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IPFS News Link • Haiti

EXCLUSIVE: Inside the REAL gangsters' paradise: Haiti is 'most lawless place on Earth'..

• By ANDRÉ PAULTRE AND NICK CRAVEN

It is possibly the most lawless and deadly place on earth. 

Port-au-Prince, capital of Haiti, is in the grip of an unprecedented wave of gang violence.

Almost 1,000 people were murdered there in the first six months of 2022 alone while there were over 1,000 kidnappings linked to organised crime by October, according to the UN. Some 70 per cent of the entire city is now a no-go area for police.

The poorest country in Latin America, already struggling to recover after the devastation of a massive earthquake in 2010, descended into this fresh wave of bloodshed and chaos after its president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated last year.

More than 100 rival gangs, funded by ransom money from a kidnapping epidemic, moved in to fill the resulting power vacuum, leaving many neighbourhoods a 'gangster's paradise', sealed by barricades of tyres.

Armed hoodlums control the entries and exits from the capital, despite frequent protests by the citizens against the violence as more than a third of the country's 11.5million population faces acute hunger.

Even the parliament and main courthouse are marooned within gangland turf.

Stinking rubbish piles up knee-high in the streets and cholera has returned after a three-year absence.


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