MIAMI – At least 180 people were killed in a massacre that began on Friday in the Wharf Jérémie section of Cité Soleil. The massacre, which occurred over the weekend, was allegedly linked to accusations of “witchcraft.” The reports began on Friday and have now been corroborated by multiple agencies, the Haitian government and the U.N.
Haiti is currently experiencing severe political instability and escalating violence, primarily driven by powerful gangs that control significant portions of the country. Violence surged earlier this year when rival gangs banded together to attack government institutions, including police stations, prisons, and hospitals.
A U.N.-backed mission led by Kenyan police was deployed to assist in stabilizing the country. However, the mission’s impact has been limited, facing strong resistance from entrenched gangs and criticism for failing to achieve significant progress.
Late last month, Russia and China opposed a U.S.-led campaign to transform the Kenya-led multinational force assisting Haitian police into a U.N. peacekeeping mission. The U.N. estimates that gangs control 85% of the capital and have spread into surrounding areas.
“Peacekeepers should only be deployed when there is peace to keep, and there is no peace in Haiti,” said China’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Geng Shuang. “Deploying a peacekeeping operation at this time is nothing more than putting peacekeepers on the front lines of battles with gangs.”
“Conditions on the ground in Haiti are not appropriate for U.N. peacekeepers,” added Russia’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyansky. “Their role is to maintain peace, not to fight crime in urban areas or save a dysfunctional state plunged into domestic conflict.” However, Polyansky expressed his country’s “shock and horror” at the ongoing violence.
Over the weekend, the situation worsened.
Wharf Jérémie is regarded as one of the poorest and most dangerous areas in the Western Hemisphere and one of the largest slums in the Northern Hemisphere. “It is a hard life in Cité Soleil. Most days, you wake up not knowing if you will eat or if you will die,” said Jojo Carelus in a talk with The Wild Hunt. “People work together and help each other, but nothing can prepare someone to imagine how hard it is to live there. Everything is broken but people get by. What happened there is too much even for the suffering already present.”
On Friday, December 6, Altès/Mikanò and his gang reportedly shot and killed at least 60 elderly individuals. The next day, they killed at least 50 more using machetes and knives.
The National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH) reported that Altès ordered the violence after his child became ill, “The massacre was triggered by the severe illness of his child. “Micanor sought advice from a voodoo priest who accused elderly people in the area of practicing witchcraft and harming the child,” the report said.
The child later died on Saturday afternoon.
RNDDH cited witnesses who described mutilated bodies burned in the streets, including several young individuals who were killed while trying to rescue others. The Committee for Peace and Development (CPD) corroborated the attack, reporting that many victims’ bodies were mutilated and burned in the streets. Most of the deceased were over the age of 60 and were killed inside their homes. “He chose to cruelly punish all the elderly people and Vodou practitioners who, in his imagination, might have been capable of casting a harmful spell on his son,” the CPD said in a statement.
Vodou Alar [Photo Credit: Calvin Hennick / Wikimedia
“This has nothing to do with Vodou. It has nothing to do with witchcraft like the news likes to call it,” said Manbo DesRosier, a Vodou priestess in Miami speaking with The Wild Hunt. “This is about power, and Wa Mikanò knows it.”
Vodou is a structured, religion-based tradition tied to West African spiritual systems brought to the Caribbean by enslaved Africans during the transatlantic slave trade. The term “Vodou” comes from the Fon word vodun, meaning “spirit” or “deity.”
“Every practice teaches respect—respect for life and respect for the elderly,” DesRosier emphasized. “This is evil.”
On Monday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres urged member states to provide more support to the multinational mission and called for an investigation into the massacre. “These latest killings bring Haiti’s death toll this year to a staggering 5,000 people,” said U.N. Human Rights Chief Volker Türk at the same press conference.
Since the massacre, Wharf Jérémie remains “under an informal siege,” with elderly residents and Vodou adherents still targeted by the broader Haitian gang alliance. The Haitian National Police insisted over the weekend that joint operations with the U.S.-backed Multinational Security Support (MSS) were “running smoothly,” denying rumors of discord between the two forces.
“The Government of the Republic condemns in the strongest terms the abject massacre perpetrated by gang leader Micanor Altès (alias Wa Mikanò) Monel Félix, and their associates,” said a statement from the Haitian government over the weekend. “This act of barbarity, of unbearable cruelty, cost the lives of more than a hundred women and men, mainly defenseless elderly people.”
“A red line has been crossed, and the state will mobilize all its forces to track down and eliminate these criminals. Justice will strike with exemplary rigor. The government extends its sympathies to the families of the victims,” the Haitian Government added.
“Please tell this story,” DesRosier urged. “The world is ignoring Haiti.”
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