Doctors Without Borders halts operations in Haiti's capital amid threats from police

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Tuesday that it is stopping operations "until further notice" in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince due to an increase in violence and threats to its staff from members of the Haitian police. The suspension would begin on Wednesday, MSF said.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Tuesday that it is stopping operations across the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince and its wider metropolitan area due to an escalation in violence and threats to its staff from members of the Haitian police.

The suspension would last from Wednesday “until further notice”, said MSF.

MSF said in a statement that since a deadly attack on one of its ambulances last week, police had repeatedly stopped its vehicles and directly threatened their staff, some with death and rape threats.

“We are used to working in conditions of extreme insecurity in Haiti and elsewhere, but when even law enforcement becomes a direct threat, we have no choice but to suspend our projects,” MSF’s Haiti mission chief Christophe Garnier said.

A spokesperson for Haiti’s national police declined to comment.

MSF, whose presence grew in Haiti in the wake of the devastating 2010 earthquake, is one of the main providers of quality free healthcare in the Caribbean nation and operates key services such as a trauma center and a burn clinic.

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(Reuters)

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