Haiti: Nearly a Million People Took to the Streets.They Want the Western-imposed government out of

loyola llothta

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November 13 - One year anniversary of the state massacre in La Saline, #Haiti. The UN-controlled police stood down for 14 hours while their death squads raped girls and women and massacred over 70 people then fed them to dogs and pigs.

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loyola llothta

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THREAD: Today marks one year since police officers and armed gangs stormed the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of La Saline, massacring 71 individuals. Local and international human rights reports alleged the involvement of government officials.
 
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The intellectual authors of this crime have yet to face justice. It took 10 months for the two government officials allegedly involved to even resign from their posts. They both remain free.

The government has countered that the violence in La Saline was simply gang related, and not political. But the massacre took place amid a growing uprising demanding accountability for government corruption.
 
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loyola llothta

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The first massive -- and overwhelmingly peaceful -- protests occurred throughout the country on October 17, 2018. The next day of protest was planned for November 18, 2018. Ahead of the second march, some opposition politicians held a press conference in La Saline.

At the press conference, they announced they would be participating in the Nov. 18 protest. La Saline, home to the church where former president Aristide once preached, has been a key location for antigovernment protests under the Martelly/Moise administrations.
 
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In the days before the massacre, residents received threatening messages concerning their participation in protests, they later told human rights investigators. On the day of the massacre, officers from the local police station did not respond to the ensuing bloodbath.

Unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident. Killings continued in La Saline. Residents displaced from La Saline have faced repression in the months since. Other neighborhoods have been attacked, houses burned. The lasting impunity continues to reverberate.
 
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Last week, at least 14 residents of Bel-Air were killed in another massacre. Local human rights organizations alleged the involvement of a former police officer, Jimmy Cherizier, who goes by the nickname Barbecue.


Cherizier, according to local police investigations and human rights orgs, also participated in the La Saline massacre. Even before that, in November 2017, Cherizier was involved in the Grand Ravine massacre, when he opened fire in the courtyard of a school.
 
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loyola llothta

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According to law enforcement sources, Cherizier also operates as a bodyguard for some elite families in Haiti and was involved in an assassination attempt against a key witness in the Manzanares drug boat case.

Cherizier, who maintains connections within the police, speaks often on local radio. He was even the subject of a sympathetic AP article: https://apnews.com/ebc2cee089f149309bd73afa07816a63 …. He remains free.
 
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In the year since the La Saline massacre, antigovernment protests have continued. Official government reports have implicated the president in the corruption scandal that launched the uprising.

For the last two months, much of the country has been shut down. What started with calls for accountability for corruption have turned into calls for president Moise to resign.
 
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Political violence continues. Local HR groups report that, since La Saline, more than 100 Haitians have died, some three dozen in recent months. Amnesty international has condemned the government’s excessive use of force. The government has prevented the IACHR from investigating.

Throughout it all, the Trump administration has steadfastly stood by President Moise and the Haitian government, even inviting Moise to his Mar-a-Lago compound.
 
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Throughout it all, the Trump administration has steadfastly stood by President Moise and the Haitian government, even inviting Moise to his Mar-a-Lago compound.

Earlier this year, more than 100 members of the US congress sent a letter to the State Department asking for answers on the question of La Saline. Today, one year since the massacre, impunity continues to reign.
 
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Full Thread

THREAD: Today marks one year since police officers and armed gangs stormed the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of La Saline, massacring 71 individuals. Local and international human rights reports alleged the involvement of government officials.

The intellectual authors of this crime have yet to face justice. It took 10 months for the two government officials allegedly involved to even resign from their posts. They both remain free.

The government has countered that the violence in La Saline was simply gang related, and not political. But the massacre took place amid a growing uprising demanding accountability for government corruption.

The first massive -- and overwhelmingly peaceful -- protests occurred throughout the country on October 17, 2018. The next day of protest was planned for November 18, 2018. Ahead of the second march, some opposition politicians held a press conference in La Saline.

At the press conference, they announced they would be participating in the Nov. 18 protest. La Saline, home to the church where former president Aristide once preached, has been a key location for antigovernment protests under the Martelly/Moise administrations.

In the days before the massacre, residents received threatening messages concerning their participation in protests, they later told human rights investigators. On the day of the massacre, officers from the local police station did not respond to the ensuing bloodbath.

Unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident. Killings continued in La Saline. Residents displaced from La Saline have faced repression in the months since. Other neighborhoods have been attacked, houses burned. The lasting impunity continues to reverberate.

Last week, at least 14 residents of Bel-Air were killed in another massacre. Local human rights organizations alleged the involvement of a former police officer, Jimmy Cherizier, who goes by the nickname Barbecue.

Cherizier, according to local police investigations and human rights orgs, also participated in the La Saline massacre. Even before that, in November 2017, Cherizier was involved in the Grand Ravine massacre, when he opened fire in the courtyard of a school.

According to law enforcement sources, Cherizier also operates as a bodyguard for some elite families in Haiti and was involved in an assassination attempt against a key witness in the Manzanares drug boat case.

Cherizier, who maintains connections within the police, speaks often on local radio. He was even the subject of a sympathetic AP article: https://apnews.com/ebc2cee089f149309bd73afa07816a63….

He remains free.

In the year since the La Saline massacre, antigovernment protests have continued. Official government reports have implicated the president in the corruption scandal that launched the uprising.

For the last two months, much of the country has been shut down. What started with calls for accountability for corruption have turned into calls for president Moise to resign.

Political violence continues. Local HR groups report that, since La Saline, more than 100 Haitians have died, some three dozen in recent months. Amnesty international has condemned the government’s excessive use of force. The government has prevented the IACHR from investigating.

Throughout it all, the Trump administration has steadfastly stood by President Moise and the Haitian government, even inviting Moise to his Mar-a-Lago compound.



Earlier this year, more than 100 members of the US congress sent a letter to the State Department asking for answers on the question of La Saline. Today, one year since the massacre, impunity continues to reign.

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loyola llothta

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Here is AP sympathetic article on the genocidal murder , Jimmy Cherizier.

Leader or killer? A day with ‘Barbecue’ in Haiti’s capital
By DÁNICA COTO
June 7, 2019

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suspected in the massacre of dozens of men, women and children in the Haitian capital — and a hero in his neighborhood, followed by crowds of adoring residents who consider him their protector.

Authorities say men like Barbecue, whose real name is Jimmy Cherizier, are increasingly taking charge of areas across Haiti as public safety disintegrates and the government loses its grip on a country facing one of its most violent periods in recent history despite a 15-year U.N. peacekeeping operation there.

“Gangs are multiplying because the government is weak,” said Haiti’s attorney general, Paul Eronce Villard, who estimates there are more than 50 gangs now operating in the country. “It’s a real challenge for police.”

Armed gangs, sometimes with links to corrupt police and believed financed by local politicians and businessmen, battle each other for control of Port-au-Prince’s lucrative outdoor markets, the source of a steady flow of cash from so-called “protection” fees from vendors, as well as drug deals and arms sales.


In this May 24, 2019, photo, Barbecue, whose real name is Jimmy Cherizier, sits at his house during an interview with AP, in Lower Delmas, a district of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Cherizier said. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)
Among them is Base Delmas 6, which local human rights groups say is led by Cherizier in Port-au-Prince’s impoverished Lower Delmas neighborhood. Cherizier denies that, describing himself as a community leader who doles out cash to residents when they’re in need, clears garbage from the streets and protects the neighborhood from rival gangs.

He’s also a suspect in the country’s worst massacre in years, accused by police and witnesses of helping to orchestrate the slaughter of up to 59 men, women and children in the nearby neighborhood of La Saline last year.

But despite being named in a police report and in two local human rights groups’ investigations of the killings, Cherizier, remains not only free, but the most powerful man in Lower Delmas.

A police badge tattooed on his right forearm and a 9 mm pistol in his waistband, the 42-year-old Cherizier sleeps during the day and spends nights scanning the streets for enemies. He enforces a nightly curfew and has a small army of lookouts who bang on drums to alert residents that rival gangs are approaching.

On a recent Saturday, Cherizier ducked through purple and yellow sheets hung out to dry in narrow alleyways and sidestepped rusty wheelbarrows filled with sugarcane and women doing their wash in buckets. The smell of marijuana and raw sewage filled the air.

Swigging from a bottle of Barbancourt rum, he later pointed at a wide canal that residents use as a toilet and a shuttered medical clinic, then noted the lack of schools.

“What do you see?” he asked as he gestured at a crowd of supporters gathered around him. “It’s misery. None of these kids have a future. In 10 years from now, they will have guns in their hands.”

Another suspected gang leader, Joel Noel, calls himself the community leader of La Saline, where the massacre began on Nov. 13 as men armed with guns and machetes broke into homes, killing and torturing dozens and raping several women. Victims’ bodies were then burned or cut into pieces and thrown to pigs and dogs. Among the dead was a 4-year-old girl shot in the head in her mother’s arms, according to authorities.


In this May 24, 2019 photo, Barbecue, whose real name is Jimmy Cherizier, center left, walks as residents chant "Barbecue for life" in his neighborhood in Lower Delmas, a district of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)
An internal investigative report by the Haitian police Bureau of Criminal Affairs, obtained by The Associated Press, has called for the arrest of Cherizier and 68 others on charges including murder and rape. It is now being reviewed by a judge, but more than six months after the carnage none have been charged.

Cherizier is implicated in two killings in the report: One by a woman who accused him and 13 others of fatally shooting her cousin and dragging his body into a swamp, and another by a woman who accused him of colluding with others to kill her son.

Noel, his lips stained purple from the wine he’d been drinking that morning, also accused Cherizier in the slayings and said people in La Saline now sleep on the streets because they’re too scared to spend the night at home.

“We need security, we need help for the people, we need justice,” he said, adding that he fears more people will be killed. “The people who can’t fight are going to be the victims.”

Cherizier denied any connection to the massacre and said his enemies have linked him to the killings out of revenge. He said he got the nickname Barbecue as a child because his mother was a street vendor who sold fried chicken, not because he is accused of setting people on fire.

“I would never massacre people in the same social class as me,” declared Cherizier, who says he takes inspiration from late dictator Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, who ruled Haiti with a bloody brutality as “president for life” from 1957 to 1971.

“I was born next door to La Saline. I live in the ghetto. I know what ghetto life is,” added Cherizier, the youngest of eight children, whose father died when he was 5.

Weeks after the massacre, police accused Cherizier of being away without leave and expelled him from the force. Cherizier contends he was asleep when the attack began and never abandoned the force.

Marie-Yolene Gilles, executive director of the human rights group Fondasyon Je Klere, accused politicians of condoning and encouraging gang activity. La Saline has long been known as a rallying point for anti-government protests, and the massacre occurred just days before scheduled nationwide protests over corruption allegations.

“Haiti’s security situation is very, very alarming,” she said. “It seems that the country doesn’t have a leader.”

The spike in violence prompted the U.S. State Department to pull out all non-emergency personnel in mid-February and issue a “no travel” advisory that remains in effect as embattled President Jovenel Moise faces massive protests over alleged corruption, lack of basic goods and record inflation.

Villard, the attorney general, said the violence is worse now than in 2004, when former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was toppled by a rebellion that led to the intervention by the U.N. peacekeeping force, whose operation will end in October.

Serge Therriault, U.N. police commissioner in Haiti, said the peacekeeping force addressed gang problems in the early stages of its mission, but he worries about the resurgence and believes it is linked to the economic downturn.


“There are limited things the police can do,” he said. “We can try to stop the gang activity, but until these people have employment ... it’s very difficult.”

The Haitian police are also dealing with gangs infiltrating the force: Last month, they referred five cadets suspected of gang involvement to authorities as outrage grew over brazen daylight killings, including a police detective slain in a high-end neighborhood and a university professor fatally shot after leaving a bank.

The surging violence concerns Jean-Pierre, a business owner who declined to give his last name for safety reasons. He opened a cafe in Lower Delmas a year ago, but thieves have already broken all the windows three times. He moved back to Haiti from Montreal in 2011 but is thinking of leaving again.

“I love this country, but at a certain point, I have to make the best decision for my family,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve reached rock bottom yet. ...It’s going to get harder in the months to come. It’s going to reach a breaking point.”

Link:
Leader or killer? A day with 'Barbecue' in Haiti's capital
 
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