A desperate citizenry combined with an absence of police forces has led to increased looting in Port-au-Prince in the wake of a the massive earthquake.
Video footage from the city showed bands of Haitian youths armed with machetes wandering the streets looting, as the local police were largely invisible.
“The Hatian National Police are not visible at all,” said David Wimhurst, a spokesman for the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Port-au-Prince. The U.N. peacekeepers are themselves devastated by casualties from the quake.
Whether the machete-wielding men posed a violent threat to the rest of the city is unclear, but what is clear is that quake survivors are taking more drastic measures as relief efforts have become bogged down in what some aid workers call a “logistical nightmare.”
Matt Marek, of the American Red Cross, said the widespread looting has mainly been relegated to collapsed buildings, not undamaged stores.
“There is no other way to get provisions,” he told The Associated Press. “Even if you have money, those resources are going to be exhausted in a few days.”
But some think the looting is becoming a more serious threat.
“It is dangerous at night. Lootings were widespread and some markets were ransacked,” Oxfam spokesman Cedric Perus said in a statement to the AP. .
And the problem will likely get worse in the absence of more effective relief.
“Literally I can say the whole population is homeless. … People grow more desperate and then God only know what’s going to happen,” Frederick Auzate, a Haitian-American from Silver Springs, Md., told CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric in Port-au-Prince Thursday.
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7 Responses
Sorry! but what does beatings and bafaling (attacking) women have to do with “desperation”? When similar tsunamis and earthquakes, where tens of thousands died, took place L”A in other regions of the world, people didn’t run around with machettes.
the Haitians are the “cream of the crop”
Yiddshemischpacha — your comment is illuminating. Instead of offering a prayer for those poor people, you offer invective. How would you feel if an Earthquake struck our people and someone said the Jews are the “cream of the crop.” Yep. You’d feel pretty terrible. Shame on you.
to #2,
not mentchlech.
It’s wrong not just because what if they said it about us, but it’s an uncaring attitude.
Also if you insult the product you insult the maker.
What exactly is “looting?”
The press loves to runs these stories after disasters but the reality is quite different.
In a situation like this, is going into an unoccupied store to get food when you haven’t eaten in a few days “looting?” Sure, if you steal items when the owner is there it is looting.
Most stories of looting are nothing more than urban legends.
just for the record, looting means forcibly taking, usually by violent means. just because the owner is there does not mean it is looting.
Sunday NYTimes:
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Along the capital’s main commercial strip Saturday afternoon, dozens of armed men — some wielding machetes, others with sharpened pieces of wood — dodged from storefront to storefront, battering down doors and hauling away whatever they could carry: shoes, luggage, rolls of carpet.
Fights broke out as crowds of people scrambled to collect rolls of fabric, sauce pans and other items that were tossed into the streets. In some cases, men pulled out knives or brandished chunks of wood to try to disperse the crowds and take the loot for themselves. Guns were fired.
“There are thefts everywhere,” said Joel Querette, 23, a college student camped out at a park near the airport. “People have guns and knives, and they are stealing and looting the stores.”
As night fell, the police brought a man to Pétionville in the back of a pickup and informed a gathering crowd that he had been caught looting in another neighborhood, witnesses said. While the police officers stood by, an angry mob pulled the man from the truck.
The mob stripped the accused looter, then began beating him. They dragged him up the street while pummeling him, then threw him on a trash heap, where he lay vomiting and bleeding.
One man began piling trash on top of him and set it on fire. As the firelight flickered on an art gallery and a church on opposite sides of the street, dozens gathered to watch the man burn to death.