{"id":25425,"date":"2024-03-29T04:40:54","date_gmt":"2024-03-29T09:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=25425"},"modified":"2024-03-29T04:41:01","modified_gmt":"2024-03-29T09:41:01","slug":"haiti-us-guns-pour-into-port-au-prince-fuelling-surge-in-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=25425","title":{"rendered":"Haiti: US guns pour into Port-au-Prince, fuelling surge in violence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Haiti is a state out of action.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than two weeks after the country’s prime minister resigned, following a surge of violence in Port-au-Prince, details of a presidential transitional council have still not been revealed.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges this council will have to face is the illegal trafficking of guns, which has powered the gangs which have taken over.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The escalation in violence has sparked an exodus from the capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among those leaving is 14-year-old David Charles whose father Israel is nervous with excitement as he waits for his son’s bus to arrive in Cap-Haitien.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A coach with boarded-up windows pulls up to the side of the road. He smiles in anticipation. His 14-year-old son David soon walks down the stairs with his luggage. They embrace tightly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David has managed to escape Port-au-Prince – a city now torn apart by armed gangs and political chaos. Most of the violence gripping Haiti is centred in the capital: the UN estimates 80% of it is now controlled by gangs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had been living there for two years without his parents, in order to finish his education, but Israel did not want him “to become a victim”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This month’s torrent of violence spurred him to get his son out to Cap-Haitien, a city in the north of the country which is safer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The journey was very long, more than six hours. I was praying the whole way,” says David. “The bus driver later told us there were a lot of gunshots in one area, our bus just missed them.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other passengers on the bus look exhausted, relieved but also upset. One man in a dark T-shirt and sunglasses speaks quietly as we ask him how he is. But becomes visibly angry as he tells us he has a message for the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“All the guns here are from the US, everybody knows it. If the US wants to stop this, they could easily do it one month!” He pleads: “We are asking the US to give us a chance to live, just give us a chance.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a country that does not manufacture weapons, a UN report in January<\/u><\/a> found every type of gun was flooding Port-au-Prince: high-powered rifles such as AK-47s, 9mm pistols, sniper rifles and machine guns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The weapons are fuelling the staggering surge in Haiti’s gang-related violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no exact number for how many trafficked firearms are currently in Haiti.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The UN report said some estimates put it at half a million legal and illegal weapons here as of 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It reported that guns and ammunition were being smuggled in from land, air and sea from US states such as Florida, Texas and Georgia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There have been seizures in the country’s main ports in Port-au-Prince, Port-de-Paix and in Cap-Haitien. Illegal weapons are hidden in shipping containers among toy and clothes donations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In July 2022, Haitian authorities seized a huge haul of dozens of weapons with 15,000 rounds of ammunition. They were stuffed in a shipment from Florida heading to an Episcopal church in Haiti.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The UN also identified the use of several clandestine airstrips built for humanitarian purposes after the devastating earthquake in 2010, which are now hardly monitored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier this month, a UN spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, told journalists the UN Secretary-General’s message to gangs in Haiti was to “silence the guns”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the corner of his office, Cap-Haitien’s chief prosecutor, Charles-Edward Durant, keeps a semi-automatic weapon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He says he needs security whenever he travels. For him, things have never been so bad in Haiti. “This is a nightmare, a horrible dream. I would like Haitians to wake up and work to have a better country.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is he worried that with guns being so prolific, the violence could make its way into Cap-Haitien?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this, he smiles with more confidence: “We are resisting, we have our ways: informants, checkpoints. Are they afraid of us? Of course. We are not playing. Anything can happen. If a gangster comes, he’s not here to play, and so we aren’t playing with them either.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US says it will throw its weight at the problem of guns and gangs, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, the State Department indicated it had plans to help establish a new policing unit in Haiti to address weapons being trafficked into the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barbara Feinstein, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Caribbean Affairs and Haiti, said at the time it was only “one piece of the equation”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, with no head of state, and effectively no government, Haiti’s people are trapped in yet another vicious circle of violence powered by illegal guns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of them is Juliette Dorson. The 50-year-old fled Port-au-Prince after surviving a shooting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The party planner still bears the scars from the bullets which hit her when she was ambushed at an event she was catering for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I said run, run, run because they are shooting. At that moment, I was shot twice: once in my feet and the other in the arm.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ten people were killed, including her 22-year-old business partner, Luc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She sobs as she speaks about him. The memory of it all is too traumatic to talk about at length.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Juliette shows us the small space she currently lives in, sharing a bed with a friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a world away from the home she once owned in the capital. The gangs have claimed that. She cannot return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When the gangs and the violence started in Port-au-Prince, the government didn’t do anything to stop it. And they let this grow and grow. It’s now too complicated to stop.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bbc<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Haiti is a state out of action. More than two weeks after the country’s prime minister resigned, following a surge of violence in Port-au-Prince, details of a presidential transitional council have still not been revealed. One of the challenges this council will have to face is the illegal trafficking of guns, which has powered the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":25426,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[27486,2547,2054,27485,21056,2033],"class_list":["post-25425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-ak-47","tag-guns","tag-haiti","tag-port-au-prince","tag-usa","tag-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25427,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25425\/revisions\/25427"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}