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Garry Jean Baptiste, leader of one of two powerful police unions
in Haiti, called on government officials to provide more
equipment and backup as gangs that control 85% of the capital,
Port-au-Prince, keep attacking neighborhoods to seize more
territory.
“Take this insecurity seriously so more lives can be saved,” he
said into a microphone as large speakers mounted on a truck
amplified his message outside the offices of Haiti’s prime
minister and its transitional presidential council.
About two dozen civilian protesters cheered on the union leader,
with some holding signs that said, “We deserve security.”
The demands come a day after leaders of the Kenyan-led mission
announced that a police officer from the East African country
was shot in Haiti’s central Artibonite region just north of the
capital. Several gangs control that area, including Gran Grif,
accused of slaying dozens of people in a small community last
year.
Jean Baptiste also denounced that police officers are not
getting paid on time and asked that the government financially
help the families of slain law enforcement.
Hours after the demonstration, Haitian Prime Minister Alix
Didier Fils-Aimé said at a news conference that the government
was committed to making the country more secure “through a
massive investment in equipment” for Haiti's National Police.
“ We are facing a humanitarian crisis,” he said.
More than 5,600 people were reported killed in Haiti last year,
with gang violence leaving more than one million homeless in
recent years, according to the U.N.
Fils-Aimé said the country was at war with the gangs and that
police would keep fighting them with the ultimate goal of
holding general elections for the first time in nearly a decade.
“There is a strategy, there is a will, there are means that are
mobilized to put an end to the evil of insecurity,” he said.
Kenya has sent hundreds of officers to help weak Haitian law
enforcement. In February, 200 more police officers from the East
African country joined more than 600 other Kenyans already
working alongside Haiti’s National Police as part of a
multinational force boosted by soldiers and police deployed by
countries including Jamaica, Guatemala and El Salvador.
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