Voodoo Vendetta

Around 200 people were killed over the weekend in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince in a massacre ordered by a powerful gang leader who targeted Voodoo practitioners and the elderly in a personal vendetta, according to the Guardian.

The National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH) said on Sunday that gang leader Monel “Mikano” Felix ordered the massacre in Cite Soleil, one of the capital’s poorest and most violent neighborhoods, after his son died from an illness, reported Al Jazeera.

At least 110 people were killed in Cite Soleil on Saturday and Sunday by gang members using machetes and knives, most of them over the age of 60, according to the rights group. Felix had reportedly sought advice from a Voodoo priest who told him that elderly people in the area were using witchcraft to harm his child.

Voodoo was brought to Haiti by enslaved people from Africa and is now a pillar of Haitian culture. It includes aspects of other religious beliefs, such as Catholicism, but has been villainized by other religions, noted the Guardian.

“He decided to cruelly punish all elderly people and Vodou practitioners who, in his imagination, would be capable of sending a bad spell on his son,” read a statement from the Haiti-based Committee for Peace and Development (CPD). “The gang’s soldiers were responsible for identifying victims in their homes to take them to the chief’s stronghold to be executed.”

According to the United Nations, about 5,000 people have been killed in Haiti so far this year and an estimated 700,000 people have been displaced, half of them children.

Although Haiti has suffered from decades of instability, the situation escalated in February when armed groups launched coordinated attacks in the capital to overthrow the prime minister, Ariel Henry. The interim government has been plagued by political infighting, leaving the country without a clear path to stability in the wake of gang violence and a severe humanitarian crisis.

A UN-backed security force, led by Kenya, has been deployed to restore order, although gangs controlling 80 percent of the capital have made it difficult for them to make progress. The mission, based on voluntary contributions, is also severely underfunded and only partially deployed, according to Al Jazeera.

Haitian leaders have called for the mission to be converted into a UN peacekeeping force to ensure it is better supplied, but the plan faces opposition from China and Russia.