The Barbecue rebellion

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI - FEBRUARY 22: Gang Leader Jimmy 'Barbecue' Cherizier with G-9 federation gang members in the Delmas 3 area on February 22, 2024 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. There has a been fresh wave of violence in Port-au-Prince where, according to UN estimates, gangs control 80% of the city. (Photo by Giles Clarke/Getty Images)

Jimmy ‘Barbecue’ Chérizier photographed in Port-au-Prince on 22nd February 2024. One week after the photograph was taken the gang leader launched an insurrection against the Haitian government

On the last day of February the gang violence crisis in Haiti plumbed new depths. Gang members set fire to police stations, stormed the international airport, burned down dozens of businesses and freed an estimated 3,500 criminals from two major prisons in the capital, Port-au-Prince. Several people, including six police officers, died in the initial violence.

In a video posted to social media, Jimmy ‘Barbecue’ Chérizier, the leader of the G-9 group, claimed responsibility for the violence and declared that a revolution was underway. The 47-year-old former police officer said that a new alliance of previously warring gangs called Vivre Ensemble (‘Live Together’) would prevent the return to Haitian soil of then-prime minister Ariel Henry, who was in Kenya trying to secure the deployment of a UN-backed peacekeeping force. “With our guns and with the Haitian people, we will free the country,” he said, demanding Henry’s resignation.

One week earlier, Chérizier had been interviewed at his home by Giles Clarke, a frequent visitor to Haiti since 2011. “Barbecue did drop a few hints,” says the New York-based British photojournalist of his timely visit. “The reason I was there was because it was fairly well known within certain circles that something was about to happen. I didn’t know the schedule, but clearly the insurrection was timed for when the prime minister left for Kenya.”

Cherizier patrolling the streets with G-9 federation gang members in the Delmas 3 area of Port-au-Prince, 22nd February 2024

Patience is required to snag an interview with a notorious gang leader. “I got to Delmas 6, a Port-au-Prince neighbourhood controlled by Chérizier on 19th February and for the next two days I showed my face and was told to come back another time because he was busy fighting… I could hear the bullets flying while I was outside his house. It was extraordinary. I was sitting there waiting to talk to someone who was in the middle of a full-on gun battle.”

On 22nd February, Clarke met the man universally known by his nickname (derived from his mother’s chicken stall not, as is sometimes claimed, from an alleged habit of incinerating his enemies). Clarke found the setting for his portrait of Chérizier and a gang member [see p69] while wandering around the Delmas 6 neighbourhood. “His guys, who were heavily armed, were only happy to be in photos with their faces covered – but Barbecue is unmasked in them.”

“I hate to say it, but Barbecue was very charming and welcoming,” Clarke continues, explaining that he found an uneasy dichotomy at play. On one hand, he says, Chérizier is trying to build schools and secure food and clean water for children and the elderly in a country with severe crises in education, sanitation and food security. He is respected by a community hostile towards the political class and receptive to his ‘freedom-fighter’ rhetoric – he presents himself as a revolutionary in the mould of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara. On the flip side, according to the UN Chérizier has “planned, directed or committed acts that constitute serious human rights abuses”, and the US has sanctioned him for orchestrating a 2018 massacre in La Saline district when he was still in the national police force, in which more than 70 people were killed. He was fired from the police later that year. The UN also says that the G-9 gang’s seizure of a fuel terminal in September 2022 “directly contributed to the economic paralysis and humanitarian crisis in Haiti.”

“I did ask him some difficult questions,” Clarke says. “His response to questions on the La Saline massacre was, ‘Things got out of hand that day, it was never my intention that so many civilians would die.’ He claims that he’s been pilloried because unlike many other gangsters he’s never aligned himself with the elites… He’s certainly a character who is capable of all sorts of brutality.”

Men, women and children take shelter at a boxing arena in downtown Port-au-Prince. Gang violence has led to 160,000 people in the city being displaced

The rise of the gangs

Clarke’s first trip to Haiti was in 2011, the year after a massive earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince, killing an estimated 220,000 people and leaving more than two million homeless. On that occasion he saw a “city in ruins” but at least there was a “sense of unity” among Haitians and a generosity towards western visitors. Unity has been in increasingly short supply in Haiti in recent times, and that sense of goodwill towards the west dissolved over the course of a botched reconstruction effort. This was not aided by the fact that UN peacekeepers improperly disposed of latrine sewage, inadvertently causing a cholera outbreak that killed more than 10,000 people.

In September 2023, five months before his meeting with Chérizier, Clarke was in Haiti again to document the impact of the gang violence crisis on the lives of ordinary people. It was his first visit since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, and he says that the extent to which Haiti had descended into anarchy in the meantime was shocking to witness. Around 200 armed groups were wrestling for supremacy in a country where the government was largely absent. As much as 90 percent of Port-au-Prince was run by gangs, with Chérizier’s volatile Vivre Ensemble – which includes G-Pèp, a federation of gangs the G-9 had previously spent years fighting – dominant, and in control of the critical port and fuel terminal. The UN reported that the gang violence was now spreading to rural areas of the country previously considered safe.

The impact of the rise of the gangs – and the near-total collapse of the state – on the lives of ordinary people is immense. There are more than 300,000 internally displaced people in a country smaller in size than Belgium, more than half of whom are children. Last year almost 4,000 people were killed and 3,000 kidnapped by gangs, according to the UN, and Amnesty has said that sexual violence against women and girls has become “a common practice”. Almost half of the country’s population of 11 million is suffering from acute hunger caused by the gangs destroying supply chains, making parts of the country inaccessible and cutting Haiti off from global commerce. The country, according to the UN’s top human rights expert in Haiti, is becoming “like Somalia at the worst of its times.”

Gangs are nothing new in Haiti, and they’ve always had links to politicians and to the small but powerful oligarchy. Gang violence was already a major issue when President Jovenel Moïse (who allegedly had ties to Chérizier) was assassinated in July 2021, but the killing created a power vacuum which the armed groups exploited to tighten their grip on the capital.

“When I visited in September 2023, Port-au-Prince felt like a city that had completely lost its way,” says Clarke. “The lack of any governance and the breakdown in infrastructure was very clear.” On that trip he toured shelters for internally displaced people, in churches and schools as well as in playgrounds, boxing clubs [see photo, right] and disused arts venues. “I went to the former Rex Medina theatre building on both my recent trips,” says Clarke. “It was almost completely destroyed in the 2010 earthquake. There were around 400 families there in September 2023, but by February 2024 its population had doubled. There were kids everywhere. It’s in a troubled part of central Port-au-Prince, but close to the embassies so it is seen as a place of relative safety.”

Men, women and children take shelter at a boxing arena in downtown Port-au-Prince. Gang violence has led to 160,000 people in the city being displaced

Clarke spoke to some of the theatre’s residents about the circumstances of their displacement at the hands of gang members looking to loot homes and gain territory. “The attacks usually happened at night – people would be in their homes and hordes of gang members would just move through neighbourhoods and drive people out; people just had to run from their homes with a bag or two. There were many brutal stories about gang violence, many shell-shocked people, lost livelihoods and cases of trauma.”

Some Haitians have been trying to defend their neighbourhoods from the gangs. Clarke photographed a series of makeshift roadblocks installed around Port-au-Prince [see p76]. “These barricades were primarily installed because of the kidnappings,” he says. “Gang members would drive up to someone’s front door, put a gun in their face, throw them in a car, drive off and then demand a ransom… They are all over the city.”

On his trip to meet Chérizier, Clarke took a ride with the National Police, outnumbered and outgunned by the gangs but one of the few state institutions still functioning. “I first rode with them in 2017 and they were so disgruntled back then – it’s even worse now… The morale is dreadful and many officers have resigned to work in private security… In 2020 they had 47 armoured police vehicles in Port-au-Prince but now it’s just 21. They don’t have anything like the weapons the gangs have.”

Haitian national police officers check the papers of drivers in Port-au-Prince, 20th February 2024. The force has lost over 3,000 officers since 2021, with the majority fired for abandoning their post in the face of gang violence

An uncertain future

On 6th March 2024, a week after his armed revolt began, Jimmy ‘Barbecue’ Chérizier held a press conference. “If Ariel Henry doesn’t resign, if the international community continues to support him, we’ll be heading straight for a civil war that will lead to genocide,” he told reporters. A few days later the prime minister, stranded outside the country due to Chérizier having forced the airport to close, announced that he would resign following the installation of a new transitional council backed by other Caribbean nations and the US. On 11th June the council announced the formation of a new government, with former Unicef regional director Garry Conille replacing Henry as interim prime minister.

After the 2021 assassination of Jovenel Moïse, over which many questions remain unanswered despite years of investigation and dozens of indictments, Henry had served as both prime minister (appointed by Moïse two days before his death) and president, supposedly on an interim basis. He repeatedly promised to hold elections to appoint a president but never followed through, arguing that it was impossible during a security crisis. Many Haitians regarded his rule as illegitimate.

Henry had long called for a multinational security force to help him fight the gangs, and in October 2023 the UN approved a plan to send a Kenyan-led 1,000-strong force to Haiti. However, the plan was blocked by Kenya’s high court in January 2024, which deemed it unconstitutional – and although Henry seemed to revive the idea by signing a security deal in Nairobi the following month, the gang insurrection that rocked Port-au-Prince while he was there made many question the move. “This is a suicide mission,” said Kenyan opposition leader Ekuru Aukot. “We’re sending them to come back in body bags.” In late May, however, Kenya’s president William Ruto confirmed that a force would be deployed in June.

Henry’s efforts to organise a peacekeeping force led to other unintended consequences. Many analysts believe that the prospect of a UN-backed force helps explain the unlikely truce that saw deadly rivals form Vivre Ensemble – a united front against an existential threat to all Haiti’s gangs. Chérizier has said that any Kenyans who participate in the mission will be treated by his alliance as “aggressors” and “invaders”.

Chérizier’s opposition to foreign intervention, as well as Haiti’s political class and oligarchs, has left many asking the question – is his ultimate goal to become President Barbecue? “I asked him about that,” says Clarke. “He told me he doesn’t want to run Haiti, but he wants a seat at the table. He claims that his loyalties are with the people of Haiti, and he wants the country run by Haitians and not the elites. And that there will be a bloodbath if the peacekeeping force comes.”

“I’ve seen the country in times of relative peace and I’ve seen it gripped by gang violence,” continues Clarke. “And I know that the people of Haiti want some semblance of peace… But the country has been slipping towards this kind of chaos for years, decades even. The gang violence is in the blood, it’s generational, I saw ten year olds holding guns there.”

With his track record of violence, Chérizier may not be the ideal person to guide a country out of the darkness – and many Haitians are appalled by the suggestion of criminals helping to form the next government. But given his popularity, his influence over the major gangs and his territorial grip on Port-au-Prince, it may not be possible to make progress without the charismatic gang leader playing a major role.

“It has taken someone like Barbecue to stand up against the elites,” says Clarke of a man who appears to sincerely believe that he will be able to liberate the Haitian people from a corrupt establishment and its foreign backers. “He said to me ‘If we don’t make it, then at least we will
die trying’.”

A roadblock in Port-au-Prince, 20th February 2024. Residents constructed the barricade to thwart kidnapping gangs from entering their areas

Posted on Monday, June 24th, 2024 - Categories: #54 - Jan-Mar 2024, App Issues.