A gang in Haiti has killed 110 people whose leader is accused of witchcraft

At least 110 people, mostly elderly, have been brutally killed by gang members in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, according to a human rights group.

The National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH) said the leader of a local gang was watching them after his son fell ill and died.

The leader of the gang is reported to have contacted a voodoo priest who blamed the local elders for “witchcraft” for the boy’s mysterious illness.

The United Nations has said the number of people killed in Haiti so far this year in the escalating gang violence has reached “an estimated 5,000”.

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While details of the massacre are still emerging, UN human rights chief Volker Türk on Monday put the number of people killed over the weekend in “violence orchestrated by a powerful gang leader” at 184.

The killing took place in the Cité Soleil area of ​​the capital.

According to reports, gang members seized a number of residents over the age of 60 from their homes in the Wharf Jérémie area, wrapped them up and shot or stabbed them to death with knives and machetes.

Residents reported seeing mutilated bodies being burned in the streets.

An estimated 60 RNDDH were killed on Friday and another 50 were rounded up and killed on Saturday, after the gang leader’s son died of illness.

Although the RNDDH said all the victims were over 60, another rights group said some young people who tried to protect the old women were also killed.

Local media said the adults are believed to be using voodoo because the gang leader was told his son was sick.

Rights groups said the man who ordered the killing of Monel Felix, also known as Mikano.

Mikano is known for controlling Wharf Jérémie, a strategic location in the capital’s harbor.

According to Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, a Haitian expert at the Global Initiative against Transnational Crime (GI-TOC), this area is small but difficult for security forces to enter.

Local media said that Mikano’s group had prevented residents from leaving Wharf Jérémie, so news of the massacre was slow to spread.

The group is part of the Viv Ansanm gang alliance, which controls much of the Haitian capital.

Haiti has been plagued by gang violence since the assassination of then-president Jovenel Moïse in 2021.

Data collected by GI-TOC shows a drop in homicide rates between May and September of this year, after rival gangs reached an uneasy truce.

But the gangs’ efforts to expand their territory beyond their strongholds in the capital have led to particularly bloody incidents in the past two months, targeting ordinary citizens rather than rival gang members.

On October 3, 115 locals were killed in the small town of Pont-Sondé in the Artibonite department.

The massacre was reportedly carried out by the Gran Grif gang to take revenge on other residents who joined a vigilante group to resist Gran Grif’s attempts to extort the locals.

If confirmed, the death toll reported by the UN for this weekend’s massacres in Cité Soleil, would make it the deadliest so far this year.

With gangs controlling nearly 85% of Port-au-Prince and growing rural areas, hundreds of thousands of Haitians have been forced to flee their homes.

According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 700,000 people – half of them children – were internally displaced across the country.

Gang members often use sexual harassment, including gang rape, to instill fear among the local population.

In a report published two weeks agoHuman Rights Watch researcher Nathalye Cotrino wrote that “the law in Haiti is so broken that members of criminal gangs rape young women without fear of any consequences”.

Efforts by the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support Mission to end the violence have failed.

An international police force arrived in Haiti in June to reinforce the Haitian National Police but has little money and no equipment to deal with heavily armed gangs.

Meanwhile, the Transitional Presidential Council (TPC) – the body set up to organize the elections and restore the democratic order – appears to be in disarray.

The TPC took over as interim prime minister last month and appears to be making little progress in organizing elections.

“They rule over a mountain of ashes,” GI-TOC’s Romain Le Cour Grandmaison writes of the council in his report.