IONA CLEAVE FROM THE SUN
CHAOS, explosions, gunfire and bodies rotting among the rubbish – welcome to the most dangerous city on Earth.
Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince is a crumbling but resilient city under siege from heavily armed gangs and ongoing political turmoil.
Haiti has long-suffered the title of the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, and the crime-ridden capital bares the brunt of overlapping crises.
Persistent earthquakes, soaring inflation, civil unrest, famine and a near-total political collapse all blight Port-au-Prince.
Yet, its biggest enemy? The 200 merciless armed gangs that inflict terror, sexual violence, torture and lawlessness.
Experts told The Sun Online that the crisis is already at breaking point as up to 20 people are killed per day in a wave of murders.
The most dangerous of these gangs is the so-called G9 coalition led by a warlord known as “Barbecue” – rumoured to have earned his nickname for setting his victims on fire.
Warring factions have torn the city apart and turned every day into a fight for survival.
IN THE GRIPS OF GANGS
Haiti was left wounded from the still unsolved assassination of President Jovenal Moïse in July 2021, which plunged the country into further instability and unrest.
With no functioning government, a power vacuum has trailed in its wake – ready to be exploited.
“Armed violence has reached unimaginable and intolerable levels,” Michelle Bachelet, the outgoing United Nations human rights chief, warned the world in May.
Now, the UN predicts that the deadly gangs control 60 per cent of Port-au-Prince – patrolling and barricading its streets and terrorising the city’s population.
“The gang phenomenon has become a metastasized cancer where they control the capital in all its peripheries,” said Dr Djems Olivier from Vincennes-Saint-Denis University, whose research specialises in the gangs of Haiti.
He told The Sun Online that the crumbling capital city has been transformed into a “barricaded metropolis” by the armed militia, who have “the right of life and death over the entire population”.
