Bwa Kale: In Haiti, Vigilante Justice Has Become the Only Option

CNN calls them vigilantes and militias but what they appear to be are regular people who are trying to avoid being killed and taken hostage by the country’s gangs. They call themselves bwa kale and they are a violent response to the violence and threats made by the gangs who have taken over much of the country.

Since the start of the month, criminal groups have been attacking with unprecedented coordination the last remnants of the Haitian state – the airport, police stations, government buildings, the National Penitentiary. The culmination of years of growing gang control and popular unrest, their joint assault forced Prime Minister Ariel Henry to resign last week, a stunning capitulation that has nevertheless proven futile in restoring calm…

In the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Canapé Vert, the bustling side streets are evidence of a once-unthinkably harsh strategy to maintain order.

The indelible mark of extrajudicial executions – a stretch of black soot thick and irregular across the pavement – is all that remains of hundreds of suspected criminals killed by residents, their bodies disposed of by flame according to a local security source.

Gangs have long haunted the residents of Port-au-Prince, but their reach has dramatically expanded over recent years, covering 80% of the city today, according to UN estimates. Seeing their city shrinking, many Haitians in this region and beyond have organized among themselves in a vigilante movement known as bwa kale.

Extrajudicial executions would normally be grounds for arrest and prosecution but in the desperate capital city, the police see the militias as an ally. Together they are fighting the gangs, trying to keep them from taking over more neighborhoods and demanding payments from more businesses. CNN spoke to a member of the militia.

“We constantly receive threats; they say they will come and attack us, destroy the neighborhood. So we block the streets and the police to do the searches; no civilians are involved in searching cars,” he added. The militia is armed only with “machetes and our bare hands,” he said.

The police meanwhile tell CNN that they know the militia well and even rely on them, with one commander crediting the group with saving the Canapé Vert police station from a particularly intense gang attack last spring. Over a dozen suspected gang members in that instance were killed and burned outside the police station, according to the commander, who requested anonymity for his security.

The hope is that this temporary reliance on vigilante justice will be short-lived but some have wondered whether bwa kale won’t eventually come just another gang. Their methods are just as brutal.

“Bwa Kale” literally means “peeled wood” in Haitian Creole. It’s also a metaphor for an act of swift justice…

A spontaneous event on April 24 appears to have been the catalyst for the movement. Police in the Canape Vert area of Port-au-Prince intercepted 13 or 14 members of a gang travelling on a minibus to join with an allied gang in the Dubussy district.

“This party didn’t have any long guns with them,” said Louis-Henri Mars, director of the Haitian peacebuilding non-profit Lakou Lape. “They only had pistols in their rucksacks, and when they were stopped, the police disarmed them.”…

“The police felt the pressure, or they felt threatened by the crowd, and they released those guys to die basically,” said Mars. “And the crowd stoned them and burned them to death, and this was the start of it.”

And once it got started, bwa kale became more aggressive. Suspected gang members were pursued and killed. Others were dragged out of homes and burned in the street. It’s a furious and violent reaction to the violence the gangs have unleashed on regular people.

The anger in the videos is palpable. Haitian gangs have raped women and girls on a massive scale. They routinely kidnap children and use torture against kidnap victims. They have ruthlessly extorted even the poorest families.

People have had enough and now they want the gangs to be afraid of them instead of the other way around. It makes sense, but it seems the gangs have compensated by coming together under the leadership of the man called Barbecue and working collectively against the police and the people. Months after the start of bwa kale, the gangs seem more in control than ever of the country. 

This CNN report explains how the gangs repeatedly targeted a police station knowing that once they take control of it they can extend their control to the entire neighborhood. The police have no choice but to rely on the bwa kale militia for help if they want to survive.

If you want to see more about bwa kale, this France 24 report from last May is good but I can’t embed it because it requires age verification.