An ex-police officer considered by many to be Haiti’s most powerful gang leader on Wednesday said that he would fight any international armed force deployed to the Caribbean country if it committed any abuses.
Jimmy Cherizier, best known as “Barbecue,” also urged Haitians to mobilize against the government.
“We are asking the population to rise up,” he said at a news conference.
Photo: AP
Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who has led Haiti since the assassination of then-president Jovenel Moise in July 2021, has been pushing for the deployment of a foreign armed force since October last year to help fight powerful gangs that are estimated to now control 80 percent of the capital of Port-au-Prince.
Last month, Kenya offered to lead a multinational force, and the US said earlier this month that it would put forward a resolution in the UN Security Council to authorize a non-UN multinational mission.
Cherizier said he would welcome a foreign force if it were to arrest the prime minister and people he described as corrupt politicians and local police allegedly selling ammunitions and guns in Haiti’s slums.
“If the foreign force comes to help and provide security for life to start over again, we will also applaud,” he said.
He said Haitians would rise up if any international force repeated the actions of previous UN peacekeepers, including committing sexual abuses and inadvertently introducing cholera into water sources.
“We will fight against them until our last breath,” he said. “It will be a fight of the Haitian people to save the dignity of our country.”
The UN had no comment, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.
Cherizier, who has been accused by authorities of masterminding several massacres in recent years and of organizing a fuel blockade last year that paralyzed Haiti for nearly two months, said that the group he leads, G9 Family and Allies, is no longer at war with another group known as G-Pep.
“We became one,” he said. “We love life a lot.”
Cherizier is the only Haitian under UN sanctions, with the Security Council saying he “has engaged in acts that threaten the peace, security, and stability of Haiti and has planned, directed, or committed acts that constitute serious human rights abuses.”
He called on the Haitian Ministry of Education to reopen schools in Cite Soleil and other slums that have been closed because warring gangs who are raping and killing people. The violence has displaced nearly 200,000 Haitians whose homes have been torched by the gangs.
Cherizier spoke to nearly two dozen journalists at an outdoors construction site in Port-au-Prince. He wore sandals, white pants and an orange hoodie emblazoned with a religious symbol used in Vodou.
He was surrounded by several G9 members carrying small handguns visible under their clothes, unlike his previous media appearances at which they held assault rifles.
‘SHORTSIGHTED’: Using aid as leverage is punitive, would not be regarded well among Pacific Island nations and would further open the door for China, an academic said New Zealand has suspended millions of dollars in budget funding to the Cook Islands, it said yesterday, as the relationship between the two constitutionally linked countries continues to deteriorate amid the island group’s deepening ties with China. A spokesperson for New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said in a statement that New Zealand early this month decided to suspend payment of NZ$18.2 million (US$11 million) in core sector support funding for this year and next year as it “relies on a high trust bilateral relationship.” New Zealand and Australia have become increasingly cautious about China’s growing presence in the Pacific
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
ESPIONAGE: The British government’s decision on the proposed embassy hinges on the security of underground data cables, a former diplomat has said A US intervention over China’s proposed new embassy in London has thrown a potential resolution “up in the air,” campaigners have said, amid concerns over the site’s proximity to a sensitive hub of critical communication cables. The furor over a new “super-embassy” on the edge of London’s financial district was reignited last week when the White House said it was “deeply concerned” over potential Chinese access to “the sensitive communications of one of our closest allies.” The Dutch parliament has also raised concerns about Beijing’s ideal location of Royal Mint Court, on the edge of the City of London, which has so
RSS