Haiti in Criminal Free-Fall

"Heavily armed bandits are no longer satisfied with current abuses, racketeering, threats and kidnappings for ransom."

"Now, criminals break into village homes at night, attack families and rape women."

Petition for police action

 

"The motive behind the surge in kidnapping for us is a financial one."

"The gangs need money to buy ammunition, to get weapons, to be able to function."

Center for Analysis and Research for Human Rights, Port-au-Prince

 

"It's madness -- you try to work for the country, to build something, provide jobs, and they do this to you."

"Where is this going? Where is this country going? It's a total mess."

42-year-old businessman 

A street vendor walks past tires set fire at a closed gas station as part of a protest against fuel shortages in Port-au-Prince on Thursday. (Joseph Odelyn/The Associated Press)

 

Safety and security of the person in Haiti? The country was always rife with criminality and corruption but now it is an absolute basket case of a crime wave that knows no boundaries. Violence is surging across the country from its capital to its rural areas where entire towns have been taken over by criminal gangs, and the residents have fled in terror. 

In Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, gangs are estimated to control about half of the city. One day alone this month saw gangs shoot at a school bus in the capital with five people injured, and another group of criminals hijacked a public bus. It made international news, however, when one of Haiti's most ambitiously notorious gangs kidnapped a group of 17 social workers with the Christian Aid Ministries.

 

This is a country economically bankrupt. International aid has always reached Haiti but the country's needs are now so great such aid is no longer even a stop-gap. There are shortages of everything; from fuel to basic foodstuffs and medical supplies. People are desperate for relief, many are on the brink of starvation, and violent protests against government inaction take place on the streets. There is no end in sight for the country's misery.

The businessman who was bewailing the state of lawlessness in his country had himself been kidnapped on his way home from work, in a bullet-proof car. In fear of reprisals, he used only his first name, Norman, in describing his kidnapping where he went unfed for the first four days of his captivity when children who appeared to him no older than ten, beat him with machete handles or gun butts.

Finally released after 12 days when $70,000 in ransom was offered, a considerable reduction from the $5 million the gang demanded to spare his life, he speaks of at least ten others he knows who were snatched by gangs demanding ransom be paid, among them his mother. The group associated with the Chrisian Aid Ministries were on a visit to an orphanage outside Port-au-Prince.

 

A protester threatens to throw stones at motorists trying to pass a road block set by anti-government demonstrators in Port-au-Prince on Thursday. (Odelyn Joseph/The Associated Press)

 

The shock assassination of President Jovenel Moise appeared to unleash the country's security as its politics disintegrated, seemingly leaving no one in charge. In Croix-des-Bouquets, a suburb of the capital, the criminal gang known as 400 Mawozo, the same gang that kidnapped the sixteen Americans and single Canadian in the latest bold escapade demanding ransom, controls the town.

Shopkeepers on the town's main street were kidnapped and ordered to sell their possessions to pay off the ransom demanded by 400 Mawozo. As soon as they were able, they all fled to safety elsewhere, but for the fact there is no 'elsewhere' where there is safety in the impoverished country where criminality is rampant and the population cowers in fear, unable to go to work, to send their children to school.

Gang members recruit local children, encouraging youths to beat people as part of their training, with the intention of producing a more violent generation of gang members. Churches have become frequent targets, priests kidnapped while addressing their congregations, even when a church ceremony is being streamed live on Facebook. 

Seven Catholic clergy, five Haitian, two French were among ten people kidnapped in Croix-des-Bouquets by the 400-Mawozo gang in April; eventually released once ransom was paid, but  unlikely to have been the $1 million demanded by the gang. The ransom demanded for the 17 kidnapped aid workers is $1 million for each to be released, a total of $17 million. One priest whose ransom had been paid, has never been released.

People protest for the release of kidnapped missionaries in Titanyen, north of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Tuesday. (Joseph Odelyn/The Associated Press)