Haiti

[Schneemann]

Haiti ist mittlerweile faktisch ein failed state, rund 80% der Hauptstadt werden von Gangs kontrolliert, Entführungen und Morde sind an der Tagesordnung. Und manche dieser Banden scheinen sich sogar schon darauf vorzubereiten, die Regierung zu übernehmen.

Gangs rule Haiti’s capital. Some say they’re ready to overthrow the government too

Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) — From above, Haiti’s capital city Port-au-Prince still looks serene, its white-washed homes climbing steep green hills that encircle a glittering bay. But to step onto its cracked streets requires a careful calculation of risk and reward.

Ruthless gangs have a stranglehold on the city, preying on the population, carving neighborhoods into warring criminal fiefdoms, and cutting Haiti’s international port off from the rest of the country. In this city, the most-shared online videos are often torture footage, recorded and posted by gangs to spread horror and hasten ransom payments for thousands of kidnapping victims. [...]

Since last week, Port-au-Prince has been gripped by a wave of highly coordinated gang attacks, with armed groups burning down police stations and freeing prisoners in what one gang leader described as a direct challenge to Haiti’s unpopular Prime Minister Ariel Henry. On Sunday, Haiti’s government declared a state of emergency after thousands of inmates apparently escaped from its largest prison. [...]

Even for some within the gangs, the brutality of the current situation has become unbearable. “I see people dying in front of me every day,” one 14-year-old gang recruit from the city’s Martissant neighborhood told CNN, visibly distraught, in an interview last month. “The thing I hate the most is when (other gang members) kill someone and they make me burn the body,” he said. [...]

80% of Port-au-Prince controlled by gangs

On TikTok and WhatsApp, accounts flaunting guns and flashy cars tout affiliation with groups like the 5 Segond gang, 400 Mawozo (notorious in the US for the 2021 kidnapping of over a dozen foreign missionaries), and Kraze Barye, whose leader has a nearly $2 million bounty on his head from the FBI. [...]

In an impoverished country with little to exploit, the gangs are treating human beings like commodities, snatching at least 2,490 people off the street last year to trade in a fast-growing kidnapping business, per UN figures. Victims whose families cannot pay for their release are often killed, adding to the thousands of others who have lost their lives to indiscriminate gunfire, waves of arson, and other abuses. Haiti’s national homicide rate doubled last year, reaching 41 murders for every 100,000 people, the UN says – one of the highest murder rates in the world.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/04/ameri...index.html

Schneemann