Haiti seems to exist in the media only under the conditions of a news item, generally dramatic: natural disasters (the 2010 earthquake, the cyclones that hit the country repeatedly), political crises, violence, etc. The historical silence and the media treatment are part of the same view, which sees Haiti through the prism of a curse and chaos. The historical silence and the media treatment are part of the same view, which sees Haiti through the prism of the curse and chaos. The Haitians appear, at best, as victims to be rescued, at worst, as more or less violent hordes. But never as actors and actresses (Thomas, 2021). It was the same spectacular media treatment worthy of Agatha Christie novels that the kidnapping of the two Frenchmen was given by the press on Sunday 11 April. In February 2021, the UN reported that in the space of one year, abductions had increased by 200%. In the first quarter of 2021, one hundred and forty-two people were abducted (and one hundred and seventeen killed). In April alone, there were reportedly 91 cases of abduction, an average of three per day. There is therefore a real security problem on the island, making violence commonplace. Yet it is only when white French people are abducted that international sirens sound, a bitter reminder of the colonial past shared by the two countries.
The bitter irony of the Haitian people turned to frustration, if not anger, at the international mobilisation and interventionism of the state to obtain the release of the hostages – which it did – in contrast to the passivity, instrumentalisation and even complicity of the Haitian authorities in the face of armed gangs (ibid). This observation is of course the fruit of a view and a history, but which are combined with the present of popular uprising and neo-colonial dependence.
Fifteen people were once again shot dead, including a journalist and an opposition political activist, on the night of Tuesday 29 June to Wednesday 30 June in the Haitian capital (Le Monde, 2021). This shooting followed the death of a police officer who was opposed to the official police force. Yes, two police forces are currently fighting in Port-au-Prince, between those loyal to the state and those who prefer to side with the opposition and other gangs. The police, divided and politicised, present themselves as full actors in the mobilisations (Manigat, 2020). Among the victims were journalists from Radio Vision 2000, which confirms the cold-blooded murder of the expression of civil society. This is not the first time that journalists have been murdered in this way in the country: in 2000, 2018, 2019… There is no shortage of examples, but the common denominator is that these cases have never been solved (ibid). Haiti is thus plunged into a context of immeasurable instability, with the population caught between the increasingly authoritarian government and the gangs that collude with certain ruling elites. This article will therefore attempt to provide a picture of the current situation, highlighting the impacts on Human Rights.
Increasingly authoritarian power
In 2018, the country was hit by severe economic crises due to a surge in oil prices, which led to a popular uprising lasting several days throughout the country. This crisis comes against the backdrop of an energy agreement with Venezuela, Petrocaribe, through which Haiti has benefited from significant funds for development projects from 2008 to 2018. However, most of this money has been misappropriated by the political and business classes. Demonstrations against corruption began, along with those against the poverty affecting 59% of the Haitian population (Thomas, 2021). These demonstrations reveal the existence of an oligarchy, which concentrates political and economic power. These uprisings are all the more important as President Jovenel Moïse, himself implicated in the Petrocaribe case. The only response of the authorities to these demonstrations was active repression.
At the end of November 2018, in the working-class neighbourhood of La Saline in Port-au-Prince, the first and most deadly massacre took place: 71 people were killed (RNDDH, 2019). Surprisingly, the violence was perpetrated by armed gangs, not by the official authorities. Since then, according to Haitian human rights organisations, there have been twelve massacres of the same type. Investigations (national and international) have demonstrated the links between gangs, public officials and power (Harvard, 2021). This constitutes serious acts of massacres against the civilian population by the central power, which is absolutely unacceptable.
The government is experiencing unprecedentedly serious authoritarian excesses, as we have just demonstrated. Thus, since January 2020, the president governs by decree, which means that he no longer goes through the parliamentary channel to enforce his government’s laws, thus constituting a violation of participatory democracy (decrees must be used sparingly). Parliamentary elections in Haiti should have taken place in 2019, but this was officially prevented by the civil protests. As a result, for more than a year, the president has been acting as he pleases, without any checks and balances since the mandates of mayors and parliamentarians, with the exception of ten senators, have expired (Thomas, ibid). All power is concentrated in the hands of the president. The presidential term was due to expire in 2021. The last year of the presidential term could have been used to pave the way for a transition. On the contrary, by multiplying decrees, reinforcing the power of the executive and encouraging a climate of generalised violence, the option chosen was that of a strategy of decay. The president reinterprets the Constitution in his own way, and intends to remain at the head of state for another year; time, among other things, to organise a constitutional referendum. This in itself constitutes a blatant disregard for the Constitution, which prohibits any referendum and enshrines the inviolability of the judges of the Court of Cassation (ibid). On 6 February 2021, the evening before the theoretical end of his mandate, he will claim to have foiled a coup attempt, arrest several people, and retire three judges of the Court of Cassation.
It is thus in a cynical way that the government tramples on the rights of its population and allies itself with armed gangs to perpetrate state massacres. Port-au-Prince is cordoned off and blocked by armed gangs, without any intervention from the police or the government. Since the beginning of June, clashes between rival gangs have forced thousands of residents of a poor neighbourhood of the Haitian capital to flee their homes and take refuge with host families or in a gymnasium in the neighbouring city (rfi, 2021). Port-au-Prince is becoming a lawless zone, with plots of land being fought over by rival gangs. The obvious objective seems to be an extension of armed violence on the national territory in order to rule by terror and chaos which consists of the planned increase in armed groups, the multiplication of so-called “lawless” zones through the formation of armed groups, the institutional weakening of the Haitian National Police (PNH) and the setting up of armed gangs on behalf of businessmen, elected representatives, state officials (Darbouze, 2019). If in 2004, Mr Antoine Athouriste, then executive secretary of the Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programme, estimated that there were more than two hundred thousand (200,000) illegal weapons in circulation in Haiti, today the CNDDR has put forward the figure of three hundred thousand (300,000) illegal weapons for a total of seventy-six active gangs registered throughout the country (Haiti Libre, 2019).
US and International role
In Haiti, the proliferation of violent criminal groups is partly a product of U.S. foreign policy. The United States unconditionally supports the Haitian regime, which in turn has facilitated the expansion of gangs. Most weapons in Haiti, which does not produce arms, come from the United States (Darbouze, 2021). Since the 19th century, the United States has never supported “democracy” in Haiti. The US embassy in Haiti is the fourth largest US embassy in the world. Although Jovenel Moïse has been identified in the waste of $4.2 billion in Petrocaribe funds, the Core Group, the international community in Haiti, led by the United States, has unconditionally supported Jovenel Moïse since his fraudulent election in 2016.
Officially, the United States of America has had diplomatic relations with Haiti since 1862, when Abraham Lincoln sent Benjamin F. Whidden to Haiti as the United States diplomatic representative to open an American Legation in the country. Periods of intense political and economic turmoil provided the pretext for the American intervention of 1915. After 19 years of occupation, the US armed forces left the country in 1934. The occupying forces left behind an ultra-repressive apparatus of social and political control: the Armed Forces of Haiti, demobilised in 1994 and remobilised in 2017 (ibid). The presence of the United States in the political life of Haiti has thus never been so strong. And for the past thirty years, within the Haitian advocacy movement itself, ideas inherited from the American plan for Haiti have dominated the full understanding of the profound work of change to be carried out in society (Casimir, 2006). Putchist and destabilising oligarchs claim to be democrats, while leaders who enjoy the broad support of their populations are branded tyrants, demagogues and populists. The “democratic” discourse, the main organiser of the current political consensus, has been so misused (and recuperated) that it covers up both the destabilising activities of the Western powers, particularly the US Empire in Latin America, and the use of international mercenaries by an illegitimate government against its own people. And where the forefathers promised eternal war on colonialism, we see a Haitian president, Jovenel Moise, wishing that Haiti would become a Western colony again and actively working towards it. Haiti no longer seeks, in all sovereignty and independence, to build a just, equitable, sustainable and anti-imperialist global society to overcome the injustices that capitalism and its neoliberal policies have imposed on the world. But by the sole will of an imperialist power, the people are suffering the torments of a political regime decried by the whole of Haitian society, completely weakened and looking everywhere and in everything for a substitute for its lack of legitimacy (Darbouze, ibid).
There is also a growing role for NGOs in the Haitian crisis. NGOs like Viva Rio, AVSI Foundation, and Concern Worldwide have been the privileged associates of Haiti’s security apparatus. With huge financial resources, these actors work in concert with local associations they call “partners,” but which are essentially non-governmental subcontractors (Olivier, 2021). NGOs and armed gangs are motivated by their own interests: NGOs try to remedy the shortcomings of the state through projects financed by international donors, while the armed gangs, following a survival logic, ensure the distribution of food rations to poor families and organize sports and socio-cultural activities. This co-management strategy contributes to territorial fragmentation whereby an archipelago of neighbourhoods ends up beyond the control of the central state and local authorities, who become figure heads. The way NGOs operate is a determining factor in the proliferation of small local associations, and at the same time, it encourages the creation of armed gangs. The tendency of NGOs to work in partnership with local groups encourages many young people to come together in associations. Some grassroots community organizations were created solely to receive NGO funding. Most of them have connections with gang leaders who use them as intermediaries to negotiate with outside actors or to profit from the financial windfall managed by NGOs, my research has found (ibid). Gangs are now becoming more powerful and expanding their activities in other parts of the country.
One of the main missions of the MINUSTAH, deployed in 2004 after Aristide went into exile, was to disarm territorial gangs and restore peace with a view to holding elections. However, the UN-initiated disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration operation did not help to recover gang weapons. After the election of President René Préval in 2006, the government initiated a National Commission for Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (CNDDR) headed by Alix Fils-Aimé, a candidate for senator and former representative of Pétion-Ville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince. Non-state actors reinforced this program with other conflict management and peaceful resolution mechanisms (ibid). But this mission was a total failure, as evidenced by the ever-increasing number of weapons in the country. The United States is the largest supplier of legal and illegal arms in Haiti, and in December, a former U.S. Marine sergeant was found guilty of attempting to smuggle weapons from the United States to Haiti. The proliferation of territorial gangs and the development of the illicit arms and ammunitions trade has made Port-au-Prince a barricaded metropolis, a process that activist Nixon Boumba refers to in an interview in this issue as “gangsterization.” The city is controlled in the north by the gangs of Cité Soleil and Croix-des-Bouquets, in the south by the gangs of Martissant and its surrounding areas, in the east by the gangs of Pétion-Ville, and in the west by the gangs of Grand Bel-Air. If the Pétion-Ville gangs specialize in robbery, then the other gangs in the Haitian capital are mercenaries in the service of political and economic elites (ibid).
This situation is generating unprecedented instability, which is why it seems imperative to take urgent measures to put an end to this state of permanent civil conflict and for the populations to finally return to a calm and peaceful way of life. With this in mind, the following recommendations are made:
– International sanctions must be taken against the United States, including diplomatic sanctions. This major world power must stop supporting a regime that is gradually sliding towards dictatorship. In addition, the US must stop supplying arms to the government, which then end up in the hands of various armed groups and gangs in the country. The United Nations must take a serious look at this case and demand an explanation from this state which is part of the international arms trade agreement (Arm Trade Treaty).
– It also seems important to organise a UN mission on Haitian territory for two reasons. The first is obviously humanitarian, as the poorest populations are dependent on illegal armed groups. It is time to provide these families with their basic needs and to help break the bonds of dependency. Secondly, to restore democracy by organising elections as soon as possible, in order to put an end to President Moïse’s monopoly on power. It is necessary to act before the authoritarian excesses of the “monarch” lead to a situation of full dictatorship.
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By Nino Zotikishvili: The European Institute for International Law and International Relations.
