Protests took place on the 35th anniversary Haiti’s 1987 Constitution. They also followed other strikes and protests in recent weeks amid a spike of kidnappings by gangs and growing complaints about Prime Minister Ariel Henry’s inability to deal with criminal organizations.
Gedeon Chery is a National Police inspector who was assigned to the airport in Les Cayes. He said that a group of people climbed onto the tarmac and attacked the plane before setting it on fire.
Photos shared on social media showed people sitting on the fuselage of the plane while it was moving on the asphalt, with others running alongside it. Chery claimed that he did not know the reason they attacked it.
People marched through Port-au-Prince’s streets, where some people burned tires.
Despite the pledges of the prime minister to reduce insecurity, violence, including kidnappings has increased in the last year.
Haiti has also been dealing with violence over the past year due to the slow investigation into President Jovenel Moise’s murder last July 7 and the magnitude 7.2 earthquake which killed more than 2,200 people in Haiti’s southern region last August.