As a united front of powerful armed gangs in Haiti continue to hold millions hostage and threaten the collapse of society, the ongoing attacks have claimed a new victim: the downtown Port-au-Prince premises of Haiti’s oldest newspaper, the region’s oldest French-language daily.
Unknown assailants vandalized and looted the offices of Le Nouvelliste in Haiti’s capital, disrupting the newspaper’s printing, its publisher, Max Chauvet said.
“They went building by building and pillaged every one,” Chauvet said of the bandits. “Frankly, I do not understand the desire to destroy.”
The attack is the latest example of how Haiti’s armed violence is leading to the devastation of the historic center of Port-au-Prince, and the wider threat the country’s unraveling poses.
In the last two months universities, training schools and the National Library of Haiti, where rare historic books and manuscripts are stored, have all been vandalized or destroyed. Even the downtown premises of the National Press, home of the the government’s official newspaper, Le Moniteur, hasn’t been spared. Its looting coincided with that of Le Nouvelliste, which was already struggling to keep the Haitian population informed as the expansion of gangs throughout the capital cut off circulation routes, and the wave of violence hurt the paper’s balance sheets.
“I would like for the international press, which is presenting the bandits as revolutionaries, I would like for them to come and see what has happened to Le Nouvelliste,” Chauvet said, jotting off a list of structures that have been attacked or forced to abandon downtown due to the increase in violence. “Tell me who is the revolutionary when you destroy an institution like the National Press, like Le Nouvelliste.”
In an interview with the Miami Herald, Chauvet said he hasn’t been able to get a full accounting of all that was seized and destroyed. He was informed about the attack, which occurred earlier this month, by one of the few residents still living near his newspaper’s presses. The caller reported people leaving the newspaper with reams of printing paper.
“No one can go downtown,” Chauvet, a fourth-generation newspaper owner, said. ”I can’t even send someone to go take a photograph for me to see the damage.”
Speaking early Monday morning on the airwaves of Radio Magik9, which he owns, Chauvet said there are several victims as a result of the vandalism. “There are the readers who won’t have a newspaper for some time to read; I don’t know for how long. … There are the employees… who have lost their jobs.”
Like other local media housed downtown, Le Nouvelliste, located on Rue de Centre, had started shifting its operations away from the city’s center over a year ago due to kidnappings and the wave of gang violence. But the presses were too heavy to move, so it continued to print the paper out of the building at night. The raid on the country’s two largest prisons in early March, however, changed everything. After suppliers couldn’t get through the gang-controlled streets, publication of the printed paper was soon halted. The security personnel, however, remained until the stray bullets and threats became unbearable.
“They had made two to three attempts to try and break in and didn’t succeed,” Chauvet said of the bandits. “Then I told my security, ‘Your lives are more important than what is inside.’ “
Not long after, the break-in happened. The newspaper building was the latest in a series that had been targeted and pillaged since Feb. 29, when armed groups began attacking government buildings and poor and rich neighborhoods alike. In their attempt to take over the international airport and main seaport, they orchestrated the escape of more than 4,000 prisoners, and have blanketed the capital with heavy gunfire, trapping millions of Haitians.
The ongoing violence has left police scrambling and created an opening for looters who, along with armed gang members, have set fire to buildings and stolen whatever they can carry.
“You have a lot of bandits with guns, sometimes children 15 and 16 years old who are killing, destroying everything people have spent 20, 30 years building,” said Chauvet, who this year also canceled the paper’s popular Livres en Folie, a writers’ showcase and book fair. “I don’t know how we are going to get from under this economic disaster.”
Once vibrant and teeming with vendors and pedestrians, downtown Port-au-Prince is today a no-go zone, its streets resembling a post-apocalyptic scene as cars lay abandoned, garbage piles up and weeds and overgrown trees take over roadways. Hospitals are empty, pharmacies burned and government agencies are mere shells.
The Central Bank, National Palace and National Port Authority, for now, remain under police protection. Other buildings have not been so lucky.
“They have broken into all of the businesses and all of the private homes of the people in the area,” Chauvet said.
As gangs have expanded and tightened their grip on Port-au-Prince, the effect has been felt in all parts of life in both the formal and informal economies. The newspaper was already forced to stop deliveries in certain communities that had come under gang control.
“There are resources we no longer have,” Chauvet said, explaining that businesses stopped advertising a while ago and many of the ads being run by media houses are old and do not bring in any new revenue. “We practically do not have any more advertising.”
In a note, the National Association of Haitian Media, of which the newspaper is a founding member, said it was shocked by what has happened. It described the paper as “a pillar of freedom of expression in the Haitian media landscape and the last vestige of free print media in our country.” The group called on Haitian authorities to do their job and protect media outlets and journalists in Haiti.
Journalists themselves have also increasingly become targets. They’ve been kidnapped and killed. To protect themselves and their families, some have fled the country, while others practice self-censorship for fear of reprisals.
Le Nouvelliste, founded more than a century ago, will turn 126 years old on Wednesday. During its existence, it has survived presidential coups and assassination, despots and natural disasters. But this latest disaster may prove to be one of the paper’s most difficult. Millions of people are hungry, tens of thousands across the capital have been displaced by the violence and the economy is in shambles.
“There is a danger for democracy and a danger for quality journalism and an independent press,” Chauvet said. “When an independent press no longer has resources, the only people who will be able to finance the media are drug traffickers … dirty money.”
Like many newspapers in the United States, Le Nouvelliste has been working on making the transition from print to online. Now, that will need to be accelerated, said Chauvet, who plans to launch a paywall in hopes of keeping the paper afloat.
“If they refuse to pay,” he said of the public, “then that will mean the disappearance of the newspaper.”
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