how the mafia gangs, united by “Barbecue”, want to overthrow power

Chaos in Haiti. For a week, armed groups opposed to the government have been sowing terror. The capital, Port-au-Prince, is now under a state of emergency. At the heart of the revolt, an influential gang leader who threatens the country with civil war if the Prime Minister does not leave power.

In civil status he is Jimmy Chérizier, but in Haiti they call him “Barbecue”. Former police officer who sided with the mafia after a massacre of civilians in a Port-au-Prince slum in 2018, La Saline: 71 dead and residents burned alive in their homes.

In 2020 “Barbecue” sets up “the G9 family” with the nine most powerful gangs in the region, which allows it to control a large part of the capital – while being secretly financed by high officials of the state apparatus. In Haiti, you cannot stay in power without buying protection from gangs.

“We are heading straight towards civil war”

But the ambition of the gangs no longer has limits: their criminal alliance forged on the soil of political corruption is biting the hand that nourished it. Tuesday March 5, “Barbecue” gave a press conference. In a khaki-colored bulletproof vest, surrounded by armed men hooded in black, he set his conditions: “If Ariel Henry the Prime Minister does not resign, if the international community continues to support him, are we heading straight towards a civil war which will lead to genocide“.

If he does not want to take power himself, he wants at the very least to overthrow the men in power. Since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, at his home, in the middle of the night, in 2021, his Prime Minister Ariel Henry has become the country’s new strongman.

He governs a state with decrees, without parliament, without justice and without authority where citizens have even been invited to arm themselves to defend themselves. We remember these members of a gang, arrested in 2023 by residents of the capital, beaten up, lynched then burned alive, symbol of a country having descended into violence. A country abandoned by investors, which is emptying of its doctors, its engineers… A country where one in two people does not have enough to eat.

The gangs took advantage of a trip abroad

Highly contested, Ariel Henry should have organized elections in 2023 and left office on February 7, 2024. But he is hanging on. The gangs therefore took advantage of his trip abroad last week to take the country hostage. Attack on the airport, fire on police stations, attack on prisons to free several thousand detainees…

For eight days, Haiti has lived in terror. And the Prime Minister who went to Kenya to sign an agreement to send an international force to his country still cannot return home. His plane was diverted to Puerto Rico.

According to the UN, 15,000 people driven out by the violence had to flee their homes in Port-au-Prince. “Barbecue”, who is afraid of nothing, on Tuesday called on Haitians to move forward: “we are aware that the armed men committed harmful acts but (…) society must forgive them and unite to rethink a new Haiti“.

The United Nations Security Council is holding an emergency meeting on Wednesday March 6 on the escalation of violence in Haiti.