Haitian gangs massacre hundreds accused of 'witchcraft'

Haiti's gangs have crossed a "red line", after allegedly killing at least 184 people they suspected of witchcraft.

Gang leader Micanor Altès is said to have ordered the knife-and-machete "massacre" in the capital Port-au-Prince last week because he suspected people of practising witchcraft to make his child ill. At least 127 of the victims were elderly, according to Haiti's National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH), said CNN.

Altès – also known as Monel Felix, Alfred Mones, "Mikanò" and "King Micanor" – took "advice from a voodoo priest", who "accused elderly people in the area" of using witchcraft to harm his child, an RNDDH report said.

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The transitional government of the violence-ridden Caribbean nation has vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice. "A red line has been crossed, and the State will mobilise all its forces to track down and annihilate these criminals," said a statement from the Haitian prime minister's office.

'100% voodoo'

Voodoo, or Vodou as it's known in Haiti, is one of the country's official religions, along with Christianity. It is widely practised in all parts of society. A "common local joke", according to the Los Angeles Times, is that Haiti is "70% Catholic, 30% Protestant, and 100% voodoo".

Vodou is thought to have its roots in "tribal religions" that were brought to Haiti, then known as the French colony of Saint-Domingue, by West Africans taken as slaves, said Al Jazeera.

Practitioners believe that all living things – including animals and plants – have spirits, and use rituals, prayers and dances to connect with them.

But Vodou has long been "attacked by other religions", and negative stereotypes about Vodou, in "racially coded language", have been used to "pathologise Haitian culture".

Just this year, Donald Trump accused Haitian immigrants in Ohio of eating pet dogs and cats, and "disinformation flooded the internet". Elon Musk, Trump's most prominent backer, shared a video, on his social-media platform X, showing a woman of apparently Haitian origin describing animal sacrifice as common Vodou practice – a claim that has been widely debunked.

Vodou has also been the focus of Haitian gang violence before. Altès is believed to have ordered the killing of 12 elderly female Vodou practitioners in 2021.

'Spiral into the abyss'

Haiti has been "convulsed by violence" since earlier this year, when gangs banded together in a coalition known as Viv Ansanm (Living Together) to "attack government institutions", including prisons and hospitals, said The New York Times.

In the spring, the gangs succeeded in "forcing out a prime minister", and they now control about 85% of the capital and vast swathes of the countryside – despite the presence of a UN-backed police force. Overall, about 5,000 people have been killed by gang violence this year, and more than 700,000 displaced, according to the UN. More than half of those displaced are children.

Attempts by gangs to gain new territory have led to "particularly bloody incidents in the past two months", said the BBC. Ordinary residents, rather than rival gang members, are increasingly being targeted.

The brutality of these latest killings reflects the country's "accelerating spiral into the abyss", William O'Neill, the UN's human-rights expert for Haiti, told the New York Times.

The "slaughter" centred on a "sprawling slum" in the Cité Soleil area – in one of the most "impenetrable gang strongholds", known as Wharf Jérémie. "Mutilated bodies were burned in the streets," said the RNDDH report, and then flung into the sea.

It is now "a ghostly place," said El País. "Its narrow streets, once full of life, remain desolate", and "the few residents who dare to go out do so with their eyes fixed on the ground". The bodies of some massacre victims remain "covered by white sheets", a testimony to "the scale of the horror."