Leader of Haiti's main armed gang, Jimmy Cherizier, alias Barbecue. (EFE/ ORLANDO BARRÍA)
The largest conglomerate of armed gangs in Haiti, G9 Fanmi e Alye, reiterated its demand for the resignation of the Prime Minister, Ariel Henry, and threatened to oust him from power “at the cost of blood.”
The leader of the group, Jimmy Cherizier, alias “Barbecue,” summoned the national and international press in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of La Saline to demand “the immediate resignation” of Henry, “especially since he is suspected of having participated in the odious and vile assassination” of President Jovenel Moïse, perpetrated July 7.
“Barbecue,” said he is ready to oust Henry from the Prime Minister’s office at all costs, even “at the cost of blood.”
Then, he assured, “the key to the country will be handed over to a new class of men and women of civil society who will have to play the good governance card” to get Haiti out of the quagmire in which it has been mired for years.
This is at a time when “the country has no leader” and is “left to its own devices.” “The country has no prime minister, the president was assassinated. The country has no leader. That is why we, as patriots, are fighting to rectify the situation,” Cherizier said.
However, he qualified that the G9 fight “is not a battle against Henry” but “against the 5 % that holds 95 % of the country’s wealth. It is a battle against the system, against the corrupt oligarchs.”
In his opinion, the current situation in Haiti is the responsibility of “the 5% of the Syrian-Lebanese population mixed with politicians” for their “bad government for more than 50 years,” and they were also “the ones who distributed the weapons in the popular neighborhoods.”
The bourgeois and the politicians are the ones who “distribute these weapons in the working class neighborhoods to achieve their personal interests. To control the system. Today, we choose to take them, to use them against those who gave them to us, to liberate the country.”
Haiti is experiencing one of the biggest crises of violence in recent years, a consequence of gang activity, which has caused the exodus of thousands of people from their homes due to clashes over territory.
The gangs are also responsible for hundreds of kidnappings and have paralyzed fuel supplies for several weeks. However, in recent days the authorities have managed to bring fuel back to hospitals and several gas stations.