A few weeks ago we wrote a blog asking for prayers about the threat of upcoming political unrest. Since then we have been asked many times how things are going here in Haiti.Without wide spread news outlets, Haiti is a country where rumors run rampant. Rumors, whether true or not are often taken as fact and at times become self fulfilling. So my update for this post is a summary of the current rumor mill. Both sides have their own opinion of what happened or will happen.
As I explained in the previous blog, the current issue being debated is when President Jovenel Moise’s term ends. The opposition said February 7th 2021, Jovenel claims Feb 7th 2022. The opposition threatened that if Jovenel didn’t step down that they would take to the streets and have nationwide protests. Whether or not we believed these things were going to happen, everyone still had to take caution.
Inevitably the beginning of February everyone started living on edge. Schools shut down, public transportation was almost non existent for several days nation wide, businesses boarded up their windows, and the entire nation decided to just stay home to ensure their safety. On the days leading up to the 7th and a few days afterwards, there were a handful of protests scattered through out the country. Tires were burned, roads were blocked, and there was several armed clashes between gangs and the police. Despit these, I am thankful to report, that overall the country has remained calm.
Over the last few years the opposition has been paying people to take to the streets to protest. Now the police force, for better or worse, have claimed a “Zero Tolerance” to political unrest. Therefore if they see someone protesting or suspect they will protest, they just kill them right there in the street. Nick and I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, having an entire country living in fear (and young students being attacked on the way to school) is unacceptable and we are happy to see the police force taking action to prevent this. On the other hand of course we don’t feel it’s right for the police to be judge and executioner. Regardless, this zero tolerance made everyday citizens who had previously protested in order to feed their family dinner that night, more resistant to do so, and as a result, the protests that did happen were much smaller.
The president claimed that there was an attempt on his life on the 7th but that it was foiled and they arrested 20ish people. He claims that three Supreme Courts Judges were involved and therefore retired them from their position. One judge even had a Presidential Acceptance speech written that he was prepared to deliver to the Nation that day. The opposition claims the president staged the whole thing to make him look better.
There was fighting for several days amongst the Opposition as they had different opinions on who should take over as the new president until an election could take place. Several individuals even claimed themselves to be the new president. Thankfully nothing has amounted from any of those claims. Over all the past week or so the rumors seem to have calmed down and life is mostly back to normal. Or at least our new version of normal.
The country is currently plagued with kidnapping. The official report from the US Embassy is that well over 100 individuals have been kidnapped this year alone, and those are just the numbers reported. My assumption would be that many attacks are not reported. These kidnappings are occurring at random and the Embassy reports there is no pattern to them. Both individuals/families with and with out means have been targeted. Children and adults alike have been taken. Individuals from various nationalities have been taken, but so far there are only rumors of very few white Americans who have been kidnapped (its hard to find actual numbers as it’s being kept very quite). Our family has taken steps to be extra cautious any time we are off the farm. Although they are happening across the country, the bulk of them appear to be taking place in the capital of Port au Prince, which is a long way from where we live.
Haiti is definitely not the same place it was a few years ago, and we are still grieving that loss of safety we used to feel. However, we are thankful that this month hasn’t been as bad as they had predicted it to be. Likely this instability will continue at least to some extent until the Presidents term is over next February. Hopefully things will settle down after that.