Italian cooperant in Haiti: “explosive situation, people exhausted and in shock”

In Haiti, people are “in shock” for the killing of President Moise, but “the situation was already explosive before, anarchy reigned, the real authorities were the armed gangs, more armed than the police themselves”. The Italian Irene Cesati, who has been carrying out humanitarian work in Haiti for three years and is currently coordinator in the country of Medecins du monde Suisse, tells the story at Adnkronos. “Yesterday everyone was shocked” by the news of the assassination of the president, “no one expected it”, “now people are all closed in their homes, the streets are deserted”, says Cesati who speaks of a “peaceful population” that is “exhausted” by difficulties and “you have no means to react”. “The reaction of the population is one of fatigue”, “yesterday there were some looting of shops because people are so desperate that they take advantage of it if the police are busy elsewhere, but most of the people stayed at home”. Cesati is also now closed at home, according to the orders of the government which imposed a state of emergency. All members of the international community, including her, live in a relatively protected area of ​​the Haitian capital, “in houses with barbed wire, high walls and guards”. In her NGO, Cesati is the only foreigner and if she has to go out she uses a vehicle with the Medecins du monde Suisse logo driven by an unarmed driver. “When the situation is normal it is feasible, there are chats to exchange live security information,” he explains. At Adnkronos, Cesati asks above all “that we talk about Haiti, here the population is missing everything”. And now with Covid “the health situation is tragic, public hospitals do not have the necessary resources, we do not even have the data, we do not know how serious the situation is, there were a few dozen resuscitation beds, but there are no more free ones. , when former president Aristide fell ill with Covid they hospitalized him abroad, but for others it is not possible “.” In recent weeks, humanitarian access to the most problematic areas, the most vulnerable neighborhoods in the central area of ​​Port -au-Prince, it had also become impossible for our medical NGO “, says the aid worker, who speaks of 15-17 thousand internally displaced due to violence between armed gangs. Gangs that in 2020 kidnapped 240 Haitians and this year also targeted foreigners, such as the Italian businessman Giovanni Cali, freed on June 24 after more than three weeks of kidnapping. Two days before Moise’s killing, Cesati recalls, a nurse was killed while the ambulance she was traveling on to bring help found itself in the middle of a shooting on a high-speed road.