Haiti’s ‘vodou’ murders: Why did a gang kill nearly 200 people?

Nearly 200 people have been killed in Haiti over claims of “witchcraft”. The killing spree in the capital’s coastal Cite Soleil over the weekend is believed to have been ordered by a gang leader who alleged that the victims had used witchcraft against his child.

Here is more about the latest bout of gang violence in the Caribbean nation:

What happened in Haiti?

At least 184 people were killed on December 6 and 7 in Cite Soleil, an impoverished, sprawling slum by the sea which has long been ravaged by gang violence in the capital city of Port-au-Prince. The killings happened in the Wharf Jeremie neighbourhood.

The spokesperson for the secretary-general of the United Nations reported on Monday that 127 of the victims were elderly. The UN added that gang members had burned the bodies and thrown them into the sea.

It has been reported that many Haitians have fled their homes in Port-au-Prince following the gang violence over the weekend.

On Monday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on the Haitian authorities to properly investigate the killings and make sure “that perpetrators of these and all other human rights abuses and violations are brought to justice”, according to his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric. The Haitian government, as well as the European Union, have condemned the attacks.

Who ordered the massacre in Haiti and why?

The massacre was “orchestrated by the leader of a powerful gang” in Cite Soleil, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk told reporters in Geneva on Monday.

On Sunday, two local human rights organisations identified that gang leader as Jean Monel Felix, who also goes by the moniker “King Micanor”, and said he ordered the killings after his child became sick and died on Saturday afternoon.

A local rights group, the National Human Rights Defence Network (RNDDH), said that Felix had reportedly sought advice from a “Vodou” priest who accused elderly people in the area of using witchcraft to harm the child.

“He decided to cruelly punish all elderly people and Vodou practitioners who, in his imagination, would be capable of sending a bad spell on his son,” Haiti-based civil organisation the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD) reported. “The gang’s soldiers were responsible for identifying victims in their homes to take them to the chief’s stronghold to be executed,” according to CPD.

In October, the UN estimated that Felix’s gang comprises about 300 people and wields influence over the area between the capital’s main port and the international airport, Toussaint Louverture International Airport.

Felix is also allied to a gang coalition known as Viv Ansanm (Living Together), which is led by a former policeman, Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier.

What is Vodou?

Vodou – also commonly known as “voodoo” – is a monotheistic folk religion that originated in the 16th and 17th centuries among Africans who had been abducted and enslaved from near modern-day Nigeria and taken to Saint-Domingue, the French colony. Saint-Dominigue became the independent state of Haiti in 1804 following the successful Haitian Revolution.

The foundations of the religion are believed to be rooted in tribal religions from West Africa.

Vodou derives from the Fon language, and it translates to “spirit” or “deity”. The religion is central to Haitian culture.

Anthropologist Ira Lowenthal told the UK’s Guardian newspaper in 2015 that Vodou was a response to slavery, which treated enslaved Africans like cattle. “Vodou says ‘no, I’m not a cow. Cows cannot dance, cows do not sing. Cows cannot become God. Not only am I a human being – I’m considerably more human than you,’” Lowenthal said.

For many in the West, the first introduction to Vodou was the book, The Magic Island, written by a white journalist, William Seabrook, and published in 1929. Seabrook used racially coded language, such as “screaming, writhing Black bodies”, to describe the practice.

Vodou has historically been attacked by other religions and negative stereotypes about Vodou have long been used to pathologise Haitian culture. Earlier this year, before the presidential election in the United States, disinformation flooded the internet in the form of claims that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were stealing neighbourhood pet cats and dogs and eating them. This was popularised by Republican President-elect Donald Trump, who brought the issue up during presidential debates to support his anti-immigration campaign.

In September, Elon Musk shared a video on X that shows a woman who claims to be of Haitian origin stating that sacrificing animals like cats is a common practice of Haitian Vodou. This has been debunked by Ingrid Kummels, a Latin American ethnologist at Freie Universitat Berlin, who told DW News that cats and dogs are not part of such rituals.

How bad is gang violence in Haiti?

Gang violence is rampant in Haiti and the latest killings have brought the death toll from gang violence in Haiti to 5,000 people this year alone, Turk said on Monday.

There was a sharp rise in violence in February this year when Viv Ansanm launched a coordinated offensive, taking control of parts of the capital along with some rural areas, saying they wanted to overthrow Prime Minister Ariel Henry. That happened while Henry was on an official visit to Kenya requesting that a UN-backed, Kenyan-led police support mission assist in curbing gang violence in Haiti. In March, “Barbecue” Cherizier warned that if Henry did not step down, there would be civil war in Haiti.

In late April, Henry resigned after being barred from returning to the country for a couple of months, paving the way for the installation of a transitional council to pick a new prime minister and eventually conduct presidential elections. Henry’s resignation letter was signed in Los Angeles.

The transitional council named Garry Conille as interim prime minister in late May. In November, amid political in-fighting between Conille and the council, a new prime minister was appointed – Alix Didier Fils Aime. He was sworn in on November 11.

Gangs control 80 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince, where violence is a frequent. Neither the government, weakened by infighting, nor the Kenyan-led police mission has been able to end the attacks.

Rights groups have only limited access to gang strongholds and rely on witness accounts to report gang violence. On November 25, the UN airlifted its staff from Port-au-Prince amid intensifying violence. A week before this, Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, announced that it was halting its services in the capital due to “violence and threats from police”.

Gang violence has left more than 700,000 Haitians internally displaced as of October, according to UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM). More than half of those displaced are children.