On July 13, thousands of demonstrators from over 60 countries took to the streets to protest gang violence that has ravished Haiti, NBC News reports.
Political violence has embroiled the Caribbean country for decades. However, it has escalated in recent years following the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, causing the country’s government to deteriorate. The country does not have an interim president, and the last remaining senators have left their positions and have yet to be replaced. Law enforcement’s rampant corruption has allowed gangs to run amok.
“The fact that there is no government in power, it means that they could simply multiply and become stronger,” Gregory Toussaint, pastor at Miami’s Tabernacle of Glory Church, told the platform.
Since the government’s collapse, Haitian gangs now control 80% of the government, according to the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. According to UNICEF, gang violence has affected almost 1.5 million Haitians’ access to education and health services, further plunging the country’s socioeconomic status into disarray.
The movement transcends national and cultural lines. Xamayla Rose, who is Jamaican, participated in the Relief for Haiti March in New York. Rose has grown up alongside Haitian immigrants in her Brooklyn neighborhood and witnessed how they were marginalized.
“I really felt like deep down in my heart, like, if all I can do is march with my friends and to raise awareness — especially as a non-Haitian person — just to show everybody, like, it’s OK to support it,” Rose said.
Demonstrators hope to encourage Congress to take action against the gangs and expose those within the political hierarchy. Many also want the Biden administration to continue its humanitarian program. Toussaint also wants Congress to pass the Haiti Criminal Collusion Transparency Act, requiring the Department of State to “provide an annual report to Congress on ties between criminal gangs and political and economic elites in Haiti.”
Toussaint’s Shekinah.fm has launched a petition to support the bill, which has garnered almost 130,000 signatures.
Toussaint believes Haiti should devise a long-term plan to address the growing violence, similar to the Rwandan government’s decades-long method to rebuild the country following its 1994 genocide. “We should have a 25-year plan,” Toussaint said. “What do we want Haiti to look like in 2050, and we should work on that plan right now and kick it off in 2025.”
“As a believer, I am hopeful in God, and I believe there is always hope,” Toussaint said.
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