(Scypre.com) – The Federal Bureau of Investigation is warning American citizens to stay out of Haiti due to a surge in violence.
“While we understand that there are strong ties between Haiti and South Florida, before traveling there one should consider the trauma and financial costs of being kidnapped not only to themselves but to their family and friends as well,” FBI Special Agent Liz Santamaria said this week.
According to the FBI’s Miami field office, kidnappings are surging in Haiti to the tune of a 300% increase for the first three months of 2023.
According to a Haitian doctor in an interview from his home in Port-au-Prince late last month, Haitian gangs have turned to extreme measures with atrocities similar to those reported during the genocide in Rwanda.
Lawlessness, torture, civil war, and “The Purge” were all used to describe the reality of living on the island of Hispaniola. The Secretary General of the United Nations said in a recent report that the people of Haiti are suffering one of the worst human rights crises in decades.
Insecurity in the capital has reached levels comparable to countries in armed conflict due to the high number of fatalities and increasing areas under the control of armed gangs.
The State Department advises Americans not to travel to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime, and civil unrest.
Two Americans, Jean Dickens Toussaint and his wife Abigail Toussaint, were kidnapped in Haiti last month when they traveled to see ailing relatives and attend a local festival.
The couple, who were being held by a gang for ransom, were released a month later, but the conditions of their release are unknown.
On Monday, a mob in the Haitian capital of Port-Au-Prince beat and burned 13 suspected gang members to death after pulling them from police custody at a traffic stop, police and witnesses said.
Criminal gangs have taken control of most of the city of Port-au-Prince since the assassination of President Jovenel Mose in July 2021.
Some witnesses said that police killed the six people and the residents set them on fire. The statement didn’t elaborate on how members of the population lynched the suspects.
According to a new report by the Small Arms Survey, high rates of gun violence in the Caribbean are being fueled by small-scale trafficking, mostly from the United States, via shipping firms, commercial airlines and by post.
The report found that Caribbean countries suffer three times more violent deaths than the global average due to firearms.
Last week, Caribbean heads of state vowed to ban civilian assault weapons across the region and stand with a lawsuit launched by the Mexican government seeking to hold U.S. gun-makers accountable for arms trafficking out of the country.
According to a senior researcher for the Small Arms Survey, shipments to the Caribbean often consist of up to a couple dozen guns or several hundred rounds of ammunition, hidden among food or clothing.
Logistical issues preventing the screening of every shipping container and package means that little knowledge, money or infrastructure is needed to camouflage deadly weapons among thousands of shipments transported each day.
The report found that more than half of the 29 trafficking networks it studied used shipping companies, mostly located in Florida, to smuggle arms and ammunition into the Caribbean, while nearly one in five used commercial airlines.
Most pistols seized and traced across the region were made by several companies.
Neither the U.S. The four gun manufacturers immediately responded to the request for comment.
In Haiti, where heavily armed gangs are estimated to control most of the country and engage in frequent gun battles, the report noted increased seizures of large-caliber and semi-automatic rifles.
There were 600,000 civilian firearms in Haiti last year, up from 270,000 in 2019.