The UN Safety Council has voted unanimously to impose sanctions on Haitian gang chief Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, because the worldwide group pushes to carry an finish to surging violence within the crisis-hit Caribbean nation.
The decision on Friday established a mechanism to punish people and teams that “threaten the peace, safety or stability of Haiti” – and Cherizier was the primary particular person to be sanctioned below the scheme.
The chief of the so-called “G9 Household and Allies” gang alliance has turn out to be one of many faces of the multi-layered points plaguing the nation, which is affected by political turmoil, a cholera outbreak and power insecurity.
Right here, Al Jazeera appears at Cherizier’s background, alleged abuses and professed targets:
Ex-police officer
A former officer of the Haitian Nationwide Police (HNP), Cherizier has been linked to varied human rights violations and deadly assaults towards civilians, based on a number of experiences by media retailers, worldwide observers and rights teams.
The United Nations additionally has blamed the highly effective confederation of gangs that he leads for one among Haiti’s most urgent and recurring issues during the last months: extreme gas shortages.
The gang alliance is obstructing a significant gas terminal within the capital, Port-au-Prince, which has pressured hospitals to chop again on providers and pushed the nation in the direction of a significant humanitarian catastrophe.
Final 12 months, Cherizier stated the tactic of blocking gas terminals aimed to pressure Haiti’s performing prime minister, Ariel Henry, to resign from workplace.
“If Ariel Henry resigns at 8:00, then at 8:05, we take away all of the barricades, so the vehicles can come to the gas depot and replenish, after which the disaster will cease,” Cherizier advised Al Jazeera in an interview that aired in October 2021.
Henry got here to energy after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July of final 12 months. Whereas he enjoys Western assist, Haitian civil rights teams have questioned his legitimacy, particularly after Henry indefinitely postponed presidential and legislative elections final 12 months.
Cherizier has offered himself as a revolutionary, preventing a system of inequality and the elites who management it. “We’re preventing for one more society – one other Haiti that isn’t just for the 5 % of the individuals who preserve all of the wealth, however a brand new Haiti the place everybody can have meals and clear water, to allow them to have an honest home to dwell, one other Haiti the place we don’t have to depart the nation,” he stated in the identical interview final 12 months.
‘Coordinated, brutal assaults’
However the gang chief is accused of a number of abuses towards Haitians, relationship again to his days with the safety forces.
The UN and the US have stated Cherizier was an HNP officer when he was concerned in a 2018 bloodbath within the Port-au-Prince neighbourhood of La Saline that killed dozens of individuals.
The assault was coordinated between Haitian officers and native gangs to “repress political dissent” within the capital, the US Division of the Treasury stated in a 2020 assertion saying sanctions towards Cherizier.
“Throughout this assault, at the least 71 individuals had been killed, over 400 homes had been destroyed, and at the least seven girls had been raped by armed gangs,” a US authorities report stated in 2021. “All through 2018 and 2019, Cherizier led armed teams in coordinated, brutal assaults in Port-au-Prince neighborhoods.”
In response to native information experiences, Cherizier was fired from the police late in 2018, and months later, an arrest warrant was issued towards him on accusations he participated within the execution of civilians throughout a police raid within the Grand Ravine space of Port-au-Prince in 2017.
Cherizier has denied the accusations. “I’m not a gangster. I by no means might be a gangster,” he advised Al Jazeera final 12 months. “It’s the system I’m preventing towards at this time. The system has some huge cash; they personal the media. Now they attempt to make me seem like a gangster.”
Demand of amnesty
Amid the present turmoil, The Related Press reported this month that Cherizier had “proposed his personal plan for Haiti’s future — even in search of seats within the Cupboard — whereas demanding that the [Henry] administration … grant amnesty and void arrest warrants towards the group’s members”.
In an interview with the information company in 2019, the gang chief stated he was born near La Saline because the youngest of eight youngsters, and his father died when he was 5.
Cherizier additionally advised The AP at the moment in regards to the origins of his alias, “Barbecue”, denying that it was about burning individuals. He stated he acquired the title as a toddler when his mom was a fried rooster road vendor.
In the course of the previous 12 months, Cherizier has spoken frequently to reporters. Throughout his dialog with Al Jazeera, he walked by the desolate streets of La Saline and had pleasant interactions with residents. He typically has a big rifle strapped round his physique throughout public appearances.
However the picture that Cherizier has tried to challenge as a pacesetter on the aspect of the poor stands in stark distinction with a number of the accusations levelled towards him and the gangs he leads.
Haiti’s Nationwide Community for the Protection of Human Rights launched a report (PDF) in August documenting “mass and repeated rape perpetrated towards girls and ladies” throughout violence between Cherizier’s followers and rival gangs in Cite Soleil, an impoverished space of Port-au-Prince.
An earlier report by the group final 12 months additionally accused Cherizier of ordering killings and the burning of properties in varied assaults within the nation.
That was echoed by Friday’s UN Safety Council decision, which said that “all through 2018 and 2019, Cherizier led armed teams in coordinated, brutal assaults in Port-au-Prince neighbourhoods.
“In Could 2020, Cherizier led armed gangs in a five-day assault in a number of Port-au-Prince neighborhoods through which civilians had been killed and homes had been set on hearth,” the decision stated.
It added that his actions, together with the blocking of the gas terminal, “have straight contributed to the financial paralysis and humanitarian disaster in Haiti“. The UN sanctions towards Cherizier embrace an belongings freeze and a worldwide journey ban.