They came to Haiti to help, but their philanthropic adventure ended abruptly last Saturday when an armed group kidnapped 16 American missionaries and a Canadian. Between 8 and 10 in the morning, a group of heavily armed men set up barricades on Carrefour Boen and La Tremblay 17 streets, on the road to Ganthier that leads to the capital’s airport and stopped the bus carrying 17 religious natives from Ohio returning from visiting a children’s hospital. This Monday, a White House spokeswoman confirmed the FBI’s participation in the investigations, although no further details were given and State Department spokesman Ned Price confirmed that a small team of investigators landed in the country to attempt rescue or rescue. negotiation.
Behind the kidnapping is the gang known as 400 Mawozo, a violent and heavily armed organization that controls the area of Croix de Buquet, a neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, and which has about 150 members, according to organizations that study violence in the country. Caribbean. Unofficial sources of the Haitian police confirmed to EL PAÍS that so far no contact has been established with the kidnappers to find out the conditions or the amount of the possible ransom.
Meanwhile, the street cannot take any more and this Monday the capital stopped all activities during a massive strike aimed at protesting, in general, for everything. They protested the violence and the high number of kidnappings, the lack of fuel, the high prices of the most basic foods and the political lack that prevails in the country after the assassination in July of President Jovenel Moïse. In addition to all that, the telecommunications company Digicel raised its rates and the mood gradually warmed as the hours passed. “We have been asking for help for months and we have no security against kidnappings, we have launched a general appeal to the population to suspend all activity,” said Méhu Changeux, president of the Haitian owners and drivers association. “The bandits go beyond the limits: they kidnap, rape women, do what they want … That’s enough,” protested the unionist quoted by the AFP agency.
The malignant Caribbean country lives and survives largely due to the uncontrolled cooperation of this type of religious groups that could interrupt their collaboration in the country in the face of the current situation. Even organizations such as Doctors without Borders have reduced their management to emergencies and some violent neighborhoods have stopped acting due to insecurity. This 2021 has been especially hard for the population. In the last nine months there have been some 600 kidnappings, three times more than in the same period last year, according to a Human Rights organization (CARDH) that includes 29 kidnapped in recent months. The kidnappings could be a hundred or more, said the organization and detailed that the ransoms demanded range between 100,000 dollars and a million dollars.
According to this organization, 43% of kidnappings take place in Port-au-Prince, 22% in Croix-des-Bouquets, 19% in Carrefour and 16% in Delmas, all of them municipalities are located in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince, where approximately one third of the Haitian population lives. One of the cases that spread by word of mouth and portrays the putrefaction of this kidnapping industry, was that of a street vendor of nuts who could not get her daughter back after not being able to pay the $ 4,000 that they demanded not to kill her.
Join now EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits
Subscribe here
With Haiti becoming a strategic point for the arms and drug trafficking that travel up the Caribbean, the groups of kidnappers have gained firepower and are confronted almost daily with the police. Consequently, the shops and schools in Port-au-Prince closed on Monday and transport, one of the sectors hardest hit by the violence, stopped any activity. In the early afternoon, clouds of dark smoke rose over various sectors of the city center as the number of protesters increased, burning barricades in the streets of the capital.
Currently, the situation regarding the violence and the force that the gangs have taken could not be more tenuous. “The earthquake exacerbated insecurity in a country that was still in suspense due to the assassination of President Moïse. After a brief lull, the kidnappings have escalated again, with victims among senior government officials and the military, ”Insight Crime notes. This research center concludes that the danger is not limited to Haiti, but puts nearby countries such as the Dominican Republic at risk. “Until a few months ago, the gangs of Haiti were seen as a very dangerous phenomenon, limited only to their country. But their criminal governance has expanded so fast that other countries have reason to pay attention to them for various reasons, ”he warns.
Subscribe here to the newsletter from EL PAÍS América and receive all the informative keys of the region’s news