Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry has urged Haitians to use the 218th anniversary of the Battle of Vertières to ”build the new Haiti” as the country continues to battle a surge of criminal activities and political unrest.
The Battle of Vertières was the last major battle of the Haitian Revolution and the final part of the Revolution under Jean Jacques Dessalines.
Addressing a ceremony held at the Museum of the Haitian National Pantheon (MUPANAH), to commemorate the event on Thursday, Henry, who came to head the government following the assassination of President Jovenel Moise on July 7, said that “the time has come for us Haitians to redo history in another form.
“The Battle of Vertières on November 18, 1803, was the culmination of the will to be free. The victory of the native troops over the Napoleonic army paved the way for independence and national sovereignty. Despite the antagonisms between them, slaves and freedmen, blacks and mulattoes, had the intelligence to opt for union,” he said.
“Haitians, let’s unite. This is not an empty word. Let’s give meaning to Vertières. Haiti was that light that illuminated the world to show the way to freedom,” the Haitian Prime Minister said, adding “we have an obligation in the face of history to build the new Haiti we all dream of. A united Haiti. A prosperous Haiti. A Haiti reconciled with itself. A Haiti of consensus and compromise”.
Henry, who was accompanied to the observance by the Commander-in-Chief of the Haitian National Police (PNH), Frantz Elbé, as well as the Minister of Defense Enold Joseph and officers of the Armed Forces of Haiti (FAd’H), told Haitians that beyond the duty to remember this day it “can help us to better understand the present, but also and above all to better prepare for the future.
“Fate makes us both the witnesses of the collapse of our institutions and the architects of their reconstruction. May we, like our ancestors, respond to this urgent call, to this new rendezvous with history,” he added.
Meanwhile, a former police officer implicated in the assassination of President Moise at his private residence, has died from the coronavirus (COVID-19).
The PNH said that the officer had been transferred from the national penitentiary to a hospital in Port-au-Prince where he died of complications related to COVID-19 according to the PNH.
The officer in question was being investigated for his role in providing the uniforms with the DEA identification to the gunmen that stormed Moise’s house overlooking the capital and shooting him dead and also injuring his wife, Martine, who has to be flown to the United States for medical treatment.
The authorities have detained at least 40 people, including several former members of the Colombian army and they are seeking the extradition from Jamaica of Mario Palacios Palacios, a former Colombian military officer, who was arrested in Kingston earlier this month.
Haiti is also seeking the extradition of Haitian businessman, Samir Handal, who was detained at Istanbul airport in Turkey while he was in transit from the United States to Jordan.
The whereabouts of 17 United States and Canadian missionaries remain unknown, weeks after they were abducted by a criminal gang.
The group of missionaries including children was kidnapped on October 16 and the leader of the 400-Mawozo gang that police say is responsible for the abductions has demanded a US$17 million ransom for their release.
“I swear by thunder that if I don’t get what I’m asking for, I will put a bullet in the heads of these Americans,” Wilson Joseph said in a video released late last month.
CMC
