More and more personalities and organizations plead for the population to ensure its own security, in the face of the powerlessness of the police forces to protect it, highlighting self-defense against armed gangs...

Father Gardy Maisonneuve, Director of the Center Carl L'évêque, even asks citizens to organize the defense of their homes, convinced that this strategy will stop the bandits' offensive, pleading for a broader mobilization involving the entire population of a neighborhood.

For its part, the Ministry of Justice, which hears these calls, without explicitly supporting popular justice, reminds everyone that in cases where armed individuals enter their homes with violence [...] the law allows them to defend themselves as specified Articles 272 to 274 of the Haitian Penal Code.

Art. 272.- There is neither crime nor misdemeanor when homicide, injuries and blows were ordered by law and ordered by legitimate authority.

Art. 274.- The following two cases are included in the cases of current defense necessity :

1) If the homicide was committed, if the wounds were made, or if the blows were struck by pushing back during the night, climbing, or breaking into fences, walls or entrances to a house or an inhabited apartment, or their outbuildings;

2) If the act took place while defending oneself against the authors of robberies or looting carried out with violence. "

In addition, the Ministry also reminds that each citizen who collaborates with gangs, helps them by any means to commit criminal acts, will be punished according to article 45 of the Haitian Penal Code.

SL/ HaitiLibre