, and it relies on people on the ground to collect victims’ names, ages and occupations to ensure they don’t remain anonymous amid a surge in slayings. The killings are difficult to track and are not reported by an underfunded and under resourced police department overwhelmed by gangs.
Overall, more than 1,550 people have been killed across Haiti and more than 820 injured from January to March 22, according to the U.N.
The report released Wednesday by the rights group found that among those killed were seven people aboard a sailboat traveling west of Port-au-Prince that was providing public transportation; nine bus passengers traveling on the main road that connects Port-au-Prince to the central Artibonite region; and a sergeant at the headquarters of Haiti’s Armed Forces who was struck in the head by a stray bullet.
Other victims include a 7-year-old boy; a woman who was director of a girls’ school; a 28-year-old basketball player; the chief accountant for the Secretariat of State Literacy; and a 26-year-old sports reporter struck by a stray bullet while at home.
The report also detailed widespread armed attacks on multiple neighborhoods in which at least 67 people were killed as gangs set fire to homes, forcing survivors to flee. Some 17,000 people have been left homeless as a result, with many cramming into overcrowded, makeshift shelters.
Some of those fleeing sought refuge on the premises of the Social Welfare and Research Institute in early March, but police pushed back the crowd in a scuffle that ended with the death of a 14-year-old boy, the report found.
Gang rapes also are common during attacks on neighborhoods, with at least 64 reported rape survivors from January to March. The number, however, is believed to be much higher given the stigma around sexual assaults.
Among those injured was a woman whose jaw was crushed by a stray bullet, the report found.
As gang violence continues unabated, medical workers have struggled to help the wounded and ill. Haiti’s biggest public hospital remains closed, along with at least a dozen other smaller hospitals and clinics. Meanwhile, basic supplies like fuel, oxygen and medications, including pain killers, are scarce given that Haiti’s main seaport remains largely shut down and its main international airport closed for more than a month.
