MIAMI \u2014 As President Joe Biden heads to Canada on Thursday for a meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, where the crisis in Haiti will be a leading topic, there is one thing that everyone can agree on:<\/p>\n
Since the U.S. and Canada began targeting Haiti\u2019s political and business elite with travel visa bans and economic sanctions in early November, the armed violence and kidnappings by gangs have only increased.<\/p>\n
The spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Marta Hurtado, said at least 531 Haitians have been killed and 300 injured since the beginning of the year in clashes between gangs. In February alone, the U.N. office in Haiti registered 253 homicides and 259 kidnappings\u2014 the highest abduction figure in Haiti in a single month since the U.N. began keeping records in 2005, the office told the Miami Herald.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe situation is all the more alarming for children, who are often subjected to all forms of armed violence, including forced recruitment and sexual violence, with dramatic consequences,\u201d the U.N said in a separate statement it issued Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The U.N. said the deadly resurgence of \u201cacts of extreme violence perpetrated by armed groups\u201d has spared no section of Haitian society.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are living in a reign of terror,\u201d said Michel Eric Gaillard, a Port-au-Prince resident and political analyst, who on any given day can hear the barrage of automatic gunfire through his walls from warring gangs expanding their territory. \u201cThe most basic principle of democracy is absent: The rule of law.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gaillard and others say that said the Canadian government\u2019s recent deployment of two warships and a military plane over the capital have not slowed the atrocities<\/p>\n
Every day, residents \u201cmust assess the risk of stepping out of our homes, going to work, bringing our kids to school; being kidnapped, raped or killed,\u201d Gaillard said.<\/p>\n
The violence intensified on Feb. 27 with yet another armed attack on the working class neighborhood of Bel Air,<\/a> located a stone\u2019s throw away from the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince. The National Human Rights Defense Network has documented at least 70 deaths and 50 people missing, director Pierre Esperance said. He added the deadly toll comes on top of the killings of at least 20 Haitian police officers by armed bandits since January.<\/p>\n Three health centers \u2014 Gheskio in downtown Port-au-Prince and Medecins Sans Frontieres in Cite Soleil<\/a> and the H\u00f4pital Albert Schweitzer in the Artibonite Valley<\/a> \u2014 announced the suspension of operations. Neighborhoods previously regarded as peaceful have now become no-go zones.<\/p>\n At least 11 people were killed, their bodies and vehicles burned, in a retaliatory attack by the Kraze Barye gang in the Route Fr\u00e8res area of Petionville, Esperance said. The gang is led by Vitel\u2019Homme Innocent, who has been terrorizing residents in the hills of the capital in recent months despite a $1 million FBI bounty on his head.<\/a> <\/p>\n \u201cThe police have not developed a strategy to take on the gangs, and they don\u2019t have the equipment or capacity,\u201d Esperance said.<\/p>\n Haiti National Police spokesman Garry Desrosiers said he couldn\u2019t immediately confirm the death toll but confirmed that people were killed and said an investigation into the atrocities is ongoing.<\/p>\n During a visit to Newfoundland last week,<\/a> Trudeau appeared to dismiss the prospect of outside military intervention in Haiti, saying it has not produced long-term stability in the past. He instead touted Canada\u2019s efforts to strengthen Haiti\u2019s beleaguered police force and promoted Ottawa\u2019s policy of applying sanctions <\/a>against those his government believes are supporting gangs.<\/p>\n Despite Canada\u2019s blacklist \u2014 the country has named 17 individuals while the United States has sanctioned five \u2014 the gangs have become even more emboldened.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is armed conflict. I don\u2019t know what else to call it,\u201d said William O\u2019Neill, a human rights lawyer who previously served with the United Nations in Haiti.<\/p>\n O\u2019Neill said the attacks and sexual violence amount to war crimes as defined by the Geneva Conventions.<\/p>\n \u201cThese gangs are organized, they have leaders, they make themselves known, they give themselves these crazy names. They have foot soldiers, they have payrolls, which I think is driving in terms of what we\u2019re seeing with the kidnappings and the level of extortion going on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In October, Haiti Prime Minister Ariel Henry begged the international community to deploy a \u201crapid action\u201d military force. His request was supported by the U.N. Secretary-General and the U.S., which authored a resolution in the Security Council seeking a deployment. Months later, there are still no takers.<\/p>\n Henry officially called on the Armed Forces of Haiti to reinforce the Haiti National Police in its fight against the gangs.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need all of our security forces,\u201d Henry said. \u201cThe Haiti we want, we will not be able to build it with gangs that are rampant everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n Both those who support and criticize the Canadian and U.S. sanctions, say they are to blame for the gangs\u2019 new entrenchment and initiatives.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen they first started with the sanctions, the kidnappings decreased,\u201d said G\u00e9d\u00e9on Jean, a lawyer who runs the Center for Analysis and Research in Human Rights in Port-au-Prince, which tracks kidnappings. \u201cBut starting in January… kidnappings skyrocketed.\u201d<\/p>\n Jean says the sanctions, which helped tamp down violent protests after the government hiked fuel prices in September, created fear among those who had close ties to gangs, and were either financing them with weapons or money. But as gangs began to see their funding sources dry up, they turned to kidnappings and territorial disputes to fill their coffers.<\/p>\n \u201cTheir funding sources are drying up in terms of who has been behind them in the past, the big politicians, the oligarchs and for reasons may be connected to the sanctions, these folks are feeling the heat, and the gangs have had to turn to other sources of revenue,\u201d O\u2019Neill said.<\/p>\n O\u2019Neill said while he\u2019s hopeful about the Biden-Trudeau meeting, he fears that nothing will come of it, given Biden\u2019s aversion to intervention in Haiti and the focus on the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s pretty horrible what\u2019s happening\u201d in Ukraine, he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s pretty horrible what\u2019s happening in Haiti\u2026 . Twelve million people and an hour and a half from Miami. It\u2019s not Yemen, it\u2019s not Somalia, it\u2019s not Myanmar. It\u2019s right in the neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n \u00a92023 Miami Herald. Visit miamiherald.com<\/a>. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<\/a> <\/p>\n KeyWords:: 68ea524f-24df-4376-bd3d-f6d613303038 MIAMI \u2014 As President Joe Biden heads to Canada on Thursday for a meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, where the crisis in Haiti will be a leading topic, there is one thing that everyone can agree on: Since the U.S. and Canada began targeting Haiti\u2019s political and business elite with travel visa bans and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":626,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625\/revisions\/626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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