AMERICA/HAITI - Three women killed because deaf

Wednesday, 27 April 2016 violence   poverty   slavery   development  

Leveque (Agenzia Fides) - Three deaf mothers were found dead on the road that goes from the Haitian capital to Leveque. They were returning home on foot together because a bridge had collapsed and there was no bus service. Their bodies were found yesterday morning, April 26, in a ditch beside the road. They were beaten, stabbed and burned. Relatives who identified the bodies reported that their tongues had been cut.
In Haiti, according to experienced observers, people with some disabilities are still stigmatized, marginalized and often abandoned, considered contagious or cursed, and according to superstition must be punished sometimes with terrible cruelty. Women and girls with disabilities are particularly vulnerable. The note sent to Fides from a local source, reports that after the crime, indignation is particularly strong in the city of Leveque, where the victims lived in a community of 168 families of deaf people, displaced by the earthquake in 2010, which was founded by religious organizations that gave them assistance.
Although Haiti has laws for the protection of the disabled, no one applies them. Disabled people have few opportunities to work and many live hidden in homes. Some poor parents abandon their children with disabilities giving them to state or religious institutions, or try to place them as domestic servants in other households. (CE) (Agenzia Fides, 27/04/2016)


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