Guns in Sun City

 

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Guns in Sun City

At night in Port-au-Prince, my wife and I watch the sunset over the ocean. It is beautiful from where we are sitting, but we know all is not well below us in the slum. Cite Soleil (Sun City) is a slum built on a garbage dump on the Bay of Port-au-Prince. We often hear gunshots from automatic weapons coming from that direction. The sounds are very scary to hear and we are two miles away.

Who is shooting? We never know, but we do know the guns are powerful. It could be coming from the gangs in Cite Soleil or from MINUSTAH, the acronym for the United Nations forces in Haiti. MINUSTAH has been in Haiti since President Aristide was overthrown a second time in 2004 and they number about 8,000. Haiti’s national police do not have the weapons or the training to take on the gangs in the slum and won’t go near them. Almost no one, except people who live in Soleil, can come and go, and they do so only with trepidation.

Two weeks ago President Preval asked the gang leaders to turn in their weapons in an attempt to restore order in this country of constant chaos plagued with armed robbery, carjackings, and kidnappings in the middle of the day. President Preval made it clear that blood would be shed if the guns were not turned over. The gang leaders responded that they would turn in their guns yesterday but then changed their minds. The gangs blame MINUSTAH for continuing their violent assaults in the streets of Cite Soleil and their leaders state that MINUSTAH doesn’t really want “peace and disarmament because they want a justification for their presence here (Haiti).”

Several months ago, my wife and I “toured” Cite Soleil with the protection of two gang leaders. Soleil is home to several hundred thousand people and looks and smells as horrible as usual. The pockmarked bullet-ridden buildings are very scary and sad to look at. The gang leaders insisted that all they want are jobs that can provide them with enough money to feed their families.

Each morning in clinic I see babies carried by their mom or dad who has walked out of Cite Soleil that morning, sometimes dodging bullets, to get basic medical care for their child. They are risking their sick baby’s life and their lives to venture out of the slum. The parents act like parents in the states. They want the best for their children and will do anything they can to provide it including going through gunfire if necessary. 

I often ask myself what that parent would be doing in the United States. Would they be using a computer, would they be working in a bank, or would they be a mechanical engineer? These parents have no real jobs even though they work all the time to put a little food on their children’s plates at night. But their hopes for their children are the same as ours.

When people with big guns fight, the little people are always caught in the middle. The kids that cannot go to school, get a good meal, or obtain basic medical care, suffer the consequences of chaos. A simple medical problem can and often does become life-threatening as the guns keep firing in Sun City.

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Thoughts from today--February 7, 2021--

• As 2006 progressed, Cite Soleil would be a tragedy as MINUSTAH and the gangs shot at each other and innocent people were caught in the crossfire. 
• The MINUSTAH forces would increase many thousands in the following 10 years. And the cost to have these "peacekeeping forces" in Haiti would be an obscene one million dollars per day. 
• Gang leaders would come and go over the next 15 years in Soleil. 
• And it seems to me that Haiti's leaders have always wanted to keep Soleil the way it is. But to what end? This type of suffering is not created and sustained without help from above.
• Today is Super Bowl Sunday in the United States. The Tampa Bay Bucs against the Kansas City Chiefs. An old quarterback against a young quarterback. And throw the threat of super spreaders and Covid in and we have quite a spectacle. 
• But in Haiti, the American Super Bowl is not high on the list of importance. I spoke to a Haitian friend today who is ensconced in his shack with his family. Today is the day that the opposition forces in Haiti want President Jovenel Moise to step down. 
• My friend warns me that if Mr. Moise does not step down today, there will be violence. And if he DOES step down, there STILL will be violence according to my friend. 
• Moïse became president in 2017 through elections that were so deeply flawed and violent that almost 80 percent of Haitian voters did not, or could not, vote. He has avoided having any more elections, so Parliament became inoperative in January 2020, when most legislators’ terms expired. When mayors’ terms expired in July, Moïse personally appointed their replacements. (Miami Herald/Bastien/Kurzban)
• Mr. Moïse’s five-year presidential term ends today, which is why the opposition is demanding that he step down. But the president is refusing to vacate office before February 2022, arguing that an interim government occupied the first year of his five-year term. (New York Times)
• Two days ago the Biden administration gave support for President Moise remaining in power for another year. However, this is against the Haitian constitution which Mr. Moise is trying to rewrite as he orders by decree. There is no functioning Haitian Parliament at the current time having been dissolved by Mr. Moise in 2020.
• Kidnappings in Haiti during 2020 reminded me of 2006. Even poor people are kidnapped if there is any possibility of receiving ransom from them. 
• Many schools shut their doors this month not over Covid-19, but to protect students and teachers against a kidnapping-for-ransom epidemic that began haunting the nation a year ago. No one is spared: not nuns, priests or the children of struggling street vendors. Students now organize fund-raisers to collect ransoms to free classmates. (New York Times)
• And Port-au-Prince has been gangsterized. Gangs are all over Port-au-Prince, not just in the slums. And they terrorize peace-loving Haitians by walking down the sidewalks flaunting their guns out in the open. 
• Haitians suspect that the proliferation of gangs over the last two years has been supported by Mr. Moïse to stifle any dissent. At first, the gangs targeted opposition neighborhoods and attacked protests demanding better living conditions. But the gangs may have grown too big to be tamed and now seem to operate everywhere. (New York Times)
• Compared to 2006, I believe Haiti is much worse off in 2021. There are more people crammed into the same space, the Haitian currency has been devalued, one-third of the Haitian population are underfed, basic health care is not available to most, civil unrest and gangsters have locked down the country multiple times, and the Haitian government watches and does nothing as Haiti inches close to another violent explosion.