Port Au Prince | Five employees of an environmental protection agency were killed on Wednesday in clashes with police in Haiti, where large demonstrations have been taking place for several days to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who should theoretically have left power on Wednesday, according to a political agreement in the year Signed in 2022.
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The collision occurred near the capital Port-au-Prince. The five armed agents from the Protected Areas Security Brigade, an organization that recently mutinied against the government, fired at the police who responded, a police source told AFP. Three other employees from the same agency were arrested, she added.
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Thousands of people have been demonstrating in Port-au-Prince and across the country since the beginning of the week to demand the resignation of the head of government.
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“This Wednesday is D-Day. It is the day Ariel Henry must leave power,” a motorcycle taxi driver in Port-au-Prince told AFP.
“I hope he will listen to reason. Otherwise we will listen to the voice of the people,” promised the demonstrator, who did not want to give his name.
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According to an agreement reached in December 2022 after the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, the current prime minister was to organize elections to hand power to newly elected officials on February 7, 2024.
There have been no elections in the small, poor Caribbean country since 2016 and the presidential office remains vacant.
Prime Minister Ariel Henry, in power since 2021, “has not offered a solution to our problems,” denounced another protester.
“The country is being held hostage by gangs. We can't eat. “We can't send our children to school (…) We can't take it anymore,” criticized the unemployed forty-year-old, who also didn't want to give his name.
Haiti is facing a serious political, security and humanitarian crisis. Armed gangs have taken control of entire parts of the country and the number of murders has more than doubled in 2023.
Dominican Republic in “state of alert”
The ongoing demonstrations are being held at the call of several opposition parties, joined by agents from the Protected Areas Security Brigade (BSAP), which was originally responsible for protecting forests and is in turmoil with the government.
February 7th is an even more symbolic day because in Haiti it marks the anniversary of the end of the Haitian Duvalier dictatorship in 1986.
According to local media, a police station in Ouanaminthe, in the northeast of the country, was attacked by a procession on Tuesday evening.
Due to these protest movements, major roads have been closed and schools across the country have been closed since Monday.
The neighboring Dominican Republic said on Wednesday that it was in a “state of alert” and had increased security at its borders due to ongoing protests in Haiti.
The assassination of President Jovenel Moise in 2021 plunged the poorest country on the American continent even further into chaos.
In light of this crisis, the UN Security Council agreed in October to send a multinational mission led by Kenya to Haiti to support the Haitian police, which are overwhelmed by gangs.
But at the end of January, a court in Nairobi blocked Kenya's deployment of police officers. The Kenyan government announced that it would appeal this decision, while the Haitian government remained hopeful.