The assassination of President Jovenel Moïse provoked complex and divided reactions in Haitian diaspora communities across the United States, Canada, and France — reactions that reflected the profound political divisions within the diaspora itself and the range of views on a president who had been both condemned as authoritarian and defended as legitimately elected.
For Haitians who had been part of the PetroCaribe protest movement and had demanded Moïse’s resignation, the assassination was not celebrated — the killing of any human being in such a manner was condemned — but neither did it generate the simple grief that the death of a respected leader would have provoked. Many expressed sadness for Haiti rather than primarily for Moïse, lamenting that their country’s crisis had reached the point where political violence of this magnitude had occurred.
For Haitians who had supported Moïse or who identified with the communities from which he came, the reaction was one of genuine grief and anger at what they described as a political murder motivated by elite hostility to a president who threatened entrenched interests. These voices called for justice and warned against allowing the assassination to be used to illegitimately remove a government whose term had not expired.
Diaspora political organizations across the spectrum called for an independent investigation with international participation, concerned that a domestic investigation in Haiti’s dysfunctional judicial environment would not produce credible results. The call for international involvement in the investigation reflected a realistic assessment of Haitian institutional capacity while also raising questions about sovereignty and the international community’s appropriate role.