On a ride through the gang-controlled streets of Haiti’s capital on Friday, past an improvised barricade, the motorcycle taxi reached a crossroad. First came the smell — of something burning. Then, the sight: a corpse, charred black, lying in the middle of street, its bones and feet sticking out of the pile of ash.
The night before, Jimmy Boursiquot, a carpenter who lives nearby, heard two gunshots. Peering carefully out his window, checking his watch — it was 8:24 p.m. — he saw two men drive away, leaving the body behind, not far from a university administration office and one of Haiti’s largest telecommunications companies. A few hours later, he said, the men returned and burned the remains.
The streets of Port-au-Prince reek with the stench of the dead. It’s a grisly new marker of the violence and dysfunction in this beleaguered Caribbean nation of 11 million people.
In the absence of a functioning state, violent armed gangs have taken control of more than 80 percent of the capital, the United Nations estimates. Gunfire crackles at all hours. Residents who dare leave their homes stumble across bodies that have been left where they fell.
Port-au-Prince reached a high of 92 degrees on Friday. The smell of decaying corpses, human rights activists say, has driven some people from their homes. Others have taken it upon themselves to move or burn the bodies. Because who else will?
Even before the past week, public services in the city were sharply limited. Trash piled up in its slums; cholera had resurfaced. The gangs terrorized the population with systematic rape, indiscriminate kidnapping and mass killing, all with impunity.
According to MSN, Then attacks on two of the city’s largest prisons last weekend freed thousands of inmates, including some of the country’s most notorious criminals. Now gangs, reinforced by returning comrades, have attacked the city’s airport and main port.
They’ve torched at least a dozen police stations. Hospitals are closed; security forces are hard to come by. The prime minister, traveling abroad to rally support for an international police force, was unable this week to return to the country.
The gangs are in control. As gangs attack a critical port, ‘Haiti will go hungry soon’ One morgue director said he has received 20 calls in the past week from residents asking him to pick up bodies. Four calls came in on Friday, Lyonel Milfort said. He has refused all of them.
With gangs barricading the streets, Milfort said, venturing out has been impossible. Other morgues have come under attack, he said, and he doesn’t want to risk the lives of his staff.
Milfort has been in the business since 2002. Violence has forced him to halt operations before, for one or two days — but never, he said, for an entire week.
“What I’m witnessing today is unprecedented. It’s been too long,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking to go around and see bodies being eaten by dogs and see the corpses covered with sheets.”
