Grave Robbers of Haiti
7-23-1994
^The Desperate Poor Prey On The Dead to Stay Alive
^By ANDREW SELSKY
^Associated Press Writer
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) _ A stroll through this capital city's main cemetery is a walk of horror.
Since an international trade embargo was clamped on Haiti, grave robbers have looted corpses and stolen fittings from caskets, turning this once beautiful landmark overlooking Port-au-Prince's bay into a ghoulish scene, with skeletons lying half out of caskets and grinning skulls tossed about.
The thieves, trying to get at jewelry on the corpses and at the coffins' iron and bronze handles, have bashed holes into the above-ground tombs, pulled out caskets and dumped the bones on the ground.
"This shocks me," Jacques Beloni, who owns a funeral home adjacent to the cemetery, said Saturday. "When someone dies he is supposed to be in eternal peace. What's being done to the bodies is something terrible."
Beloni, director of the Cemetery of Port-au-Prince for 25 years until 1986, said the thieves try to sell the casket handles to funeral homes. They're scarce because quality ones made abroad can't be imported under the embargo.
The sprawling 227-year-old cemetery was once a place where people would stroll, paying their respects and admiring the mausoleums. Some look like fancy cottages, with tiled steps, ornate columns and sliding glass doors. There has always been some vandalism, but it was minor compared to the latest bout.
"I was proud of it," Beloni said in an interview in his Voice of God Funeral Home, standing next to a row of wooden coffins leaning against a wall. "It used to be a clean and nice place. People used to come and just sit."
Like much of Haiti, the Western hemisphere's poorest country and the target of a crippling embargo aimed at ousting its military rulers, the cemetery is now a wreck.
Inside the invaded tombs lie caskets half-pulled out with the lids smashed and lying ajar, the ripped silk linings riffling in the breeze.
A cobweb is stretched across a hole bashed into one tomb. Beyond lies a wooden coffin, its lid destroyed. Leg and hip bones, grey and riddled with holes from age, are scattered inside.
Police patrols have been stepped up to curtail the grave robbing, which happens at night, officials say.
Preceded by a line of mourners singing hymns - men wearing suits in the oppressive heat and the women in dresses - a battered hearse with chipped grey paint moves slowly down a gravel road between the mausoleums.
As the mourners gather in knots, the coffin is slid into a tomb. Cemetery workers then seal the opening with cinderblocks and cover it with a coating of cement.
The presiding minister, Seneque Rafael, said he has seen relatives of people whose tombs have been broken into weep upon discovering what has happened.
As a worker dabbed on the last of the cement with a trowel and the mourners shuffled away, Rafael cast a last glance at the newly filled tomb.
"I think he will be allowed to rest in peace. But to make sure, we will be taking security measures, like those," he said, pointing to iron padlocked covers families have placed over some tombs to keep the thieves out.
^The Desperate Poor Prey On The Dead to Stay Alive
^By ANDREW SELSKY
^Associated Press Writer
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) _ A stroll through this capital city's main cemetery is a walk of horror.
Since an international trade embargo was clamped on Haiti, grave robbers have looted corpses and stolen fittings from caskets, turning this once beautiful landmark overlooking Port-au-Prince's bay into a ghoulish scene, with skeletons lying half out of caskets and grinning skulls tossed about.
The thieves, trying to get at jewelry on the corpses and at the coffins' iron and bronze handles, have bashed holes into the above-ground tombs, pulled out caskets and dumped the bones on the ground.
"This shocks me," Jacques Beloni, who owns a funeral home adjacent to the cemetery, said Saturday. "When someone dies he is supposed to be in eternal peace. What's being done to the bodies is something terrible."
Beloni, director of the Cemetery of Port-au-Prince for 25 years until 1986, said the thieves try to sell the casket handles to funeral homes. They're scarce because quality ones made abroad can't be imported under the embargo.
The sprawling 227-year-old cemetery was once a place where people would stroll, paying their respects and admiring the mausoleums. Some look like fancy cottages, with tiled steps, ornate columns and sliding glass doors. There has always been some vandalism, but it was minor compared to the latest bout.
"I was proud of it," Beloni said in an interview in his Voice of God Funeral Home, standing next to a row of wooden coffins leaning against a wall. "It used to be a clean and nice place. People used to come and just sit."
Like much of Haiti, the Western hemisphere's poorest country and the target of a crippling embargo aimed at ousting its military rulers, the cemetery is now a wreck.
Inside the invaded tombs lie caskets half-pulled out with the lids smashed and lying ajar, the ripped silk linings riffling in the breeze.
A cobweb is stretched across a hole bashed into one tomb. Beyond lies a wooden coffin, its lid destroyed. Leg and hip bones, grey and riddled with holes from age, are scattered inside.
Police patrols have been stepped up to curtail the grave robbing, which happens at night, officials say.
Preceded by a line of mourners singing hymns - men wearing suits in the oppressive heat and the women in dresses - a battered hearse with chipped grey paint moves slowly down a gravel road between the mausoleums.
As the mourners gather in knots, the coffin is slid into a tomb. Cemetery workers then seal the opening with cinderblocks and cover it with a coating of cement.
The presiding minister, Seneque Rafael, said he has seen relatives of people whose tombs have been broken into weep upon discovering what has happened.
As a worker dabbed on the last of the cement with a trowel and the mourners shuffled away, Rafael cast a last glance at the newly filled tomb.
"I think he will be allowed to rest in peace. But to make sure, we will be taking security measures, like those," he said, pointing to iron padlocked covers families have placed over some tombs to keep the thieves out.
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