Five workers in the environmental protection service were killed yesterday Wednesday in clashes with the Haitian police, as massive demonstrations have continued for days with a central demand for the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henri, who in theory should have left office yesterday, under political agreement signed in 2022.

Clashes broke out near the capital Port-au-Prince. Five armed members of a forest protection force, which recently mutinied against the government, opened fire on police officers, who returned fire, according to an Agence France-Presse police source.

Three members of the force were arrested, he added.

Thousands of people have been demonstrating since the beginning of the week in Port-au-Prince and other regions of the country, demanding the resignation of the head of government.

“It’s the crucial day, the day Ariel Henri had to leave power,” a motorbike taxi driver in Port-au-Prince told AFP.

“I hope he shows some sense. Otherwise, the voice of the people will be heard,” said a protester.

Under an agreement struck in December 2022, a few months after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise, the prime minister was supposed to hold elections and hand over power on February 7, 2024.

Elections have been held in Haiti since 2016. The presidency of the poorest Caribbean country remains vacant.

Prime Minister Henri, in power from 2021, has not brought “any solution to our problems,” another protester said.

“The country is under the hostages of the gangs. We cannot secure anything to eat. We cannot send our children to school. We can’t do it anymore,” said an unemployed man in his forties who also came down to demonstrate.

Haiti remains in a serious and multidimensional crisis—security, humanitarian, public health, political…—as heavily armed gangs have brought much of the country under their control. The number of homicides more than doubled in 2023, according to UN data.

Dominican Republic on “alert”

The demonstrations began at the call of opposition parties and include members of the Protected Areas Security Brigade (BSAP), which theoretically guarantees the protection of the forests, but has rebelled against the government.

February 7th is a date with special symbolic importance in Haiti, it is the anniversary of the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986.

The day before Tuesday, a police station in Wanamid, in the northeastern part of the country, was attacked by people participating in a march, according to the media.

Major roads have been blocked and educational institutions have been closed since Monday due to the protests.

Yesterday the authorities in the neighboring Dominican Republic announced that they had declared a “state of alert” and strengthened measures at the border, due to the ongoing protests in Haiti.

The assassination of President Moise by a firing squad in 2021 plunged the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere into chaos.

To overcome the crisis, the UN Security Council gave the green light in October to the deployment of a Kenyan-led multinational force in Haiti to support the Haitian police, which are unable to deal with armed gangs.

But at the end of last month, a court in Nairobi blocked the Kenyan police mission. The Kenyan government has announced it will challenge the decision. The one from Haiti said that she still has hopes that the mission will indeed be developed in the near future.