Blocked highways, deserted streets, commercial activity stalled ... The capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince, was paralyzed Monday after violence between disgruntled police and soldiers who left at least two dead and a dozen wounded. Barricades of all kinds were erected on the main arteries of the capital, cut off from other cities in the country. Protest police even seized the keys of the few vehicles that were still driving in order to block roads, AFP said.
A demonstration by police demanding better working conditions ended in blood on Sunday when several of them attacked the Haitian army headquarters in the center of Port-au-Prince. The military staff, evoking an assault carried out by individuals "hooded and provided with firearms", reported a dead and wounded in its ranks.
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A protesting policeman, among the five who were dismissed, spoke on the other side of a dead man and several wounded, but the police were not yet able Monday morning to give an assessment of the violence of the previous day. The Justice Ministry denounced the violence of the previous day in a press release Monday, saying that these actions looked "more and more" like an "attempted coup" against President Jovenel Moïse.
A source close to the latter told AFP that the president was currently working to form a new government, and that it was up to the police to bring order and peace to the country, which had been confronted since the beginning of the year to a resurgence of insecurity. The United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) expressed "deep concern" over the "serious incidents" on Sunday, urging the protesting police to avoid any escalation in the violence.
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Angry police have erected barricades outside police stations, AFP said. The Place du Champ de Mars, where police and soldiers clashed on Sunday, remained impassable and at high risk. The Syndicate of the National Police of Haiti in a statement called on Monday all the police officers to return home "in order to give another orientation to the fight of the police officers".
These violence led the government to cancel, for the second year in a row, the carnival that was to be held there from Sunday to Tuesday, an unmissable event in Haitian cultural life and a significant economic windfall in a country with endemic poverty.
