The UN Security Council met on an emergency basis on Wednesday (6) to discuss the crisis in Haiti, gripped by a wave of violence. “The situation is critical,” said Ecuadorian ambassador José Javier De la Gasca López Dominguez after the meeting.
(RFI) Gang leader Jimmy Cherizier, the “Barbecue”, head of the alliance formed between the criminal factions, is calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who is out of Haiti. Unable to return to the country, he landed on Tuesday night in Puerto Rico from Kenya.
According to Cherizier, if the international community continues to support the prime minister and Henry remains in office, the country will be heading “straight for a civil war that will lead to genocide”.
“Either Haiti becomes a paradise for all of us, or a hell for all of us,” said the 46-year-old former policeman, nicknamed Barbecue.
The government has declared a state of emergency in the country and a night-time curfew. Government offices and schools remain closed.
In recent days, 15,000 people have fled their homes in Port-au-Prince, according to the UN, which has begun distributing food and basic necessities to the population.
On Wednesday night, armed security forces stood guard around strategic locations in Port-au-Prince. “We have no authorities, we have no leaders, we have no one, we have nothing,” Linda Antoine, a shopkeeper in the city, told AFP. “It’s every man for himself.”
The Association of Private Hospitals of Haiti has issued a call for help in the face of “a serious shortage of essential medical supplies, fuel and oxygen” following attacks on several establishments.
Armed groups want to overthrow the prime minister appointed by President Jovenel Moïse shortly before his assassination in 2021. He should have left office at the beginning of February.
The country, currently without a president or parliament, has not held elections since 2016. “Despite many meetings, we were unable to reach a consensus between the government and the various opposition actors, the private sector, civil society and religious organizations,” said Guyana’s President Mohamed Irfaan Ali, who holds the rotating presidency of the Caribbean Community (Caricom), on Wednesday.
In Washington, US diplomats asked Ariel Henry to “speed up the transition” to “free and fair elections” and demanded “concessions in the interests of the Haitian people”. The White House, however, has made it clear that it does not expect the prime minister to resign.
Due to violence, political crisis and years of drought, 5.5 million Haitians, almost half the population, are in need of humanitarian assistance. But the UN’s appeal for donations – US$ 674 million for 2024 – was only 2.5% funded.
After months, the Security Council agreed in October to create a multinational mission led by Kenya to send 1,000 police officers to Haiti. But its deployment has been delayed by the Kenyan justice system and a lack of funding.
Nairobi and Port-au-Prince signed a bilateral agreement on Friday, but no date has yet been set for the mission’s arrival.
In early January, UN chief Antonio Guterres said he was “shocked” by the “staggering level” of gang violence, with the number of killings more than doubling by 2023, with almost 5,000 people killed, including 2,700 civilians.
Who is Barbecue?
Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, a former policeman who likes to present himself as a revolutionary, leads the “G9 Family” gang alliance in Haiti. He is behind the increase in violence in recent days.
Haiti’s armed groups, often divided and fighting to expand their respective territories, announced last week the creation of an alliance to fight the government.
Since then, they have attacked strategic locations such as airports, police academies and prisons, from where thousands of detainees have escaped.
The gang leader has a history of violent actions. In 2022, at the head of the G9 alliance, he blockaded the country’s main oil terminal for months, paralyzing fuel distribution and plunging Haiti further into chaos.
The episode sparked calls from the government for the creation of a multinational force to help Haiti’s overstretched police force, a mission that has yet to materialize.
Barbecue was the first to appear in October 2022 on the list of the new UN sanctions regime against Haitian gangs (travel ban, asset freeze, selective arms embargo).
But despite everything, “it continues to commit acts that threaten the peace, security and stability of Haiti”, commented the UN committee of experts in charge of monitoring the sanctions in September.
The organization’s report details the criminal activities of the various gangs that control entire areas of the country, especially the capital.
For the “G9 Family” and its more than 1,000 members, most of whom are ex-policemen, ex-security guards and street children, the list is long: murders, robberies, extortion, rapes, targeted killings, drug trafficking, kidnappings, arson, among others.
Saline massacre
These experts also point to Barbecue’s involvement in the “Saline massacre”, which left 71 dead in a few days in a neighborhood of Port-au-Prince in 2018.
The gangs, sometimes used by the authorities to suppress protests in working-class neighborhoods, “removed the victims, including children, from their homes to burn them, dismember them and feed them to animals,” described the US Treasury Department at the end of 2020, when it decided to sanction Chérizier.
According to the same source, the gang leader received the support of two high-ranking officials in the government of President Jovenel Moïse, who was assassinated in July 2021 in Port-au-Prince.
Barbecue, who frequently posts videos on social media, rejects the accusations. “I am not a criminal, I will never be a criminal,” he declared in 2021 during an interview with Al Jazeera, saying that he is fighting “for another society”.
Asked by a journalist from Le Figaro where his nickname “Barbecue” came from, he replied that he sold barbecued meat on the sidewalk when he was a teenager. But in reality, Chérizier had a habit of burning his victims.
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