Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry is struggling to stay in power as he tries to return home, where gang attacks have shuttered the country’s main international airport and freed more than 4,000 inmates in recent days.
As of midday Wednesday, Henry remained in Puerto Rico, where he landed the day before after he was barred from landing in neighboring Dominican Republic because officials there closed the airspace to flights to and from Haiti.
Locked out of his country for now, Henry appears to face an impasse as a growing number of officials call for his resignation or nudge him toward it.
Henry, Haiti’s top official since the still-unsolved July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, visited Kenya last week to rally support for the deployment of a U.N.-approved, Kenya-led security force to Haiti, a key element in his plan to restore calm.
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He was returning home Tuesday when the Dominican Republic, with which Haiti shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, denied his plane permission to land. He headed instead for Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory.
On Tuesday, Caribbean diplomat Ronald Sanders told The Washington Post, Henry received a message from the U.S. State Department asking him to consider stepping down under certain conditions. Sanders, the ambassador of Antigua and Barbuda to the United States, said the message, which was described to him, included a statement that Henry could read when announcing his resignation.
The 74-year-old physician, unelected and increasingly isolated, has declined so far to step down.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday evening. Earlier in the day, spokesman Matthew Miller denied that the United States had urged Henry to resign.
“We are not calling on him or pushing him to resign,” Miller told reporters. “But we are urging him to expedite the transition to an empowered and an inclusive governance structure that will move with urgency to help the country prepare for a multinational security support mission to address the security situation and pave the way for free and fair elections.”
With Henry away, Haiti’s gangs this week have dramatically escalated the violence in a country where security was already collapsing. An attack on the country’s largest prison over the weekend allowed thousands of inmates to escape, prompting authorities to impose a 72-hour state of emergency and nighttime curfew.
The presidency remains vacant; lawmakers’ terms have expired. That leaves Henry to lead the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Port-au-Prince and parts of the countryside are controlled by armed gangs who rape, kidnap and kill with impunity. The State Department on Wednesday urged U.S. citizens here to leave the country as soon as possible.
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Haiti’s most powerful gang leader, Jimmy Chérizier, the former police officer known as “Barbecue,” this week gave Henry an ultimatum: Resign or “the country is headed straight to a genocide.”
“If the international community continues to support him, they are taking us to a civil war,” Chérizier warned Tuesday. “We will fight until Ariel Henry’s resignation.”
Caribbean leaders, seeing Henry as more hindrance than help, have also called on him to step down. On Tuesday, the Caribbean Community (Caricom) urged Henry to resign and proposed a timetable for next steps.
Henry was attempting to fly back to Haiti on Tuesday when he received a message from the State Department asking him to agree to a new transitional government and resign, the Miami Herald reported.
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A Haitian politician who participated in discussions with Haitian leaders and Caricom said Henry’s resignation is “inevitable.” Haitian and Caribbean leaders have suggested a two-headed transitional government in which a prime minister and presidential council would share power, according to the politician, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions. Caricom leaders are increasingly arguing that there is no path forward with Henry as prime minister.
On Saturday night, heavily armed gangs attacked Haiti’s two largest prisons, allowing thousands of inmates, including some of the nation’s most notorious criminals, to escape.
By Monday, gangs had burned down a police station near the airport and fired multiple shots at the airport itself. A police union reported attacks on several police stations throughout Port-au-Prince.
Water and food in the capital are scarce. Violence has trapped many residents in their homes and shut down most public hospitals.
The University Hospital La Paix, one of the few still operating, is “overwhelmed,” its medical director, Jean Philippe Lerbourg, toldThe Post on Wednesday.
Since Feb. 29, he said, La Paix has admitted 66 gunshot victims and dozens of patients with other wounds. Two of the gunshot victims have died.
“We can’t hold on much longer,” Lerbourg said. “We’re running low on blood, and we’re short-staffed because many can’t reach the hospital.”