Since August 20th, the day Willard Vancol was kidnapped by the Viv Ansanm gang, families and friends have been without any news and expecting the worst. In the absence of responses from the kidnappers and no action from the authorities, neighbors decided to join the police at the beginning of this week to carry out searches. This Wednesday (9), Vancol’s body was found in a bush, showing signs of violence and decapitated.
Vancol had been active for 40 years in various organizations linked to the peasant struggle, mainly in the field of training and popular communication. He was not only a well-known leader in the Haitian community and movements, but also respected for his dedication and work.
For 20 years at Iteca, an institute that supports peasant organizations in the search for better living conditions, Vancol coordinated a community radio and the Gressier Training Center, located in a 5-hectare forested area, 16 km southwest of Port-au-Prince.
Since July, the municipality of Gressier had been repeatedly attacked by gangs, causing the violent death of at least 20 residents and forcing hundreds of families to leave their homes. On August 20, when the center of Iteca was invaded and looted, the few workers present at the site managed to escape, but two were injured and Vancol was taken away.
The news of his murder raised a strong commotion among Haitian popular organizations, who live under constant threat from armed groups. The Haitian Defense Platform for Alternative Development (Papda), of which he was founder in 1995, deplores the loss of a “Haitian patriot who dedicated all his strength and intelligence for more than 40 years to defending the rights and dignity of the popular classes”.
“Willard Vancol founded many organizations that today do quality work in the south of the country and contributed to training thousands of peasant cadres. He believed a lot and fought for decentralization and sovereignty with regard to food”, continues Papda.
A statement from the residents of Boukan, the neighborhood where the Iteca center is located, recalls that Vancol was “a dedicated man, a social animator, a trainer and an important actor for the development of the community”, highlighting that he “brought hope to the lives of the peasants”.
The Society of Animation and Social Communication, which brings together several community radio stations, also expressed its outrage at yet another case of “massacre, kidnapping or violence, which have been recurrent against the country’s media”. In this sense, the organization demands “measures to guarantee the protection and lives of the population in all corners of the country”.
At an international level, Alba Movimentos, which Papda is part of its Haitian chapter, published a note of solidarity on its social networks, in which it denounces that “the death of Willard Vancol constitutes a blow against popular organizations that, for decades, have been fighting for the dignity, rights and sovereignty of the Haitian people”.
Source: www.brasildefato.com.br
