The UN said Friday it was concerned about the expansion of gang activity, which has been raging with impunity in the capital Port-au-Prince for several years now, in the Artibonite Valley, Haiti’s main agricultural region. . “The gangs have established a climate of terror, characterized by looting, assassinations, kidnappings, destruction, extortion, hijacking of goods trucks and acts of rape on young girls and women“, Details a press release from the United Nations office in Haiti.
Since October, the UN has identified “at least 69 gunshot wounds and 83 people injured” in this rural region, located about a hundred kilometers north of the capital, where “farmers’ crops and livestock are systematically stolen“.
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The most recent wave of violence, unleashed at the end of January by the gangBaz Gran Grif“, included in particular an attack against a police station, during which seven police officers were killed, specifies the press release. The United Nations further reports that officers from at least five police stations in the area “were forced to close the doorsfrom their police stations.
Faced with this violence, thousands of inhabitants have had to flee their villages, and the UN is concerned about the humanitarian consequences of this rapid expansion of crime in this Haitian department. “Due to insecurity, the Albert Schweitzer hospital, located in the town of Deschapelles and which provides services to around 700,000 people in the region, has suspended all its activities since February 16,” indicates the organization, while recalling that “several schools in the city remain closed“.
Long confined to the very poor neighborhoods of the seaside of the capital Port-au-Prince, the gangs have, since 2020, greatly increased their hold across Haiti, of which they now control more than half of the territory.
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These criminal gangs carry out kidnappings daily in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, demanding tens or even hundreds of thousands of US dollars from the relatives of their victims, most often sexually assaulted during their captivity.
In 2022, the UN recorded 1,359 kidnappings and more than 2,000 murders in Haiti, a third more than the previous year.