https:\/\/medialatitudes.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/AUD-20230528-WA0813.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\nTo better understand the situation, here is Jean Samuel Mentor\u2019s account:<\/p>\n
Located in the municipality of Cabaret, some 30\u00a0kilometres north of Port-au-Prince, Source-Matelas has become a like cemetery without graves. This contrasts with that area\u2019s mainly agricultural background. Some industries have also been active there for years, such as the private port of Lafiteau\u2014owned by businessman Gilbert Bigio\u2014, Moulins d\u2019Ha\u00efti<\/em> (Windmills of Haiti) and the National Cement Plant, as well as various commercial and health centres.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Images of devastation<\/strong><\/p>\nThis place used to be the perfect image of a quiet town. But for several weeks now, barefoot corpses have remained scattered across the area, spreading a foul smell all around. More than a hundred people have been beheaded, shot or burnt alive inside their homes. The scenes are of utter devastation. After several attempts, the gangs that had been eyeing the town for months eventually launched their offensive.<\/p>\n
Cinq secondes<\/em> and Talibans<\/em>, two very powerful heavily armed groups active in the country\u2019s Western Department, have seized control of the town, making it difficult to enter as anything that moves gets shot at. On the main road to Source-Matelas, a sense of fear is always there. Inside the now-deserted town, the smell of death lingers in the air. Just a few metres away from these warlords, an armoured tank patrols but does not intervene. Its presence is unsettling.<\/p>\nMost of the population has taken refuge in a public square 2\u00a0kilometres away. Despair and anguish are written on everybody\u2019s face. No one knows where to go. Even this shelter is at risk, for armed groups intend to extend their control over the whole of Cabaret. At 6\u202fp.m. a farmer arrives in a van to give out a few mangoes to the displaced. \u201cThat\u2019s all I\u2019ve got, I can\u2019t give more. Our harvest is spoiling and we can\u2019t sell them in the capital or in other cities. Gangs control everything,\u201d says the man, who seems to be in his fifties.<\/p>\n
All local businesses have had to close since the town was seized. Practically no one uses the main road anymore. \u201cThis is exactly what they wanted: to control Source-Matelas in order to extort local businesses,\u201d explains Marie-Yol\u00e8ne Gilles, director of Haitian NGO Fondasyon Je Klere<\/em>.<\/p>\nShe also says that, while it is difficult to establish a definitive death toll as long as gangs are still present, the number of deaths and disappearances is about a hundred, according to a provisional estimate. She further clarifies: \u201cThe Haitian Red Cross and the Directorate of Civil Defence are unable to provide first aid to the injured.\u201d<\/p>\n
The residents\u2019 squad<\/strong><\/p>\nTo understand what triggered the slaughter, we must go back a few days. In order to defend themselves against the frequent raids and assaults, local residents had formed an anti-gang squad. But at dawn, on the very day they were about to inaugurate a police substation in Gran-Chimen\u2014an area within Source-Matelas\u2014 to boost police presence in the area, gangs carried out a raid, armed with enough weapons to wreak havoc on the town. At the end of the first day of attack alone, a dozen people had already been killed, says Joseph Jeanson Guillaume, Cabaret\u2019s interim mayor.<\/p>\n
\u201c<\/em>Since then, the number of deaths and disappearances has increased every day. If the national police took stronger action, the human toll would be lower,\u201d he laments.<\/p>\nGuillaume is not the only one criticising the police. In their fight against gang violence, locals had equipped themselves with an arsenal comprising machetes, knives, homemade weapons and old rifles, among others. All the same, they knew that their enemies had access to much bigger calibers. So did the local police, who nevertheless disarmed the members of the anti-gang squad just two days prior to the attack, according to a survivor wishing to stay anonymous.<\/p>\n
The gangs took this opportunity to systematically slaughter the inhabitants. According to Fondasyon Je Klere<\/em>, thirteen members of the same family \u2013 the Joachims \u2013 were killed that day, while another family with eight infants, fleeing in a small boat, drowned. The NGO has published a report summarising the different massacres perpetrated in Haiti over the past 21 months.<\/p>\n\u201cI can\u2019t take it any more. I feel powerless.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nThree weeks after the carnage a new gang leader was appointed in Gran Chimen while local police forces remain still absent. According to Joseph Jeanson Guillaume, although an armoured tank is patrolling the main road, no operation has yet been launched to retake the town.<\/p>\n
The government has also been idle so far, as neither the Prime Minister or any minister has condemned the atrocities committed that day or announced measures to restore order. We attempted to contact the Haitian National Police spokesman, Senior Officer Garry Desrosiers, to ask him when they plan to take back control, but to no avail.<\/p>\n
The authorities in Cabaret are overwhelmed and do not know who to turn to for help. Joseph Jeanson Guillaume admits he is unable to change things: \u201cI can\u2019t take it any more. I feel powerless seeing all these people dying and fleeing their homes. There are children, elderly people\u2026 I can\u2019t take it anymore,\u201d he says, also blaming the government for abandoning the most vulnerable.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow the whole town is fleeing\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nCivil Defence technical coordinator Riv\u00e9lino Valcin\u00e9 also confesses he can\u2019t assist the victims and the displaced.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring the first attack in Source-Matelas, we had already taken in about fifty people under our care, whom we\u2019d gathered in the Cabaret National School. But we were unable to provide them with any real kind of assitance. Now the whole town is fleeing and Civil Defence cannot possibly support over 300 households.\u201d<\/p>\n
The victims\u2019 lasting pain<\/strong><\/p>\n\u201cI was raped by four different men. The first one chose me because they couldn\u2019t find my daughter and so raped me instead. They also shot my little brother through the heart. And then four young men raped me in front of my children\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
This account is made by a woman we will call Jacqueline, a 38-year-old survivor taking shelter in a public school with over a hundred other people, mainly women and children. Among them, several mothers were subjected to gang rapes in front of their children, just like her. RNDDH registered a total of 29 such victims in the 19 April massacre.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey murdered and burnt my husband before my very eyes, then raped me in front of my children\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nA few steps away from Jacqueline, six other women are in conversation. None of them wants to talk about that day of sheer horror, except Jana (also a pseudonym), who speaks in their name:<\/p>\n
\u201cThey murdered and burnt my husband before my very eyes, then raped me in front of my children, who were screaming. Three men told me to run so I managed to escape with my kids. The next day I saw that our house had been reduced to ashes,\u201d she says, adding she has felt constant pain in her lower abdomen ever since.<\/p>\n
According to\u2009RNDDH, the abuse inflicted on women\u2019s bodies is used as a weapon in the series of slaughters perpetrated in Haiti. Marie Rosie Auguste Duc\u00e9na, one of the organisation\u2019s leaders, adds that the collective raping of women and little girls is a common gang practice.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will never know exactly how many people were killed, how many women raped or how many houses burnt down, because gangs rule this area and the police are absent\u2014or, at least, fear to venture in Source-Matelas,\u201d she sarcastically comments. <\/em><\/p>\nTen days after the attack, some families fled the municipality to take shelter in the north while others, having nowhere to go, organised themselves to try and snatch back control with an operation called \u201cBwa Kale\u201d. This Creole slogan, which cannot be easily translated, refers to a vigilante movement aimed at driving gangs away through violent means. However, this initiative has gone sour, causing three people to die. Between April 2022 and April 2023 thirteen large-scale massacres and armed assaults were recorded in the country.<\/p>\n
Post-edited translation by <\/strong>Ga\u00ebl Roumegoux (MA1 student Translation at ULB) under the supervision of Sonja Janssens<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Haiti is facing a surge in gang-related violence. In 2023, Haitian journalist Jean Samuel Mentor went to Source-Matelas, north of Port-au-Prince, to meet the victims of a massacre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3136,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[481,356,480,260],"coauthors":[479],"class_list":["post-3135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exile","tag-gangs","tag-haiti","tag-violence","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medialatitudes.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medialatitudes.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medialatitudes.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medialatitudes.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medialatitudes.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3135"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/medialatitudes.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3137,"href":"https:\/\/medialatitudes.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3135\/revisions\/3137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medialatitudes.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medialatitudes.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medialatitudes.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medialatitudes.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3135"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medialatitudes.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}