Investigation: How a Haitian congregation tried to take down a gang

Issued on: 16/10/2023 – 19:01

“We’re at war! We’re going to attack them!” On August 26, Marcorel Zidor, also known as Pastor Marco, rallied his followers at the Piscine de Bethesda evangelical church in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. This church has a significant platform with a Facebook following of more than 110,000 people. Pastor Marco’s aim was to confront the “Taliban” gang, led by an individual known as Jeff, operating in the Canaan district north of the capital.

Gangs hold sway over a major portion of Port-au-Prince, and the city’s residents bear the brunt of their violence, enduring massacres, rapes and kidnappings for ransom. At least 2,439 fatalities and 951 abductions were recorded between January 1 and August 15, according to the UN.

After mass on August 26, Pastor Marco and his congregation head for Canaan. Some are armed with sticks and machetes. On their way, they pass the police station in the Bon Repos district: it’s just one kilometre from Canaan, but the police let them continue on their way. 

In Canaan, some of the congregation throw stones. The gang retaliates by shooting at them: it’s a bloodbath. Some people are also kidnapped by the gang, interrogated and then released.

At least 21 people killed by the gang

Neither authorities nor the church have released any official figures on the number of casualties. However, the FRANCE 24 Observers team was able to analyse footage and count the bodies visible in videos shot by the gang. We can confirm that at least 21 people were killed. But the death toll is likely to be higher, as some people are still missing.

Several potential reasons account for why regular churchgoers felt compelled to confront a heavily armed gang. Chief among them is what locals see as helplessness and inaction of the Haitian authorities when faced with these armed factions.

“We have a big security problem with the gangs. The government is not doing its job. It’s not taking responsibility. So private citizens are trying to do what the government should be doing,” notes Harold (not his real name), a member of the congregation.

This isn’t the first time that individuals have tried to take on the gangs directly. At the end of April, local residents began hunting down suspected gang members and killing them. We took a closer look at the “Bwa Kale” movement in a special episode of The Observers.

However, this is the first time that a pastor has called on his followers to attack a gang directly. Previously, some pastors had only encouraged individuals to defend themselves against such groups, despite the fact that religious individuals have also fallen victim to kidnappings.

‘He said: “Everyone who’s coming with us, pick up a pebble. It will protect you against the bullets”‘

We wanted to understand why the congregation would go up against a gang. So we took a closer look at Pastor Marco’s speech, where he told his church that God would protect them from the bullets. Aristilde Deslande, a Haitian journalist specialising in religion, explained:

Pastor Marco is in the category of pastors who are known as “prophets”. The same is true of the prophet Mackenson, for example. Their practices are a little different from those of other evangelical Christians in Haiti; they’re closer to vodou. For example, vodou preachers might give people pebbles to “resist bullets”. It’s like giving them an amulet. This is what happened on August 26, when Pastor Marco told his followers to use pebbles to protect themselves from bullets.

These prophets generally perform “miracles”. For example, there’s a video in which Pastor Marco tells his followers that if they want to speak English, all they have to do is put everything related to English on a USB key. He tells them that they then need to boil the key in water, and drink it, to speak English. Their miracles are usually fake…

Generally speaking, the people who follow these pastors have a very minimal level of education. So they can be easily manipulated. They trust these pastors, who have managed to procure a kind of leadership that is lacking at the state level, especially as many people are desperate, and cling to what they find.

In Haiti, the pastor’s initiative drew criticism, with some believing that he had acted irresponsibly, gambling with the lives of his followers. Others, like Harold, felt he deserved credit for having “tried”.

In the days following the massacre, the police opened an investigation at the Direction Centrale de la Police Judiciaire “to establish the responsibilities of all those involved in this affair”. It also stated that it had not been notified of the march and that the demonstrators had “bypassed the security arrangements […] set up by the forces of law and order”. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship announced the temporary closure of the church, but primarily to prevent reprisals against it by the victims’ families.

The pastor asserted that 95 percent of his congregation remained unaffected, contending that those who lost their lives had “lost their faith”.

We spoke to the pastor’s lawyer, Phizema Palvin, in mid-September. He told us that Pastor Marco said he would “continue on the same path, to oust the criminals”. A call for “revolution” is still up on the church’s Facebook page.

Palvin had promised that the pastor would grant our editorial team an interview, but in the end, he failed to show up.

Read moreHaiti: In the grip of the gangs