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Evelyne Sincère’s murderers knew that they could kill her with impunity and without consequence.

I first saw her in three stages—her entire life summarized in a trio of images. In the first photograph, we see her beaming, smiling face, with the sky blue flower in her hair.  She looks like she could be any of us, when we were young, looking playfully at a camera, and eager to see what we look like on the other side of the screen.  Behind her, on a wall, is what looks like a geometry lesson. Was that picture taken at her school? What was making her laugh?

In the second picture, she barely looks like the same young woman, except for the short twists in her hair. Her hands are bound with the same bright orange cloth that’s being used as a gag across her mouth. Her eyes are covered with a piece of purple cloth. This is the hostage photograph that was sent to her sister, the one that accompanied the ransom demands. Trying to imagine what she might be thinking is heart shattering. Who knows what horrors she had already endured? 

We soon find out from the third photograph, the one we have no right to see, but from which we can not look away, the picture of her lifeless body, lying on a pile of garbage on the side of the road, wearing only a bra. The twists are still in her hair. As the mother of two daughters slightly younger than her, I know all the time and patience that goes into twists like these. I know every moment is an act of love. 

Her sister, Enette Sincère, spoke for all of us with her cries and her tears. Enette was forced to absorb the unthinkable along with everyone around her. She described her negotiations with the kidnappers, her pleas for them to spare her sister’s life. She even gave out the phone numbers the kidnappers used to negotiate with her, for a ransom that initially began at 100,000 US dollars and ended at 15,000 gourdes. She was about to pay when  she learned of her sister’s murder.  

Enette Sincère alternated between speaking to her sister’s corpse, and to the rest of us. She called her sister her princess, her darling, (cheri mwen), her beauty (ma beauté), all while answering reporters’ questions. With a groundswell of grief that reminded me of birth pains, she was at times miraculously composed, then the wave would hit her, and she would want to photograph, then touch her beloved Evelyne, her doudou.

Evelyne Sincère was twenty-two years old and had just completed her secondary school exams at Lycée Jacques Roumain. She had not yet even received the results, her sister stressed. Their mother died in the 2010 earthquake and Enette seemed to be the kind of sister who was also a good friend.

When Enette Sincère was asked by a reporter how she felt seeing her sister’s body, she said:

“Se paske l ap viv Ayiti. Se paske l ap viv Ayiti.  S il pa ta p viv Ayiti mezanmi, èske l ta p sou yon pil fatra?”  

It’s because she lives in Haiti. It’s because she lives in Haiti. If she didn’t live in Haiti, would she be on a pile of trash?”

This should bring eternal shame to Haitian officials, from President Jovenel Moïse, to Prime Minister Joseph Jouthe, to the Minister of Justice and Public Security, Rockefeller Vincent, and the head of Haitian National Police, Normil Rameau, all of whom hash out the same declarations and press statements assuming no responsibility, rape after rape, killing after killing, kidnapping after kidnapping, assassination after assassination, and massacre after massacre.

The President’s initial lukewarm response, via tweet nonetheless, makes him sound like a mere bystander. 

“En tant que père de famille, je suis profondément choqué par l’enlèvement suivi de l’assassinat de la jeune écolière Evelyne Sincère. De telles atrocités sont inacceptables. Les autorités policières et judiciaires n’ont qu’un seul choix: mettre les bandits hors d’état de nuire.“

“As a father, I am profoundly shocked by the kidnapping, followed by the murder of the young student Evelyne Sincère. Such atrocities are unacceptable. Police and judicial authorities have only one choice: to neutralize the bandits.”

Would he be so  profoundly shocked if he were paying attention?  According to the advocacy group, Nou Pap Dòmi, there have been more than 124 cases of kidnapping from January to August 2020, including ones in which young women have been abducted. Would he merely tweet a  platitude, if this were his daughter? Or the daughter of one of his friends? It’s fine to acknowledge, as he does later, again by tweet, that Evelyne could have become yon “gwo fanm” (I am assuming he means a great woman) in the future, but what has he done to keep young women like her safe, much less to help them thrive?

My uncle, who spent most of his adult life as a minister in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Bel Air, used to say that poverty is criminalized in the poorest neighborhoods in Haiti, and the people who end up punishing those who are poor are the actual criminals. Evelyne Sincère’s murderers knew that they could kill her with impunity and without consequence. To those in power, and to those who brutalized and murdered her, Evelyne Sincère was disposable, like cargo, as was shown by the kidnappers’  response to her sister when she asked for extra time to piece together the ransom: that they couldn’t keep her too long because they didn’t have enough space, and presumably too many captives, as though she were a prisoner of war.

In his own statement, Haitian Prime Minister Joseph Jouthe declared:

“En temps normal, les enfants enterrent leurs parents; seulement en temps de guerre qu’un parent devrait enterrer son enfant. Or, nous ne sommes pas en guerre en Haïti.“

“Normally, children bury their parents; only in time of war should a parent bury a child. Yet, we are not at war in Haiti.”

Though the Prime Minister appears unwilling to acknowledge it, Haitian gang leaders, and their funders, are acting as though they are at war. They are certainly armed for war.

The Prime Minister also took great pains to add:

“Le Chef  du Gouvernment profite pour enjoinde les pères et mères de famille de garder un oeil vigilant sur leurs enfants en tout ce qui concerne leur déplacement et surtout leur fréqentations.“

“The Head of Government takes this opportunity to urge fathers and mothers to keep a watchful eye on their children in all matters concerning their movements and especially the company they keep.”

Here he skirts around something that often emerges after young women are  beaten, assaulted, brutalized, raped, and even killed. He hints that it might have been her fault, as if the girls with the mothers and fathers keeping a watchful eye on them don’t ever get murdered, or kidnapped, or raped in the country, under his watch. And how can parents protect their children when the government can’t protect the parents?  What about the babies who have been murdered in their mother’s arms, the toddlers assassinated at their father’s sides? Is it because the parents were not watching closely enough?

These days, the way images are circulated at lightning speed makes both willing and unwilling witnesses of us all. We did not watch Evelyne Sincère die, the way we did George Floyd for example, but because of her sister’s testimony and the images she left behind, she has entered our lives in the most shocking way, both as her own unique self, and as a symbol of so many other women, men, and children who have been assaulted, kidnapped, and assassinated in recent weeks and months. Some whose names we know, and many more whose names we will never know.

There are scores of potential Evelyne Sincères living in fear in Haiti.

There are scores of potential Evelyne Sincères living in fear in Haiti. We know them because they are our sisters, our cousins, our nieces, our goddaughters, our friends, women—young and old—whose dreams we encourage and support in whatever way we can from the Haitian dyaspora. We are tired of seeing them die like this. We are tired of the mediocre and inhumane leaders who create and tolerate the circumstances that lead to those deaths. We long for a day when Haiti will have conscious feminist female politicians who will understand all that has led to a young woman ending up on the side of the road on a pile of trash. And leaders who are willing to do something to stop it. We long for a day, when, if she had lived, Evelyne Sincère could have looked forward to a safe and promising future in her country.

As we recover from our haze of the turbulent US elections, and ponder what the outcome will also mean for Haiti, let us not forget Evelyne Sincère, because Evelyne Sincère is Haiti, and, as clichéd as it sounds, Evelyne Sincère is also us. But most of all, for those who loved her, she was a smiling young woman with a sky blue flower in her hair. A darling beauty, a doudou, whose future has been taken away.