Haiti is suffering an escalation in gang violence. Here, Sky’s chief correspondent recalls the moment he came face to face with the gang boss leading the anti-government uprising.
We were told to wait on a street corner and stay in our car.
It was a hot day on the edge of one of the toughest areas in Haiti‘s capital Port-au-Prince.
The streets were full of people criss-crossing busy roads, pausing to buy food from street vendors, or browsing the goods on offer from shabby shops and store fronts.
I noticed a motorcycle pass us, and then stop and turn around. It happened a few times, and our driver Etienne indicated we were being watched.
After half an hour or so, the motorbike pulled up alongside us and told us to follow.
We turned off the main street and into a myriad of alleyways. On the corners, masked men with machine guns stared as we followed the bike.
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We were then flagged down, got out of our car, and were told to wait. Another man, this one carrying a pistol, then approached us and told us to follow him. We turned a corner, and behind him, a burly man walked towards us.
He was casually dressed and was wearing two large diamond earrings and carrying a revolver.
I shook his hand.
It was January 2023, and this was my first meeting with Jimmy Cherizier – the Haitian gang boss known universally as Barbecue.
Folklore says his nickname comes from the way he treated his victims; his friends say it is actually because his mum ran a fried chicken stall and he has had the nickname since he was a child.
He is the same gang boss leading a violent anti-government uprising that has seen two jailbreaks, violence, and mayhem on the streets over the last few days.
The beleaguered government of this impoverished Caribbean country has declared a state of emergency and curfew.
The gangs say they will go for government buildings and the airport next, and are using a divide-and-conquer type tactic, stretching the already stretched police forces.
Barbecue is a former policeman, now gang boss who is the acknowledged mouthpiece for a coalition of gangs called the G9, which he describes as a group of armed young men and women with an ideology to change the lives of those who live in Haiti’s notorious slums.
Haiti has been in a bad place for years and there hasn’t been an elected controlling authority since President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in 2021.
This most recent wave of gang violence has spiked because the country’s prime minister Ariel Henry has been in Kenya finalising plans for a peacekeeping force to come from Africa to Haiti, with the financial support of the United States.
When I met Barbecue last year, he warned that sending foreign troops would only lead to more violence.
“I think if we have an intervention, the international community is understanding enough to sit down and have a decent conversation with everyone,” he told me.
“But if they try to resolve it with guns, I think, certainly, many people in the slums could die, and they will kill mostly innocent people, more than the guilty ones.”
Barbecue is engaging and really is a natural politician.
He sees himself as a revolutionary fighting against the dark corruption of government and oligarch businessmen but make no mistake he is an out-and-out gangster – even if he sees himself as a Robin Hood-type figure.
“We took up guns to change the living conditions of those less fortunate in the slums, we said it’s to change their lives, we don’t use guns to kidnap people,” he insisted at the time.
Read more: The people fleeing gang rule in Haiti
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With no elected civilian government, chaos on the streets, and a group of gangs who control vast swathes of the country, to all intents and purposes Haiti is now controlled by a federation of gang bosses – which is arguably a world first.
At the helm is Barbecue – a man who, when I met him, I knew straightaway was a force to be reckoned with.
Images by Dominque Van Heerden and Toby Nash.
