PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — More than 1,000 Haitians marched through the Caribbean nation’s capital Monday to protest a reported plan to destroy their hillside shanties for a flood-control project before they have found more permanent dwellings in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake.
Police fired tear gas in an attempt to control the protesters, some of whom threw rocks.
The demonstrators went through the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area chanting threats to burn down the relatively affluent district if the authorities flatten their homes.
The number two official at the Environment Ministry, Pierre Andre Gedeon, said on a local radio broadcast last week that officials want to demolish several hundred homes to build channels and reforest the hillsides in an effort to curb the deadly floods that come with the annual rainy season. Officials have made no other public reference to the plan and calls to the ministry on Monday were not answered.
The protesters said President Michel Martelly fell short on his promise to build homes destroyed in the 2010 earthquake.
The disaster destroyed tens of thousands houses in the capital and other cities in the south and officials said 314,000 people died.
The march began peacefully but some protesters threw rocks at a towering hotel financed in part by the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, a nonprofit set up after the earthquake by two former US presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
The demonstrators were angry to see the opulent hotel under construction amid fears that they will lose their homes.