More than 2,400 people have been killed in Haiti since the start of 2023 amid rampant gang violence, including hundreds killed in lynchings by vigilante mobs, the UN said Friday.
The toll comes as gang violence in Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince this week left 30 residents dead and more than a dozen injured.
“Between January 1 and August 15 of this year, at least 2,439 people have been killed and a further 902 injured,” UN rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva.
In addition, she said, “951 people have been kidnapped” during the same period.
And as anger grows over the gang violence, she warned that a rise in popular justice movements and self-defence groups was spurring further violence.
“Since April 24 up to mid-August, more than 350 people have been lynched by local people and vigilante groups,” she said, adding that of those, 310 were alleged gang members and one was a police officer.
The remainder were members of the public.
Houses in Port-au-Prince’s Carrefour-Feuilles neighbourhood were set on fire in the attacks and two police officers also died, according to a provisional toll provided to AFP by the National Human Rights Defense Network.
The neighbourhood is a strategic area for the gangs, which control about 80 percent of Haiti’s capital.
Violent crimes including kidnappings for ransom, carjackings, rapes and armed thefts are common.
In recent days violence in the neighbourhood has caused some 5,000 residents to flee, authorities said.
“Reports from Haiti this week have underscored the extreme brutality of the violence being inflicted on the population and the impact that it is having on their human rights,” Shamdasani said.
She said that her boss, UN rights chief Volker Turk, was calling for urgent action to be taken on an appeal for a non-UN multinational force to be sent in “to support the Haitian police in addressing the grave security situation and restoring the rule of law”.
It’s not ridiculous. It’s calling out the hypocrisy and racism inherent here. Do you see people saying we need to send UN peacekeeping forces to Japan because of the Yakuza? How about UN peacekeeping forces to stop white people lynching black people in America? No? You don’t?
What are the conditions for the gangs to arise? Did the US train assassins and terrorists in the School of the Americas and did those people then go on to commit mass atrocities all throughout South America? Did a US-trained Colombian group assassinate the democratically elected president of Haiti? Is Haiti impoverished by the deliberate actions of the Western block, starting with France and then continuing with the US and their international financial institutions?
The gangs are only a problem because the US says they are a problem, and the story is believable because white people are indoctrinated to imagine black gangs as something that must be dealt with for the sake of saving black people from themselves. The reality is that Haiti has been abused by the West for centuries and the internal violence within Haiti emerges from the white European oppression and violence imposed on them. The gangs in Haiti might as well be fighting and purging Western-aligned interests for all we know. And if they were, it would be a great incentive for the West to send a peacekeeping force because they don’t want Haiti run by a leader that will work for Haiti’s interests.
This article just says “Did you know there are gangs in Haiti (implied, black people)? These gangs are violent and ruthless (implied, unlike civilized white people)? The UN should do something about this!”
“The gangs are only a problem because the US says they are a problem”
entirely false.
i won’t necessarily say anything about the UNs involvement and whether it should or should not happen. i have mixed feelings in regards to helping out a country vs the helping actually hurting. they are both true and possible outcomes.
but you do realize the number of people killed this year in haiti due to the gang is around the average yearly civilians killed per year under papa docs regime? this gang is a big problem for haiti. they are in economic and political free fall right now and a gang is capitalizing on that by terrifying the entire nation
idk how much you know about haiti or if you are haitian yourself, but my family lived in haiti and left due to this gang. they stayed for a long time when everyone else around them who could was leaving. but one night, this same gang shot over 300 people in a village less than 5 minutes away from my parents village, and they knew they had to leave.
gangs and danger have always been big in haiti. they are in every country, some just more well-hidden than others. but this is not equatable to that.