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2024-03-11 Caribbean-Latin America
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Jimmy's BBQ Guys. Who started riots under the nose of the United States
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Ol'ga Kuznetsova
[REGNUM] “Seven days of bedlam in Haiti”, “Haiti will soon starve”, “Biden supports the unpopular leader of Haiti and digs the US into a political hole”, this is approximately what the English-language news from the Caribbean has looked like in the last week.
Continued from Page 4
Yes, Haiti, just look, Honduras will win in the “country as a common noun” category. However, despite the great resonance, nothing unusual is happening in the country now.
In late February, the Prime Minister of this Caribbean country, Ariel Henry, went to Kenya, trying to save the agreement on sending a detachment to participate in an operation to combat Haitian gangs.
Back in 2023, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kenya promised to send a thousand police officers for these purposes, but this was planned to be done after coordination within the country and receipt of a mandate from the UN Security Council.
There was a hitch with the first point: after a lawsuit by the opposition, the Supreme Court of Kenya declared agreements of this kind unconstitutional and blocked the dispatch of a peacekeeping contingent to Port-au-Prince.
While the Haitian prime minister was trying to resolve the situation, those same gangs did not want to calmly wait for results.
LOTS OF CHAOS AND FEW CASUALTIES
In early March, united gangs broke into one of the prisons and freed about four thousand prisoners out of 11 thousand held there. Including, according to rumors, Colombian mercenaries who participated in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in 2021 were also released.
Here, however, it must be clarified that these mercenaries are practically folklore characters. First, they were “shot” during detention, then they managed to “die” in their cells from local infections, and now they were “released” during the next assault. During which, by the way, according to individual reports, for some reason the prison gates were not completely closed.
At the same time, the storming of the prison - a rather noisy and bloody event - was covered rather dimly in the Western information field. Information is limited to a few blurry videos with the number of victims not very clear to the general public.
Considering that during the next riot in the penitentiary institutions of the same Ecuador or gang wars in the Mexican states, heads are flying in the literal sense of the word, the attempt to seize power on the part of the gangster formations of Haiti looks rather weak, even with all the claims to the contrary.
Soon, the leader of the united gangs of Haiti (and part-time former police officer) Jimmy Charizier, known in the criminal community under the nickname Barbecue, made an appeal. He said he would not allow the prime minister to return to the country because it would provoke a “civil war” and “genocide.” And he recommended that the local population not send their children to school in the coming days. Just in case, to avoid trouble.
Bearing in mind how such promises end, citizens immediately began to either blockade their areas of residence, or immediately packed up their things in an attempt to leave them. No one, almost traditionally, was going to comply with the urgently imposed curfew.
The gangs began to “liberate the country”: they attacked the capital’s airport, destroyed several police stations and tried to block the country’s main container port. According to the UN, there is very little left for the Jimmy Barbecue guys to completely seize power - some 20% of the capital.
Despite the horror and scale of the events, the official number of victims of the chaos is not too high. At first it was said about four, and a week later their number fluctuates around twenty.
Of course, in countries with a difficult situation on the streets, casualties are usually counted based on the results of the month, including victims of stray bullets and attacks. However, for a new “slave revolt” - and Haiti is in fact the only state that at one time emerged as a result of the success of such an event - there are surprisingly few bloody details.
UNLOVED PRIME MINISTER
The unrest in Haiti came at just the right time for Prime Minister Henri. He needed visual “illustrations” of the need to bring in peacekeepers for both the UN Security Council and Kenya. Videos of attacks by Haitian gangs even began to circulate on Kenyan social networks.
However, the local opposition launched a response “flash mob”. Appeals began to appear with statements that the Kenyan guys would have to bring Haiti to its senses “on behalf of the white oppressors,” or even die on this unfriendly land.
In fact, Ariel Henry's mission in Kenya has failed. The agreement is under threat of new lawsuits from the local opposition, and the dispatch of peacekeepers has again been delayed indefinitely.
And for Henri and his team this is a big problem. His powers to govern the country ended on February 7, and his refusal to leave his post has already led to major protests.
The seventh of February is a significant date; on this day, Haitian presidents traditionally take the oath of office. The agreement on the resignation of Ariel Henry, who assumed control of the country after the mysterious assassination of President Moïse, was signed taking into account the expiration of his powers on February 7 of this year.
However, as Western media note, this agreement is not binding. Prime Minister Henri, refuting all accusations and taking offense at the word “usurper,” is in no hurry to prepare Haiti for presidential elections.
According to the leadership of many Caribbean countries, this behavior is the cause of the country's current problems. Representatives of individual public organizations add that the US government is aggravating the situation by supporting Henri and preventing the formation of a supervisory committee that would restore order in the country.
The States, by the way, refused to send a military contingent, although this topic is being discussed in the media.
Now, according to the official version, Ariel Henri cannot return to the country. The neighboring Dominican Republic refused to accept his plane: relations between the countries are not the simplest. So the Haitian Prime Minister is sunbathing in American Puerto Rico and looking for ways to resolve the conflict.
SAME SCENARIO
This is not the first time that unrest in general and clashes with Jimmy Barbecue in particular have occurred during the reign of Ariel Henry. Just last year, Barbecue sparked a humanitarian crisis by seizing the country's main fuel terminal. And after that there was an even greater series of riots and popular protests. The largest demonstrations were the recent ones in February, in which even former government officials took part.
Typically, the script for protests is similar: the unrest subsides, demonstrators return to normal life in the city slums, and Barbecue and other gang leaders invariably remain at large.
Prime Minister Henri, in almost all of these cases, observed what was happening from abroad. He has so successfully avoided physical danger that he has repeatedly led observers to believe that he deliberately allows such outbursts of violence in order to obtain foreign peacekeeping troops and strengthen his own positions, at least for a while.
It is possible that Henri will still be able to return to the country. But riots are guaranteed to happen again, unless, of course, the scientific community urgently invents a cure for hunger and instability.
SEARCH FOR THE GUILTY
As for the Americans, it would be wrong to talk about any special love and active support for Henri on their part. The White House does not risk sending military aid: the memory is still fresh that everything transmitted through official channels invariably ends up on the black market.
And while American officials don’t care about the sale of “humanitarian aid”—donated food, medicine, clothing—then the situation with weapons is different. The Americans clearly do not want to see it in the hands of the militants storming the embassy.
However, it would be unfair to place all the blame for what is happening in the country only on Henri. The situation has been steadily deteriorating over the past few decades, and without external humanitarian assistance, the local population is struggling to survive. Some experts believe that the country has never recovered from the massive earthquake of 2010 and the cholera epidemic that followed.
Others say that Western corporations are to blame, taking advantage of the fact that the well-being of Haitian citizens actually depends only on them. There are also those who blame local managers who seek to enrich themselves in one way or another through cooperation with foreigners and the distribution of humanitarian aid.
Of course, thoughts are also voiced that the “state of victorious slaves” without proper leadership will never be able to reach a normal standard of living - no matter how many centuries you wait.
A change of power and the emergence of a leader who will demonstratively sever relations with Western countries is unlikely to be a solution in this case. Without humanitarian aid from Western countries, Haiti's very existence is in question.
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2024-03-11 06:18||
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