PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Edris Fortuné can’t work without his motorcycle. The photographer and political activist is worried that a government plan to increase the price of fuel will make everything more expensive — while rendering it impossible for him to earn a living.

So Fortuné joined the thousands who poured into the streets of Port-au-Prince and other cities this week to demonstrate against the price hikes and the interim government of Prime Minister Ariel Henry. People burned and looted businesses and government offices and gunfire rang out throughout the capital. Foreign embassies suspended operations and stores shut down.

It’s a new round of unrest in a country beset by worsening hunger, record inflation, spiraling gang violence and political instability deepened by the brazen and still-unsolved assassination last year of President Jovenel Moïse.

Haiti’s assassination probe has stalled. The U.S. one is advancing.

“Ariel Henry doesn’t have sympathy for the Haitian people,” Fortuné, 42, told The Washington Post. “The increase of the gas price is a provocation. It’s further proof of his arrogance. The misery in the country will get worse.”

Protests spread across this Caribbean nation, from the beleaguered capital to the ordinarily tranquil cities of Gonaïves in the north and Jérémie in the southwest.

The World Food Program said Friday that looters stormed a warehouse in Gonaïves and made off with enough food to feed 100,000 schoolchildren through the end of the year. Haitian police said they would temporarily suspend already-issued gun permits.

“The government raises fuel prices, the street spits its anger,” blared the newspaper Le Nouvelliste.

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Henry said this week that the government could no longer afford to subsidize gasoline, diesel and kerosene. He said the “state needs to collect more taxes so it can answer the needs of those who are less privileged.”

“Do you find it normal that the state wants to launch social programs and is only able to collect 3 billion gourdes when we are spending more than 50 billion gourdes to subsidize fuel for people who can pay the normal rate?” he asked in a national address on Sunday. “We will have to adjust fuel prices.”

Under Henry’s plan, the cost of a gallon of gasoline would more than double from $2.10 to $4.79. A gallon of diesel would jump from $2.97 to $5.63 and kerosene from $2.96 to $5.59.

The government said the prices were “significantly lower than those on the international market.”

Critics accuse Henry of slow-walking progress toward new elections to replace Moïse so he can remain in power. He fired back.

“If it was not for the dilatory behavior of some people, the gangs spreading terror and the difficulties to give the Haitian national police the equipment they need to act with efficacy and to establish peace,” he said, “we would have already launched the consultations to … make the necessary steps to start the election process.”

Few Haitians believe him. As gangs have increased their stranglehold on the Haitian capital in the last year, they say, Henry has been largely silent.

Scores of Haitians, including entire families, have been killed in violent clashes between warring gangs in recent months. Thousands more have been displaced. Civilians have been trapped in their homes without access to food or water.

Ralph Chevry, a board member of the Haiti Center for Socio Economic Policy in Port-au-Prince, called the fuel announcement “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” He said the protests are a reflection of broader discontent with Henry and a desire for political change.

“It’s a very tenuous situation that we’re living in,” he said. “We basically have to fend for ourselves.”

Luis Abinader, the president of the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, told the Organization of American States this week that the situation in its neighbor “could be defined as a low-intensity civil war.”

Chevry said Abinader’s assessment was not “far-fetched.”

The situation “is degenerating,” he said. “There’s no control.”

Intermittent fuel shortages and chronic blackouts, driven in part by contract disputes and the security crisis, are not uncommon in Haiti. Many people and businesses here rely on fuel for electricity. During previous energy-related crises, even hospitals have shut down because their generators run on diesel.

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Fortuné's two-bedroom apartment had no electricity when he spoke to The Post on Thursday night.

“The current situation in this country is creating monsters,” said Fortuné. “What’s happening is a consequence of the government’s inaction.”

Marie Stéphane Lundy opened Lundy’s Beauty Study and Barbershop in Jérémie in August 2021. She opposed the planned fuel price hikes; she said she would likely have to increase the price of her services to make up for it. She worried that she would lose clients and have to lay off more than half of her 11 employees.

And she was afraid that people might loot her little business.

“People are desperate,” Lundy said. “They are frustrated. It’s really not good for us.”