PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A desperate appeal Wednesday from the president failed to restore order to Haiti’s shattered capital, and bands of looters sacked stores, warehouses and government offices.
Gunfire rang out from the wealthy suburbs in the hills to the starving slums below as 9,000 U.N. peacekeepers were unable to halt a frenzy of looting and violence that has grown out of protests over rising food prices.
Many of the protesters are demanding the resignation of the U.S.-backed president, Rene Preval, and U.N. peacekeepers had to fire rubber bullets and tear gas Tuesday to drive away a mob that tried to storm his palace.
He delivered his first public comments Wednesday, nearly a week into the protests. With his job on the line, Preval urged Congress to cut taxes on imported food and appealed to the rioters to go home.
“The solution is not to go around destroying stores,” he said. “I’m giving you orders to stop.”
But gunfire rang out around the palace after the speech as peacekeepers tried to drive away people looting surrounding stores.
The streets remained in the control of bands of young men carrying sticks and rocks, who set up roadblocks of burning tires and stopped passing cars. Businesses were closed and most people locked themselves indoors as mobs looted stores, warehouses and government offices.
Black smoke billowed over the city as protesters set tires ablaze. Sustained gunfire was heard throughout Petionville, where many diplomats and foreigners live, and in Martissant, a lawless slum west of downtown. On the road to the airport, groups of protesters surrounded makeshift barricades and threw rocks at passing cars.
Protests were reported Wednesday throughout Haiti. In the northern city of Cap-Haitien, bandits tried to steal food from the warehouse of the U.N. World Food Program, a spokeswoman for the peacekeepers said. Protesters also burned tires in Ouanaminthe, on the border with the Dominican Republic, and hundreds marched peacefully in the port of St. Marc.
Haiti is particularly affected by food prices, which have risen 40 percent on average globally since mid-2007. With 80 percent of its population struggling to survive on less than $2 a day, the rising prices pose a threat to its fragile democracy.
Preval acknowledged the threat in his address, saying Haiti’s predicament comes partly from a dependence on imported rice that has weakened national production. He said the rising prices are a global phenomenon and said the tax cut would help lessen the pain.
Many protesters want the United Nations to pull its peacekeepers from Haiti because of resentment over foreign presence. Anger also has been directed at the United States, which sent troops to Haiti in 2004 during the rebellion that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. On Tuesday, protesters threw rocks at the Canadian Embassy and at U.S. Embassy buildings. The U.S. Embassy suspended operations Wednesday.
