Thousands of Haitians prepared to sleep in schools and a theater around the main square of Port-au-Prince on Friday, after fresh attacks by armed gangs pushed already displaced people downtown to seek shelter wherever they could.
The Gran Ravine gang, led by Renel Destina, has besieged the densely populated neighborhood of Carrefour Feuilles for weeks, forcing aid workers to withdraw and thousands of people to flee their homes. Under-resourced police have struggled to contain the violence.
Dailove Pompilus, who was nine months pregnant, said she had no choice but to come to the Champ de Mars square after the gang attacked her home in Carrefour Feuilles, killing her three-year-old son.
Photo: Reuters
“My first child,” she said. “They burned down the house with him inside.”
Sophia Jean, another resident, fled with her eight-month-old baby and the clothes on her back. “I did not have time to take anything,” she said.
By nightfall, people took refuge at nearby schools and the Rex Theater.
Yves Penel, a theater manager speaking at the main square, said hundreds of people had arrived on Thursday overnight, and that they had created committees to manage food, water and hygiene.
“I grew up in Carrefour Feuilles,” Penel said. “We will do what we have to do.”
The UN estimates more than 10,000 people have been displaced in the last two weeks alone.
Thursday night marked the first time since the catastrophic 2010 earthquake that people have camped in the Champ de Mars, the capital’s main square that is home to historical monuments honoring heroes of the Haitian Revolution.
“They shot at us,” said Clerina Coffy, who fled Place Jeremie, a makeshift camp roughly 1.5km away, with her three children during Thursday night. “We are here because we have nowhere to go with the kids.”
Local reporters said some people looking to leave the city had gathered at a bus station while elsewhere civil defense groups reinforced barricades.
Although schools are set to resume this month, many are hosting displaced people, and the education ministry has called for the buildings to be protected.
Haiti’s gang warfare has left about 2,500 dead and 1,000 injured since January, according to the UN, amid widespread kidnappings, lynchings and sexual violence.
The UN Security Council is expected to vote on a plan to send international security assistance, which Haiti’s unelected government requested last October. A Kenyan delegation met with police chiefs last month, but a multinational force has yet to materialize.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s officially declared wealth is fairly modest: some savings and a jointly owned villa in Budapest. However, voters in what Transparency International deems the EU’s most corrupt country believe otherwise — and they might make Orban pay in a general election this Sunday that could spell an end to his 16-year rule. The wealth amassed by Orban’s inner circle is fueling the increasingly palpable frustration of a population grappling with sluggish growth, high inflation and worsening public services. “The government’s communication machine worked well as long as our economic situation remained relatively good,” said Zoltan Ranschburg, a political analyst
RSS