Like at fan school, we give good mentions. The current Minister of Trade and Industry, Ricardin St-Jean, who has failed miserably with the government team in place since July 2021, was appointed Minister of the Interior and Territorial Communities during the Council of Ministers of May 8. In Haiti, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Haitians denounced the mismanagement of Mr. Ricardin Saint-Jean during two days of demonstrations, which began on Tuesday August 23, 2022, against the shortage of fuel, the high cost of living and insecurity. The demonstrators even prevented the head of the Ministry of Trade and Industry from going to his office. With a banner in the air, they denounced their poverty and their poor living conditions. One of the demonstrators was shot in the abdomen by a police officer armed with an assault rifle.
The tragedy that Haiti is currently experiencing has reached a point where it “runs the risk of provoking a real genocide in the country,” warned Father Henry Marc Siméon, director of the communications office of the Archdiocese of Port-au-Prince, The capital of the country.
In an interview with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, Siméon pleaded for support: “People [d’Haïti] who are calling for help today need men and women of good will from all countries to come to their aid, to help us get out of this situation we are experiencing. »
The priest stressed that Pope Francis has repeatedly made calls for peace and support for the Haitian people. Just on April 28, on the occasion of the recitation of the Regina Caeli while in Venice, the Holy Father prayed “that the God of peace may illuminate hearts so that the will for dialogue and reconciliation may grow in each. »
Siméon shared the drama they experience daily: “Some say that today Port-au-Prince has become an open-air cemetery. You walk down the street among corpses. There is not a day when, if we walk in the center of the city, we do not come across corpses of people whose identity or origin we know neither, and whose families sometimes cannot offer them a decent burial. »
Gangs force people to pay ‘tolls’
The same United Nations report indicates that nearly 90% of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area is controlled by gangs. The priest further lamented that “we cannot leave…to go to another area of the country without passing through a point controlled by the bandits. We have to pay tolls. »
Siméon recalled a recent call from a nun who told him that “her vehicle with nuns and lay people on board had been stopped. They made them pay the toll to continue and kidnapped one person who was with them. »
Although “some religious congregations continue to operate” in the country, he said, “there are many difficulties for religious communities to operate and continue their mission. »
“On several occasions, gang members have kidnapped religious men and women,” he noted, including six nuns from the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Anne, six Brothers of the Sacred Heart and three Sisters of Saint -Joseph of Cluny. All the sisters and four of the brothers were later released.
