Chaotic protests in Haiti has recently ravaged through the nation following the assassination of then President Jovenel Moise on July 7, 2021. The coup left the country with instability and no functioning governing body.
Protesters are now calling for Prime Minister Ariel Henry to step down. One protester told reporters, “Haitian people will demonstrate with our plates and spoons and blankets and pillows in front of Ariel Henry’s house to ask him to resign because hunger and insecurity are killing us all.”
Prime Minister Henry was appointed by the late President Moise and took office less than two weeks after Moise’s assassination. Henry pledged to tackle corruption and instability, but adversity, deadlocks, and corruption, coupled with the world’s economic depletion has made Haitians grow more impatient.
Gas and food prices have quadrupled since the start of the year, with a gallon of gas costing $15. The Nation’s gas stock is incredibly low as importers are struggling to receive subsidies that keep domestic fuel prices low, and the difficulties to receive dollars from the central bank, as reported by Harold Isaac in Port-au-Prince for the Reuters News Agency.
Poverty in Haiti grew from 51% in 2020 to 53% in 2021 according to the World Bank. The economic state is continuously deteriorating in 2022.
The economic and political instability of Haiti was worsened by last year’s 7.2 magnitude earthquake in its southern tip that resulted in more than $1.6 billion in damages, COVID-19, and the worldwide growing inflation. This cumulation of events has led to increased gang violence, kidnappings, and unsolved murder cases.
Harold Isaac, the Port-au-Prince resident and journalist spoke with Al-Jazeera in regards to the current state of the nation stating, “there’s gas shortages, there’s severe criminality with kidnappings and gang violence. Massacres over the last few weeks and therefore the government so far has been rather weak in its responses, and hasn’t been able to address these realities that are affecting daily lives for Haiti.”
There have not been any disclosed definitive reasons behind the 2021 assassination of former President Jovenel Moise, however, an investigation by Maria Abi-Habib for The NY Times suggests that prior to his murder, Moise had a collection of names and entities in the drugs and armed trafficking business.
Moise had begun implementing a series of measures by first filtering out the nation’s custom’s department and the criminal underworld that infiltrated the eel industry. He nationalized a seaport that has a smuggling and drug trafficking history.
According to Abi-Habib, “In July, before he was assassinated, the president was working on a list of powerful politicians and businessmen involved in drug trafficking in Haiti. According to four high-ranking Haitian advisors and officials in charge of drafting this document, Moïse had intended to deliver this file to the United States government.”
The documents Moise propelled were also supposed to be handed over to the DEA, and he insisted that no pardons should be given to anyone, including the powerful and rich allies that aided in his quest to sit in the presidential office.
During the interrogations that followed the arrests of several hitmen involved in the murder, a couple of them purportedly referred to the retrieval of the list as a top priority.
Senior Haitian officials knowledgeable of the investigative details told The NY Times that upon the arrival of investigators to the murder scene, President Moise’s office had been ransacked, and a disarray of documents were the aftermath.
Abi-Habib’s investigation and the current state of Haiti suggests that corruption has infiltrated the functionable shell of government and economic institutions that could improve the quality of life of Haitians. Ongoing natural disasters are exacerbating the already depressive situation of the peninsula.