Dr. Ronald V. LaRoche hasn’t been able to cross into danger zone to inspect the hospital he runs in Haiti’s Delmas 18 neighborhood since it was ransacked by gangs last week, but a TikTok video he saw gave clues to his current condition : on fire.
He learned from neighbors and others who ventured into the gang’s territory that Jude-Anne Hospital had been ransacked and cleared of anything of value. It was the second hospital to be closed.
“They took everything — the operating rooms, the X-rays, everything from the labs and the pharmacies,” Dr. LaRoche said. “I imagine! They take windows from hospitals! Doors!”
Haiti is in the midst of an uprising not seen in decades. As politicians across the region try to find a diplomatic solution to a political crisis that has trapped Prime Minister Ariel Henry in Puerto Rico and gangs attack police stations, a humanitarian disaster is rapidly escalating. The food supply is threatened and access to water and health care has been severely limited.
Andre Michel, an adviser to the prime minister, said Mr. Henri refused to resign and asked the international community to take all necessary measures to ensure his return to Haiti.
United States and Caribbean leaders are trying to convince Mr Henry that continuing in power is “untenable”. A Kenyan-led international security mission has stalled. The United States offered to fund the mission, but showed little interest in sending its own troops.
On Sunday, the US military conducted an operation to add more security forces to the US embassy and airlift non-essential personnel out of the country, the US Southern Command said in a statement. “No Haitians were on board the military aircraft,” the statement said.
As gangs expand their territory and gather in coordinated attacks against the state, millions of people across the country are caught in the middle. Many are afraid to leave their homes for fear of being caught in the crossfire. They are hungry. They are running out of clean water and natural gas. They are desperate.
“Everybody around me is running,” said Dr. LaRoche, who packed up and closed three more medical facilities to avoid more looting. “Women, children and the elderly have bags on their heads and are leaving on foot. It’s a war zone.”
Gangs that over the past year have spread across the country joined forces last week to attack state institutions, freeing thousands of prisoners. They are demanding the resignation of Mr. Henry, who was unable to return to Haiti as violence surrounded the airport and grounded all flights.
The chaos has left people to fend for themselves as best they can.
“The biggest fear is stray bullets,” said Nixon Bubba, 42. Advisor to the American Jewish World Service, an international aid and human rights organization based in Haiti.
Last weekend she called the motorcycle taxi driver she uses on a regular basis to go shopping. “He said, ‘I can’t come now. My brother was hit by a stray bullet,” Mr Bumba said.
The driver’s brother was hit in the stomach and is recovering in hospital. Another friend’s daughter was hit in the jaw by a bullet on the campus of the city’s main public university, he said.
Blondine Tanis, 36, a radio host who was kidnapped for ransom in July by people on her street, who then sold her to another gang that held her for nine days, said the violence in Haiti was nothing like she had ever seen before. He compared it to the 1991 coup that led to three years of military rule, but then it was a baby.
“There are young children on the streets with heavy automatic weapons,” he said. “They shoot people and burn their bodies without remorse. I don’t know how to describe this. I wonder what happened to this generation. Are they even human?’
Ms. Tanis said she has applied to enter the United States through the Biden administration’s humanitarian parole program.
As the security situation worsens, so does food insecurity. Nearly a million of Haiti’s 11 million people are on the brink of starvation, according to the U.N. About 350,000 of them are on the run, living on the streets, in tent cities or in overcrowded schools as gangs invade their neighborhoods.
Most people now only leave their homes to do basic things like go to the bank or shop for food and water. They take advantage of the lull in violence to buy groceries. But experts fear stocks will soon start to dwindle as more goods pile up at the docks because road transport is too dangerous and gangs have taken over ports.
One person described the scene at a supermarket on Saturday as a “carnival” because so many people spent hours queuing to get supplies. Zanmi Lasante, a health organization affiliated with Partners In Health who has been working in Haiti for decades, said he has enough fuel to run his generators for about a week.
MSF was forced to increase hospital bed capacity from 50 to 75 as more and more people unable to access the closed public hospital turned up with gunshot wounds. A patient arrived at 3pm for treatment of a gunshot wound from that morning. He died minutes later, said Dr. James Gana, who treats patients and helps run the clinics.
Doctors Without Borders recently opened an emergency clinic in the city center after it had been closed for several months because gang members had removed patients from an ambulance and then killed them in front of the organization’s staff. Blood and oxygen supplies are running low.
“We will very soon have shortages of everything,” said Jean-Marc Biquet, MSF’s head of mission in Haiti. “There is no more gas at the gas stations. People sell fuel in small bins and no one knows where that fuel comes from.”
Without a supply of clean drinking water, there is an increased risk of cholera, he said.
Mario Delatour, 68, a film director, said he has not found bottled water for three days. A generous neighbor with a water treatment system filled a five-gallon bottle for him Saturday, but he still needs gas for the generator that powers his home. His neighborhood, a relatively safe haven, has been without power for three months.
“I have enough fuel for tonight, but I don’t know about tomorrow,” Mr. Delatour said. “I’m a little on edge. It’s a terrible thing, man.’
Julio Loiseau, a community activist in Port-au-Prince, said that with the power out, groceries go bad quickly, when you can find them.
“In order to have bread, one has to get in line very early in the morning,” he said. “The only bread factory cannot meet its demands due to lack of supply. I’m out of supplies.”
Jean-Martin Bauer, Haiti country director for the United Nations World Food Program, noted that the economic situation for many people is particularly precarious because it has been too dangerous for people to go out to work and many people take their money out on a daily basis.
“What is happening in Haiti is a prolonged episode of mass starvation,” Mr. Bauer said. “That’s probably one of the causes of what’s happening. We know that hunger is associated with instability and is a breeding ground for conflict, a breeding ground for strife and mass migration.”
Franz Louis, 35, a security guard waiting for his shift on Saturday, said that like many Haitians, he feels that Haiti has “totally fallen apart.”
“The best solution for a young person at the moment is to leave the country,” he said. “If you want to stay in your country and you can’t eat and you can’t go where you want, what other choice do you have?”
Mr Lewis said he wondered what the end game of the gangs was. “Do they have an ideology?” asked.
Robert, a 41-year-old furniture maker in Port-au-Prince, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals, said he was forced to sell his furniture for less than what it cost him to make.
“Sometimes you buy rice and you don’t have enough money to buy vegetable oil and spices, and that happened to me last week,” said Robert, from his outdoor workshop. “Now the rice is finished and I have to find another piece of furniture to sell at a low price—and I also need a customer.”
Robert has a wife and two children, a 7-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl. He even avoids looking at the large wardrobe he built in December that he has failed to sell.
“The day I have no more furniture to sell,” he said, “will be famine.”
