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Haiti, whose history since its independence from France in 1804 has been marked by economic hardship, political instability, dictatorships, and recurrent natural disasters, including a 2010 earthquake that left more than 250,000 dead, is one of the poorest countries in the world, and the poorest of any country in the Latin America and Caribbean region.
Now, Haiti is collapsing under an exponential tide of violence. Gang-led massacres are multiplying in the poorest neighbourhoods of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and kidnapping has become a fast-growing criminal activity, spreading throughout the country. Criminal gangs are becoming ever more powerful, taking control of swathes of territory, the most often with the complicity of the notoriously corrupt Haitian police and President Jovenel Moïse’s administration.
The situation has spiralled since a first massacre in November 2018 in the capital’s slum-ridden La Saline neighbourhood, a heartland of anti-government protests, when at least 71 people, including children, were murdered, 11 women were gang-raped, 400 homes destroyed, and the victims’ bodies variously thrown into rubbish dumps or dismembered and burned.
In December last year, a statement by the US Treasury Department confirmed the substance of previous reports by the UN and human rights activists about the events. The statement announced financial sanctions against the perpetrators; these were identified as Jimmy Chérizier, a then serving police officer and now a gang leader who took an active part in the massacre, and also the Haitian interior ministry’s director general Fednel Monchery and another government official close to Moïse, Joseph Pierre Richard Duplan, who are both accused of planning the horrific attack.
The massacres have become recurrent since the raid on La Saline two and a half years ago. “Cherizier is now one of Haiti’s most influential gang leaders and leads an alliance of nine Haitian gangs known as the ‘G9 alliance’,” sobserved the US treasury in its December 10th statement. “Throughout 2018 and 2019, Cherizier led armed groups in coordinated, brutal attacks in Port-au-Prince neighborhoods. Most recently, in May 2020, Cherizier led armed gangs in a five-day attack in multiple Port-au-Prince neighborhoods in which civilians were killed and houses were set on fire.”
The latest carnage occurred on April 26th this year, when a group known as the “Boston” gang raided a zone held by a rival gang, “Ti Gabriel”, in the Port-au-Prince neighbourhood of Cité Soleil, a vast shanty town that is home to a population of around 260,000.
According to a provisional toll, backed by eye-witness accounts, at least nine people were murdered and many more wounded. The victims included a pregnant teenager and two young men riding in a tap-tap – a share taxi – which was machine-gunned during the clashes.
Just weeks before those events, other gangs attacked the Bel-Air neighbourhood in the centre of the capital, on March 31st and April 1st. It was a punitive raid, led after local inhabitants had prevented two attempted kidnappings. The toll was at least 13 dead, while four people went missing, and around 20 homes burned down, according to the Haiti’s National Human Rights Defense Network (which goes by the French acronym of RNDDH ), a local association for the defence of human rights which is respected by the media for the quality of its investigations.
“The survivors live in a psychosis of fear,” declared the RNDDH in a report published online on April 7th. “Commercial and educational institutions do not operate […] the RNDDH reminds to the attention [sic] of the agents of the PNH [National Haitian Police] who are not in collusion with any armed gang, the obligation that they are made to side with the victims. This is why the organization recommends that they do everything possible to protect the population of Bel-Air, to defend it from the onslaught of the G9 and Fanmi e Alye, to secure it by all means and to put an end to these attacks once and for all.”
Several gangs are grouped into the so-called “G9 alliance”. One of its leaders, cited in the US Treasury Department statement, is the sinister Jimmy Chérizier, who also goes under the nickname of “Commander Barbecue”. The instigator of the two worst massacres, at La Saline and Bel Air, Chérizier is a former high-ranking officer with the National Haitian Police who now rules over a part of the relatively wealthy Delmas municipality in Port-au-Prince. He takes to the radio to announce instructions and warnings and, according to several investigations, including by the UN, has direct relations with the country’s political regime.
“With the ‘G9 alliance’, which has the benediction of the authorities, the massacres have increased,” commented RNDDH director Pierre Espérance. He cited the example of yet another attack carried out in the Cité Soleil neighbourhood in July 2020, when around 50 people were reported to have been killed, while 30 others went missing, and 15 women were raped.
Another Haitian organisation, the Centre for Human Rights’ Research and Analysis, or CARDH, is involved in trying to keep a regular register of the kidnappings in the country. In its May 4th dedicated bulletin, it noted that kidnappings had increased by 300% in April – up from 27 recorded in March to 91 in April. Over the 12 months of 2020, it reported a total of 796 kidnappings. Once again, the political powers are accused of being involved in the crimes.
“The G9 gangs and [their] allies circulate in vehicles with official registration plates, and state services take part in meetings in all tranquillity,” noted the CARDH in
Several human rights associations in Haiti have come together under an umbrella organisation called the Haitian Observatory of Crimes Against Humanity (OHCCH). On April 22nd, the OHCCH published a lengthy report, compiled in association with Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic, entitled ‘Killing with Impunity: State-Sanctioned Massacres in Haiti’. Reporting in detail on the numerous killing sprees that have been taking place for more than two years, the joint study affirms that Haitian state actors were involved in the massacres.
“There is a reasonable basis to conclude that state and non-state actors have committed crimes against humanity in Haiti during Jovenel Moïse’s presidency,” the report concludes. “The brutal killings, rapes, and torture of civilians in La Saline, Bel-Air, and Cité Soleil appear to follow a widespread and systematic pattern that further state and organizational policies to control and repress communities at the forefront of government opposition.”
“This finding must serve as an urgent call to action to ensure that accountability follows,” said the report, adding: “The attacks show an alarming pattern of state involvement. Evidence suggests that senior government officials in Moïse’s administration have planned, provided resources for, and solicited attacks against civilians.”
One of the member associations of the OHCCH is the Bureau des avocats internationaux (the Bureau of international lawyers). A prominent Haitian legal team for the defence of human rights, it is headed by lawyer Mario Joseph. “The Moïse administration maintains that these attacks are simply internal quarrels between armed gangs,” he said. “But irrefutable evidence establishes that high-level government representatives have played an important role in the planification and execution of the attacks, and also to conceal them.”
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This fusion between criminals and the political powers stems from a massive rejection among the population of President Moïse and his ruling party, the PHTK (Parti Haïtien Tèt Kale), in large part due to a dislocated state apparatus which lies in ruins. The president’s numerous opponents, including political parties, the clergy and associations, accuse him of attempting to quell revolt by terrorising the population into submission. Before the holding of presidential and legislative elections due later this year, Moïse has drafted a reform of the constitution in order to reinforce his powers within a dictatorial regime, and which will be put to a referendum at the end of June.
The US, which remains the most important actor in Haitian politics, has until recently unflinchingly backed Moïse. But the arrival of the new US administration under President Joe Biden appears to have changed that. Concerned over the accelerating deterioration of the situation in Haiti, Washington has opposed Moïse’s draft constitutional reform and planned referendum, insisting that properly organised legislative and presidential elections must be held in priority. Meanwhile, the killings and kidnappings which have largely achieved their aim of terrorising the population, and above all in Port-au-Prince, have brought the country to a halt.
François Bonnet
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The latest carnage at Cité Soleil is echoed in a book recently published in France, entitled Soleil à coudre, which provides a sharp insight into what Haitians are living through. Its author, 26-year-old Jean D’Amérique, is one of Haiti’s leading young writers. His novel, written in French, recounts the descent into hell of the shanty towns of Port-au-Prince. “That violence is there – I have seen it and I have lived it,” he told Mediapart in an interview published here on the following page. “Yes, we are at the extreme point of a crisis that has lasted for years. It’s the result of a state that has become institutionalized in violence, a state that is always absent and creates nothing anymore other than violence. These gangs – it created, armed, funded and manipulated them.”
Jean D’Amérique (whose real name is Jean Civilus) initially began writing poetry in an evolution from rap music, and three subsequent anthologies have earned him acclaim and several French-language literary awards, while he has also written several plays. A co-founder of a yearly international poetry festival, ‘Transe poétique’ (poetic trance), which is held every September in Port-au-Prince, he divides his time between Haiti, France and Belgium.
Soleil à coudre, his first novel, follows a central character, a teenage girl called Tête Fêlée, from the Port-au-Prince slum neighbourhood of Cité de Dieu. “You will be alone in the great night” is the fate promised to Tête Fêlée, whose mother is a prostitute and whose stepfather is a gang leader’s lieutenant. Her whole life is surrounded by violence. The novel’s poetic prose illustrates, far better than detached analyses, the current crisis in Haiti and what the population has endured for years.
In this interview with Mediapart, he dresses a sombre picture of the crisis in Haiti, but also explains why he has hope that his generation, which is increasingly mobilised against a corrupt state, will succeed in bringing about change. “If we manage to reconquer the public space and the space of the state," he says, “then we can once more come together as a country.”
Mediapart: You are known as a poet and playwright, why did you decide to write a novel?
Jean D’Amérique: I began this novel in 2016. I wanted to unfurl a story using a longer format, for example to take the time to bring alive complex characters. But this novel remains nourished by poetry and theatre. For example, there is no physical description of the characters. They exist by what they say, by their actions, their behaviour. I didn’t want to freeze the way of looking at the characters. For Tête Fêlée, we perceive her through her words, by what she lives through and suffers. It is her voice that defines her, not her body.
Is it poetic prose? Perhaps. I regard the novel as being not only a linear narration of a story or plot. For me, it’s a wrestle between the story and the language, you have to try and synchronise them. I began poetry around 2005 to 2008, the years when rap was very popular. At secondary school, I wrote bits of text. I published my first collection of poems in 2015.
Mediapart: Why did you choose violence as the theme for this book?
J.D’A: I was born, and grew up, in a little village in south-east Haiti, and it was only when I was 11-years-old that I arrived in Port-au-Prince, to go to secondary school. Coming from a peaceful countryside, the meeting with the town was a very violent shock. Port-au-Prince became part of my body and my imagination. I lived in insecure neighbourhoods,Carrefour, Village de Dieu, close to Bicentenaire. The neighbourhood where Tête Fêlée lives is called Cité de Dieu. It could be Cité Soleil or any other of these shanty town neighbourhoods. It is a metaphor for the Haiti of the common people.
Mediapart: Misery, violence, shanty towns and crime… Do you not fear being criticised for using what some consider to be eternal stereotypes about Haiti?
J.D’A: Firstly, that’s what Haitians live with. That violence is there – I have seen it and I have lived it. Secondly, I don’t want to talk about the expected. I looked a lot for places of nuance and complexity. It is not about evil and good. No. There are other issues, patriarchy, masculine virility, relationships between social classes. All of that ranges from the intimate to politics. I try not to judge these characters who live in such sombre conditions, reliant on a violence they did not create.
They fight to survive, take to different paths to escape. I also tried to show dignity as the mysterious part of each person. I try to transmit this reality by bringing in a bit of the fantastic element, something from Vodou mythology.
Mediapart: Tête Fêlée escapes through writing, while trying to pen a letter to her sweetheart. Is writing what allowed you to escape violence?
J.D’A: Literature is the only space where I feel I can confront this violence. To tell the story of Port-au-Prince is to talk about violence and overcome it with words and poetry. It is almost a physical experience with words; to say what extreme violence is, in a language I find beautiful, to use the power of words to sublimate things.
Mediapart: Your novel, then, can be read as an account of the crisis that Haiti has endured since 2018, with massacres and, these recent months, kidnappings one after the other?
J.D’A: Yes, we are at the extreme point of a crisis that has lasted for years. It’s the result of a state that has become institutionalized in violence, a state that is always absent and creates nothing anymore other than violence. These gangs – it created, armed, funded and manipulated them. Today, they have for a part turned against it and taken control of the country. The only time one sees the state is when corruption and complicity with the gangs is involved. That’s what the Cité de Dieu lives with in my novel. The political powers arm the gangs to terrorise the population.
Mediapart: Yet, you describe a gang leader who is perceived as a ‘shield’ by the population of the neighbourhood he controls.
J.D’A: Of course, because these gangs become the authorities for these neighbourhoods. In utter destitution, the population is obliged to cooperate with them. They maintain a minimum of protection and order on these areas.
Mediapart: In what way is the current crisis on a scale almost without precedent?
J.D’A: I have the feeling that the period of the PHTK, the party of President Jovenel Moïse, is one of a long collapse. It is a regime imposed on the population, which exists only through propaganda – no programme, no achievements. The state has progressively disappeared and those in power have ‘gangsterized’ the country. They have lost all credibility, all support, with only violence as a means of lasting, and that will continue.
Mediapart: How do you see the months ahead?
J.D’A: It’s going to be very difficult.Jovenel Moïse does not want to step down from power. He’s trying to change the constitution and to have a referendum, but no-one wants that, nor has confidence.
Mediapart: There have, however, been large mobilisations in Haiti, over the PetroCaribe corruption scandal, among others. Is it not encouraging to see a new generation that choses to remain in the country and to become strongly involved, and movements that are being created?
J.D’A: Yes, a new generation is mobilised and is in the process of redefining a new political space. We don’t accept any rubbish anymore, there is always someone there to say ‘no’, and a political conscience that is sharpening. The future of Haiti relies upon that. This resistance keeps us going. That’s what Haiti is, it’s the Haiti that we want. If we manage to reconquer the public space and the space of the state, then we can once more come together as a country.
Writing and activism are two very different places. But when I’m in Port-au-Prince, I am present in these movements, in my own manner, without placing myself to the fore. At every time I can, I stand up, and in my work I try to be driven by all these realities.
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Soleil à coudre byJean D’Amérique is published in France by Éditions Actes Sud, priced 15 euros.
He also has a blog on Mediapart (in French) here.
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