Survivors of massacre in small Haitian town where 70 died point finger at government

PONT-SONDÉ, Haiti — Angry whispers have broken the heavy silence that fell over Pont-Sondé just days after a vicious gang attack left more than 70 dead, marking one of Haiti's biggest massacres in recent history.

The whispering came from a handful of people that remained in the small town in central Haiti after Thursday's assault. They huddled by the roadside, stood under leafy trees or milled around the lone cemetery.

All of them blamed the government for the assault by the Gran Grif gang, created after a former legislator armed young men nearly a decade ago to secure his election and control of the area.

''I have to thank the government, because the gangs are killing people and kids cannot go to school,'' said Lunoir Jean Chavanne, the town's morgue driver.

He lost three relatives, including a 14-year-old boy and a beloved uncle who was a priest of the Vodou religion.

Like others, Chavanne questioned why authorities didn't do anything to stop the attack by Gran Grif, considered one of Haiti's cruelest gangs.

''They've been announcing that they were coming a number of times on social media,'' he said.

A tragic message

Pont-Sondé was once a bustling community with a thriving marketplace located near the mighty Artibonite River, Haiti's longest.

It's the same river that gang members used to their advantage the night of the attack, plying its rich brown waters with canoes so as not to alert anyone about their presence.

They killed babies, older people and entire families.

Among the victims was the nephew of 58-year-old Elvens François, who was preparing to bury him on Tuesday.

He recalled how he was carrying a plastic bag with his belongings as he prepared to flee his house when three men gripping automatic weapons surrounded him. One held François from the back while the other two gang members faced him.

''They attacked me, cornered me and took everything from me,'' he said, tears in his eyes.

He doesn't know why he was spared.

François' nephew will be buried near a mass grave at Pont-Sondé's lone cemetery, where an 83-year-old caretaker serves as the lone witness to most burials since the attack, with the relatives of victims either dead or having joined the more than 6,200 people who fled to the nearby coastal city of Saint-Marc for safety.

On Tuesday, the caretaker pointed to the recent graves he dug, noting none of their relatives were able to attend the burials.

They are the most recent victims of a surge of gang violence to hit the Artibonite region in recent years, although the magnitude of Thursday's attack shocked many.

''This is the most terrifying massacre in decades in Haiti,'' said Romain Le Cour, senior expert on Haiti for the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. ''It's definitely a show of force.''

Such massacres were limited to the capital of Port-au-Prince, of which 80% is controlled by gangs and is now being patrolled by Kenyan police leading a U.N.-backed mission struggling with a lack of funds and personnel.

The attack poses additional challenges to authorities already struggling with gang violence in the capital, Le Cour said.

''It's a very, very tragic message and challenge sent to the authorities and the international community,'' he said.

‘I'm left with nothing'

Gone is the chatter of street vendors and the rumbling of small, colorful buses known as tap-taps crowded with passengers.

The only noises now are the angry whispering, the shovel hitting the dirt at the cemetery and the occasional motorcycle carrying a coffin.

The handful of people who stayed behind now carry machetes, walking past walls pocked with bullet holes and floors smeared with blood.

''Young men in the area were fighting back,'' Chavanne said, referring to a local self-defense group known as ''The Coalition'' that was trying to keep the Gran Grif gang at bay. ''This is how we were able to resist.''

But it was those very efforts that sparked the attack, according to Haiti's National Human Rights Defense Network.

The human rights group said in a report that Gran Grif was angry that the self-defense group was trying to limit gang activity and prevent it from profiting off a makeshift road toll it had recently established nearby.

''The night that they invaded, there was nothing that they were able to do,'' Chavanne said of the self-defense group.

The leader of Gran Grif, Luckson Elan, was recently sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council and the U.S. government. Also sanctioned was Prophane Victor, the former legislator that the U.N. accused of arming young men in the Artibonite region.

Chavanne and others questioned what police plan to do now.

''Four days later, the gang is still threatening people on social media, saying that they're coming back to finish them,'' he said. ''And now, I'm left with nothing in my hands, just dead family members.''

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Dánica Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Evens Sanon contributed to this report from Port-au-Prince.