Angry crowds in the seaside slum of Cité Soleil in Port-au-Prince attacked a group of Vodou practitioners Tuesday, pelting them with rocks and halting a ceremony meant to honor victims of last month’s deadly earthquake. Voodooists gathered in Cite Soleil where thousands of quake survivors live in tents and depend on food aid. Praying and singing, the group was trying to conjure spirits to guide lost souls when a crowd of evangelicals started shouting. Some threw rocks while others urinated on voodoo symbols. When police left, the crowd destroyed the altars and voodoo offerings of food and rum. “We were here preparing for prayer when these others came and took over,” said Santé Joseph, an evangelical worshipper in Cité Soleil, near the capital’s port, who joined the angry crowd in a concrete outdoor civic center.
Tensions have been running high since the Jan. 12 earthquake killed what Presidnt René Préval fears may have been an estimated 300,000 people and left more than 1 million homeless. Religious tension has also increased: Baptists, Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Scientologists, Mormons and other missionaries have flocked to Haiti in droves since the earthquake to feed the homeless, treat the injured and jockey for souls. Some Vodou practitioners have said they’ve converted to Christianity for fear they will lose out on aid or a belief that the earthquake was a warning from God.
Photo: People destroy objects that were to be used in a voodoo ceremony in the Cite Soleil neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Tuesday Feb. 23, 2010. The crowd attacked a group of voodoo practitioners, pelting them with rocks and halting a ceremony meant to honor victims of last month’s deadly earthquake. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills) (The Associated Press)
