All 78 detainees escape Haiti prison during protest

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All 78 detainees at a prison in Haiti escaped Tuesday, police said, during a demonstration against President Jovenel Moise.

Witnesses said the anti-Moise protest was taking place in front of the police station adjoining the penitentiary in Aquin, a town of around 100,000 on the south coast of the country's Tiburon Peninsula.

The country is in the grip of a growing political crisis which has seen citizens take to the streets of the capital Port-au-Prince and elsewhere over the last week to demand Moise's resignation.

A car is placed as a barricade by demonstrators during clashes in the center of Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, February 12, 2019. / VCG Photo

Barricades have sprung up in some areas of the capital and other cities, with protesters demanding the president answer reports of mismanagement and possible embezzlement of development funds in the impoverished Caribbean nation.

In October, an investigation found that three quarters of the 11,839 people imprisoned in Haiti were still waiting for a court ruling – a delay that has sometimes stretched beyond a decade.

Demonstrators are demanding Moise quit over a scandal centering on the Petrocaribe fund, under which Venezuela supplied Haiti and other Caribbean and Central American countries with oil at cut-rate prices and on easy credit terms for years.

Demonstrators gesture next to the body of a dead protester during clashes with Haitian police in the center of Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, February 12, 2019. / VCG Photo

Investigations have shown that nearly two billion U.S. dollars from the program were misused.

A report released in January on the misuse of the money also named a company that was then headed by Moise as a beneficiary of funds from a road construction project that never had a signed contract.

During his election campaign, Moise promised "food on every plate and money in every pocket," yet most Haitians still struggle to make ends meet and face inflation that has risen 15 percent since his election.

A mediation group composed of a senior officials from the UN, Brazil and a coalition of Western nations has called on Haiti's politicians to enter dialogue over the crisis, lamenting the loss of life and damage caused by the protests.

While the government has offered no response to the demands of demonstrators, opposition groups have also failed to spell out any concrete solution to the crisis, beyond calling for the president to step aside.

(Cover: Demonstrators march on the streets. / VCG Photo)

Source(s): AFP