Faced with a dramatic escalation of violence, the government of Haiti has declared a state of emergency for at least three days and imposed a nighttime curfew in the capital Port-au-Prince. In an attack on the country’s two largest prisons on Sunday night, armed gangs enabled hundreds of prisoners to escape. The state of emergency will initially apply for 72 hours and can be extended, the Haitian government said on Sunday evening, local time. The curfew came into effect overnight with immediate effect and will last from 6 p.m. to 5 a.m. each morning.
The government said it wanted to take this step to bring the situation under control and restore public order. “Law enforcement officers have been instructed to use all legal means at their disposal to enforce the curfew and arrest anyone who resists,” explained Finance Minister Patrick Boisvert, acting as caretaker prime minister in the absence of Ariel Henry. The national police will do everything in their power to track down the escaped prisoners and arrest those responsible for the criminal acts and their accomplices, it is said in a press release from the Haitian government.
Call from a powerful gang leader
Armed groups attacked the national prison in Port-au-Prince on Saturday. The police were unable to stop them from freeing a large number of prisoners held on charges including kidnapping, murder and other crimes. It initially remained unclear how many prisoners escaped: the government did not provide any official information; figures in the media vary from hundreds to almost all 3,700 prisoners. It is probably an “overwhelming” majority, the Reuters news agency quoted sources familiar with the situation as saying.
Gang violence has escalated again in recent days after powerful gang leader Jimmy Chérizier called on criminal groups to band together to overthrow Prime Minister Henry. From Thursday onwards, they paralyzed public life in large parts of Haiti’s capital with serious shootings. Several people were injured in the weekend attacks, and there are also said to have been deaths among police officers and prison staff.
Eyewitnesses reported seeing a dozen bodies near the Port-au-Prince prison. The Haitian government has not announced whether prisoners were also able to escape from the second largest prison in Croix-des-Bouquets.
Henry has been in charge of government on an interim basis since 2021. He traveled to Kenya last week to promote the deployment of an international police unit to stabilize the situation in the crisis-ridden Caribbean country. After months of negotiations, representatives of both countries signed a corresponding agreement on Friday. The Kenyan government wants to send 1,000 police officers to Haiti to fight gang crime. According to UN estimates, criminal groups control around 80 percent of Port-au-Prince and are increasingly expanding their area of influence to other parts of the country.
Like the newspaper Miami Herald According to reports, several gang leaders were also imprisoned in the national prison in Port-au-Prince. There are also 18 Colombian ex-military officers there who are accused of murdering President Jovenel Moïse; they apparently did not escape during the attack on Saturday. Moïse was killed with twelve shots in his home in 2021. It is still unclear who ordered his murder.
Since then, the security situation in Haiti has deteriorated sharply. According to the UN, more than 1,100 people were killed, injured or kidnapped by criminals in January alone. The violence is exacerbating the already precarious living conditions of many people. Haiti is considered the poorest country in Latin America and has been in a serious crisis for years. According to the UN, almost half of Haiti’s eleven million residents suffer from acute hunger.