Haiti in 'Grim' State a Year After President's Murder

It's been exactly a year since Haitian President Jovenel Moise was assassinated in his private residence, and the state of things in the Caribbean nation has only gotten worse, with a proliferation of gang violence, a despairing populace, and a "seeming state of lawlessness" in parts. That's how it's framed by the New York Times, which notes that when Moise was killed, many Haitians thought that "his assassination would be the country's new rock bottom," giving them hope that they "could start climbing back up." Instead, the paper lays out a "grim" picture of burned-out homes, gang rapes, beheadings and other dismemberment, and even the killing of minors over accusations of serving as informants for rival gangs, per a recent UN statement.

Thousands of children have been kept out of school due to the violence, there's been a fuel shortage after gangs seized critical fuel depots, and the economy is limping along. Confidence in leadership is shaky as well: Prime Minister Ariel Henry, now the nation's de facto leader, has been implicated in the assassination, an allegation he denies. "Every day is a fight," a former plumber-turned-motorcycle taxi driver tells NPR. "It's a fight to stay alive. It's a fight to eat. It's a fight to survive." "I see no future in Haiti for my kids," a mother in the capital of Port-au-Prince concurs to the Times. Meanwhile, one of the former Colombian soldiers accused of helping to murder Moise is now speaking out, per the Miami Herald.

"We among ourselves concluded that the president was killed by his own bodyguards," retired Sgt. Edwin Blanquicet Rodriguez told Colombian radio station La FM, insisting that he was innocent of taking part in the slaying. Blanquicet says he was in Haiti to make money as a security guard for Christian Emmanuel Sanon, an American preacher who himself has been accused in the plot, allegedly because he wanted to take over as president himself. The Times notes that while two probes—one in Haiti, one in the US—have led to multiple arrests, no trials have yet come to fruition. The American investigation has spurred speculation that the assassins had ties to US intelligence agencies like the CIA. "I have so many questions without answers," Martine Moise, who was injured in the attack against her husband, told local media this week, per Al Jazeera. (More Haiti stories.)