Human rights group says Haitian government inaction to blame for latest gang massacre

PORT-AU-PRINCE — Weeks before a powerful gang slaughtered at least 115 people in a small rural town in central Haiti in the middle of the night, members of the community pleaded for help from the country’s police chief, prime minister and members of the ruling presidential council to no avail, a leading Port-au-Prince-based human-rights group says.

Not only were the residents’ cries ignored, so were the warning signs of an imminent attack on Pont-Sondé by the heavily armed Gran Grief gang based in neighboring Savien, a new report by Fondasyon Je Klere/Eyes Wide Open Foundation says. The death toll, initially reported by the United Nations to be more than 70, is now at least 115, according to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, an independent non-profit that collects data on violent conflicts around the world.

“ The massacre demonstrates to what extent the right to life is trivialized in Haiti,” the Fondasyon Je Klere/Eyes Wide Open Foundation report said. “This massacre could have been avoided if only one armored tank was stationed at Pont-Sondé, and if corruption in the management of the intelligence service’s money was not the rule.” Haitian human-rights advocates and a group known as the Commission for Dialogue, Reconciliation and Awareness to Save the Artibonite have criticized a government intelligence budget they say isn’t being used to thwart gang activities but to supplement the income of members of Haiti’s nine-member Transitional Presidential Council.