Haiti: A Prayer for Hell

A gruesome scene takes place in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince.

A gang member has been arrested. His body is set on fire outside the ruins of a destroyed house.

A few tens of meters away, a crowd stands and follows along. A hungry pig looks for garbage near the dead one. Black smoke rises into the sky.

At the same time, pastor Lucon Rigaud (46) is desperately fleeing the country.

The journey to Haiti was characterized by unrest and sadness. He was going home to a country in total collapse to bury his father.

Now he just wants out.

On his way to the border, he takes a picture of the sunrise. That’s how he wants to remember Haiti.

– The matches were in full swing in Port-au-Prince, so we did everything to bypass the capital on the way to the border, the pastor tells VG.

The island of Hispaniola consists of the French-speaking Haiti and the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic.

The holiday idyll on the Dominican side of the island is regularly referred to as a tropical paradise.

Repeated chaos, suffering and death mean that Haiti is regularly compared to hell on earth.

At the border crossing, those who want to get out of Haiti meet closed doors. But the pastor had an ace up his sleeve: an American passport.

He belongs to the more than 730,000 migrants in the United States who were born in Haiti.

After 15 years in the USAand with dual citizenship, the pastor still has no doubts.

– My home is Haiti. In the heart it will always be like this. But life is almost unbearable in Port-au-Prince. And when the capital is in chaos, the whole country suffers, he explains.

Haiti’s history is marked by violence. Built on brutal slavery, the island state gained its freedom after a very bloody revolution in 1804.

– Haiti is still paying the price for the liberation of the black slaves, says Pastor Rigaud.

– The USA and France have always pressured us. At the same time, our leaders have failed the people. Now the situation is dire. Yet again.

France forced in the 19th century the freed state to pay huge compensation to the former plantation owners, and Haiti was never able to get back on its feet.

The last decades of the 20th century were marked by the brutal dictatorship of father and son Duvalier, known by the nicknames “Papa Doc” and “Baby Doc”. They were supported by the United States.

Since 2018, criminal gangs have completely taken over. Now it’s worse than ever.

A gang leader with the grotesque nickname Barbecue, allegedly because he burns his enemies to death, has taken power.

But where do the gangs get all the weapons from, wonders Pastor Rigaud?

– Haiti is right next to Florida. We do not manufacture weapons ourselves. And these gangs have become more powerful than the police and the army, he explains.

– The US is unable to stop illegal arms sales to Haiti, but it is able to stop people from Haiti who want to come here as refugees, elaborates the pastor.

VG hears the same argument from everyone we speak to in the area of ​​New York known as “Little Haiti”.

Those we speak to point out that today’s total crisis in the island state is due to decades upon decades of a combination of bad leaders and foreign influence.

The anger and disappointment is particularly aimed at the United States and France.

– If you want to survivethen one must leave Haiti.

Activist Pascale Solages (36) is among those who have managed to get to the United States.

– We know that the gangs’ weapons come from the United States. The international community has supported corrupt leaders. And the same leaders have used the gangs to rule over the people. It’s a vicious circle, she explains.

In addition to a wave of brutal murders, rapes, robberies and destruction, the gangs have specialized in kidnapping and extortion.

Many Haitians in the United States have had to buy their relatives free.

– Every time the phone rings, you feel tremendous stress. I always think that now there will be bad news, says Marc Joassaint (23).

The crisis most think of when they hear about the country of Haiti, is the horrific earthquake of 2010.

230,000 people lost their lives, another 250,000 were injured and 1.5 million lost their homes.

– The situation now is even worse than in 2010, says Pierrot Lazarre (43), who is assistant pastor at the Catholic church in Brooklyn.

He explains that despite billions of dollars in emergency aid, the country has not been rebuilt.

– The earthquake could have marked a new beginning, but the emergency aid was swept away. Now there is a reign of terror in the capital. My brother lives there, and has lost his home twice, he says.

In the Catholic churches in New York believers gather from all over the world.

The majority of those who took part in the fair VG participated in at Easter have a background as migrants to the USA.

About half of the churchgoers are from Latin America, the other half from Caribbean countries.

– We who are from Haiti feel so powerless. When my brother calls from Port-au-Prince I can hear shooting and fighting in the background. I have tried to register him and my nieces as refugees to the USA, but they have not received permission to travel, says Yvette Sainvil (41).

– The only thing I can do is pray for them.

A new UN report which came just before Easter, pointed to a catastrophic spiral of violence in Haiti:

Last year there were a total of 4,451 murders, and up to 22 March this year at least 1,554 were killed. People are attacked in their homes because they are believed to be supporting the police or rival gangs, or are caught in crossfire.

Lynching and sexual violence against women are widespread, warns the UN.

In his service, pastor Rigaud tries to get support from above.

– At Easter we pray for peace between people, between races and between all countries. In my own country the situation is horrific now. Dear God, I say a prayer for Haiti, he says.