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ausetkmt · 10 months ago

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Haiti's top gang leader threatens politicians as fires break out in capital

PORT-AU-PRINCE, March 14 (Reuters) - A powerful gang leader in Haiti has issued a threatening message aimed at political leaders who would participate in a planned transition council, as fires broke out amid a fresh surge of violence in the Caribbean nation's capital.

Nearby countries bolstered their border security and withdrew staff from embassies while plans to send a long-awaited international security force remain uncertain.

After unpopular Prime Minister Ariel Henry announced on Monday he would step down once the council was in place, the capital, Port-au-Prince, was initially quieter, but violence appeared to be flaring up again as of late Wednesday, with a shootout in one neighborhood and an attack on the police academy early on Thursday.

A fire broke out at the main penitentiary, emptied of prisoners by armed men earlier this month. Thick black smoke earlier billowed out from the facility, but the fire appeared to be out by Thursday afternoon, when local media showed heavily armed police entering the partially blackened site filled with mounds of trash.

Reuters could not immediately establish if any people had remained in the jail or what sparked the blaze.

A police union said the national police chief Frantz Elbe's house had also been set on fire on Thursday. It did not say whether anyone had been hurt or give details on Elbe's whereabouts.

Haiti is struggling to resolve a long-running political and humanitarian crisis. Heavily armed gangs have taken over much of the capital, and rights groups have reported widespread killings, kidnappings and sexual violence. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced.

Henry, who was never elected, had been appointed prime minister by President Jovenel Moise in 2021, shortly before Moise was assassinated. Henry repeatedly postponed elections.

The comments from gang alliance head Jimmy "Barbeque" Cherizier were recorded on Wednesday and distributed via a rambling seven-minute audio message widely shared on Thursday morning on messaging platform WhatsApp.

"Don't you have any shame?" said Cherizier, directing his remarks at politicians who he said were looking to join the council. "You have taken the country where it is today. You have no idea what will happen," he added.

"I'll know if your kids are in Haiti, if your wives are in Haiti ... if your husbands are in Haiti," he said in an apparent threat to their families. "If you're gonna run the country all your family ought to be there."

In his remarks, Cherizier said the resignation of Henry was only "a first step in the battle" for the island nation of around 11 million.

Haiti's government again extended a nightly curfew through Sunday, in an order signed by acting Prime Minister Michel Boisvert. Henry has been stranded abroad since trying to return from a trip to Kenya to secure support for a security mission.

Regional bloc CARICOM has detailed the political parties and other social sectors set to make up the nine-member transition council that will take over from Henry. Negotiations over the council were brokered by Caribbean leaders and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, but formal appointments are yet to be made.

On Wednesday, the leader of a party declined an offer of a voting member of the council, backing instead an alternate three-member transition council that would empower former coup leader Guy Philippe, who was recently imprisoned in the United States and is seeking an amnesty for gang leaders.

EMBASSY REDUCTIONS

With Haiti's political future in limbo and the timing of the long-delayed Kenyan-led security mission unclear, the already sparse international presence in Haiti has been further receding.

Canada announced a reduction to its embassy staff that will leave only essential employees in the country, and said the embassy was temporarily closed to the public. That follows similar drawdowns by the United Nations and at the U.S. embassy.

The country's main cargo port said that despite military reinforcements, it would not receive vessels until further notice, as it assesses damages to containers and infrastructure.

Major passenger cruise line Royal Caribbean Group also suspended for a week its regular visits to Labadee, its private resort in northern Haiti.

Fearing a spread of instability in the region, Britain said it was bolstering security in the Turks and Caicos Islands, an overseas territory, as did the governor of the U.S. state of Florida. The Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispanolia with Haiti, closed its shared border with Haiti last year and has regularly deported Haitians.

The U.S. southeast coast guard said, "At this time, irregular migration flows through the Caribbean remain low."

Dominican media reported that aviation authorities in a press conference rejected a U.N. statement claiming that an airbridge would be set up from the country to bring humanitarian aid to Haiti, maintaining the airspace would remain closed.

Aid group Mercy Corps said Port-au-Prince residents were being reduced to "forced nomads," seeking refuge from shootings in temporary shelters with family or strangers and battling constant uncertainty, food shortages, trauma, illness and overcrowding.

Marie Love Elucien, 25, who lost her home and shop due to gangs, told Mercy Corps that she was most afraid for her young daughter: "I'm worried she's going to have a fit and become paralyzed because every time she hears the shots she jumps and screams.

"She cries incessantly and no one can touch her; she becomes hysterical and uncontrollable," she said.

More than 360,000 people are internally displaced in Haiti, according to U.N. estimates.

Gina Antoine, a 43-year-old pregnant mother of three, told Mercy Corps that she was exhausted from moving between neighborhoods and could not run anymore.

"We face inhumane situations daily, walking among corpses. Gangs can attack at any moment," she said. "I have nowhere else to go. I wish everything could return to normal."

#Haiti #Haiti Revolution 2024 #Haiti's top gang leader threatens politicians as fires break out in capital

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newstfionline · 8 months ago

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Wednesday, May 1, 2024

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High Tide (Washington Post) The number of high-tide floods in cities along the Gulf Coast has been rising, and their frequency is upending centuries of settlement and threatening billions of dollars’ worth of damage along the coast. The projections suggest that the flooding seen lately is just the beginning, with high-tide floods in the Gulf region projected to be 15 times more frequent in 2050 compared to the frequency seen in 2020. Some of that is because the cities themselves are subsiding and getting lower even as the waters are rising, which has exacerbated the impacts of the rising seas. In Galveston, the sea level is 8.4 inches higher in 2023 than it was in 2010, and in Pensacola it’s 6.5 inches higher.

As new Haiti leadership takes power, gangs demand a seat at the table (Reuters) Haiti’s new transition council is set to choose the country’s next president on Tuesday, but leaders of the gangs who have exerted increasing control are clamoring for political influence and amnesties and threatening violence if their demands are not met. In an interview with CNN published on Monday, Vitel’homme Innocent, who heads the Kraze Barye gang and is accused of orchestrating the 2021 kidnapping of U.S. missionaries, called for the council to listen to the gangs and find a resolution to the crisis “as soon as possible.” Kraze Barye forms part of a loose coalition of gangs known as Viv Ansanm, or “Live Together,” who now control most of capital Port-au-Prince. The coalition is demanding the future government grant them an amnesty for their crimes and create a plan for young gang members who may have been forced into joining, either under threat of violence or due to a lack of economic alternatives, Innocent told CNN. Viv Ansanm’s leader, a former police officer named Jimmy Cherizier who is known as “Barbeque,” warned of consequences if the gangs were ignored.

Mexico is taking Ecuador to the top UN court over the storming of the Mexican Embassy (AP) Mexico is taking Ecuador to the top U.N. court Tuesday, accusing the nation of violating international law by storming the Mexican Embassy in Quito to arrest a former vice president who had just been granted asylum by Mexico. The April 5 raid, hours after Mexico granted asylum to former Vice President Jorge Glas, spiked tensions that had been brewing between the two countries since Glas, a convicted criminal and fugitive, took refuge at the embassy in December. Leaders across Latin America condemned the raid as a blatant violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Ecuador said Glas was wanted on corruption convictions and not for political reasons, and has argued that Mexico granting asylum to a convicted criminal was itself a violation of the Vienna convention.

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An assassination plot on American soil reveals a darker side of Modi’s India (Washington Post) The White House went to extraordinary lengths last year to welcome Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a state visit meant to bolster ties with an ascendant power and potential partner against China. But even as the Indian leader was basking in U.S. adulation on June 22, an officer in India’s intelligence service was relaying final instructions to a hired hit team to kill one of Modi’s most vocal critics in the United States, Sikh activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. That India would pursue lethal operations in North America has stunned Western security officials. In some ways, however, it reflects a profound shift in geopolitics. After years of being treated as a second-tier player, India sees itself as a rising force in a new era of global competition, one that even the United States cannot afford to alienate. Asked why India would risk attempting an assassination on U.S. soil, a Western security official said: “Because they knew they could get away with it.”

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Residents of northern Israel brace for possible all-out war with Hezbollah (Reuters) Eli Harel was an Israeli soldier in his early thirties when he was sent into Lebanon in 2006 to battle fighters from the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah in a bloody, largely inconclusive month-long war. Now 50, Harel is ready to rejoin the army to fight the same group if shelling along Israel’s northern border turns into a full-blown war with Hezbollah. Harel lives in Haifa, Israel’s third biggest city, well within range of Hezbollah’s weapons. Haifa’s mayor recently urged residents to stockpile food and medicine because of the growing risk of all-out war. Israel and Hezbollah have been engaged in escalating daily cross-border strikes over the past six months—in parallel with the war in Gaza—and their increasing range and sophistication has spurred fears of a wider regional conflict. Hezbollah has so far restricted its attacks to a strip of northern Israel, seeking to draw Israeli forces away from Gaza. Some 60,000 residents have had to leave their homes, in the first mass evacuation of northern Israel. Eyal Hulata, a former Israeli national security adviser, said Israel should announce a date in the next few months when displaced Israeli civilians can return, effectively challenging Hezbollah to scale back its shelling or face all-out war.

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Kenya orders evacuation of all riverside dwellings amid deadly floods (Washington Post) Kenya’s president ordered Tuesday the evacuation of all homes along the nation’s rivers after floods killed at least 169 people in the past month, with dozens still missing. The announcement came a day after a torrent of water swept away scores of people near the town of Mai Mahiu, about 30 miles northwest of the capital, Nairobi.

Faith-Based Retirement Communities (NYT) Before Helen Leddy moved to Shell Point Retirement Community in Fort Myers, Fla., last year, she got the lowdown on the place. Ms. Leddy, 86, was concerned that the denomination that founded Shell Point, the evangelical Christian and Missionary Alliance, might promote values that did not match hers, and that her new neighbors might proselytize. A friend, who has lived at Shell Point for six years, told her that wasn’t going to happen. Faith-based communities like Shell Point, which was established in 1968, generally don’t insist that residents subscribe to the religion that shaped the communities, according to Katie Smith Sloan, the president and chief executive of LeadingAge, an association of nonprofit providers of aging services. Instead, the religious aspect, which was once a meaningful calling card, is now often seen as just another effective marketing tool, like on-site beauty salons or golf pro shops. Ms. Leddy, who recently attended a pizza party in her building, said that gatherings at Shell Point “generally start with a blessing, and maybe there’s a blessing at the end.” Otherwise, acquaintances toss off the occasional “God bless.”

#headlines #news

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