Blog Eyewitness Accounts of Riots in Haiti
by Catherine LaineApril 9th, 2008
Michael May who landed in Port-au-Prince just in time for the riots writes:
Haiti: Days One and Two
[Day One]”The city is hot,” [Roberta] said. It was about 90 degrees, but she wasn’t referring to that. Trouble had broken out in downtown Port Au Prince; people were throwing rocks. Pulling off the airport road we had to wait for a caravan of maybe ten or fifteen UN vehicles with troops to go by. Roberta said it was because people are starving. The government’s having a hard time getting control of corruption in the ports and food is either too expensive or is rotting in customs because there aren’t enough people to process it. The violence wasn’t near where we were, but just knowing that it was going on in another part of the city made me more alert as we drove through town.
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[Day Two]Everything seems peaceful and routine, but Roberta told us this morning that the violence in town has spread to the airport road where they’re burning tires.She’s surprised that that’s carried over into a second day. Usually the police have it under control in a lot less time. She doesn’t expect it to last much longer and later in the week we should be able to go into town, but it still makes my imagination go all sorts of places I’d rather it not. If we’d flown in today instead of yesterday, for example, she wouldn’t have been able to come get us.
The demonstrations have spread out to this part of the city, but everyone seems to think it’ll blow over soon. Mainly it’s just people burning tires in the road and holding sticks and rocks. That shuts down the roads and draws attention to the suffering that’s going on, but most people honor the “strikes” and no one gets hurt. This is all really new to me though and it bothers me knowing that I can’t just leave if I want to. We’re scheduled to be here another week though, so there’s plenty of time for the situation to improve.
Portuguese telecoms engineer Tarun Pinto tell the BBC
The protests actually started on Monday.
But Tuesday was when the protests really escalated. I noticed no activity on the streets. There is normally a little market, cars - there was nothing, just the occasional motorcycle. People were protesting about massive hikes in the price of food.
There was a general atmosphere of disorganisation, I saw people running in panic all over the place. They seemed to be running away from the main crowd. We didn’t really know what was going on.
It was only later in the day that we were told by our security people that we had to leave everything because the main protest was going to pass us. They were coming up our street of our office building and might have guns. Continue…
From Melinda Miles: Bleach vs. Battery Acid: Getting Seriously Hungry in Haiti
For more than a month now, people throughout Haiti have been referring to their hunger as “klowox”, for Clorox bleach. However, over the last week the character of hunger has reached a more severe level, and now it is worse than feeling like your stomach is full of bleach – now the pain is being called “asid bateri”, battery acid.
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We traveled to Les Cayes a few weeks ago and spent hours walking around the picturesque, pedestrian-friendly, and peaceful city. On Friday, protesters burned two UN vehicles and several people were shot and killed. In Petit Goave, the mayor was attacked and yesterday shop owners were padlocking their shops, anticipating looting today. This morning protesters had set up barricades on the main highway from the south to Port-au-Prince all the way into the city.
Related Posts:
Update: Food Riots in Haiti [April 17, 2008]
News: Food Riots in Haiti [April 8, 2008]
To go or not to go: How AIDG Haiti handled the uncertain security situation [April 23, 2008]
