“Amnesty is a French word. In Creole, it means ‘bwa kale’,” a police officer from the city of Jérémie said via WhatsApp.
One afternoon in September 2022, a resident of Turgeau caught a young man red-handed stealing a vehicle battery from a private yard.
Armed only with his tools, the young man is severely beaten. But the citizens decide to call the police to get him back.
Arriving on the scene, the agents – transported by a white and blue pickup – brutally smashed the young man in the back of the vehicle, an AyiboPost journalist noted.
As they were leaving, one of the police officers turned to the crowd with a disapproving look: “You have a ravine nearby and you’re calling the police about a thief?”
Armed only with his tools, the young man is severely beaten. But the citizens decide to call the police to get him back.
On April 24, 2023, fourteen suspected bandits were handed over by police to an angry crowd in Canapé Vert, according to a human rights organization.
The event marked the beginning of the “bwa kale” movement through which elements of the population set themselves up as police officers, investigators and vigilantes.
Any individual suspected of banditry, caught in the act, or travelling without a national identification card, in an area that is not his own, can be intercepted, questioned and sometimes killed.
On April 24, 2023, individuals suspected of being bandits were shot and burned with tires by an angry mob in Canapé Vert. | © Jean Feguens Regala/AyiboPost
Barricades are being erected to surround certain neighborhoods.
Vigilance groups are sometimes formed to watch over entrances and exits day and night.
Read also: Photos | Barriers multiply at the entrance to neighborhoods in P-au-P
204 alleged gang members and associates were killed between April 24 and June 24, 2023, according to the Center for Analysis and Research in Human Rights (CARDH) in a report published on June 24, 2023.
Since the movement was launched, several hundred people, perhaps even thousands, suspected of banditry have been lynched by the population throughout Haiti.
These acts occur in a country caught in the trap of organized crime.
In 2023, the United Nations reported more than 4,700 homicide victims nationwide.
In the first quarter of 2024, about 2,500 people were killed or injured in gang violence, according to the UN, which last year approved the deployment of a Kenyan-led security mission to help police combat gangs.
The operating procedures of the mission are not yet public.
But already, a muscular intervention by police officers – alone – or supported by foreign elements opens a window for slippages and an acceleration of summary executions of the Bwa Kale type.
A curious teenager scans a charred body in the streets of Port-au-Prince on March 4, 2024, on Rue Oswald Durand, a few meters from the National Palace.
Contacted by AyiboPost, presidential advisor Lesly Voltaire fears the flight of gang members to outside the capital, thus increasing the possibilities of violence against the rural population.
“No one is in favour of an amnesty,” according to Voltaire, who called for the creation of a justice and truth committee, in particular to encourage gangs to hand over their weapons.
Watch this explanatory video from AyiboPost which helps to understand the concept or the word “Amnesty”, very common in Haiti at present:
Hundreds of police officers have fled the country in recent years. Estimates for 2023 put the strength of the PNH at 13,000 officers for a country of more than eleven million inhabitants.
Between June 2022 and June 2023, the National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH) recorded fifty-eight police officers murdered.
This is why any call perceived as leniency towards gang leaders receives a lukewarm reception within the police institution. An institution whose dozens of members have died in recent years in clashes with gangs.
“Amnesty is a French word. In Creole, it means ‘bwa kale’,” a police officer from the city of Jérémie said via WhatsApp.
Read also: Gangs hack PNH communications radios
Some neighborhood vigilance brigades are led by police officers, accompanied by sometimes armed civilians.
Pierre, for example, is a divisional inspector. He has been coordinating a vigilance brigade in the Carrefour-Feuilles shantytown since the launch of the “Bwa Kale” movement.
Presidential adviser Lesly Voltaire fears that gang members will flee the capital, increasing the possibility of violence against the rural population.
Pierre’s men regularly conduct searches on all unknown persons frequenting the area.
The police institution framework says it monitors so that no member of its troop abuses the innocent.
These precautions do not prevent slip-ups.
On April 24, 2023, for example, a young man was murdered in Turgeau because he had no identification with him, an AyiboPost journalist noted. Relatives, taken to the scene, later claimed that he had no connection with banditry.
In a report released in May 2023, the RNDDH protested against “the state authorities who hide behind [le] movement [bwa kale] to encourage the Haitian population to eliminate for themselves the links they have with the individuals they have armed and to prevent, at the same time, that Justice does not reach them.”
At AyiboPost, the RNDDH program manager, Marie Rosy Auguste Ducena, criticizes the “un-ethical” behavior of the police officers who handed over the fourteen people suspected of acts of banditry to the population in April 2024.
Read also: Photos | Tattooed Haitians Under Constant Threat of “Bwa Kale”
The movement takes place in a context of dysfunction of the country’s sovereign institutions, often out of step with the needs of society.
Haiti’s legal system, modeled on French law, contains centuries-old texts. The Penal Code dates back to 1825 and the Civil Code to 1835.
“It is because justice does not normally fulfill its function that the population is taking justice into its own hands through the Bwa Kale movement,” says Ducena.
Long before Bwa Kale, recourse to formal justice represented an exception in certain rural areas.
“Justice does not function under normal conditions [notamment] because of the incessant strikes in the system,” criminal law specialist Frantz Gabriel Nerette told AyiboPost.
And this private vengeance would be motivated by the whole of the “disgust and frustrations of the population towards the State apparatuses [incapables] to produce results,” analyzes Me Nerette.
It is because justice does not normally fulfill its function that the population is taking justice into its own hands through the Bwa Kale movement.
– Marie Rosy Auguste Ducena
Private takeover of justice and community security is not new in the country’s history.
The former policeman Abelson Gros Nègre participates to vigilantism initiatives at Carrefour-Feuilles.
The former spokesman for a police union said he witnessed in 1991, “even though I was still a child,” the response of the shantytown’s vigilance brigades “to bandits who wanted to besiege the area.”
Historian and professor at the State University of Haiti, Derinx Petit Jean, distinguishes at least five movements with traits similar to Bwa Kale in the history of Haiti.
First, at 18e century with the picket movement which began in 1843 in the south and was led by Jean Jacques Acaau.
Then, the Zinglins movement, a paramilitary group which was born under the government of Faustin Soulouque.
The “zero tolerance” policy under the presidency of Jean Bertrand Aristide. And the two versions of the Peyilòk movement, respectively in 2019 and 2022.
Private takeover of justice and community security is not new in the country’s history.
“We are here because Port-au-Prince is becoming a hypertrophied zone,” analyzes Professor Derinx Petit Jean. “The majority of the inhabitants live in the capital. Which creates a concentration of fear.”
The movement does not solve the problem of displacement of people due to the phenomenon of insecurity in the country, according to specialists.
If in the past people did not move to avoid being kidnapped or raped, today, “the “Bwa Kale” movement has reduced the movement of people to other places where they are not known to avoid being killed,” sociologist Mardochée Gédéon told AyiboPost.
Moreover, most gangs originate as community protection associations.
“This is the case for most of the gangs in Cité-soleil, Grand Ravin, Martissant, Village de Dieu, etc.”, notes sociologist Fritz Dorvilier.
“These groups can become tools of repression and exercise forms of symbolic and physical violence: lack of respect for elders, members of the population, predation on community resources, shootings, brutality,” concludes the sociologist.
We are here because Port-au-Prince is becoming a hypertrophied area. The majority of the inhabitants live in the capital. Which creates a concentration of fear.
– Derinx Little Jean
The movement has given rise to scenes of unprecedented violence, sometimes shared widely on social networks.
Interviewed by AyiboPost, Dr. in Clinical Psychology and Psychopathology Jeff Matherson Cadichon speaks of the possibility for spectators to experience psychological pain, fear, shock, anxiety or even shame.
On October 13, 2003, at one o’clock in the morning, while a layer of darkness enveloped Alcius Alley in the commune of Gonaïves, about three armed men, with their faces uncovered, broke down the doors and brutally invaded Chenet’s house located in Descahos.
In the trepidation of the hour, the idea quickly clicks in the mind of the man, who was in his early thirties: his home has been invaded by criminals.
His motorcycle, his wife’s gold rings and other valuables were taken away.
The next day, individuals were identified by the population as the perpetrators of the attack.
Read also: “Kafou lanmò” are multiplying in Port-au-Prince
Fifteen days later, one of them was captured in the heights of Morne Blanc, in the commune of Gonaïves, by a handful of alert people at ten o’clock in the evening.
His body is hacked to pieces with a machete. His bare stomach is topped with his genitals, torn off and exposed to the open sky.
There is no indication whether the man actually took part in the burglary.
Par Fenel Pelissier, Widlore Merancourt, Rolph Louis-Young & Legrand Junior
Jérôme Wendy Norestyl participated in this report.
Cover image: A motorcyclist and his passengers ride past a burning body in Port-au-Prince in April 2023.
The photos are from Jean Feguens Regala/AyiboPost.
Stay in touch with AyiboPost via:
► Our channel Telegram : Click here
► Our Channel WhatsApp : Click here
► Our Community WhatsApp : Click here
