Black Immigrant Daily News

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Rising gang crime in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince is limiting access to education and is preventing thousands of children from going to school. Since 2020, gang-related violence has led to school closures, and children have become easy prey for gang recruitment.

Steve (not his real name) dreamed of becoming a schoolteacher when his life was turned upside down last year. Due to the upsurge in gang-related violence in his neighborhood, his school was closed, and the 15-year-old found himself roaming around on the streets, at the mercy of armed groups. “I joined the gang in February 2021. They saw me walking and called me and asked me to work for them. There were other children like me.”

According to a report published by two local youth-focused organizations 13 per cent of the children surveyed in one troubled neighbourhood in the capital, Port-au-Prince, say they have been in direct or indirect contact with members of armed gangs as they tried to recruit them.

I’ll be killed if I leave the gang

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They offer to pay the children a lot of money, while threatening to kill them if they don’t comply. “Every day, as soon as they send me to watch the police, they will pay me 1,500 or 2,500 Haitian gourdes ($15-25). They told me they’ll kill me if I don’t want to stay with them,” says Steve.

In 2021, clashes between rival armed gangs erupted in some urban areas of the capital Port-au-Prince. More than 19,000 people including 15,000 women and children have been forced to flee their homes due to acts of violence such as killings, kidnappings; hundreds of houses have been burned or damaged.

This year, the gang war has intensified. Since 24 April, half a million children have lost access to education in Port-au-Prince where some 1,700 schools are closed, according to government figures.

Broken childhood

Steve led a peaceful life as a suburban child. He played with his younger brother and two younger sisters, and thoroughly enjoyed his childhood with his grandmother. “I used to ride my bike, play video games and watch movies until dark. Sometimes, I went to fetch water for my grandmother and I also cleaned the house,” he recalls.

Violence is impacting an increasing number of schools and has shattered the dream of many children. An education ministry assessment between April and May 2022 of 859 schools in Port-au-Prince revealed that 31 per cent of had been attacked, and over 50 had closed their doors to students. A large number of schools have been occupied by gangs or are serving as temporary accommodation for families displaced by violence.

The number of students in classes has fallen from 238,000 at the start of the gang crisis in April to 184,000 now.

Child rights violations

Violence, school closures and idleness lead inexorably to the enrollment of children into armed groups. “There are always shootings where I live and often people cannot get out. The schools are closed, and we are all abandoned in the streets. When you live on the street, you become a street child, and that’s what gets us into gangs,” says Steve.

“Giving children weapons to fight and using them as soldiers or spies is a violation to their child rights and condemned by both national and international laws,” says Bruno Maes, UNICEF Representative in Haiti. “It saddens me that children who are willing to learn and teachers willing to educate cannot do so because they feel unsafe. Children must be able to attend school safely, play freely and enjoy being a child and given a chance to develop to their fullest potential.”

Steve has now been caught and is awaiting trial on charges related to his gang activity. While in detention, he is being helped by the UNICEF-supported Brigade for the Protection of Minors (BPM).

Source: UN News Headline photo: Stock image

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En partenariat avec l’Université Paris-Est Créteil, la plateforme régionale d’oncologie de la Martinique a remis, vendredi dernier, les certificats à son premier réseau d’animateurs-relais et de patients-experts spécialisés en cancérologie. 

France-Antilles Martinique

1401 mots – 06.07.2022

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80-year-old Santa Chun died after being knocked down on the Valley of Peace Road, and 69-year-old Crispín Moreno Francisco was hit by a Toyota Ranger pickup truck in Carmelita Village while crossing the Philip Goldson Highway.

by Charles Gladden

VALLEY OF PEACE, Cayo District, Mon. June 4, 2022

Over the weekend, two elderly persons died as a result of road traffic accidents. The first fatal accident, which claimed the life of 80-year-old Santa Chun, occurred on Friday, July 1, while  Chun was walking on the side of the highway in the Valley of Peace, Cayo District, after buying tortillas. The other accident took place on Sunday, July 3, in Carmelita Village, Orange Walk District, where 69-year-old Crispin Moreno Francisco was killed instantly when he was hit by a pickup truck while crossing the Philip Goldson Highway.

According to an initial police report, the driver of the pickup which hit Chun in Cayo, 43-year-old Jesus Felipe Galdamez, a vendor, told police that at around 7:40 p.m. on Friday night he was traveling in his pickup truck in the direction of Valley of Peace as he headed to Belmopan when he suddenly saw Chun walking on the side of the highway. Galdamez said he tried to swerve to avoid hitting Chun but to no avail. He stopped and assisted Chun by transporting her to the Western Regional Hospital, where she succumbed to her injuries sometime after 11:00 p.m. that night.

Since then, police have detained and charged Galdamez with manslaughter by negligence, causing death by careless conduct, and driving a motor vehicle without due care and attention.

Galdamez voluntarily gave urine samples to the police, so he did not receive a NIP (Notice or Intended Prosecution).

The family of Chun is now urging that speed bumps be placed in the village to prevent speeding on the highway, which could cause another family to lose a loved one.

The second fatal traffic accident, which occurred in Carmelita Village, took the life of 69-year-old CrispínMoreno Francisco, who was fatally hit by a Toyota Ranger pickup truck while crossing the Philip Goldson Highway.

Police arrived at the scene around 7:15 p.m., and were told by the driver of the Toyota Ranger pickup truck, CadieRhaburn, who hit Moreno Francisco, that he was traveling along the highway and was approaching a Chinese store when he saw Moreno Francisco crossing the highway hurriedly and tried to avoid hitting Moreno Francisco but failed to do so.

Moreno Francisco was flung a distance away due to the impact of the hit and died instantly when he landed on the pavement.

Jamie Moreno Francisco, a son of the deceased, has said that his father would often cross the road by himself in order to get to the store and he would often advise him to be careful of the traffic, as his father is a stroke survivor.

“Sometimes when he wants to walk around to go to the shop to buy something he would normally cross, or if I’m around I’ll do the errand for him, because you know the traffic is really high, and you got drivers who are driving, but they don’t drive with due care and attention… I always told him, ‘Dad, one of these days you need to watch the road because the road is not like what you think. And the situation that you will be in, you won’t be able to make it like us who have two better feet’,” said the grieving son.

“I used to come down every weekend or every two weeks to watch him, treat him the best although we went through our ups and down, but we’ll leave it in God’s hands, because he knows what he’s doing. But he was good, we treat him [well]. I love him because he’s my flesh and blood and the only thing you can do is to come together and make sure everything is accomplished in the proper way,” he continued.

Moreno Francisco believes that a speed bump should be installed in the area to avoid more accidents due to the lack of lights in the area.

“I think the people who are in charge of the highway are supposed to do is to try to make a bump in this area, because normally when the night comes, it is very dark; that’s the error. But normally, sometimes people see things at the moment, but when they put on their high beam, and that’s when they say sorry, because it’s too late,” he said.

Police have detained Rhaburn, and charges are currently pending.

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BELIZE CITY, Mon. July 4, 2022 Five men convicted for one of the most heinous murders in modern Belizean history are set to stand trial for yet another high-profile crime, this time, the 2016 kidnapping of Lloyd and Rose Friessen. Danny Mason was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2020 after being convicted along with Ernest Castillo, Ashton Vanegas, Keiron Fernandez, and Terrence Fernandez of the murder and beheading of Pastor Llewelyn Lucas. Today, the group returned

Magistrate’s Court for a jury selection (voir dire) and the possible commencement of the trial, but this was put off after the presiding judge, Justice Francis Cumberbatch, dismissed the jury on the grounds that they may have been prejudiced.

Following the afternoon session, Norman Rodriguez, attorney for Ashton Vanegas, explained to reporters, “One of the concerns raised by a senior counsel is that since every defendant can object to five of those people, just a normal objection if you don’t want them on the panel, and since there are five defendants, he was saying that you should have at least 25 representing the 5 defendant objections and 9, but that did not happen, and there was 24.”

He said there was an adjournment until this afternoon, and during that time the counsel for the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) was to make submissions to the court, but the judge considered another issue at that time— the impartiality of the jury.

“When we came back, the judge looked at another issued raised, and that is that the jury had become privy to a part of the process, and the judge in his own discretion and wisdom decided to discharge the jury,” Rodriguez said.

He said that the next jury will not be selected until around September of this year, so the official commencement of the trial would be delayed until then. In the meantime, however, the parties have agreed to engage on other matters related to the case in a case management session to be held later this month.

“I believe it is September when a new jury’s life will come into play, and then we will be able to proceed with the trial, but in the meantime, the judge along with counsels in chambers decided that we could address some other issues, through case management, and so we

are set for the 20th and the 21st to return to court for those matters to be addressed,” Rodriguez said.

Norman Rodriguez, attorney for Ashton Vanegas

The case stems from the claims of Mennonite Lloyd Friessen, who has said that Mason conned him out of $300,000 in a fraudulent corn shipment deal the victim fronted the cash for. The shipment, which was to come from Argentina, never reached the country, and the former major producer from out of Spanish Lookout started to press Mason to return the money. This was when Mason allegedly lured him and his wife to his Intelco Hill residence under the

pretext of having a business meeting but then kidnapped them with the help of his reportedly armed workmen and took them to his ranch.

It is on that same ranch that Pastor Lucas is believed to have been beheaded weeks later. Friessen said that they were both threatened by Mason, and that he was told he would have to pay $2,500 weekly instead of getting his money back, and that if he said anything to the police, Mason would find out, since he had connections inside the department. Friessen told police that he paid the money for a few weeks before fleeing the country.

If convicted for the kidnapping, Mason and his accomplices could potentially be sentenced to even more time on top of the life sentences they have received. Each of the men has to wait 30 years or more before they will be eligible for parole.

That previous case is going to be called up for appeal shortly, attorney Norman Rodriguez said today during his interview.

“That is going through. There have been certain little issues as in every process and more so in the legal process, but those have been ironed out and we are getting near to the appeal being heard. No date as yet.” Rodriguez said.

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