In Port-au-Prince, the ultraviolence of gangs and a trapped inhabitants | EUROtoday

On Apr 15, 2025

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IHere, we’re speaking about fight areas. In this ravaged metropolis, held 85 % by ultraviolent gangs, we slalom between the barricades attempting to keep away from the misplaced bullets, which might mow you three kilometers from the place they have been drawn. The partitions are riddled with bursts, there are not the buildings destroyed, burned, the heaps of rubble; And within the midst of all this, on the facades and buses which are nonetheless rolling, coloured evocations of “Almighty Jesus”.

In Port-au-Prince, epicenter of battles, the middle is the day by day theater of clashes between the “bandits” and the boys of the Haitian nationwide police (PNH). The presidential palace, imposing white colonial model constructing, was abandoned. The Prime Minister’s residence can be deserted. Nearby, the French Embassy, the place we nonetheless welcome nationwide and binational nationals, in addition to visa seekers. An administrative and diplomatic exercise underneath very excessive safety. A thousand French persons are current in Haiti, a few of which come from traces put in on the island for a very long time, and which have their pursuits there. Like the Barbencourt household, which produces a world well-known rum.

Read too Haiti, 15 years later: blood on ruinsWe are additionally combating in Delmas and Christ-Roi. Outside the town, the Kenscoff space, rural and mountainous, can be the topic of clashes. The elites who felt sheltered there of their villas, protected by safety guards, are not. Not way back, we may nonetheless get out of Port-au-Prince by the highway passing there, for a passage tax with a gang. It’s now over, it’s utterly closed. “We are completely besieged, it is a real trap, because access to the sea is also impossible, and the airport is closed,” says a Frenchman. You can solely come out by helicopter. A warning ensuing from the assault on an airliner of the American firm Spirit Airlines on November 11, 2024. The solely resolution is now: reaching Cap-Haitian, north of the island, from which flights for Miami go away.

“A Haitian killed, injured or removed every hour”

Despite the embargo on arms decreed by the UN Security Council, their quantity in circulation is estimated at 500,000. The gangs have them, but additionally the inhabitants, wherein the sensation of abandonment is at its top, with inhabitants who’ve determined to prepare their very own self -defense teams in sure districts.

“It is said that a Haitian is killed, injured or removed every hour,” continues our French, conversant in the jolts of the nation. “People can not. Two nuns have been nonetheless murdered final week within the metropolis of Mirebalais, sixty kilometers from the capital. A couple of days earlier, the gangs had attacked the police station and launched 529 jail prisoners. »»

Read too Violence in Port-au-Prince: “Sometimes there is collusion between the police and the gangs” Residents had beforehand managed to withstand gangs, which, confronted with this opposition, got here again in power. It is the VIV Ansam coalition (Living Together), led by the sinister Jimmy Chérizier, alias Jimmy Barbecue, who was proper for the inhabitants: “The sofa-green district is now emblematic of this resistance, and gang leaders broadcast the message, that’s their next goal. Previously, the Solino district, which also had its self -defense brigade, ended up falling. But the inhabitants of Port-au-Prince consider that they cannot count on corrupt leaders, more concerned with the preservation of their political and financial interests, without culture of security and singularly lacking in empathy for their fellow citizens of working-class neighborhoods. Popular expression in local media, to designate businessmen suspected of collusion with mafia groups: there are “criminals in Savates and criminals with tie”.

Large -scale massacres

To mark its exasperation, the street launched the “Bwa Kale” movement, which intends to protest both against politicians and against gangs, with regular slippages, when alleged gang members are lynched and burned by the crowd.

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But it’s nothing alongside the outbursts of violence and cruelty of gang leaders, who don’t hesitate to perpetrate giant -scale massacres. In October, 130 individuals have been killed by the boys of Gran Grif, within the agricultural area of Artibonite. And in December, 200 victims have been counted in Cité-Soleil, essentially the most well-known slum in Port-au-Prince. Monel Felix, says Micanord, satisfied that the loss of life of his son was resulting from a spell, methodically had all these whom he suspected of practising the Voodoo ceremony.

Read too Why does Haiti by no means cease sinking into chaos? Faced with these criminals prepared for the whole lot, the safety forces current in Haiti appear only a few. Officially, the PNH aligns 11,000 cops, extra seemingly 7,000 or 8,000, together with 700 in specialised raid items. The Haiti Armed Forces (FADH), reconstituted in 2017, are round 1,000 and assigned to the safety of strategic websites. As for the multinational power, it consists of 1,000 troopers, primarily Kenyans (two of which died in fight in current weeks), in addition to Guatemalteques, Salvadorians and Jamaicans. 10,000 in all, for a inhabitants of 12 million inhabitants, or 1 per 1,000. In the neighboring Dominican Republic, the place there are the identical variety of residents, the police can depend on 100,000 members.

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