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Nearly 200 people in Haiti were killed in brutal weekend violence reportedly orchestrated against voodoo practitioners, with the government on Monday condemning a massacre of “unbearable cruelty.”
The killings in the capital Port-au-Prince were overseen by a powerful gang leader convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, according to civil organization the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD).
It was the latest act of extreme violence by powerful gangs that control most of the capital city in the impoverished Caribbean country mired for decades in political instability, natural disasters and other woes.
“He decided to cruelly punish all elderly people and voodoo practitioners who, in his imagination, would be capable of sending a bad spell on his son,” a statement from the Haiti-based group said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the “horrific” violence, which his spokesman said left at least 184 people, including 127 elderly men and women, dead.
Calling the bloody episode an “act of barbarity, of unbearable cruelty,” the office of Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime said “this monstrous crime constitutes a direct attack on humanity.”
Both the CPD and UN said that the killings took place in the capital’s western coastal neighborhood of Cite Soleil.
