Haiti: What help can the US offer?
Newshour
BBC
4.4 • 984 Ratings
🗓️ 5 September 2024
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Haitian authorities have expanded a state of emergency to the whole country as the government battles violent gangs that have taken control of large parts of the capital - and are attempting to move into other regions. We hear what life is like for people living through the insecurity.
Also on the programme: President Macron of France has announced former EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier as his choice for Prime Minister, but will a divided parliament support him?; and can a ‘green prescription’ to get outside in nature be as effective as therapy?
(Photo: A Kenyan police officer leaves a building during a joint operation with Haitian police, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Credit: REUTERS/Jean Feguens Regala)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to News Hour live from the BBC World Service in London. |
| 0:07.8 | I'm Rebecca Keesby. |
| 0:09.8 | The US Secretary of State Anthony Blinkin is due in the Caribbean nation of Haiti today |
| 0:15.4 | amid very high security when he meets local leaders. |
| 0:19.2 | Haiti has been gripped by warlike gang violence for the past couple of years, eventually resulting in the collapse of the previous government earlier this year. |
| 0:28.0 | Now a transitional council is in charge, but I'm putting that phrase in quotation marks because no one really seems to have control of the situation |
| 0:38.0 | There's a state of emergency in place at the moment, but it seems not exactly enforced and while rival gangs are |
| 0:45.5 | fighting it out civilians are trapped in the middle half a million Haitians have |
| 0:50.3 | been displaced by the violence and some 5 million that's half the population |
| 0:54.9 | struggle to get enough to eat more on Mr Blinckin's visit and what he hopes to |
| 0:59.6 | bring to this situation in a moment, independent journalist Harold Isaac is in the |
| 1:04.8 | capital Port of Prince and he gave me a picture of life for ordinary people there. |
| 1:08.8 | For people living in gang control areas, it's a daily confrontation, honestly, find their ways to get by, despite it all, |
| 1:17.6 | the gangs have been responsible of atrocities, rape, setting homes and fires, killings, you name it, and essentially growing into virtually |
| 1:27.0 | a proto state. |
| 1:28.8 | Can you just expand on that a little bit for us? |
| 1:31.0 | We're trying to sort of build a picture because it is very specific to Haiti what's been going on and I think sometimes people |
| 1:37.3 | imagine you know their local gangs in their cities but this is like you say the grip that these gangs have and the punishments they've been |
| 1:44.9 | meeting out on rival gangs. |
| 1:46.9 | Over the last 20 years really you went from having gangs that had what we called Creole weapons, which was self-made weapons, to now gangs |
| 1:57.5 | carrying around AR-15's Kalashnikovs, you know, and very high-powered rifles and waging terror, for the most part, to vulnerable |
| 2:06.3 | populations, especially in popular neighborhoods of the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince. |
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