Haiti (MNN) — Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated at his home yesterday in the early morning hours. The government has declared a “state of siege,” one level higher than a state of emergency.
Authorities don’t yet know who orchestrated the attack, though they say the group was “highly trained and heavily armed.“ Regional and international leaders have condemned the violence.
Eva DeHart of For Haiti with Love says, “The information came out early about the president being assassinated. His wife had also been shot and was hospitalized. ”
Turmoil ahead
Since the next man in line recently died from COVID-19, Haiti faces a murky path forward. DeHart says, “They were in the middle of a transition. They had a new prime minister named, but not sworn in yet. And he has to be sworn in by the President. So everybody is just kind of staying in their homes because they’re afraid of whoever did this. The country is just kind of numb.”
DeHart asks listeners to pray the situation gets worked out peacefully. The assassination threatens the stability of the whole country, including the northern areas where For Haiti with Love works. “Cap Haitian is pretty much even more in limbo than [Port-au-Prince] because they don’t have a direct link to the politics. So they won’t have, at this point, any say in how it goes forward. Pray that God will lead whoever ends up taking the reins.”
The header photo shows President Jovenel Moïse talking to Canadian Prime minister Justin Trudeau in 2018. (Photo courtesy of Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores from Perú, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
