Almost 200 massacred in Haiti as Vodou practitioners reportedly targeted

Violence in Haiti’s capital over the weekend resulted in the death of about 200 people, many in a massacre in which a gang boss reportedly targeted Vodou practitioners.

Civil organisation the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD), said a “powerful gang leader” overseen the killings of at least 110 people, after the conviction that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion were overseen by 

The Haiti-based group stated: “He decided to cruelly punish all elderly people and Vodou practitioners who, in his imagination, would be capable of sending a bad spell on his son.

“The gang’s soldiers were responsible for identifying victims in their homes to take them to the chief’s stronghold to be executed.”

Meanwhile, the UN rights commissioner, Volker Turk, told reporters in Geneva that not less than 184 people died over the weekend, adding that the latest killings “bring the death toll just this year in Haiti to a staggering 5,000 people.”

Both the CPD and UN said that the massacre took place in the capital’s western coastal neighbourhood of Cité Soleil.

According to The Haiti has suffered from decades of instability but the situation escalated in February when armed groups launched coordinated attacks in the capital, Port-au-Prince, to overthrow the then prime minister, Ariel Henry.

Gangs control 80% of the city and despite a Kenyan-led police support mission, backed by the US and UN, violence has continued to soar.

The CPD said that most of the victims of violence waged on Friday and Saturday were over 60, but that some young people who tried to rescue others were also among the casualties.

“Reliable sources within the community report that more than a hundred people were massacred, their bodies mutilated and burned in the street,” a statement said.

More than 700,000 people are internally displaced in Haiti, half of them children, according to October figures from the UN’s International Organization for Migration.

Vodou was brought to Haiti by enslaved people from Africa and is a mainstay of the country’s culture. It was banned during French colonial rule and recognised only as an official religion by the government in 2003.

While it incorporates elements of other religious beliefs, including Catholicism, Vodou has been historically attacked by other religions.