Haiti's Business Leaders Providing Arms to Haitian National Police for Protection

The private sector has been frustrated and anxious about the port and other industrial sites in Port-au-Prince being unprotected from criminal activity. Mevs, concerned about the illegal purchase of arms, contacted James Foley, former U.S. Ambassador to Haiti to alert him to the situation. Mevs also asked the U.S. Embassy to develop a program for the legal sale of arms to the HNP.

Security had been a problem in the warehousing and port neighborhoods since the death of Labaniere, a former Lavalas militant leader in Cité Soleil. Labaniere betrayed the Lavalas movement by joining forces with those, who supported the coup d'etat of the Aristide government in 2004. Labaniere's role, as part of the Prime Minister Gerard Latortue's provisional government, was providing security to the commercially-zoned areas of the port neighborhood.

Communications between Foley, the UN military, and interested parties became focused on increasing security around the commercial areas. This led to the UN military forces surrounding Cité Soleil and firing at least 22,000 bullets in an effort to kill off gang leaders responsible for criminal incursions into the commercial areas. Since that event security has improved significantly.

Former Haiti President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's pro-democratic sympathies and the resulting Lavalas movement that grew from it has polarized politics to such a degree that the UN releases a suspect official death toll of only six people killed during the Cité Soleil massacre.

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