Haiti’s nightmare escalates: Over 13 million Haitians are now displaced amid spiraling gang violence and state collapse. In just one year, authorities report 5,600+ killed, but the true toll is likely far higher. Despite the arrival of the Kenya-led international security mission, peace remains a distant illusion.
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00:00Welcome back. In Haiti, the situation continues to be critical, with high numbers of human rights violations,
00:07millions internally displaced, and a capital mostly controlled by criminal armed groups.
00:12International Affairs Analyst Danny Shaw is currently in-country. Let's welcome him to talk more on what Haiti is experiencing.
00:18Welcome, Danny Shaw, again to From the South.
00:23Greetings from Haiti. Thank you for the invitation.
00:26It's our pleasure. Danny, unfortunately, the situation in Haiti tends to fly under the radar in terms of widespread media coverage.
00:34Can you paint a picture of the current situation on the ground in Port-au-Prince, beyond territorial control?
00:39How are these armed groups impacting the daily lives of ordinary Haitians?
00:43Access to food, water, health care, and basic movement.
00:48The situation here is extremely difficult.
00:51So, the blockade of Haiti, the U.S.-Western core group blockade of Haiti, it's a financial blockade.
00:58People wait in line at Western Union or Social Bank for days, and they're not able to access much-needed money.
01:10There's a media blockade against Haiti.
01:12There's not clarification on why these paramilitaries continue to receive how many hundreds of thousands of guns, of bullets.
01:22They just caught the Dominican government, again, allowing how much of their guns of the military and the police's guns to leak into Haiti.
01:34So, the Haitian people always explain this is a planned, organized, hybrid war, a multifaceted war against Haiti, against Haiti's quest for self-determination.
01:45I've been working here outside of the capital, Port-au-Prince, with different popular organizations.
01:51And we're asking the same question that Telle Seward has asked, how do we block this informational blockade?
01:57The number one thing you hear from Haitians across the country, I've been traveling hundreds of miles, keeping us as safe as possible.
02:06But the number one thing you hear over and over is, United States, international community, please stop sending all of these guns.
02:13These are the guns that Jimmy Chariziere, Barbecue, and Izo, and all of these warlords from Viva Ensemble, the name of the paramilitary coalition.
02:23They're using these guns to murder, displace, humiliate, and destabilize the Haitian masses, which have historically been the backbone, the backbone of struggle here in Haiti, whether it was fighting for Lavalas and Aristide, or whether it was resisting the UN, Brazilian, Minnesota, U.S. occupation.
02:48It's these masses of people who are being displaced.
02:51The gangs have a discourse in social media that they're somehow revolutionary on YouTube, on Twitter, but never once have they actually attacked the oligarchs or the imperialists.
03:02It's the masses of Maleray.
03:04Maleray means the poorest of the poor, the most vulnerable and dispossessed, or attacks every day by these gangs, by these, what the Haitian people call terrorists.
03:14When the Kenya-led mission was approved, many condemned it, including Haitians, so if we have nothing to show in terms of the mission achieving any of its goal, what are the realistic prospects for this mission, given the complexity of the threat and past failures of international interventions in Haiti, and what are the biggest risks?
03:33Yeah, I think that's a great question that we have to unpack at every level.
03:41So we could really say right now that it's Eric Prince versus Barbecue, the former executive of BlackRock against the paramilitary gang leader, Timmy Chirisier, with the Haitian people trapped in the middle.
03:57The Haitian people are truly before two occupations.
04:00That's what I continue to see, whether I'm in the south of the country, the north of the country, the outskirts of the capital, which is in the center of the country.
04:08Eric Prince continues to have a drone war, and supposedly the drone war is on these gangs, but every gang member that might be killed is usually 100 to 1,000 everyday Haitians who are displaced.
04:20So the idea of a second militarized occupation, basically it's U.S. guns for hire coming in, whether it's in the form of private mercenaries like Eric Prince or Marco Rubio, which has now floated the idea of the Organization of American States Intervening, the same way they did in the Dominican Republic in 1965, to turn back that revolution on April 28th, 1965.
04:44Whatever combination of government forces and private forces, this is not a good thing for the Haitian people.
04:51Of course, there's already the Kenyan soldiers, the Salvadorian soldiers.
04:54These are on, they're on the payroll of the U.S., first under Biden, now under Trump and Marco Rubio.
05:01So it's very interesting.
05:02You have the indirect occupation through the gangs, which have now cleared out.
05:06We're talking about mass displacement, 1.3 million people, according to the latest studies by the United States.
05:14The United Nations and these other World Health Organizations, 1.3 million people displaced.
05:19And now you have these private security forces coming in, which are only going to create more displacement and more war.
05:25And Jimmy Shrizia has said, well, if they can get drones with all of the money that we have from the cocaine dealing and the drug dealing,
05:32the kidnapping of Haitians, they have their own criminal economy.
05:37They're going to get their own drones and try to fight back against the Haitian national police,
05:42which are working with the forces that I mentioned.
05:45So it's really a difficult situation.
05:47The Haitians talk about how this is the David versus the army of Goliath.
05:51And they're just trying to survive.
05:53They don't remember the last time that they've been able to live.
05:56So much of what I'm saying comes directly from the Haitian leaders, many of whom are sitting with me behind me.
06:02The thing is that because of the language, it's a lot easier for me to translate these ideas.
06:10Danny, many analysts agree that the so-called international community bears significant responsibility
06:16through historical interference, support for destabilizing actions, or simply neglect.
06:21What specific actions or inactions by key international players, I'm referring to the U.S. and the likes,
06:26you were also referring to them, have contributed to the current impasse?
06:30And what should be done differently?
06:33Yeah, I think we also have to mention the massive, massive cocaine industry.
06:39This is something that's not talked about a lot.
06:41But a high percentage, I read a study that 60% of Colombian cocaine entering into the Western world,
06:49the U.S. and the European countries, comes through Haiti.
06:53Because Haiti is so destabilized, because there's no functioning state,
06:57we could call it a failed state, we could call it a colonial, corrupt state.
07:02When you talk about the cocaine industry, you're talking about a $1 trillion industry.
07:06So there's no question that U.S. intelligence, the CIA, the DEA, Biden pulled the plug on the DEA
07:13right after they had a major bust in Haiti.
07:18The Haitian people tell us every day this is an organized, planned chaos.
07:23This is CIA and U.S. intelligence and DEA written all over it.
07:29So Haiti is up against very, very powerful enemies.
07:32I see my job as a journalist, a photographer, to get these voices out, to try to translate these voices,
07:39because the Haitian people feel extremely isolated, like they've been forgotten about.
07:44They see a lot of similarities with the headlines you had earlier about Gaza.
07:50This is the Palestine of the Caribbean, where the people are trying to defend themselves and organize.
07:55But how can you organize against a paramilitary army that just in Port-au-Prince, the capital of some 3 million people,
08:03is already displaced more than one-third of the capital, occupies about 90 percent of the capital.
08:09So the Haitian people feel extremely overwhelmed by the number of enemies they're up against.
08:16Danny, one very quick final question.
08:18What is your final message to the international community about the urgency that the Haitians need to go over this crisis?
08:27The Haitian people are particularly, they feel like this is an extermination campaign.
08:32They see new construction, new international investment, capital investment around their national airport, which is shut down.
08:40So there's a travel blockade against Haiti as well.
08:43We see the Dominican Republic, the minions of the U.S., Luis Sabina there, deporting all of these Haitians.
08:50Trump says that he's going to end TPS in about a month's time.
08:53That could mean half a million Haitians are at risk in the U.S. of being deported,
08:57being deported back to what, back to an inferno, where U.S. guns and U.S. cocaine as well,
09:06because they're the ones that ultimately benefit from it, the big international drug dealers.
09:12And it's the Haitian people who are trapped in the middle.
09:14The Haitian people don't see the U.S. and France and Canada.
09:17The core group is somehow representing the international community.
09:22When the Haitians talk about an international community, they're thinking of their neighbors in Cuba.
09:27I mean, I can almost see Cuba from where I am in the northwest of the country.
09:31They're thinking of Venezuela.
09:32They're thinking of the Chinese and the Russians.
09:34They're thinking of multipolarity.
09:35The future of Haiti, if it continues to run through Miami, Washington, Paris, and Montreal,
09:41will be more servitude, slavery, colonization, and even genocide.
09:46If the future of Haiti runs through Caracas, Havana, Managua, Johannesburg, Beijing, Moscow,
09:56and there's hope for Haiti.
09:57And it's important, too, for the Sahel states with everyone's, you know, new favorite Ernesto Che Guevara
10:03on social media, Ibrahim Traorti, for him to pay special attention to what's happening to Haiti,
10:12because there's a lot of misinformation in terms of this war.
10:15This is a paramilitary war, a gang war.
10:17Jimmy Chirizia may say something different.
10:19I've interviewed thousands and thousands of Haitians.
10:22This is an all-out, total imperialist war on the Haitian people.
10:25Thank you very much, Johnny, for your inputs and for your time here from the South.
