“The bandits control the territory”: upsurge in armed violence in Haiti

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An upsurge in violence caused by armed gangs in Haiti worries the Office of Citizen Protection as two infants were shot dead in less than a month in the country.

“For several months, the bandits have controlled the national territory,” lamented Wednesday in an interview with AFP Renan Hédouville, protector of the citizen.

“As we speak, the bandits are protected by certain political authorities, by certain authorities of the central power, while the population is taken hostage, abandoned to itself,” he added.

Clashes between rival gangs have claimed several innocent lives since the start of the summer in Port-au-Prince, the capital. And the main provincial roads are regularly blocked by armed bands who hold passengers to ransom and divert goods.

From January to June, at least 243 people were victims of gun violence in Port-au-Prince alone, according to the Haitian Episcopal Commission for Justice and Peace.

Carried out three weeks apart, in mid-July and early August, the shooting murders of two infants, aged eight and four months, aroused great emotion among the population, but no official reaction.

“It is the complete silence of the authorities, the very complacency of these authorities in relation to these crimes,” protested Renan Hédouville, who said he had not received any response to letters sent to the president and the prime minister to alert them to this security crisis.

At the end of June and beginning of July, two peaceful demonstrations organized in the capital to denounce this climate of insecurity had been forcefully repressed by the police.

Gang members then marched through the streets of downtown, displaying their guns and firing regularly in the air.

No police unit had intervened to interrupt this march, broadcast live on social networks by some participants.

“This anarchy will have disastrous consequences on the functioning of society,” warns Renan Hédouville.

“If the authorities are complicit in the bandits who terrorize the population, they (…) will sooner or later be accountable to national or international bodies”, says the director of the Office for the protection of the citizen. ‘Haiti.

In a statement released Wednesday, the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince recalls “the need for the government of Haiti to investigate and prosecute those responsible for these acts of gang-related violence.”

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