Port-au-Prince (EFE).- Haitian gang leader Jimmy Cherisier, also known as Barbecue, announced on Wednesday that residents of specific central Port-au-Prince neighbourhoods would be permitted to return home. Port-au-Prince is 90% under the control of armed gangs.
“It is our soldiers who are preventing people from returning, so we are going to ask them to withdraw,” said the leader of the Viv Ansanm coalition of armed gangs. The coalition has controlled particular neighbourhoods of the Haitian capital for over a year.
“To correct the mistakes made by the gangs, the first decision we will make is to facilitate the return of people to certain areas,” Barbecue said in a video.
“I am finalizing arrangements with Viv Ansanm so that, by the end of August, they withdraw from Delmas 30, Solino, Christ Roi, and Nazon, allowing people to return to their homes in these areas,” he added.
It is not the first time Cherisier has spoken about this, yet it is the first time people have actually started returning to these areas, as confirmed by EFE.
He affirmed that while he is withdrawing from these areas, he will prepare for battle and devise new strategies against the Haitian authorities, whom he called “thieves.”
At one point in the video, he stressed that arms and ammunition dealers, as well as “those who do not want peace,” are worried because they feel their business is going to decline. Some of them are even saying that this “peace has been achieved in exchange for money” from the government.
“Viv Ansanm trusts me. They know that I haven’t accepted money from anyone. This peace has not been bought. It is a peace that enables people to return home and reconsider our struggle against the nine thieves of the Transitional Presidential Council and their corrupt prime minister,” he added.
As of Aug. 24, thousands of displaced people from various districts in the city center, including Solino and Nazon, demonstrated in the streets of Port-au-Prince to express their intention to return to their neighbourhoods of origin. The following day, several hundred displaced people were seen returning to their homes on the Delmas highway.
Some consider that the armed gangs are taking this step because they need human shields in light of the Haitian National Police’s (PNH) announcement of intensified operations in the coming days.
With the support of the Multinational Security Support Mission of almost 1,000 officers led by Kenya, the Haitian Police face the powerful armed gangs that have taken over practically all the territory of Port-au-Prince. There, they sow terror through murder and rape, forcing the displacement of thousands of people.
While these gangs continue to plague the country, hundreds of their members have been killed in clashes with the PNH and the multinational security support forces, as well as by kamikaze drones launched several months ago. EFE
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