Aid ‘not getting to the right hands’: American evacuated from Haiti

(NewsNation) — American missionary Miriam Cinotti was one of about 13 U.S. citizens evacuated from Haiti over the weekend after gang violence sent the country into chaos.

Cinotti detailed the challenging journey of leaving Haiti and eventually reaching the Dominican Republic in an appearance on “NewsNation Now.”

“Project Dynamo came in and we had this closed area we had to meet at, and it was a four-hour drive during the night to get there. And then once they picked us up at our location, we had to walk on the beach to get in a boat, and then from there, getting a bus to drive where we are now in Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic.”

Gangs have torched police stations, opened fire on the main international airport and stormed Haiti’s two biggest prisons, releasing more than 4,000 inmates. On Monday, they attacked and looted homes in two upscale communities that had previously remained peaceful, killing at least a dozen people during the rampage.

Cinotti says her mission of grace has brought her to Haiti several times over 14 years. She is no stranger to the gang violence in the country.

“There has been gang violence for the last three years, we actually had to move over 200 orphans out of the area that was under gang fire every night and traumatized. And so we moved them to the south of Haiti to Plaisance-du-Sud, where they are settled now into a safer place where they can be taken care of much better out of the trauma that they were in. That’s what we were doing here,” Cinotti said.

Haiti is in a state of emergency as gangs have taken control of several areas in the country, including the neighborhood surrounding the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs earlier this month said over 360,000 people have been displaced due to the violence.

Despite efforts to provide humanitarian aid to Haitians, Cinotti says those who need help are not actually getting it.

“Forces need to come on the ground to help settle Haiti, these gangs are not going to stop because there’s no government, there’s nothing to make them stop,” Cinotti told NewsNation. “They’ve been doing this for three years and it’s really sad that humanitarian efforts are not getting to the right hands and to the people. It’s sad, and it’s not fair.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.