Survivors of a massacre in a small Haitian town that left 70 people dead are pointing the finger at the government

PONT-SONDÉ – Angry rumors have broken the heavy silence that fell on Pont-Sondé just days after a vicious gang attack left more than 70 dead, marking one of Haiti’s worst massacres in recent history.

The whispers came from a handful of people who remained in the small town in central Haiti after Thursday’s attack. They huddled by the side of the road, stood under leafy trees or walked around the lonely cemetery.

They all blamed the government for the attack by the Gran Grif gang, founded after a former lawmaker armed young men to secure his election and control of the area nearly a decade ago.

“I have to thank the government because the gangs are killing people and children cannot go to school,” said Lunoir Jean Chavanne, a driver at the city’s morgue.

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

Like others, Chavanne wondered why authorities did nothing to stop the attack by Gran Grif, considered one of Haiti’s most vicious gangs.

“They announced a number of times on social media that they were coming,” he said.

A tragic message

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

It’s the same river that gang members used to their advantage on the night of the attack, plying the rich brown water in canoes so as not to alert anyone to their presence.

They murdered babies, the elderly and entire families.

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

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

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

He doesn’t know why he was spared.

François’ cousin will be buried in a mass grave in Pont-Sondé’s only cemetery, where an 83-year-old caretaker is the only witness to most of the burials since the attack, with the victims’ relatives dead or joined the more than 6,200 people fled for safety to the nearby coastal city of Saint-Marc.

On Tuesday, the caretaker pointed to the recent graves he had dug, noting that none of their relatives could attend the funerals.

They are the latest victims of a wave of gang violence to hit the Artibonite region in recent years, although the scale of Thursday’s attack shocked many.

“This is the most terrifying massacre in Haiti in decades,” 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 have been limited to the capital Port-au-Prince, 80% of which is controlled by gangs and now patrolled by Kenyan police leading a UN-backed mission struggling with a lack of money and personnel.

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

“It is a very, very tragic message and challenge to the authorities and the international community,” he said.

‘I have nothing left’

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

The only sounds now are the angry whispers, the shovel hitting the ground in the cemetery and the occasional motorcycle with a coffin.

The handful of people left behind now carry machetes and walk past walls riddled with bullet holes and floors smeared with blood.

“Young men in the area fought back,” Chavanne said, referring to a local self-defense group known as “The Coalition” that tried to keep the Gran Grif gang at bay. “That’s how we were able to resist.”

But it was precisely these efforts that led to the attack, according to Haiti’s National Human Rights Defense Network.

The human rights group said in a report that Gran Grif was angry because the self-defense group was trying to limit gang activity and prevent it from benefiting from a makeshift road toll it recently imposed in the area.

“The night they invaded, they couldn’t do anything,” Chavanne said of the self-defense group.

Gran Grif leader Luckson Elan was recently sanctioned by the UN Security Council and the US government. Also sanctioned was Prophane Victor, the former lawmaker accused by the UN of arming young men in the Artibonite region.

Chavanne and others wondered what police plan to do next.

“Four days later, the gang is still threatening people on social media, saying they will come back and kill them,” he said. “And now I have nothing left in my hands, only dead relatives.”

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