Convict burns to death in a Haitian street

POLITICS - WARNING! WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ IS GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING.

Yesterday the man on the right was tortured, stripped naked and eventually lit on fire when police caught the man looting.

The order of events:

1. The earthquake leveled the local penitentiary in capitol Port-au-Prince.
2. Many convicts escaped from the collapsed building.
3. The man on the right was caught by police, placed in a truck and was being transferred to a jail when a mob of people saw him.
4. They swarmed the police truck, dragged the convict from the truck while the police radioed for help.
5. They bound him with rope, stripped him naked, tortured him and then took turns beating him with a long wooden stick.
6. Then they lit his body on fire.
7. When police sirens were heard someone yelled: "Get away! The police!" and the mob blended into the rest of the crowd, leaving his body burning in the street.

People have been looting and scavenging for food for days now as food is scarce and relief supplies are slowly trickling in to some of the worst locations. Many of the roads were destroyed by the earthquake and are now impassable.

Decades of government corruption in Haiti has resulted in a bitter scared populace. Since the earthquake the government is barely functioning and control is now more or less in the hands of international aid organizations and the American military which has stepped in to render assistance.

One can only hope that international attention might actually help Haiti to pull itself from the ruins and rebuild, throwing off the shackles of corruption, but history suggests government corruption is virulent everywhere.

See Also:
Profiteerism as Haiti suffers