Tag: voodoo

Haitian gang leader ‘massacred more than 100 people claiming witchcraft killed his son’

A Haitian gang leader is accused of ordering the massacre of more than 100 people, including elderly religious leaders, to avenge the death of his son.

The killings reportedly took place between Friday and Saturday in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti’s capital.

According to the National Human Rights Defense Network, Micanor Altès, also known as Monel Felix and Wa Mikanò, sought the advice of a Vodou priest after his son fell ill.

The human rights organization said that following the boy’s death, Altès began to accuse older people in the community of ‘of practicing witchcraft and harming the child.’

The Cooperative for Peace and Development learned that gunmen swept up community leaders in the Cité Soleil neighborhood and took them to Altès’ stronghold, where they were murdered along with motorcycle drivers who attempted to intervene.

‘He decided to cruelly punish all elderly people and (Vodou) practitioners who, in his imagination, would be capable of casting a bad spell on his son,’ the group said.

The Cooperative for Peace and Development found that that there’s a ban on people leaving the community ‘in order to continue to identify (Vodou) practitioners and the elderly with the aim of carrying out the silent killing.’

Haiti’s government in a statement Monday acknowledged the massacre and said that more than 100 people were killed.

While reports of the number of dead in Port-au-Prince tend to vary in a country where such killings often occur in gang-controlled, largely inaccessible areas, the government vowed to seek justice for the ‘unspeakable carnage.’

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Zombies and Voodoo: The Living Dead Religion of Modern Haiti

On the list of the most well-known monsters from Hollywood movies, zombies clearly occupy one of the top positions. In their cinematographic version, they consume human flesh and brains with the explanation that this fact diminishes their pain of being dead, while humans bitten or hurt by zombies end up becoming zombies as well. In Haiti, zombies not only exist in movies, but as a day-to-day reality that is steeped in Voodoo, which revolves around spirits known as lwa. In Haitian Voodoo (or Haitian Vodou) the Iwa spirits get their names and attributes from traditional West and Central African divinities, and they are also equated with certain Roman Catholic saints.

Haiti, the first black republic, is distinguished by colonialism, poverty, zombies, and Voodoo. Situated in the Caribbean and with its capital at Port-Au-Prince, this country continues to be dominated by the existence of gangs and corruption, and the silence of the night is often interrupted by gunshots and by violent thunderstorms. The harsh living conditions in this island nation have reduced the medium life expectancy to just 43 years. Even though life goes on, just like business, each morning brings forth the necessity to clean the streets after the confrontations of the night.

The Spanish arrived in Haiti in the year 1492 and they exterminated the local indigenous population in less than ten years. Taking into consideration the fact that the Industrial Revolution had not occurred yet, slaves continued to be in high demand and colonial Haiti quickly got involved in this horrible industry. In roughly 1503, the Catholic priest Bartholomeo de las Casas came up with the idea of bringing slaves to Haiti from Africa. After this, the French rulers of Haiti, in turn, followed the Spanish model and they continued to bring slaves from Africa to Haiti with the purpose of making them work on plantations.

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