Against the backdrop of total political and state collapse in Haiti, a nebula of gangs has literally taken power in Port-au-Prince, or at least in much of the capital. The 400 Mawozo gang’s kidnapping on Saturday of North American missionaries from Ohio charity Christian Aid Ministries is just the most recent indication of the climate of terror the island is sinking into .
Since these are foreigners, we inevitably hear more about them. However, the Center for Analysis and Research in Human Rights, based in Port-au-Prince, identified more than 600 kidnappings for ransom between January and September 2021, including 29 of foreigners, against a little less than 250 last year. These armed bands would now control half of the capital and its main access roads. There was a time when kidnappings of American citizens rarely happened. They have become more common over the past two years, along with those of members of the Catholic Church. Particularly dangerous, 400 Mawozo is accused of committing abject violence and rape.
Until the dismantling of the peace mission (MINUSTAH) in 2017, gang violence was relatively contained. From the botched election of Jovenel Moïse in 2016 to his assassination on July 7, through the scandal of the PetroCaribe affair, which provoked the emergence of a broad popular anti-corruption movement that we still refuse. to hear, Haiti has seen its permanent political crisis give rise to a deep social crisis which is now degenerating into a security crisis. A descent into hell for Haitians, the extent of which we can hardly measure, but of which it is clear that it is the product of a crass carelessness and an endless contempt of supported national elites by the United States despite widespread opposition from civil society. Result: more than half of the 11 million Haitians live today under the poverty line, a poverty which does not depend, as the clichés want it, with the “fatality”, but with the dynamics of inequalities. and pauperization maintained by the powers.
By “negligence” we mean Haitian politicians who spend less time trying to get the country back on track and fighting impunity than accusing each other of being involved in the assassination of the former. -President Moses. A president whose authoritarian drift and instrumentalisation for his own ends of gang violence was denounced during his lifetime.
By “carelessness” and by “contempt” we mean the old complacency of the “international community”, the United States in the lead, since their influence is heavy and tutelary, but others also by extension, namely Canada, the United States. France and Brazil. Since Papa Doc that corrupt Haitian governments have been financially and politically supported by Washington, despite obvious human rights abuses. Washington, and Ottawa behind it, has been perpetuating the status quo in Haiti in the name of short-term stability which never turns to disorder and violence – and which today leads to what the researcher Frédéric Thomas does not hesitate to call the “gangsterization of the State “.
We have just seen how the United States is indifferent to the fate of Haitians, to the way in which the Biden government recently had the makeshift camp under the Del Rio bridge, on the border of Mexico and the United States, emptied. , and returned manu militari, in defiance of international conventions on refugee law, thousands of migrants in Haiti despite the chronic insecurity that prevails there. A convincing reminder of the high degree of tolerance for “bad governance” of which the United States is capable. And a position so shocking that barely appointed, the American envoy to Haiti Daniel Foote resigned from his post, describing the expulsions as “an inhuman and counterproductive decision”.
It would be useful for Haitians if the United States finally got involved in their country for the better and not to “reinforce the worst”, to use the words of an editorial writer in the Novelist, a daily newspaper in Port-au-Prince. The holding of elections in the short term, let alone the sending of American troops, cannot constitute a lasting antidote to the deterioration of the situation. Giving Haitians back their agriculture would be more profitable than financing another free zone. To support – rather than completely ignore them – the living forces of the country who advocate the formation of a large transitional government to tackle the cogs of poverty, the United States, Canada and France would take a stand. on the “good side of history” – read: the reverse of the steamroller of globalization. Haitians are longing for these countries to stop bothering them.