A Haitian gang leader ordered more than 110 people to be massacred for “witchcraft” after his child got sick and later died over the weekend, a human rights group reported.
Monel “Mikano” Felix gave the order for the killings, which were carried out with knives and machetes, after a Voodoo priest told him elderly people in Port-au-Prince’s notorious Cité Soleil slum had cursed the child, the National Human Rights Defense Network told Reuters.
At least 60 people were killed on Friday and another 50 on Saturday, all over the age of 60, the human rights group said. Felix’s child died on Saturday afternoon.
The massacre brought the death toll from Haiti’s dramatic security crisis to 5,000 civilians killed this year, the United Nations’ human rights chief Volker Turk told reporters on Monday. Years of political chaos have left a power void filled by violent local gangs.
Felix’s Wharf Jeremie gang has about 300 members in Cité Soleil, one of Haiti’s poorest and most violent areas, and neighboring Fort Dimanche and La Saline, according to the U.N.
The Haitian government has asked for U.N. peacekeepers to assist local police. But so far, only a partial mission has deployed, with China and Russia opposing a more robust response, Reuters reported.
In October, members of a different gang killed more than 115 people in Pont-Sonde, a town about 60 miles north of Port-au-Prince, in retaliation for them fighting back against toll charges the gang levied against drivers.
