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.

...continued

©2024 Miami Herald. Visit miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.