Haiti: The Return of the Bad Days?

Criminals Again Rear Their Heads As A Passive State Looks On

Vitel'Homme Innocent of the Kraze Baryè gang.

Haiti’s Prime Minister Ariel Henry - who has been ruling the country with no constitutional or legal authority to do so since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse - this week appeared to mark two years in power in a most unusual way.

When dozens of families were driven from their homes in the capital’s suburb of Tabarre by the Kraze Baryè (Gate Breakers) gang of Vitel'Homme Innocent - a wanted criminal upon whose head the U.S. State Department has placed a $1 million bounty - and proceeded to cower at the gates of the U.S. Embassy, Henry responded not by launching a police operation against the gang but by sending agents from the Corps d’intervention et de maintien d’ordre (CIMO) riot squad of the Police nationale d’Haïti (PNH) to violently disperse and tear gas those driven from their homes. Henry, whose reign has seen armed groups overtake a vast majority of the capital and operate with impunity as tens of thousands of residents have been displaced, has appeared impassive at best when faced with the terrible human suffering his government has presided over. The events in front of the U.S. Embassy yesterday suggest perhaps something even worse.