A demonstrator holds up a Haitian flag during protests demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Friday.
Odelyn Joseph/AP
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A demonstrator holds up a Haitian flag during protests demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Friday.
Odelyn Joseph/AP
MEXICO CITY — Haiti is entering its second day of a state of emergency, after gangs attacked the capital city’s most important prisons over the weekend, releasing thousands of inmates. The country’s airport is under siege, and on Monday evening, it was still not clear whether Haiti’s de facto prime minister had made it back into the country.
Monique Clesca, a well-known activist in Haiti, says the weekend represented “three days of terror.”
“Gangs paraded throughout Port-au-Prince with their arms openly,” she told NPR. “It wasn’t done at night and the police was nowhere to be found.”
Almost three years after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, Haiti has been in free-fall. Elections haven’t been held since 2017, so the term for every elected official has expired; security services are overwhelmed and millions are going hungry.
Here are three things you should know about this latest bout of violence in the country.
It marks the overt involvement of gangs in politics
Robert Fatton, who studies Haiti at the University of Virginia, says other bouts of violence in Haiti were marked by fights between gangs.
This time, he says, the gangs in Haiti have forged an alliance and at least one of the big gang leaders, Jimmy Chérizier, who is nicknamed Barbecue, has said explicitly that the point of this violence is to overthrow the government.
Leader of the “G9 and Family” gang, Jimmy Cherizier, better known as Barbecue, in Haiti on Oct. 21, 2022.
Matias Delacroix/AP
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Leader of the “G9 and Family” gang, Jimmy Cherizier, better known as Barbecue, in Haiti on Oct. 21, 2022.
Matias Delacroix/AP
Fatton says working together, the gangs have flexed a powerful muscle. They already controlled most of the capital city, but over the past week, they shot at airplanes at the international airport in Port-au-Prince. International airlines stopped their flights, something that rarely happened in the past. The gangs also overpowered police at two of the main prisons and managed to release thousands of inmates.