Haitian mobs lynch 45 amid cholera fears
The number included at least 14 suspected sorcerers previously known to have been lynched in the far southwestern region of Grand’Anse as local people feared they were spreading cholera with a magical substance. The area has been largely spared by the outbreak.
“We have counted 40 people dead in Grand’Anse department alone, where people are attacking natural healers they accuse of cholera-linked witchcraft,” said communications ministry official Moise Fritz Evens.
Five other people were killed in similar circumstances elsewhere in the country.
“The victims — most of them voodoo priests — were stoned or hacked with machetes before being burned in the street,” added the official, who was presenting the results of an investigation conducted in Grand’Anse earlier this month.
Communications minister Marie-Laurence Lassegue said “voodoo practitioners have nothing to do with the cholera epidemic. We must press for an awareness campaign about the disease in the communities.”
Official figures earlier showed the water-borne bacterial infection has claimed 2,591 lives so far in the nation’s first cholera outbreak in more than a century.
Health ministry figures as of December 17 showed 121,518 people had been treated for the water-borne bacterial infection, including 63,711 who received hospital treatment.
And in a sign there is no end in sight for the disease that has become a thorn in the side of the already deeply troubled nation, about 50 people died on each of the last five days recorded. At the outbreak’s peak in November there were daily death tolls of 60, 70 and even 80 and above.
The cholera outbreak led to deadly anti-UN riots as people turned their anger on peacekeepers from Nepal accused of bringing the disease into the country.
