There has been fighting in the prison since yesterday. In Haiti, which shares an island in the Caribbean Sea with the Dominican Republic, the situation has been very unstable for some time.
The police are increasingly losing ground to armed gangs, who now control large parts of the capital. Haiti has also had an army since 2017, but the soldiers are worse armed than the gangs.
After last Thursday, the situation has become even more dire for the authorities. Prime Minister Ariel Henry traveled to Kenya to seek support for an international mission in Haiti to combat gang violence. Gang members then opened fire on police stations and around the airport and prison. The airport remained closed for a few days, but appears to have reopened.
‘It’s all over’
It is not clear what the situation at the prison is now. The police warn that if they lose the battle there, ‘everything is over’. “Then no one will be spared in the capital, because there will be 3,000 extra criminals walking around,” the police wrote on X. It is also not clear whether and how many police officers were killed.
The aim of the armed gangs appears to be to take control of the entire country. Gang leader Jimmy Cherizier, alias ‘Barbecue’, demands Prime Minister Henry’s resignation. “The armed groups are not the enemy of the people,” Barbecue said. “With these weapons we will liberate Haiti.”
13 murders a day
Yet the high level of gang violence leads to enormous massacres. In 2023, more than 4,700 murders were recorded in Haiti. That is an average of regarding thirteen per day, while only eleven million people live in Haiti. For comparison: 126 murders were committed in the Netherlands in the same year.
In total, regarding eighty percent of the capital Port-au-Prince is now said to be in the hands of the gangs. Because the authorities are largely powerless, citizens in some places have taken the law into their own hands. After public lynchings of gang members by an angry crowd of citizens, the gangs hit back even harder.
Because the Dominican Republic has closed its border with Haiti, Haitians, who were already poverty-stricken, have nowhere to go. There has been talk of international intervention in the country for some time, but this has not yet happened.
In October, the UN Security Council already approved an international mission in Haiti, with several countries sending law enforcement officers to help stabilize the situation. The mission was to be led by Kenya, but the Kenyan Supreme Court put an end to the plan.
After Prime Minister Henry’s visit this week, Kenya agreed to send 1,000 police officers there. It is not clear whether the judge will allow this this time. Benin promised earlier this week to send regarding 2,000 troops. Jamaica, the Bahamas and the United States also said they wanted to help. The question is whether it will all come in time.
