KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

T&T will im­ple­ment tar­get­ed sanc­tions against no­to­ri­ous Hait­ian gang leader Jim­my Chérizier, alias Bar­be­cue, fol­low­ing ap­proval by the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Tues­day.

The Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil re­gards Chérizier as one of Haiti’s most in­flu­en­tial gang lead­ers. He heads an al­liance of Hait­ian gangs known as the G9 Fam­i­ly and Al­lies.

Dur­ing Tues­day’s sit­ting, Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al-Rawi raised a mo­tion to ap­prove the state­ment of Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Ka­ga­loo re­gard­ing the Eco­nom­ic Sanc­tions (Im­ple­men­ta­tion of Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil Res­o­lu­tion 2653 (2022) on the Re­pub­lic of Haiti) Or­der, 2023.

Al-Rawi said based on the an­nexe to Res­o­lu­tion 2653, Chérizier has en­gaged in acts that threat­en the peace, se­cu­ri­ty and sta­bil­i­ty of Haiti, planned, di­rect­ed or com­mit­ted ac­tions that con­sti­tute se­ri­ous hu­man rights abus­es, has act­ed in gang op­er­a­tions di­rect­ly against Haiti and has caused eco­nom­ic paral­y­sis and cri­sis.

“Cher­izier, that one in­di­vid­ual at this point, that one per­son, the sub­ject of the an­nexe we are treat­ing with to­day in Her Ex­cel­len­cy’s state­ment, is to be tar­get­ed by every fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion in the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad & To­ba­go,” Al-Rawi said.

The Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit and bank­ing sec­tor must ap­ply freez­ing or­ders on all as­sets, monies, trans­ship­ment and ben­e­fits as­so­ci­at­ed with Chérizier. These in­clude prop­er­ty, mon­ey, and a tran­sit trav­el ban.

“Un­less we do our part in the Cari­com ma­trix to pro­tect Haiti and the peo­ple of Haiti, then we are sim­ply fail­ing in our oblig­a­tions.”

Al-Rawi said it was not good enough to re­ly on David Rud­der’s lyrics in “Haiti I’m Sor­ry” or cel­e­brate rev­o­lu­tion leader Tou­s­saint Lou­ver­ture. He said this ac­tion was un­prece­dent­ed in Cari­com, and T&T was pleased to start the process un­der the Eco­nom­ic Sanc­tions Act, be­gin­ning with Cab­i­net invit­ing Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo to trig­ger the process by pro­duc­ing a state­ment and pub­lish­ing an or­der.

Al-Rawi said the process of de­bat­ing Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo’s state­ment with­in one month is a crit­i­cal first mea­sure that will last for three months, fol­lowed by fur­ther steps, in­clud­ing leg­is­lat­ing a con­tin­u­a­tion of the or­der.

The coun­cil states that while serv­ing as an of­fi­cer in the Hait­ian Na­tion­al Po­lice, Chérizier planned and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the No­vem­ber 2018 dead­ly at­tack against civil­ians in a Port-au-Prince neigh­bour­hood known as La Saline, killing at least 71 peo­ple and de­stroy­ing over 400 hous­es. Armed gang­sters raped at least sev­en women dur­ing the in­ci­dent.

The coun­cil stat­ed that Chérizier’s ac­tions have di­rect­ly con­tributed to the eco­nom­ic paral­y­sis and hu­man­i­tar­i­an emer­gency in Haiti. It adopt­ed Res­o­lu­tion 2653 on Oc­to­ber 21, 2022, not­ing its con­cern about the eco­nom­ic se­cu­ri­ty, hu­man rights, hu­man­i­tar­i­an and food se­cu­ri­ty cri­sis in Haiti and stressed the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of glob­al gov­ern­ments to act.

Re­spond­ing to the mo­tion, Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles said the Op­po­si­tion sup­port­ed Kan­ga­loo’s state­ment and the res­o­lu­tion be­cause the or­der was to en­sure com­pli­ance with T&T’s oblig­a­tions un­der the Unit­ed Na­tions char­ter. How­ev­er, Charles crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment for wait­ing eight months af­ter the coun­cil adopt­ed the res­o­lu­tion to raise the mo­tion in Par­lia­ment. He read that it re­quired all mem­ber states to take im­me­di­ate and nec­es­sary mea­sures to pre­vent the di­rect or in­di­rect sup­ply, sale or trans­fer to or ben­e­fit of in­di­vid­u­als, en­ti­ties des­ig­nat­ed by the com­mit­tee, arms or re­lat­ed ma­te­ri­als of all types.

Charles said Cana­da and the Eu­ro­pean Union im­ple­ment­ed the res­o­lu­tion in No­vem­ber 2022.  

“This means, Madame Speak­er, that for the past eight months, we in Trinidad & To­ba­go have failed to ful­fil our in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions be­cause some­one in the Gov­ern­ment dropped the ball and did not no­ti­fy the Pres­i­dent of this de­vel­op­ment in a time­ly man­ner,” Charles said.

He said Haiti was “our peo­ple, and we must help them.”