Hait­ian au­thor­i­ties have an­nounced the tem­po­rary sus­pen­sion of the li­cense of the Bethes­ta Church fol­low­ing last week’s protest march that left at least sev­en peo­ple dead and and sev­er­al oth­ers in­jured or kid­napped af­ter gun­men fired up­on them.

For­eign Af­fairs and Wor­ship Min­is­ter Jean Vic­tor Généus, an­nounced the clo­sure of the church led by Pas­tor Mar­co Izidor al­so known as “Pas­tor Mar­co”, who on Au­gust 26, led sev­er­al hun­dred wor­shipers armed with ma­chetes, sticks or pikes as they marched through a sub­urb of the cap­i­tal, Port-au-Prince, when the mem­bers of the gang, be­lieved to be those in con­trol of the sub­urb of Canaan, fired up­on them with ma­chine guns,The act­ing Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al of the Na­tion­al Po­lice of Haiti (PNH), Frantz El­bé, said that the au­thor­i­ties had been un­suc­cess­ful in pre­vent­ing the march tak­ing place.

The sub­urb of Canaan, which was found­ed by sur­vivors of the dev­as­tat­ing 2010 earth­quake, is con­trolled by a gang led by a man iden­ti­fied on­ly as “Jeff”, who is be­lieved to be al­lied with the 5 Segonn “5 Sec­onds” gang.

Last Fri­day, Pas­tor Mar­co, failed to show up at the Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tor’s Of­fice af­ter be­ing in­vit­ed to do so. The pas­tor as well as three mem­bers of his church were in­vit­ed to re­port to the Cen­tral Di­rec­torate of the Ju­di­cial Po­lice (DCPJ) to an­swer ques­tions re­lat­ed to the march.

Me­dia re­ports said that in the midst of heavy gun­fire by the gang mem­bers, Pas­tor Mar­co fled on a mo­tor­cy­cle.

Un­of­fi­cial re­ports put the death toll as high as 20, at least 12 wound­ed and an un­de­ter­mined num­ber of oth­ers tak­en hostage by the gang.

So­cial me­dia users have ex­pressed their anger at the ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of Pas­tor Mar­co and called for his im­me­di­ate ar­rest.

In a state­ment last week, the Na­tion­al Po­lice of Haiti (PNH) con­demned this ‘re­gret­table’ tragedy and of­fered its sym­pa­thy to the fam­i­lies and loved ones of the vic­tims.

Haiti has been thrown in­to tur­moil since the Ju­ly 7, 2021 as­sas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Jovenel Moïse, with the in­ter­im gov­ern­ment of Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Ariel Hen­ry urg­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to send in a mul­ti-na­tion­al force to main­tain peace and se­cu­ri­ty in the coun­try.