© OCHA/J. Clark A woman forced from her home by violence sleeps in a store in Port-au-Prince. Murder, rape and ‘unbearable pain’: Gangs terrorize Haiti Peace and Security
Armed gangs continue to terrorize Haitians, “deliberately inflicting unbearable pain” on people who are often simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. UN expert on human rights in this country William O’Neill stated this in an interview with the UN News Service on the eve of the publication of his new report. According to the document, only in two districts of the capital In Port-au-Prince, at least 613 people were killed and another 375 were injured in the four and a half months up to July 31.
More than a third of the victims were people not associated with gangs, including 111 women and 77 children.
Today, gangs control most of Port-au-Prince and parts of the surrounding areas.
During the reporting period, the report said, more than 176 women and girls aged 10 to 71 were victims of rape and gang rape by alleged gang members, who “often use it as a form of punishment for residents of areas controlled by rival gangs.”
60~p>In addition, more than 18 thousand people.
Mass killings
In a report published by the UN office in Haiti, human rights activists cite a number of specific cases violations.
So, two 17-year-old boys were shot by a gang leader who accused them of passing on information to a rival group, and a 71-year-old man was shot after that how he appealed to the gang leader with a request for food.
The woman was stopped and gang members began interrogating her. According to eyewitnesses, she could not utter a word out of fear. She was accused of being an informant for a rival gang and was executed on the spot.
Seventeen boys between the ages of 15 and 17 were collectively executed because gang members suspected them of working for another group. Some teenagers were taken to a landfill and shot there.
Shortly after the World Cup match between Haiti and Scotland on June 13, a crowd of 300 people, including a musical group, headed to one of the areas where they were attacked by a gang, some of whose militants took positions on the roofs of houses. At least 61 people were killed and another 20 were injured. Among the dead were at least seven children, the youngest of whom was barely seven years old.
Large sexual violence
The report also provides evidence of widespread sexual abuse. For example, five masked men beat a mother of three with gun butts in her home and then raped her in front of her children.
Another woman was raped by a group of armed men. Before that, they set fire to her house, killing her husband and little daughter, who was barely two years old. She was raped in front of her ten-year-old son.
Victims described how they were intercepted on the street on their way home, taken to a wooded area and raped there.