A video that circulated broadly on the web not too long ago confirmed a Haitian gang chief, Joseph Wilson, shirtless, fortunately exhibiting off belts of .50 caliber ammunition, mockingly saying he used the armor-piercing bullets to groom his hair.
“We’ve got sufficient combs for our hair to final a 12 months,” he joked.
So how did he get them?
Weapons aren’t manufactured in Haiti, and it’s unlawful to ship any there, however the gangs terrorizing the nation’s capital, Port-au-Prince, by no means appear to be wanting them — or of ammunition.
Experts estimate that there are about 20 armed teams working in Port-au-Prince, some who carry AR-15 and Galil assault rifles, shotguns and Glock handguns. The U.N. estimates that between 270,000 and 500,000 firearms are circulating illegally in Haiti, with most weapons within the fingers of gangs.
Their superior hearth energy has overwhelmed the skinny ranks of Haiti’s ill-equipped police and contributed to an astonishing loss of life toll final 12 months of greater than 5,600 murder victims, a bounce of greater than 1,000 from the 12 months earlier than.
The United Nations imposed an arms embargo on Haiti three years in the past, but most weapons on Haiti’s streets are from the US, the place they’re bought by straw patrons and smuggled into the nation by sea or typically by land by the Dominican Republic, in line with the United Nations.
The problem has turn out to be so critical that Haiti’s authorities has restricted imports alongside its land border with the Dominican Republic. Solely items that have been initially produced there are allowed; any merchandise that didn’t originate within the D.R. must enter by Haiti’s gang-infested seaports.
As Haiti’s capital grapples with a violent disaster that threatens its very existence, questions stay about whether or not Haiti and different nations — together with the US — are doing sufficient to manage the tide of weapons.
“In case you cease the circulate of weapons and bullets, the gangs ultimately, actually, run out of ammunition,” stated Invoice O’Neill, the U.N.’s unbiased human rights skilled for Haiti. “That’s a faster, quicker, safer strategy to dismantle them.”
The place are the weapons coming from?
In brief, Florida.
South Florida, together with the ports of Miami and Fort Lauderdale, was the purpose of origin for 90 % of Caribbean-bound shipments of illicit firearms reported between 2016 and 2023, in line with the United Nations Workplace on Medicine and Crime.
Gangs typically purchase weapons and ammunition by attacking police stations in Haiti or by bribing native police into offering weapons. Practically 1,000 police weapons have been diverted prior to now 4 years, the U.N. stated this week, and cops have been reported to promote them on the black market.
However weapons are extra usually smuggled in delivery containers and aboard freighters leaving South Florida, hidden amongst tightly packed jumbles of bicycles, automobiles, electrical items, clothes and meals.
U.N. officers and personal safety consultants say traffickers altered their techniques in latest months to keep away from elevated inspections on the Miami River, a five-mile waterway that cuts by the town of Miami and has lengthy been a hotbed for contraband.
Smugglers expanded their operations to new routes between Florida and the Dominican Republic, together with Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, a big cruise ship and cargo facility, the U.N. stated in a latest report.
What weapons are being smuggled?
To date this 12 months, Dominican officers have made two giant seizures of smuggled firearms on the port of Haina, close to the capital, Santo Domingo.
In February, Dominican Customs brokers made what they described because the nation’s largest seizure of weapons destined for Haiti.
Practically two dozen firearms, together with a Barrett .50 caliber semiautomatic rifle and 15 AK-47-style assault rifles, in addition to 36,000 rounds have been inside a container on the Sara Categorical, a 35-year-old freighter that runs an everyday route between Miami and the Dominican Republic.
The proprietor of the Miami firm listed on the invoice of lading was arrested within the Dominican Republic.
A second cargo from New York seized in January on the identical Dominican port can also have been certain for Haiti, investigators stated. That cargo included 37 weapons, and a number of other Kalashnikov-style rifles with labels exhibiting they have been manufactured in Vermont and Georgia.
In November, Dominican authorities arrested a number of Dominican cops accused of smuggling almost a million rounds of ammunition from a police depot. At the very least one of many patrons was from Haiti, Dominican court docket data present.
Has regulation enforcement had any success?
In response to a September letter from a number of members of Congress who requested for extra to be achieved to handle weapons smuggling to Haiti, the U.S. Commerce Division, which regulates firearms exports, stated in December that none of its 11 foreign-based export management officers have been posted within the Caribbean due to an absence of funds.
Nonetheless, the company stated that throughout the Biden administration, 9 Haiti-related investigations resulted in convictions.
Extra not too long ago, different federal regulation enforcement companies have pursued a number of Haiti weapons circumstances.
Final month, a 31-year-old police officer in St. Cloud, Florida, pleaded responsible to buying and reselling no less than 58 firearms as a part of a scheme that despatched a whole lot of weapons to the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Haiti.
In January, a 34-year-old undocumented migrant from Guatemala, Ricardo Sune-Girón, pleaded responsible to firearms trafficking in Tampa. In keeping with a plea settlement, Mr. Sune-Girón recruited straw purchasers to illegally purchase 900 firearms — together with assault rifles — that he then transported from Florida to the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
A former safety officer for Haiti’s chief of police was arrested in Florida in December after investigators linked him to almost 90 firearms.
How is regulation enforcement tackling the issue?
Haiti has few sources like scanners and border guards to deal with the issue of smuggled firearms at its borders and ports, whereas consultants say the US has restricted functionality to look exported items at home ports and usually performs solely random cargo inspections.
Ships crusing to Haiti from the US are sometimes jammed with assorted cargo, from second hand clothes to family home equipment, bicycles and automobiles, making it straightforward to cover contraband.
In a single case, disassembled weapons found aboard a freighter on the Miami River certain for Haiti have been hidden in shipments that included tennis rackets, fruit juice, rice and clothes.
“We present up unannounced,” stated Anthony Hernandez, a Customs and Border Safety agent who testified on the federal trial in Miami in January of an accused smuggler. “We do our greatest to get to as a lot as we are able to.”
Haiti’s regulation enforcement authorities didn’t reply to repeated requests for remark.
What concerning the Dominican Republic?
Within the Dominican Republic, the US helps a particular unit of 30 native Customs brokers, with one other 20 presently being vetted to work on U.S.-related circumstances.
The authorities have tightened controls, together with including eight new X-ray scanners at foremost ports, the place all cargo destined for Haiti is examined, the Dominican international ministry stated.
Dominican Customs officers monitor all suspicious shipments to catch and prosecute traffickers, a U.S. embassy consultant who was not licensed to talk publicly stated, questioning whether or not the Dominican Republic was an vital supply of unlawful weapons to Haiti.
Dominican Customs authorities referred inquiries to prosecutors, who declined to remark.
So what will be achieved to cease it?
Critics say not sufficient is finished to control the sale of weapons in the US to straw patrons, an unlawful observe during which folks purchase weapons on behalf of one other individual, together with traffickers. The observe is liable for numerous the arms that wind up utilized in crimes in Mexico and all through Latin America.
Sellers usually ignore simply detectable buying patterns by gun traffickers posing as reliable prospects and repeatedly shopping for a number of weapons, consultants say.
“That’s the place you may cease this,” Jonathan Lowy, founding father of World Motion on Gun Violence stated. “It’s very troublesome to cease as soon as the weapons are within the fingers of the trafficker. They are often damaged down and put in a crate of breakfast cereal or fruit juices.”
