People in Haiti on Tuesday took to the streets to protest rising insecurity, with demonstrations turning violent in Les Cayes, where people stormed an airport, and attacked and burned a small plane owned by a US missionary group.
At least one person died and five others were injured, including four police officers, in the confrontation between protesters and authorities in Les Cayes, said Gedeon Chery, a Haitian National Police inspector assigned to the city’s airport.
Chery told reporters that the person killed was a protester who was shot, but he did not say whether police were responsible.
Photo: AFP
A second small plane was burned at the local airport of the city of Jacmel, but it was not clear if it was also part of an attack by protesters, National Police spokesman Garry Desrosiers said.
The second aircraft was non-operational and had been stationed there for a while, Desrosiers said.
The protests coincided with the 35th anniversary of Haiti’s 1987 constitution, and follow other protests and strikes in the past few weeks amid a spike in gang-related kidnappings and complaints about Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry’s inability to confront gangs.
Photo: Reuters
On Twitter, Henry condemned the violence in Les Cayes and said he has ordered authorities to look for the people behind it.
Chery said that a group of people had gotten onto the terminal’s tarmac, attacked the plane and set it on fire.
A video posted in social media showed some people on the plane’s fuselage while the red-and-white aircraft was moving on the tarmac, and others running alongside it.
Chery said he did not know why they attacked it.
Agape Flights, a Christian ministry transporting supplies to missionaries in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas, said in a statement that “our team is safe.”
It said Agape’s Chieftain aircraft was destroyed and they are preparing to bring the ministry’s team back to the US.
“Our missionary affiliates are hearing that they thought it was a politician’s plane they were destroying,” the statement said.
People also protested in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, where some burned tires.
They criticized how Henry has not controlled insecurity.
“He has nothing left to offer but words and more baseless words,” said Marie-Andre Michelle, one of the people who marched in Port-au-Prince.
Violence has increased over the past year, despite the prime minister’s pledges to crack down on insecurity.
Kidnappings in Haiti increased 180 percent last year, with 655 of them reported to police, a report last month by the UN Security Council said.
Authorities say that the number could be higher, as many kidnappings go unreported.
Along with violence, Haiti has been also dealing with the ongoing sluggish investigation of former Haitian president Jovenel Moise’s killing on July 7 last year and a magnitude 7.2 earthquake that killed more than 2,200 people in the country’s south in August last year.
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