Vigilante justice is on the rise in Haiti and crime is plummeting

The 14 allegedly arrested gang members arrived at a police station in Haiti’s capital when a group of people overpowered police, rounded up the suspects outside and used gasoline to burn them alive.

The gruesome executions on April 24 marked the start of a brutal vigilante campaign to reclaim the streets of the capital Port-au-Prince from gangs that have been terrorizing Haitians for nearly two years.

In a country plagued by extreme poverty and violence, civilians have taken up arms and killed at least 160 people believed to be gang members in the six weeks since a civilian self-defense movement known as “bwa kale” began its vigilance with the brutal attack on the police station, according to data collected in a new report by a prominent Haitian human rights organization.

The result: a sharp drop in the number of kidnappings and murders attributed to gangs in neighborhoods where people told The New York Times they had been afraid to leave their homes.

“Before the 24th, someone would come by every day demanding that I give him money because of my little business,” says 62-year-old Marie, who sells shoes on the streets of Port-au-Prince. The Times is withholding her full name and those of other residents mentioned in this article for their safety.

“When I had no money, they took whatever they wanted from my table, and this happened at any time of the day,” she said.

But two weeks ago, members of the “bwa kale” — crude slang for erection — burned a man believed to be a gang member alive in front of her shoe stand.

Although she sees the revenge movement as “God starting to make things right,” Marie has doubts.

“I support vigilance groups, but I don’t like the way they do it,” she said. “He could have been punished in a different way. He could have been arrested and put in jail.”

The outbreak of mafia litigation is concerning, say Haiti experts, because it could easily be used to target people unrelated to gangs and lead to an explosion of even worse violence if the gangs seek retaliation.

That it took a movement of self-proclaimed vigilantes to bring some semblance of calm to parts of Port-au-Prince underscores the chaos engulfing a country that has not had a president elected in two years, and where underpaid and undersized police officers large numbers have fled.

Even when vigilantes set people on fire and set up checkpoints, many Haitians support them, seeing them as a natural result of an acute power vacuum.

Nearly two years ago, the last elected president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in his home and replaced by an interim prime minister widely regarded as inept. No elections have been held since the assassination and the Caribbean nation of 11 million has no elected officials.

The acting prime minister, Ariel Henry, appealed for outside intervention last year, but efforts by the United States and other countries to build an international contingent have stalled, largely because no country wants to lead it .

Gangs have long controlled Haiti’s poorest neighborhoods, but their influence and violence increased after the murder of Mr. Moïse.

They’ve battled for control of parts of Port-au-Prince through indiscriminate killings, rape and kidnappings. According to the United Nations, there were 470 murders in a nine-day period last July. Due to the violence, the residents were unable or unable to work buy food, causing many people to leave for the United States.

“People lived like rats that only came out of their holes to eat,” says Arnold Antonin, 80, a Haitian filmmaker who lives in the Dominican Republic and fled last year when his wife, Beatriz Larghi, was kidnapped and gangs took over his neighborhood. south of the capital. “The gangs were like the cats.” (His wife was released unharmed after three days, after a ransom was paid.)

On April 24, residents decided enough was enough. The 14 suspected gang members had been arrested and taken to a police station in Port-au-Prince. Police officers helplessly watched as neighbors beat the suspects and used petrol-soaked tires to set them on fire, according to the report from the Center for Analysis and Research on Human Rights, known as CARDH, which used a combination of field investigators, local authorities, and witness statements. , media and verified social media posts to collect its data.

The murders were also captured in videos that were widely shared.

“The country is almost anarchy,” said Nicole Phillips, a human rights lawyer in San Francisco who closely follows Haiti, noting that vigilante killings are particularly concerning because many young boys are forcibly recruited into gangs.

In one episode, in Pétion-Ville, an affluent suburb of Port-au-Prince, a mob left the charred bodies of five men they had killed near a police station on the road leading to Mr. Moïse’s house.

“The reaction of the population, after years of gangs imposing their law, can be attributed to self-defense,” said Gédéon Jean, CARDH’s executive director. “Gangs are supported by certain authorities, politicians and business people. At almost all levels of the police force, gangs have links with police officers. The police do not have the resources to systematically and simultaneously tackle the growing gangs.”

According to the report, the “bwa kale” movement has led to a significant reduction in gang violence. May recorded 43 homicides, most of them in Port-au-Prince, compared to 146 in April, Mr. Jean, adding that almost no kidnappings have taken place.

“Fear has switched sides,” said Mr. Antonin. He plans to return to Haiti in the coming weeks now that his neighborhood is back in community hands.

While gang violence has seemingly declined abruptly, gangs still remain powerful and control some neighborhoods and major roads, said Pierre Espérance, executive director of the National Human Rights Defense Network.

“The problem is the correlation between gangs and those in power,” he said. “We see no will from the authorities to improve the situation in Haiti. I will not say that I support bwa kale, but I will say that I understand the people, because there is a lot of impunity and the absence of authorities, and they have no options.”

The rise of the vigilante movement, he said, underlines the failure of the international community to deal with the crisis.

President Biden said in March that military intervention “currently not in the game.” Meanwhile, the US government has allocated $92 million to help Haiti strengthen its security forces, including by providing new police vehicles, the State Department said.

Mr Henry in a speech last month urged citizens to lay down their arms.

“I ask my compatriots, despite what they have suffered at the hands of the bandits, to remain calm,” he said.

Vigilance in Haiti is nothing new. It was used during the Haitian Revolution against the French in the late 18th century and was common in 1986, when former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier was ousted from the country and mobs attacked and massacred his associates.

The practice was known in Creole as dechoukaj, the uprooting of the old order.

“The people doing this are not criminals,” said Robert Maguire, a retired professor at George Washington University who has studied Haiti for decades. “They are ordinary Haitians who are fed up, frustrated and scared. And they want some kind of security. If they have to do it themselves, they will.”

Amanda, 29, said she had to hurriedly leave her home in the La Grotte neighborhood of Port-au-Prince one April morning when gangs raided her street. She slept on sidewalks and hid from attackers. The vigilantes then killed some of the gang members, she said, but with no guarantee they caught the right people.

Now they man checkpoints and help keep strangers away from her by checking IDs.

“I support the vigilance brigades,” she said. “When I pass through a checkpoint, I accept that they are checking me.”

An energetic teen who worked at a checkpoint vowed to keep the pressure up by closing roads all night and interrogating people trying to get in. That was necessary, he said, because the police were too afraid of the gangs.

“We are ready to fight until things change in this country,” he said, refusing to give his name for fear of being targeted by gangs. “Nothing can stop us.”

Emiliano Rodriguez Mega contributed reporting from Mexico City.