Residents organized into self-defense groups
During the night from Monday to Tuesday, police intercepted a truck and a minibus transporting members of armed gangs in Pétion-Ville, a wealthy town in the suburbs of Port-au-Prince, and in the center of the capital, explained to AFP the deputy spokesperson for the Haitian national police, Lionel Lazarre.
The police then opened fire on these gang members, killing ten of them, according to the same source. While fleeing, others were then pursued and killed by residents organized into self-defense groups and by police officers.
Since last week, Port-au-Prince has been shaken by a new outbreak of violence fueled by “Viv Ansanm” (Living Together), an alliance of gangs formed in February and which managed to overthrow the then prime minister, Ariel. Henry. This coalition launched an attack against Pétion-Ville and the Bourdon and Canapé Vert districts, after an appeal on social networks from one of its leaders, Jimmy Chérisier, alias “Barbecue”. The latter “demanded the resignation of the Presidential Transitional Council” (CPT), the head of the executive, and promised that “Viv Ansanm would use all its means to achieve the departure of the CPT”.
MSF suspends its activities in Port-au-Prince
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is concerned about “the escalation of violence in Haiti,” according to his spokesperson and urges “urgent progress in the political transition.”
But the security situation pushed MSF to “suspend its activities in Port-au-Prince” from Wednesday and “until further notice”, following “serious threats made against its staff by members of the forces Haitian police force.
The NGO recalls in a press release that it denounced incidents on November 13, two days earlier, when one of its ambulances “was attacked, leading to the execution of at least two patients and an attack against medical staff” . “The following week, police officers repeatedly stopped MSF vehicles and directly threatened staff, including threats of death and rape,” she denounces.
More than 20,000 people forced to move
The UN representation in Haiti counted 1,233 murders between July and September, 45% of which were attributable to law enforcement and 47% to gangs, in a country of 12 million inhabitants.
This violence occurs in the midst of a political crisis with the dismissal on November 10 by the CPT of the Prime Minister, Garry Conille, who was replaced on the 11th by businessman Alix Didier Fils-Aimé. He promised to restore security and organize the first elections since 2016.
Added to the violence is a catastrophic humanitarian situation which last week forced more than 20,000 people to move, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), never before seen on “such a scale (…) since August 2023.
However, there is a multinational police support mission in Haiti. Supported by the UN and the United States, it is led by Kenya, which deployed a little more than 400 men there this summer.
