Haiti media under siege as armed gangs target news outlets in Port-au-Prince
Armed groups in Haiti have targeted another local media, making it the third outlet to be attacked by gangs in a week marked by the burning of schools, the looting of businesses and escalating panic in the streets of Port-au-Prince.
On Sunday, the editorial staff of Télé Pluriel in the Delmas 19 neighborhood, said heavily armed gang members had broken through the station's main barrier sometime during the night and set fire to its premises while also pillaging their offices. The attack on the independent television channel followed similar assaults on other media.
Between Wednesday and Thursday, armed groups also attacked Radio Télévision Caraïbes and Mélodie FM after invading the neighborhood where radio stations are located. All attacks have been blamed on the powerful Viv Ansanm, Living Together, gang coalition. The gang, which controls up to 90% of the capital, has been advancing on the capital day-by-day amid an effort by a Haitian government task force to hit their strongholds with explosive drones that, so far, have proven unsuccessful at either capturing or killing any prominent gang leaders.
On Friday, automatic gunshots could be heard throughout Port-au-Prince where people brave enough to take to the streets were ducking stray bullets — even in restaurants. In a widely circulated video, gunmen could be seen in a high-rise and sporadically firing at anything moving. Elsewhere, people reported buildings in some downtown neighborhoods engulfed in flames and others being looted. Gang members are reportedly paying individuals to set fire to the buildings.
The intensified gang attacks have led to more individuals fleeing their homes and neighborhoods including several orders of Roman Catholic nuns and orphans.
'The losses were enormous,' the staff of Télé Pluriel said in a post on its website, adding that due to ongoing violence they have been unable to access the area.
Télé Pluriel is owned by Pierre-Louis Opont, a former head of Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council, and his award-winning journalist wife Marie Lucie Bonhomme, a recipient of the 2025 Greeley Peace Prize from the University of Massachusetts Lowell for her defense of human rights and reporting on the challenges Haitians face at home and abroad. She and Opont founded the station in 2012 and Bonhomme presents the evening news on the channel while hosting a weekly show titled 'Sans Détour.'
A veteran reporter with Vision 2000 and host of its morning current affairs news program, Bonhomme and Opont both found themselves victims of gangs when they were abducted a week apart in 2023. While she was held briefly, Opont was held for several weeks before he was freed after a ransom was paid.
The attacks against Haitian media are being viewed as an attempt to undermine journalists in Haiti and to weaken the press. They also come amid U.S. cuts by the Trump administration that on Saturday led to all full staffers with Voice of America's Haitian Creole service being placed on full time leave and earlier this year led to the cancellation of the news program 'Enfòmasyon nou dwe konnen' (Information We Should Know) by the PANOS Institute. The program disappeared from the broadcast of several Haiti radio stations after the U.S. announced a pause in its foreign assistance.
In a note, the head of SOS Journalistes Haiti, a journalists association, noted that gangs have launched a wanted poster against several journalists and have ordered their arrests. 'Journalists and the entire population are at the mercy of gangs,' Guyler Delva, the head of the association said, lamenting about the lack of protection for journalists under the current regime. He accused members of the country's nine-member Transitional Presidential Council of endangering 'the safety of members of the press in an obvious, persistent, stubborn and deliberate manner.'
Haiti, the Committee to Protect Journalists said last month, is one of the world's deadliest places to be a journalists. Among the incidents, it cited was a December attack where the gang coalition opened fire on journalists at a hospital reopening, killing two of them before taking responsibility for the incident.
As news of the latest media attacks circulated on Sunday, local media reported that armed gang members had set fire to yet another armored vehicle belonging to the Haiti National Police. The vehicle was being driven in the hills above the capital in Kenscoff, the reports said when gang members ambushed it with Molotov cocktails.
Since late January, scores of gang members have been in command of several rural communities in Kenscoff in an effort to take control of wealthy enclaves not yet under their control. The burned police vehicle is the third police armored vehicle to be set ablaze by gangs in Kenscoff and the fifth in recent months.
Earlier in the week, gangs set fire to the offices of Radio Télévision Caraïbes on Chavannes Street in downtown Port-au-Prince. A journalist with the station said it appeared that a fire was started early Thursday morning. Gang members also attacked Mélodie FM, located two blocks away on Rue Capois.
The station, per a note, was looted sometime between Wednesday and Thursday.
According to witnesses, gang members invaded the area in the middle of the night in pickup trucks and broke into several buildings, most of which had been deserted by occupants. To access Mélodie FM, they reportedly dug large holes in the walls of its premises, and used them as tunnels to enter the building.
No casualties were recorded during this intrusion, and no radio station employees were present at the scene.
Founded in 1998, the station is owned by journalist Marcus Garcia, another renowned Haitian journalist and columnist who led the struggle for press freedoms against the Duvalier dictatorship in the 1980s. As a result of his fight, he was exiled and fled to the United States where he lived for several years.
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