Haiti is under a state of emergency after the country’s gangs freed thousands of people from the country’s largest prisons and are reportedly uniting to bring down Haiti’s de facto Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who has yet to return to the country since he traveled to Kenya last week to discuss a deal to bring a U.N. force of 1,000 Kenyan police to the island. “It is a desolation that we are feeling. It is a terror that we are living,” says Haitian pro-democracy advocate Monique Clesca about escalating gang violence that has already displaced thousands of Haitians. “We have been terrorized for the last 30 months of Ariel Henry’s government,” she says, emphasizing “the Biden administration has its hands in the bloodshed.” We are also joined by researcher Jake Johnston, who traces the relationship between U.S. intervention and Haiti’s unrest, “a process stoked and perpetuated by the international community, and namely the United States,” and we speak with Kenyan MP Otiende Amollo, who opposes the plan to send Kenyan “peacekeepers” to Haiti, calling it a move “that flies in the face of the rule of law.”
And let’s be clear: The Biden administration has its hands in the bloodshed, because we, at least from the Montana Accord, have been saying since August 2021, two-and-a-half years ago, that this must stop. We have an alternative solution. We must get those criminals out of offices. We must get those criminals out. So, the Biden administration is paying the price, because there is no doubt in my mind that they bear a huge responsibility, along with the U.N., along with France, along with Canada. But the Biden administration has its knee on our necks, because we would not be here if they had listened to us Haitians, who have said for a long time, “This is unacceptable. This criminal regime is unacceptable to us Haitians.”
