OAKLAND POST — The Haiti Action Committee condemns recent violence in Haiti following a massacre by the Viv Ansanm paramilitary death squad in Kenscoff on August 23. This attack targeted survivors sheltering in a church and homes, with estimates of 40 to over 70 killed and women raped and taken hostage. Police were reportedly aware of threats but failed to intervene. The committee also highlights the death by suicide of a Haitian college student in Ohio after losing legal immigration status, and demands the Trump Administration stop deporting Haitians back to Haiti..
By Haiti Action Committee via BlackPressUSA Newswire
Heavily armed, paramilitary death squad Viv Ansanm on Sunday, Aug. 23, carried out another major massacre in the Kenscoff commune in the hills outside of Port-au-Prince. The death squad attacked survivors of previous violence who were sheltering in a church in one of the villages.
Many people in the church were killed, along with people in their homes. Women and young people were targeted in particular. Community sources have provided different estimates of the number of people killed, but they range from 40 to over 70 people. Women were raped, and dozens of people were additionally taken hostage; they remain captive with imminent threats to their lives.
According to local officials, this attack was announced by the paramilitary death squad at least two weeks before it occurred. The police and government authorities were made aware of the threat, but once again failed to provide protection, as has been the case in many other massacres. The population is furious over the obvious collusion between the U.S.-installed puppet government and the death squads.
Kenscoff has repeatedly been targeted by Viv Ansanm as it seeks to consolidate its control of the commune and expand control into the adjacent Petionville region of Port-au-Prince.
Other massacres by paramilitaries, armed with weapons from the United States, have likewise continued across Haiti in recent weeks, notably Gresye south of Port-au-Prince, a village in the Akaye region north of Port-au-Prince, and Dessalines and other towns in the agricultural center of the Artibonite region.
In another shocking incident in Ohio, Pierre Damas Bel, a 20-year-old Haitian college student. died by suicide Monday morning after losing his legal immigration status and receiving a GPS ankle monitor from immigration authorities,
It was 8 a.m., and he was sitting inside his car on the side of the interstate highway, struggling with the shame of being forced to wear an ankle monitor by immigration officials.
Bel, a student at Wright State University, said he had been bullied at school and felt “humiliated” by the device.
“I told him to come home so we can talk,” Bel’s father said in a statement. “Around 11 the police showed at my door to report that my son threw himself under a truck.”
Bel stepped into oncoming traffic and died from his injuries, the Ohio State Highway Patrol said. His family blamed the humiliation brought on by the ankle monitor he had been wearing since July.
Meanwhile in Haiti, there are now 1.5 million people internally displaced by violence and more than 5.8 million people on the brink of starvation.
These are the conditions into which the Trump regime is attempting to deport 350,000 Haitians who have had their TPS (Temporary Protected Status) in the US revoked.
Haiti Action Committee urges people to call or email their senators to demand they immediately pass Senate Bill S.4814 to extend TPS for Haitians! The House has already passed a version of this bill, H.R. 1689.
