FILE PHOTO: Police officers patrol after dispersing demonstrators, who were calling for help from the government and security forces after gangs attacked neighbourhoods and set houses on fire, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti August 19, 2024. REUTERS/Ralph Tedy Erol/File Photo
PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Armed men set fire overnight to a building in Haiti's capital that had long served as headquarters for the nation's oldest radio station, as an alliance of gangs continues to grow its power despite efforts by local security forces.
Videos shared on social media on Thursday showed the multi-story building in downtown Port-au-Prince charred after the attack. Radio Television Caraibes abandoned the building a year ago after gangs moved into the area.
Frantz Duval, the editor-in-chief of Le Nouvelliste, Haiti's oldest newspaper, decried the arson in a post on X, saying it echoed an attack that cost the 126-year-old paper its own offices and printing press a year earlier.
"More institutions are disappearing," he told local radio. "It is our history we are losing."
Reporters Without Borders' Latin America office director, Artur Romeu said of the attack on the 76-year-old radio station: "It is yet another attempt to intimidate media workers through terror and destruction, aiming to silence one of the country's most influential outlets. This attack highlights the extreme precarity in which Haitian journalists work, risking their lives toreport the news."
Last December, two journalists were killed at a government press conference being held to announce the reopening of Haiti's largest public hospital, in downtown Port-au-Prince. Although the health minister never arrived, armed men shot at reporters who gathered for the event.
Haiti's government, which has struggled to contain the advances of highly armed and well-funded gangs that now control nearly the entire capital, vowed the attack would not go unpunished.
"Reinforced measures are being deployed to secure media outlets targeted by criminals and ensure the safety of the population," it said in a statement.
The Viv Ansanm gang alliance has been escalating attacks since government security forces this month began attacking gang enclaves with explosive-packed drones, leading to rumors that gang leader Jimmy Cherizier had been killed.
Cherizier, known as "Barbecue," later appeared in a video threatening retaliatory drone attacks.
Over 42,000 people were forced to flee their homes between mid-February and early March alone, and the number of people internally displaced by the violence has now surpassed 1 million.
(Reporting by Harold Isaac in Port-au-Prince and Sarah Morland in Mexico City; Editing by Leslie Adler)
