Kidnapping in Haiti: Christian Aid ministries faced close appeals and threats ahead of kidnapping

More warning signs were to come. In 2020, the group’s headquarters in Titanyen, a village north of Port-au-Prince, received threats from a local gang, according to another post in the same blog.

“Clashing gangs smash calm nights with rapid gunfire. The CAM base in Haiti was targeted by the local gang. Demanding money and food, they vandalize CAM vehicles and threaten with severity ”, we can read.

That same year, the group’s annual report said it had been forced to withdraw U.S. personnel from Haiti for nine months due to political unrest, before dismissing them.

Members of a family, who were with a young child when they were taken hostage, had just arrived in Haiti earlier this month.

They have been held captive for four days now.

The kidnappers of the missionaries have demanded $ 1 million per hostage, for a total of $ 17 million – and so far they are sticking to their demands. “The kidnappers were warned to harm the hostages and what the consequences could be for them [if that were to happen]. But they are not influenced by these warnings, ”said Haitian Minister of Justice Liszt Quitel.

The 400 Mawozo, which have up to 150 members according to a Haitian security source, are known for mass kidnappings and largely control Croix des Bouquets. In the same neighborhood, in April, five priests and two nuns, including two French citizens, had already been kidnapped and then released for ransom.

Global attention to a Haitian epidemic

Hundreds of kidnappings have been reported in Haiti since the start of the year, but this latest incident involving American and Canadian missionaries has catapulted the country’s security crisis to the forefront of the world stage.

And in a city of nearly a million people, almost everyone seems to have their own dark story to tell, with stories of kidnappings and attacks as widespread as poverty and political instability propelling it up. .

Chrisner and Merline, a married couple from Port-au-Prince, were kidnapped in January – seized as they left their local church. Sitting in their captors’ car, balaclavas over their heads, they could only think of one thing: either you go home or you don’t come back at all.

For five sleepless days, the couple waited in a small room where they were given food and water only once a day.

Since January, at least 645 kidnappings have taken place, rarely involving foreigners. Of this year’s total, 42 kidnappings involved foreigners and 4 foreign residents, according to the nonprofit Center for Analysis and Research on Human Rights (CARDH) in Port-au-Prince.

Data from global risk consultancy Control Risks revealed that reported kidnapping cases rose 550% in the first nine months of 2021 compared to the same period last year.

Jean Gardy Jean, a resident of Port-au-Prince, told CNN that the kidnappings of American missionaries this week speaks volumes about how the world values ​​the lives of Haitians.

“Kidnappings here have been happening for so long, why no one talked about it then? Why is the world making so much of a fuss about aliens? It’s because they are more important,” he said. he declared.

“Gangs have become more influential actors”

More than 15,000 people fled their homes in the capital this summer, due to gang violence and widespread arson. Life in Port-au-Prince is marred by rampant inflation, frequent power cuts, and food and fuel shortages, in large part due to gang activity choking key delivery routes.

“The gangs have become more influential actors, which puts pressure on the interim government,” said Alan Zamayoa, Control Risks analyst for the Americas, noting that in recent months humanitarian aid has been able to flow. through Martissant, a gang-plagued neighborhood in the capital, following a gang truce.

On Sunday, the grip of gang activity was laid bare, as Prime Minister Ariel Henry was forced to back down on his plan to lay a wreath for Haitian Revolutionary leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines – a party commemorating his death – at a memorial in Pont Rouge, an area controlled by a coalition of gangs known as the G9.

Zamayoa says there are many factors at play.

While “the security forces are overwhelmed and understaffed,” he said in recent years criminals have also “had access to more lethal weapons, such as semi-automatic rifles, which are much more powerful. as police equipment ”.

Zamayoa explained that in addition to these factors, “collusion with police officers and politicians, as well as impunity, is extremely high.”

All of this contributes to the gangs’ ability to “exercise territorial control” over areas of the capital, added Nicola White, director of Control Risk.

“They can detain multiple victims at the same time because they are not under sustained and credible pressure to close deals quickly or quietly,” White said, adding that these factors “have allowed for a significant increase in kidnappings.”

But Haitians have had enough. Just before the kidnapping of the missionaries, a Haitian transport union called for an indefinite strike, which began on Monday, to protest the increase in kidnappings, among others.