Philip Williams: Haiti a Hell

I’ve just come back from a horrific tour around the city … terrible destruction, people still trapped with no one to dig them out … bodies everywhere. And with no effective government or law and order people take justice into their own hands …

By Ron Haviv VII for msnbc.com Suspected looters are being held by police in downtown Port-au-Prince

We just saw one man naked and dying in the street. He’d been accused of robbery and the mob exacted instant justice. He was dying in the street covered in blood with a crowd watching … including me. Half an hour later another crowd and a fire. … At first I thought just another body so they must be cremating it. But it was another man accused of robbery and killing a woman, so this was another case of street justice. There is no other justice here. It’s a reflection of the desperation and the small price of a life. Haiti is a hell and anything that can be done to help should be. Sorry to be so black, but that is the reality of this place right now.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation correspondent Philip Williams, a 2005 Dart Center Ochberg Fellow now based in London, arrived in Haiti Saturday.