Haiti, January 18: A GROUP of men and children watch as a suspected thief is brutally beaten to death by a man wielding a stick.
The victim is naked and his hands and feet are bound. The man’s body is then dragged along by a rope and set on fire as bystanders watch the scene with dead eyes.
It is broad daylight in Port- au- Prince, the devastated capital city of Haiti.
These are the latest in a series of chilling images from the country as anarchy threatens to destabilise the relief effort following Tuesday’s earthquake.
Fears are growing for the continued safety of the nation. Violence is rife as scavengers and looters swarm over the wrecks of shops, carrying off anything they can find.
Robbers prey on survivors struggling without supplies in makeshift camps on roadsides littered with debris and decomposing bodies.
Men armed with machetes and other weapons walk brazenly through the capital city while others stalk the streets holding shotguns.
One Russian search team said the general insecurity was forcing them to suspend their rescue efforts after nightfall.
Some of the trouble stems from the destruction of the country’s main jail and subsequent escape of its prisoners.
Heavily armed gang members who once ran Haiti’s largest slum like warlords have returned with a vengeance since the earthquake damaged the National Penitentiary, allowing 3,000 inmates to break out.
The pacification of Cite Soleil had been one of President Rene Preval’s few undisputed achievements since taking office in 2006.
“ It’s only natural that they would come back here. This has always been their stronghold,” a Haitian police officer said in the teeming warren of shacks, alleys and open sewers that is home to over 3,00,000 people.
Tensions have been rising among those awaiting international help and hunting for missing relatives as aid begins to trickle in four days after an earthquake killed scores of people.
A senior UN official warned that hunger will fuel trouble if aid does not arrive soon, although the law and order situation remains under control “ for the time being”. But American secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who visited the country this weekend, has vowed the US will stand by Haiti.
“ We will also be conveying very directly and personally to the Haitian people our long- term unwavering support, solidarity and sympathies,” Clinton, who was accompanied on her flight to the country by a raft of supplies, said.
Haiti’s shell- shocked government has given the US control over its main airport to bring order to aid and food flights from around the world and speed relief to the impoverished Caribbean nation.
Besides the violence, it is the sheer impracticality of so many aircraft at a small airport that has seriously hampered the provision of aid.
“ It’s like getting a billiard ball through a straw,” US vice- president Joseph Biden said.
–Agencies