Waterloo Region Record

Vigilantes answer Haiti’s gangsters with street justice

DÁNICA COTO

Old cars, used tires and barbed wire block off the biggest neighbourhood in the capital of Haiti.

Gun-toting gangsters have been robbing, raping and murdering the innocent. Weak or corrupt police and officials have done little, or worse.

Now, the people are taking action and a wave of brutal vigilante justice is roiling Haiti, concentrated in this capital of about 1 million. The vigilantes close off neighbourhoods. They stone and often chop the limbs of suspected gangsters, behead them and set them afire, sometimes while they are still alive.

Vigilantes have killed at least 164 people since the movement dubbed “bwa kale” began in April, according to the United Nations. The name means “peeled wood” in Haitian Creole and insinuates male dominance and power in street slang.

“If you’re not from here, we’re going to kill you,” said Leo, a community leader who granted the AP access to the Turgeau neighbourhood so that journalists could see how the neighbourhood is responding to the gangs estimated to control 80 per cent of Port-au-Prince. He did not provide his last name.

Banners that read, “We are tired of the kidnapping,” and “Watch out for one another,” are strung throughout the city, and many neighbourhoods have erected barricades like those closing off Turgeau.

On a recent afternoon, Leo and neighbours guarded one of the four makeshift barriers blocking roads into their hilly community of doctors, nurses, pastors, lawyers, street vendors and engineers.

People who wanted to enter had to show their IDs, open their bags, lift their shirts to reveal any gang tattoos, and, if they didn’t live there, explain where they were going. At night, those seeking to enter Turgeau also had to provide a password, which the community changes every week.

Haitian police don’t keep reliable crime statistics. But gang-related killings and kidnappings have dropped because of bwa kale, say human-rights activists, who also worry about the gruesome violence, and that innocent people could be killed.

Weslander Al Cégaire, a cook in the southern city of Les Cayes with a round face and easy smile, told the AP that his cousin was recently killed by bwa kale participants while riding with a motorcycle driver who was targeted.

“It’s a good movement, but at the same time, the innocent are paying for the guilty,” Cégaire said, adding that he left Port-au-Prince because he feared the gang violence and the bwa kale movement.

The bwa kale movement gained momentum in Turgeau after residents said the gang launched a predawn attack in late April, killing nearly a dozen people.

More than 1,630 people were killed, wounded or kidnapped in Haiti in the first three months of the year, a nearly 30 per cent increase compared with the previous quarter, according to a report issued in May by the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti. In April alone, more than 600 people were reported killed, compared with a total of 846 people slain in the first three months of the year.

CANADA & WORLD

en-ca

2023-06-05T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-06-05T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://waterloorecord.pressreader.com/article/281638194596630

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