Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in his private residence overnight, according to Haitian government officials.
Haitian interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph called the attack on Moïse a “hateful, inhumane and barbaric act” in a statement, according to Fox News. First Lady Martine Moïse was shot during the attack and is being treated at a nearby hospital.
Joseph said that he will take over as interim president while the government rebounds from Moïse’s death. Joseph also said that the group that targeted Moïse is still at large and has yet to be identified. He said that some members of the group spoke Spanish.
“The country’s security situation is under the control of the National Police of Haiti and the Armed Forces of Haiti,” Joseph statement said, according to CNBC. “Democracy and the republic will win.”
Haiti has been increasingly unstable under economic and societal pressures. Opposition leaders in Haiti have used the dismal state of affairs to slam Moïse, and many critics of the president have demanded he step down amid claims that he has overstayed his legal term in the office. As CNBC reported:
Haiti’s economic, political and social woes have deepened recently, with gang violence spiking heavily in Port-au-Prince, inflation spiraling and food and fuel becoming scarcer at times in a country where 60% of the population makes less than $2 a day. These troubles come as Haiti still tries to recover from the devastating 2010 earthquake and Hurricane Matthew that struck in 2016.
Opposition leaders accused Moïse, who was 53, of seeking to increase his power, including by approving a decree that limited the powers of a court that audits government contracts and another that created an intelligence agency that answers only to the president.
In recent months, opposition leaders demanded he step down, arguing that his term legally ended in February 2021. Moïse and supporters maintained that his term began when he took office in early 2017, following a chaotic election that forced the appointment of a provisional president to serve during a year-long gap.
According to Fox News, frustration against Moïse has grown partly because his government has refused to hold elections, instead ruling the country by decree.
HD Editor’s Note: Why Is This News Biblically Relevant?
In Matthew 24, the disciples ask Jesus, “What shall be the sign of thy coming, and the end of the world?”
Jesus’s response is a detailed description of the condition of the world and what it will look like in the last days. Wars and rumours of wars, nation rising against nation, famines, pestilences, earthquakes, these being the beginning of sorrows. He depicts persecution and an abounding iniquity that would cause the love of many to wax cold and divisions that would cause loved ones to betray one another.
In Luke 21:25, Jesus says, “There will be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth Distress of Nations with Perplexity, the seas and the wave roaring.”
With the current global state of turmoil amongst the nations, we can’t help but recognize the distress of nations Jesus describes in Luke 21 and Matthew 24, matching what we see today.
