PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Jimmy Cherizier zips through Haiti’s capital on the back of a motorcycle, flanked by young men wielding black and leopard print masks and automatic weapons.

As the pack of bikes flies by graffiti reading “Mafia boss” in Creole, street vendors selling vegetables, meats and old clothes on the curb cast their eyes to the ground or peer curiously.

Cherizier, best known by his childhood nickname Barbecue, has become the most recognized name in Haiti.

And here in his territory, enveloped by the tin-roofed homes and bustling streets of the informal settlement La Saline, he is the law.

Internationally, he’s known as Haiti’s most powerful and feared gang leader, sanctioned by the United Nations for “serious human rights abuses,” and the man behind a fuel blockade that brought the Caribbean nation to its knees late last year.

But if you ask the former police officer with gun tattoos running up his arm, he’s a “revolutionary,” advocating against a corrupt government that has left a nation of 12 million people in the dust.

“I’m not a thief. I’m not involved in kidnapping. I’m not a rapist. I’m just carrying out a social fight,” Cherizier, leader of “G9 Family and Allies,” told The Associated Press while sitting in a chair in the middle of an empty road in the shadow of a home with windows shattered by bullets. “I’m a threat to the system.”

At a time when democracy has withered in Haiti and gang violence has spiraled out of control, it’s armed men like Cherizier that are filling the power vacuum left by a crumbling government. In December, the U.N. estimated that gangs controlled 60% of Haiti’s capital, but nowadays most on the streets of Port-au-Prince say that number is closer to 100%.

“There is, democratically speaking, little-to-no legitimacy” for Haiti’s government, said Jeremy McDermott, a head of InSight Crime, a research center focused on organized crime. “This gives the gangs a stronger political voice and more justification to their claims to be the true representatives of the communities.”

It’s something that conflict victims, politicians, analysts, aid organizations, security forces and international observers fear will only get worse. Civilians, they worry, will face the brunt of the consequences.

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Haiti’s history has long been tragic. Home of the largest slave uprising in the Western Hemisphere, the country achieved independence from France in 1804, ahead of other countries in the region.

But it’s long been the poorest country in the hemisphere, and Haiti in the 20th century endured a bloody dictatorship that lasted until 1986 and brought about the mass execution of tens of thousands of Haitians.

The country has been plagued by political turmoil since, while suffering waves of devastating earthquakes, hurricanes and cholera outbreaks.

The latest crisis entered full throttle following the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. In his absence, current Prime Minister Ariel Henry emerged in a power struggle as the country’s leader.

Haiti’s nearly 200 gangs have taken advantage of the chaos, warring for control.

Tension hums in Port-au-Prince. Police checkpoints dot busy intersections, and graffiti tags reading “down with Henry” can be spotted in every part of the city. Haitians walk through the streets with a restlessness that comes from knowing that anything could happen at any moment.

An ambulance driver returning from carrying a patient told the AP he was kidnapped, held for days and asked to pay $1 million to be set free.

Such ransoms are now commonplace, used by gangs to fund their warfare.

An average of four people are kidnapped a day in Haiti, according to U.N. estimates.

The U.N. registered nearly 2,200 murders in 2022, double the year before. Women in the country describe brutal gang rapes in areas controlled by gangs. Patients in trauma units are caught in the crossfire, ravaged by gunshots from either gangs or police.

“No one is safe,” said Peterson Pean, a man with a bullet lodged in his face from being shot by police after failing to stop at a police checkpoint on his way home from work.

Meanwhile, a wave of grisly killings of police officers by gangs has spurred outrage and protests by Haitians.

Following the slaying of six officers, video circulating on social media – likely filmed by gangs – showed six naked bodies stretched out on the dirt with guns on their chests. Another shows two masked men using officers’ dismembered limbs to hold their cigarettes while they smoke.

“Gang-related violence has reached levels not seen in years … touching near all segments of society,” said Helen La Lime, U.N. special envoy for Haiti, in a late January Security Council meeting.

Henry, the prime minister, has asked the U.N. to lead a military intervention, but many Haitians insist that’s not the solution, citing past consequences of foreign intervention in Haiti. So far, no country has been willing to put boots on the ground.

The warfare has extended past historically violence-torn areas, now consuming mansion-lined streets previously considered relatively safe.

La Lime highlighted turf wars between Cherizier’s group, G9, and another, G-Pep, as one of the key drivers.

In October, the U.N. slammed Cherizier with sanctions, including an arms embargo, an asset freeze and a travel ban.

The body accused him of carrying out a bloody massacre in La Saline, economically paralyzing the country, and using armed violence and rape to threaten “the peace, security, and stability of Haiti.”

At the same time, despite not being elected into power and his mandate timing out, Henry, whose administration declined a request for comment, has continued at the helm of a skeleton government. He has pledged for a year and a half to hold general elections, but has failed to do so.

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In early January, the country lost its final democratically elected institution when the terms of 10 senators symbolically holding office ended their term.

It has turned Haiti into a de-facto “dictatorship,” said Patrice Dumont, one of the senators.

He said even if the current government was willing to hold elections, he doesn’t know if it would be possible due to gangs’ firm grip on the city.

“Citizens are losing trust in their country. (Haiti) is facing social degradation,” Dumont said. “We were already a poor country, and we became poorer because of this political crisis.”

At the same time, gang leaders like Cherizier have increasingly invoked political language, using the end of the senators’ terms to call into question Henry’s power.

“The government of Ariel Henry is a de-facto government. It’s a government that has no legitimacy,” Cherizier said.

Cherizier, a handgun tucked into the back of his jeans, took the AP around his territory in La Saline, explaining the harsh conditions communities live in. He denies allegations against him, saying the sanctions imposed on him are based on lies.

Cherizier, who would not tell the AP where his money came from, claims he’s just trying to provide security and improve conditions in the zones he controls.

Cherizier walked through piles of trash and past malnourished children touting an iPhone with a photo of his face on the back. A drone belonging to his team monitoring his security follows him as he weaves through rows of packed homes made of metal sheets and wooden planks.

Tailed by a cluster of heavily armed men in masks, he would not allow the AP to film or take photos of his guards and their weapons.

“We’re the bad guys, but we’re not the bad-bad guys,” one of the men told an AP video journalist as he led her through a packed market.

While some have speculated that Cherizier would run for office if elections were held, Cherizier insists that he wouldn’t.

What is clear, said McDermott, of InSight Crime, is that gangs are reaping rewards from the political chaos.

InSight Crime estimates that before the killing of the president, Cherizier’s federation of gangs, G9, got half of its money from the government, 30% from kidnappings and 20% from extortions. After the killing, government funding dipped significantly, according to the organization.

Yet his gangs have significantly grown in power after the group blocked the distribution of fuel from Port-au-Prince’s key fuel terminal for two months late last year.

The blockade paralyzed the country in the midst of a cholera outbreak and gave other gangs footholds to expand. Cherizier claimed the blockade was in protest of rising inflation, government corruption and deepening inequality in Haiti.

Today, G9 controls much of the center of Port-au-Prince and fights for power elsewhere.

“The political Frankenstein long ago lost control of the gang monster,” McDermott said. “They are now rampaging across the country with no restraint, earning money any way they can, kidnapping foremost.”

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Civilians like 9-year-old Christina Julien are among those who pay the price.

The smiling girl with dreams of being a doctor wakes up curled on the floor of her aunt’s porch next to her parents and two sisters.

She’s one of at least 155,000 people in Port-Au-Prince alone that have been forced to flee their homes due to the violence. It’s been four months since she has been able to sleep in her own bed.

Their neighborhood in the northern fringes of the city once was safe. But she and her mother, 48-year-old Sandra Sainteluz, said things began to shift last year.

The once bustling streets emptied out. At night, gunfire would ring outside their window and when neighbors would set off fireworks, Christina would ask her mother if they were bullets.

“When there were shootings I couldn’t go in the yard, I couldn’t go see my friends, I had to stay in the house,” Christina said. “l had to always lay down on the floor with my mother, my father, my sister and my brother.”

Christina started having heart palpitations due to the stress and Sainteluz, a teacher, worried for her daughter’s health. At the same time, Sainteluz and her husband feared their kids could get kidnapped on the way to school.

In October, during Cherizier’s blockade, armed men belonging to the powerful 400 Mawozo gang stormed their neighborhood. That same gang was behind the kidnapping of 17 missionaries in 2021.

Christina saw a group of men with guns from a friend’s house and ran home. She told Sainteluz, “Mommy we have to leave, we have to leave. I just saw the gangsters passing by with their weapons, we need to leave!”

They packed everything they could carry, and sought refuge in the small, two-bedroom home of family members in another part of the city.

Life here is not easy, said Sainteluz, the main provider for her family.

“I felt desperate going to live in someone else’s home with so many children. I left everything, I left with just two bags,” she said.

Sainteluz scrambles to scrub clothes, cook soup for her family in the dirt-floored kitchen and help Christina sitting on an empty gasoline container meticulously doing her math homework.

Whenever a gust of wind blows through the nearby hills, the rusted metal rooftop of the house they share with 10 other people shudders.

The mother once worked as a primary school teacher, earning 6,000 Haitian gourdes ($41) a month. She had to stop teaching two years ago due to the violence. Now she sells slushies on the side of the road, earning a fraction of what she once made.

Young Christina said she misses her friends and her Barbie dolls.

But, the sacrifice is worth it, Sainteluz said. Over the past few months, she’s heard horror stories of her daughter’s classmates getting kidnapped, neighbors having to pay ransoms of $40,000 and killings right outside their house.

At least here they feel safer. For now, she added.

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Associated Press journalists Evens Sanon and Fernanda Pesce contributed to this report from Port-au-Prince.

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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/

United Nations:

The world sees Pakistan because the “epicentre” of terrorism, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar stated on Thursday, asserting that the worldwide neighborhood has not forgotten the place the menace stems from, regardless of the mind fog induced by over two years of Covid-19.

He made the remarks whereas addressing reporters on the UN Security Council stakeout after charing a signature occasion held underneath India’s presidency of the Council on ‘Global Counterterrorism Approach: Challenges and Way Forward.

“In terms of what they are saying, the truth is everybody, the world today, sees them as the epicentre of terrorism,” he stated.

“I know we’ve been through two and a half years of Covid and a lot of us have brain fog as a result. But I assure you the world has not forgotten where terrorism emanates from, who has their fingerprints over a lot of activities in the region and beyond the region.

“So, I’d say that it is one thing which they need to remind themselves earlier than indulging within the sort of fantasies which they do,” he added.

Mr Jaishankar was responding to a question on Pakistan Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar’s recent allegation that “no nation had used terrorism higher than India”.

He invoked US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who at a joint news conference in 2011 with then Pakistan Foreign Minister Khar, said: “You cannot hold snakes in your yard and count on them solely to chew your neighbours.” “I learn the stories on what Minister Hina Rabbani Khar stated. And I used to be reminded, greater than a decade in the past, my reminiscence serves me proper. Hillary Clinton was visiting Pakistan. And Hina Rabbani Khar was a minister at the moment,” Mr Jaishankar said, while responding to a question on Khar’s recent statements about a dossier against India.

“Standing subsequent to her, Hillary Clinton really stated that when you have snakes in your yard, you possibly can’t count on them to chew solely your neighbours. Eventually, they’ll chew the individuals who hold them within the yard. But as , Pakistan will not be nice on taking good recommendation. You see what’s occurring there,” he said.

Pakistan should clean up its act and try to be a good neighbour, Mr Jaishankar said as he underlined that the world is not “silly” and is increasingly calling out countries, organisations and people who indulge in terrorism.

“You know, you are asking the incorrect Minister whenever you say how lengthy will we do that? Because it’s the Ministers of Pakistan who will let you know how lengthy Pakistan intends to apply terrorism,” Jaishankar said.

#WATCH |…They’re ministers in Pakistan who can tell how long Pakistan intends to practice terrorism. World isn’t stupid, it increasingly calls out countries, orgs indulging in terrorism…my advice is to clean up your act & try to be good neighbour:EAM S Jaishankar at New York pic.twitter.com/BJYmNcb2Oj

— ANI (@ANI) December 15, 2022

He was responding to a question by a Pakistani journalist on how long South Asia is going to see terrorism disseminating from New Delhi, Kabul, and Pakistan.

“At the top of the day, the world will not be silly, the world will not be forgetful. And the world does more and more name out international locations and organisations and individuals who bask in terrorism,” he said.

“By taking that debate elsewhere, you aren’t going to cover it. You’re not going to confuse anyone anymore. People have figured it out. So my recommendation is please clear up your act. Please attempt to be an excellent neighbour.

“Please try and contribute to what the rest of the world is trying to do today, which is economic growth, and progress and development,” Mr Jaishankar stated.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is revealed from a syndicated feed.)

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has denied American claims that it’s transport artillery shells and ammunition to Russia to be used in its warfare towards Ukraine, and on Tuesday accused the United States of mendacity.

The denial follows dozens of weapons checks by North Korea, together with short-range missiles which might be seemingly nuclear-capable and an intercontinental ballistic missile that would goal the U.S. mainland. Pyongyang stated it was testing the missiles and artillery so it may “mercilessly” strike key South Korean and U.S. targets if it selected to.

North Korea has been cozying up to conventional ally Russia in recent times and even hinted at sending staff to assist rebuild Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine. The United States has accused North Korea, one of the crucial weaponized international locations on the earth, of supplying Soviet-era ammunition corresponding to artillery shells, to replenish Russian stockpiles which have been depleted within the Ukraine.

Last week, Russia sent North Korean chief Kim Jong Un a trainload of 30 thoroughbred horses, opening the border with its neighbor for the primary time in 2 1/2 years. Kim is an avid horseman and state media have typically pictured him galloping on snowy mountain trails astride a white charger. The horses, Orlov trotters, are prized in Russia.

Spokespeople of Russia’s Far Eastern Railway instructed the state-run information company Nov. 2 that the primary prepare headed to North Korea with the 30 horses and stated the following prepare was to carry drugs.

Experts say North Korea could also be looking for Russian gas and likewise expertise transfers and provides wanted to advance its navy capabilities as it pursues extra subtle weapons programs.

In September, North Korea restarted its freight prepare service with China, its greatest buying and selling accomplice, ending a five-month hiatus.

Last week, U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby accused North Korea of covertly supplying a “significant number” of ammunition shipments to Russia. He stated the United States believes North Korea was making an attempt to obscure the switch route by making it seem the weapons had been being sent to international locations within the Middle East or North Africa.

“We regard such moves of the U.S. as part of its hostile attempt to tarnish the image of (North Korea) in the international arena,” an unidentified vice director at the North Korean ministry’s military foreign affairs office said in a statement carried by state media.

“We once again make clear that we have never had ‘arms dealings’ with Russia and that we have no plan to do so in the future,” the vice director stated.

In September, U.S. officials confirmed a newly declassified U.S. intelligence finding that Russia was in the process of purchasing millions of rockets and artillery shells from North Korea. North Korea later dismissed that report, calling on Washington to stop making “reckless remarks” and to “keep its mouth shut.”

On Nov. 2, Kirby said the U.S. has “an idea” of which country or countries the North may funnel the weapons through but wouldn’t specify. He said the North Korean shipments are “not going to change the course of the war,” citing Western efforts to resupply the Ukrainian military.

Slapped by international sanctions and export controls, Russia in August bought Iranian-made drones that U.S. officials said had technical problems. For Russia, experts say North Korea is likely another good option for its ammunitions supply, because the North keeps a significant stockpile of shells, many of them copies of Soviet-era ones.

Even as most of Europe and the West has pulled away, North Korea has pushed to boost relations with Russia, blaming the U.S. for the crisis and decrying the West’s “hegemonic policy” as justifying military action by Russia in Ukraine to protect itself. In July, North Korea became the only nation aside from Russia and Syria to recognize the Donetsk and Luhansk territories as independent.

North Korea’s possible arms supply to Russia would be a violation of U.N. resolutions that ban the North from trading weapons with other countries. But it’s unlikely for North Korea to receive fresh sanctions for that because of a division at the U.N. Security Council over America’s confrontations with Russia regarding its war in Ukraine and its separate strategic competitions with China.

Earlier this year, Russia and China already vetoed a U.S.-led attempt to toughen sanctions on North Korea over its series of ballistic missile tests that are banned by multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions.

Some observers say North Korea has also been using the Russian aggression in Ukraine as a window to ramp up weapons testing activity and dial up pressure on the United States and South Korea. Last week, the North test-fired dozens of missiles in response to large-scale U.S.-South Korea aerial drills that Pyongyang views as a rehearsal for a potential invasion.

In a separate statement published Tuesday by state media, a senior North Korean diplomat criticized U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ recent condemnation of North Korea’s missile launch barrage, calling him a “mouthpiece” of the U.S. government.

“The U.N. secretary general is echoing what the White House and the State Department say as if he were their mouthpiece, which is deplorable,” said Kim Son Gyong, vice minister for international organizations at the North Korean Foreign Ministry.

Kim said that Guterres’ “unfair and prejudiced behavior” has contributed to the worsening tensions in the region.

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Follow AP’s protection of the Asia-Pacific area at https://apnews.com/hub/asia-pacific

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian missiles hit residence buildings within the southern Ukrainian metropolis of Zaporizhzhia on Thursday, killing at least seven folks, with at least 5 others lacking, in a area that Moscow has illegally annexed, a neighborhood official stated.

Two strikes broken greater than 40 buildings hours after Ukraine’s president introduced that his army had retaken three extra villages in one other of the 4 areas annexed by Russia, Moscow’s newest battlefield reversal.

The Zaporizhzhia regional governor, Oleksandr Starukh, who offered the casualty determine, stated greater than 20 folks had been rescued from the multistory residence buildings. Rescuers who earlier took a 3-year-old lady to a hospital continued to go looking the rubble early Friday. Starukh wrote on Telegram that Russian forces used S-300 missiles within the assaults.

Russia has been reported to have transformed the S-300 from its authentic use as a long-range antiaircraft weapon right into a missile for floor assaults due to a scarcity of different, extra appropriate weapons.

“Absolute meanness. Absolute evil,” Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskky stated of the assaults, in a video speech to the inaugural summit of the European Political Community in Prague. “There have already been thousands of manifestations of such evil. Unfortunately, there may be thousands more.”

Zaporizhzhia is without doubt one of the 4 areas of Ukraine that Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed as Russian territory in violation of worldwide legal guidelines. The area is residence to a sprawling nuclear energy plant underneath Russian occupation; the town of the identical identify stays underneath Ukrainian management.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, introduced Thursday after assembly with Zelenskyy in Kyiv that the U.N.’s atomic vitality watchdog will enhance the variety of inspectors at the Zaporizhzhia plant from two to 4.

Grossi talked with Ukrainian officers — and later will confer in Moscow with Russian officers — efforts to arrange a safety zone across the nuclear energy station. Grossi stated mines seem to have been planted across the perimeter of the plant, which has been broken through the battle and prompted worries of a potential radiation catastrophe. Zelenskyy stated Russia has stationed as many as 500 fighters at the plant.

Putin signed a decree Wednesday declaring that Russia was taking on the six-reactor facility, a transfer Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry known as a legal act that was “null and void.”

Ukraine’s state nuclear operator, Energoatom, stated it will proceed to function the plant, whose final working reactor was shut down Sept. 11 due to frequent outages of exterior energy wanted to run essential security methods. Transmission traces to the plant have been repeatedly shelled, and Grossi on Thursday reported shelling in an industrial space near the plant’s entry highway.

Outside the battlefront, Russian authorities detained a number of hundred Ukrainians making an attempt to flee Russian-occupied areas Wednesday close to the Russian-Estonian border, in line with Ukrainian Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets. Citing the Estonian Ministry of Internal Affairs, he wrote on Facebook that Russian forces took the Ukrainians on vans to an unknown vacation spot.

Most of the detained Ukrainians had fled by means of Russia and Crimea and had been searching for to enter the European Union — Estonia is a member state — or discover a technique to return residence, Lubinets wrote.

Russian has pressured 1000’s of Ukrainians into “filtration camps” to find out their loyalties. Zelenskyy stated Thursday greater than 1.6 million Ukrainians have been deported to Russia.

The exact borders of the areas in Ukraine that Moscow is claiming stay unclear. Putin has vowed to defend Russia’s territory — together with the annexed Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia areas of Ukraine — with any means at his army’s disposal, together with nuclear weapons.

Ukrainian forces are seizing again villages in Kherson in humiliating battlefield defeats for Russian forces which have badly dented the picture of a strong Russian army. Ukrainian officers stated Thursday they’ve retaken 400 sq. kilometers (154 sq. miles) of territory, together with 29 settlements, within the Kherson area since Oct. 1.

Ukraine additionally was urgent a counteroffensive within the Donetsk area, which Moscow-backed separatists have partially managed since 2014 however which stays contested regardless of Putin’s proclaimed annexation.

In battered Chasiv Yar, a metropolis within the Donetsk area 7 miles (12 kilometers) from heavy preventing, the human impression grew to become clear as retirees waited to gather their pension checks at a publish workplace.

“We are hoping for victory of the Ukrainian army,” Vera Ivanovna, 81, a retired English and German trainer, stated as artillery booms echoed. “We lived in independent Ukraine as you are living in America. We also want to live how you are living.”

At least two Russian strikes have hit Chasiv Yar in latest days, with one individual reportedly buried underneath the rubble of a dormitory. More than 40 folks had been killed in July when Russian rockets struck a residential constructing.

Russia stated it had seized the Donetsk area village of Zaitsevo. The governor of the neighboring Luhansk area stated Ukrainian forces had recaptured the village of Hrekivka. Neither battlefield report might be independently confirmed.

The U.S. authorities, in the meantime, despatched its worldwide improvement chief to Kyiv on Thursday, the highest-ranking American official to go to Ukraine since Russia illegally annexed the 4 areas. The head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Samantha Power, met with authorities officers and residents and stated the U.S. would offer an extra $55 million to restore heating pipes and different tools.

USAID stated the United States had delivered $9.89 billion in help to Ukraine since February. A spending invoice that U.S. President Joe Biden signed final week guarantees one other $12.3 billion for Ukraine’s army and public providers wants.

“This war will be won on the battlefield, but it is also being won in Ukraine’s ongoing efforts to strengthen its democracy and its economy,” Power informed reporters at Kyiv’s prepare station.

She stated Ukraine’s success as a democratic nation with a contemporary economic system tackling corruption incensed Putin.

The European Union on Thursday froze the property of an extra 37 folks and entities tied to Russia’s battle in Ukraine, bringing the entire of EU blacklist targets to 1,351. The newly sanctioned included officers concerned in final week’s unlawful Russian annexations and sham referendums. The newest sanctions additionally widen commerce bans towards Russia and put together for a value cap on Russian oil.

At the United Nations in New York, Russia known as for a secret poll subsequent week on a Western-backed decision that may condemn Russia’s annexation of the 4 Ukrainian areas and demand that Moscow reverse its actions. Russia apparently hopes to get extra help from the 193 nations within the General Assembly if their votes aren’t made public.

Russia vetoed a legally binding Security Council decision on Sept. 30 to sentence annexation referendums within the 4 Ukrainian areas as unlawful. The General Assembly’s resolutions aren’t legally binding.

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Associated Press writers Hanna Arhirova in Ukraine and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

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