PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Armed with machetes, bottles, and rocks, residents in the hilly suburbs of Haiti’s capital fought back against encroaching gangs Tuesday, a day after a crowd burned 13 suspected gangsters to death in a gruesome outburst of vigilante violence.
Tired of relying on an understaffed police department, scores of men in the Canape Vert neighborhood of Port-au-Prince spent the night on roofs and patrolled entrances of their community blocked with big trucks spray-painted with the words, “Down with gangs.”
“We are planning to fight and keep our neighborhood clean of these savages,” Jeff Ezequiel, a 37-year-old mechanic, told The Associated Press. “The population is tired and frustrated.”
The makeshift brigade is the latest example of growing attempts by Haitians to fight gangs on their own. Earlier this year, people elsewhere in Port-au-Prince and in the central Artibonite region, which has been hit by heavy gang violence, have lynched several suspected gang members.
Until now, Canape Vert and nearby Turgeau — the site of a major hotel chain and a local university — had largely avoided the gang-fueled violence that has been consuming the capital and surrounding areas since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. The United Nations estimates that gangs now control up to 80% of Port-au-Prince.
“Gang expansion into areas previously considered safe…has been alarming,” according to a U.N. Security Council report released on Tuesday.
Reported killings from January to March 31 have risen by more than 20% compared with the last quarter of 2022, and 637 kidnappings have been reported so far this year, an increase of 63% compared with the last three months of 2022, the report stated.
Meanwhile, Haiti’s National Police has 1.2 officers per 1,000 inhabitants in this country of more than 11 million people.
“The police remain under resourced and face overwhelming odds in their struggle to keep gangs from tightening their grip on the country,” the U.N. report said.
On Tuesday, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres urged the immediate deployment of an international armed force to Haiti — a request Haiti’s prime minister first made in October last year — and warned in a report that violence in Port-au-Prince “has reached levels comparable to countries in armed conflict.”
More than 130,000 Haitians have fled their neighborhoods as gangs break into homes, kill and rape residents in a fight to control more territory, and nearly 40% of them are now living in makeshift shelters lacking basic services, according to the U.N.
But on Tuesday, many in Canape Vert returned to their homes after temporarily fleeing the area on Monday when the 13 suspected gang members were killed.
“There’s nowhere to run,” said Samuel, 25, who declined to give his last name out of fear of being killed. “We have to stand and fight back. If there has to be a war, I will be part of it.”
