Haiti looters are shot or lynched as owners comb through house ruins
0 views
Skip to first unread message
Pastor Dale Morgan
Jan 24, 2010, 4:23:34 AM1/24/10
to Bible-Pro...@googlegroups.com
Perilous Times
Haiti looters are shot or lynched as owners comb through house ruins
Most people aren't stealing, they are simply trying to recover what's left of their own possessions
* Rory Carroll
* The Observer, Sunday 24 January 2010
Marc Nestor holds a certificate he rescued from the wrecked law offices of his employer, Jean Samson. Photograph: David Levene
It was testament to the mayhem in Rue Pavée that everyone forgot about the burning corpse.
A group of youths in rags had clambered up to the top floors of destroyed shops and were throwing random objects into the street: nappies, books, bags, tyres, then chairs, bookcases and filing cabinets.
Fights broke out as the mob below surged forward to grab the prizes. A teenager peeled away, clutching a bulging white cotton bag. What was in it? "I don't know," he said, sweating, his eyes darting about, lest a rival snatch it. "But it's mine."
Motorcyclists draped looted tyres over their torsos before roaring away in clouds of dust.
Shots rang out: the police. Uniformed officers charged up the street, rifles levelled, scattering the crowd. Just a fleeting cameo by the Haitian state. Minutes later, the police were gone and the looters returned to pillage what remained of Rue Pavée. The corpse continued burning.
It was a scene dreaded since the earthquake on 12 January flattened Port-au-Prince: chaos and immolation as feral gangs took over the shattered ruins. A Caribbean vision of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Images of the mayhem flashed around the world, alarming aid agencies and terrifying the truckers waiting to cross into Haiti from the Dominican Republic. "They could attack at any moment. I'm getting a knife or a club before crossing," said Leonel Sosa, 22, as he loaded up his vehicle.
For those following events in the Haitian capital from afar, it was easy to overlook one thing: the mayhem was restricted to a few streets downtown. The ransacking and violence in Rue Pavée were real, but not representative of the rest of the city.
The people of Port-au-Prince have proved remarkably stoical in the face of extreme deprivation. The Haitian state has all but vanished, and the international response has yet to fill the gap, yet most neighbourhoods remain calm. In Delmas, for instance, street stalls selling oranges and fried plantain operated without hassle, a few metres from homeless, penniless families who had not eaten in 24 hours. The only thing they stole were glances. "Our neighbours will help us," said Juliette Josef, 28, surrounded by her four children.
Haiti's capital is filled not with looters but scavengers, an important distinction. Talk to those scouring the ruins for something to salvage and they almost always turn out to be the owners.
Mon Plaza, a warren of shops and houses in the hillside district of Pétionville, resembled an ant hill, with people carting possessions through the cracked concrete maze.
Some carried mattresses and iron bedsteads on their heads, others hauled pillow cases bulging with books, cutlery and electrical equipment. Looters have been lynched and shot, but these scavengers, reclaiming their own possessions, had nothing to fear.
On a dusty street in front of a collapsed three-storey house, Lenel Dilus hunched over a coffee table with a can of insect repellent, a can of air freshener, and a red bottle of Rumpa'n grenadine syrup: the sum total of what he had salvaged from the family home and business.
Around him were four neighbours with saws, iron bars and improvised tools. They had come to help him salvage items from the ground floor, a grocery store. Their other mission was to extract the bodies of five relatives and employees. They rubbed a lime under their noses to mask the smell, covered their faces with cloths and set to work.
"Lenel is not paying us for this, we want to help," said Estinvil Sainvilus, a civil servant. His task was to saw off the usable bits of wood from broken doors and furniture.
It was not pure philanthropy – the diggers would split the salvage – but the calm, businesslike exercise in solidarity and mutual gain was a world away from the chaos of Rue Pavée. Worming into corpse-filled, unstable ruins while aftershocks jolt the city is nasty, dangerous work, but it is one of the few jobs available in a shattered economy.
Marc Nestor, 34, a handyman for a law firm, assumed his job had vanished with the firm's offices in Rue de Centre. But last week his boss, Jean Samson, asked him to extract what he could from the debris. After five hours he had filled four cardboard boxes with documents, framed diplomas, legal texts and a hardback dictionary whose cover showed a picture of Barack Obama.
"I lost my whole world, but here at least I've got something back," said Samson, patting the boxes. Dapper in grey trousers and shirt, and with a blue surgical mask, the lawyer sat in a plastic chair in the middle of the deserted street and watched his employee squirm in and out of crevices. "I may need to hire a second guy. There's heavy stuff to be got out, bookcases, chairs."
High-powered efforts to clear debris got under way yesterday in the form of Caterpillar earth-movers equipped with turbo-diesel engines. They shovelled tonnes of broken concrete, some festooned with tablecloths and sheets.
Before the machinery arrived, Pierrot Boss, an ironmonger, squirrelled into the ruins of his workshop on Rue de Boudon to claim a 2009 calendar, treasured because of its historic illustrations of Port-au-Prince architecture.
His favourite photograph was that of the Banque National, a handsome building antedating the First World War. "It was damaged in the earthquake," said Boss. "But look at it here. It's beautiful."
Haiti looters are shot or lynched as owners comb through house ruins
Most people aren't stealing, they are simply trying to recover what's left of their own possessions
* Rory Carroll
* The Observer, Sunday 24 January 2010
Marc Nestor holds a certificate he rescued from the wrecked law offices of his employer, Jean Samson. Photograph: David Levene
It was testament to the mayhem in Rue Pavée that everyone forgot about the burning corpse.
A group of youths in rags had clambered up to the top floors of destroyed shops and were throwing random objects into the street: nappies, books, bags, tyres, then chairs, bookcases and filing cabinets.
Fights broke out as the mob below surged forward to grab the prizes. A teenager peeled away, clutching a bulging white cotton bag. What was in it? "I don't know," he said, sweating, his eyes darting about, lest a rival snatch it. "But it's mine."
Motorcyclists draped looted tyres over their torsos before roaring away in clouds of dust.
Shots rang out: the police. Uniformed officers charged up the street, rifles levelled, scattering the crowd. Just a fleeting cameo by the Haitian state. Minutes later, the police were gone and the looters returned to pillage what remained of Rue Pavée. The corpse continued burning.
It was a scene dreaded since the earthquake on 12 January flattened Port-au-Prince: chaos and immolation as feral gangs took over the shattered ruins. A Caribbean vision of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Images of the mayhem flashed around the world, alarming aid agencies and terrifying the truckers waiting to cross into Haiti from the Dominican Republic. "They could attack at any moment. I'm getting a knife or a club before crossing," said Leonel Sosa, 22, as he loaded up his vehicle.
For those following events in the Haitian capital from afar, it was easy to overlook one thing: the mayhem was restricted to a few streets downtown. The ransacking and violence in Rue Pavée were real, but not representative of the rest of the city.
The people of Port-au-Prince have proved remarkably stoical in the face of extreme deprivation. The Haitian state has all but vanished, and the international response has yet to fill the gap, yet most neighbourhoods remain calm. In Delmas, for instance, street stalls selling oranges and fried plantain operated without hassle, a few metres from homeless, penniless families who had not eaten in 24 hours. The only thing they stole were glances. "Our neighbours will help us," said Juliette Josef, 28, surrounded by her four children.
Haiti's capital is filled not with looters but scavengers, an important distinction. Talk to those scouring the ruins for something to salvage and they almost always turn out to be the owners.
Mon Plaza, a warren of shops and houses in the hillside district of Pétionville, resembled an ant hill, with people carting possessions through the cracked concrete maze.
Some carried mattresses and iron bedsteads on their heads, others hauled pillow cases bulging with books, cutlery and electrical equipment. Looters have been lynched and shot, but these scavengers, reclaiming their own possessions, had nothing to fear.
On a dusty street in front of a collapsed three-storey house, Lenel Dilus hunched over a coffee table with a can of insect repellent, a can of air freshener, and a red bottle of Rumpa'n grenadine syrup: the sum total of what he had salvaged from the family home and business.
Around him were four neighbours with saws, iron bars and improvised tools. They had come to help him salvage items from the ground floor, a grocery store. Their other mission was to extract the bodies of five relatives and employees. They rubbed a lime under their noses to mask the smell, covered their faces with cloths and set to work.
"Lenel is not paying us for this, we want to help," said Estinvil Sainvilus, a civil servant. His task was to saw off the usable bits of wood from broken doors and furniture.
It was not pure philanthropy – the diggers would split the salvage – but the calm, businesslike exercise in solidarity and mutual gain was a world away from the chaos of Rue Pavée. Worming into corpse-filled, unstable ruins while aftershocks jolt the city is nasty, dangerous work, but it is one of the few jobs available in a shattered economy.
Marc Nestor, 34, a handyman for a law firm, assumed his job had vanished with the firm's offices in Rue de Centre. But last week his boss, Jean Samson, asked him to extract what he could from the debris. After five hours he had filled four cardboard boxes with documents, framed diplomas, legal texts and a hardback dictionary whose cover showed a picture of Barack Obama.
"I lost my whole world, but here at least I've got something back," said Samson, patting the boxes. Dapper in grey trousers and shirt, and with a blue surgical mask, the lawyer sat in a plastic chair in the middle of the deserted street and watched his employee squirm in and out of crevices. "I may need to hire a second guy. There's heavy stuff to be got out, bookcases, chairs."
High-powered efforts to clear debris got under way yesterday in the form of Caterpillar earth-movers equipped with turbo-diesel engines. They shovelled tonnes of broken concrete, some festooned with tablecloths and sheets.
Before the machinery arrived, Pierrot Boss, an ironmonger, squirrelled into the ruins of his workshop on Rue de Boudon to claim a 2009 calendar, treasured because of its historic illustrations of Port-au-Prince architecture.
His favourite photograph was that of the Banque National, a handsome building antedating the First World War. "It was damaged in the earthquake," said Boss. "But look at it here. It's beautiful."
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages