Haiti’s leader has left Port-au-Prince as Gangs wreak havoc attacking key institutions

Gang-Violence-Haiti

Important Takeaways:

  • Haiti violence sees police ‘attacked with machetes’ as gangs wreak havoc in Port-au-Prince
  • Describing the violence in the country, a journalist on the ground told Daily Express US that cannibalism has been witnessed on the streets as the violence reaches “unprecedented” levels.
  • Speaking anonymously, they said: “Haiti is living in a total chaotic situation right now. It is total chaos everywhere, especially in the capital where I am right now.
  • “Haiti has a leader, Prime Minister Ariel Henry, but he is not inside the country right now. In the meantime, you have gangs waging full attacks on key institutions.
  • “You also have attacks on police stations. On February 28 a police station was attacked. The officers were in there for three hours crying for help, and after that, we saw images of officers being cut by machetes being shared on social media.
  • “The gangs are heavily armed with guns from the US, but they are also equipped with high-level technology like drones.
  • “The level of violence is unprecedented. The gangs seemingly want to kill as many people as they can. They are in a fear campaign where they want to appear as murderous and as violent as possible.”
  • He continued: “For instance, we have seen images of gang leaders eating people they have killed. We have seen images of people being tortured when they are kidnapped.
  • “It is senseless. The goal here is not just to ensue fear, but to paralyze people mentally. This is a message that Haiti is under the total control of gangs.”
  • Henry is an unpopular acting Prime Minister of Haiti who has been criticized for failing to quell the gangs. He was never elected into his role and is now losing the trust of the country’s population.
  • He left the country last week, and his whereabouts remain unclear

Read the original article by clicking here.

Sweden seeks help from military to crack down on gangs

Gang-Violence-Sweden

Important Takeaways:

  • Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has blamed “irresponsible immigration policy and a failed integration” for the violence.
  • Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson was meeting the head of Sweden’s armed forces and the police chief on Friday to discuss ways to stem growing gang violence in the country
  • In September alone 12 people were killed in the wave of violence sweeping the country. One was killed in a bomb attack, and another 11 were shot dead in separate incidents.
  • “Sweden has never seen anything like this. No other country in Europe is seeing anything like this,” Kristersson said.
  • New laws will give police more power to combat gang activity, including wiretapping and body searches in certain areas, harsher sentences for repeat offenders, and double sentences for some crimes.
  • “We’ll put them on trial. If they are Swedish citizens they will be locked away with long prison sentences, and if they are foreigners they will be deported,” he said.
  • “We are going to deport foreigners who move in criminal gang circles even if they haven’t committed a crime,” he added.

Read the original article by clicking here.

‘Descent into hell’: Kidnapping explosion terrorizes Haiti

By Andre Paultre and Sarah Marsh

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – A wave of kidnappings is sweeping Haiti. But even in a country growing inured to horrific abductions, the case of five-year-old Olslina Janneus sparked outrage.

Olslina was snatched off the streets of the capital Port-au-Prince in late January as she was playing. The child’s corpse, bearing signs of strangulation, turned up a week later, according to her mother, Nadege Saint Hilaire, a peanut vendor who said she couldn’t pay the $4,000 ransom. Saint Hilaire’s cries filled the airwaves as she spoke to a few local radio stations seeking help raising funds to cover funeral costs.

Saint Hilaire is now in hiding after receiving death threats, she said, from the same gang that killed her daughter. “I wasn’t supposed to go to the radio to denounce what had happened,” she told Reuters.

Police in her impoverished and crime-ridden neighborhood, Martissant, told Reuters they were investigating the case.

Haiti’s epidemic of kidnappings is the latest crisis to befall this Caribbean island nation of around 11 million people, roiled by deepening political unrest and economic misery. Kidnappings last year tripled to 234 cases compared to 2019, according to official data compiled by the United Nations.

The real figures are likely much higher because many Haitians don’t report abductions, fearing retribution from criminal gangs, according to attorney Gedeon Jean, director of the nonprofit Center for Human Rights Analysis and Research in Port-au-Prince. He said the research center recorded 796 kidnappings last year.

Haiti’s national police force did not respond to a request for comment. President Jovenel Moise has said repeatedly that his government is doing all it can, and has put more resources into anti-kidnapping efforts. Still, he publicly acknowledged on April 14 that “kidnappings have become generalized” and that efforts to combat persistent insecurity have been “ineffective.”

Human rights activists and a new report from Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic allege that Moise’s government has allied itself with violent criminal gangs to maintain its grip on power and to suppress dissent. Opposition groups have called for Moise to resign and hand power to a transitional government that would delay presidential and legislative elections slated for September until the nation is stable enough to ensure a free and fair contest.

Haiti’s acting Prime Minister Claude Joseph denied those allegations and the report’s findings. He said anti-democratic forces are whipping up violence to destabilize Moise’s administration in an election year. “They are fomenting the gangs to stop there being elections,” Joseph told Reuters.

Criminals have targeted some poor people, like Saint Hilaire, for modest sums. Many more victims come from the ranks of the Haitian middle class – teachers, priests, civil servants, small business owners. Such targets aren’t rich enough to afford bodyguards but have enough assets or connections to scrape up a ransom.

In one of the most high-profile recent cases, five Catholic priests, two nuns and three laymen were kidnapped on April 11 in the commune of Croix-des-Bouquets, northeast of the capital. Four members of the group were subsequently released and six are still missing, according to an April 25 statement by the Society of Priests of St. Jacques, a French missionary society linked to four of the kidnapped priests. An official with that group declined to comment on whether a ransom was paid.

“For some time now, we have been witnessing the descent into hell of Haitian society,” the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Port-au-Prince said in a statement earlier this month.

‘KILLING THE ECONOMY’

Haiti last experienced a major surge in kidnappings and gang violence after a rebellion toppled then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004, prompting the United Nations to send in a peacekeeping force.

The departure of that force in October 2019 was followed by a resurgence in gang crime, according to human-rights activists, who say kidnapping has proven lucrative at a time when Haiti’s economy is teetering.

Rights activists say politics also play a role. They allege Moise’s government has harnessed criminal groups to terrorize neighborhoods known as opposition strongholds and to quell public dissent amid street protests that have rocked the country the past three years.

The report released April 22 by the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School alleges “high-level government involvement in the planning, execution and cover-up” of three gang-led attacks on poor neighborhoods between 2018 and 2020 that left at least 240 civilians dead. The report relied on investigations of the attacks by Haitian and international human rights experts. It alleges the government provided gangs with money, weapons and vehicles and shielded them from prosecution.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury in December sanctioned reputed Haitian gang leader Jimmy Cherizier and two former Moise administration officials – Fednel Monchery and Joseph Pierre Richard Duplan – for helping orchestrate one of the attacks. All three have denied wrongdoing.

Kidnapping is an outgrowth of impunity for criminal organizations, according to Rosy Auguste Ducena, program manager of the Port-au-Prince-based National Network for the Defense of Human Rights.

“We are talking about a regime that has allied itself with armed gangs,” Ducena said.

Justice Minister Rockefeller Vincent denied any government alliance with gangs. He told Reuters in December that the wave of kidnappings was the work of political enemies seeking to undermine Moise “by creating a sense of chaos.”

The rise in kidnappings has petrified many Haitians. The heads of seven private business associations this month issued a joint statement saying they had reached “a saturation point” with soaring crime. They endorsed a nationwide work stoppage that occurred on April 15 to protest Haiti’s security crisis.

“Kidnapping is killing the economy,” said Haitian economist Etzer Emile. He said the tourism and entertainment sectors have withered.

Moise’s administration says it is working hard to end the terror. Two years ago it revived a commission aimed at disarming gang members and reintegrating them into society. Over the past year, the government has increased the police budget and solicited advice from Colombia, which once battled its own kidnapping epidemic. In March, Haiti created an anti-kidnapping task force to attack the problem with tactics such as tracing laundered ransom money.

Still, four policemen died last month in a gun battle with alleged criminals in a slum where kidnapping victims are often held. The government declared a month-long state of emergency in gang-controlled neighborhoods. Yet abductions continue to mount.

Moise, who has opted not to seek re-election this September, has defied the opposition’s calls for him to step down early. On April 14 he issued a statement saying he aimed to form a government of national unity to better tackle the “pressing problem of insecurity.”

HOODS, GUNS AND TORTURE

Many Haitians remain skeptical – and on edge.

One victim was a 29-year-old doctor. He was kidnapped in his own vehicle last November after leaving the Port-au-Prince hospital where he had just finished an overnight shift. He told Reuters his story on condition of anonymity.

At dawn, four armed assailants hustled him into the back seat, threw a hood over his head and held him at gunpoint as they drove, he said. His captors eventually tossed him into a room with three other abductees – a man and two women – who had been snatched earlier.

The physician said his kidnappers ordered him to phone his family to request $500,000 for his release. The first two people he tried said they couldn’t pay. The kidnappers slapped him and delivered a threat.

“They said that if I called a third person that didn’t give me a satisfying response, they would kill me,” he said.

The doctor’s girlfriend said she and three friends negotiated with the gang. She wouldn’t say how much they paid, fearful of becoming targets for other criminals.

The doctor said he reported his abduction to Haiti’s national anti-kidnapping police unit. That unit did not respond to requests for comment.

The physician does not know the fate of his fellow abductees. He said the kidnappers poured melted Styrofoam on their skin because their families had yet to pay up.

Saint Hilaire, the mother of the young girl who was kidnapped and murdered, said she continues to watch her back after speaking publicly about the abduction.

The kidnappers “told me to make sure I never ran into them, because they would kill me,” she said.

(Reporting by Andre Paultre in Port-au-Prince and Sarah Marsh in Havana; editing by Marla Dickerson)

A day without women: strikes in Mexico and Argentina follow huge rallies

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Millions of women in Mexico and Argentina will stay away from offices, school and government offices on Monday, stepping up historic protests against gender violence that saw hundreds of thousands take to the streets over the weekend.

The one-day action dubbed “a day without us” is intended to show what life would be like if women vanished from society. In Mexico, the strike stems from a surge in disappearances of women and femicides, or gender-motivated killings of women.

FILE PHOTO: Women protest against gender violence and femicides at Angel de la Independencia monument in Mexico City, Mexico, February 22, 2020. REUTERS/Gustavo Graf

Femicides in Mexico jumped 137% in the past five years, government statistics show, as gang violence pushed the national murder tally to record heights. Most violent crimes go unsolved.

On Sunday, women took to the streets in unprecedented numbers across Latin America as part of International Women’s Day, demanding abortion rights and action from leaders to stem the violence.

The mostly peaceful protests saw anger boiling over into some outbreaks of violence, such as Molotov cocktails thrown at Mexico’s national palace, after the killing of a 7-year-old and the murder and skinning of a young woman shocked the nation.

The impact of Monday’s strike, in contrast, will stem from the absence of women in businesses, universities and government ministries. Not all women, however, will take part.

“We are tired of being victims, of being abused and mistreated. Enough is enough,” said Alma Delia Díaz, 45, a beautician in the Mexico City suburb of Ecatepec.

Diaz said she supported women making their voice heard, but personally could not miss a day’s work.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has said government employees are free to join the walkout. But he has also accused political opponents of seeking to exploit Mexico’s security problems to undermine his administration.

(Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Army pulls out of violent Cape Town suburbs after show of force

Soldiers patrol as they are deployed to quell gang violence in Manenberg township, Cape Town, South Africa, July 18, 2019. Picture taken July 18, 2019. REUTERS/Shafiek Tassiem

By Wendell Roelf

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) – South African soldiers pulled out of gang-ridden suburbs of Cape Town on Friday after a brief show of force, leaving residents uncertain about what to expect next.

Streets were quiet on Friday morning after a convoy of armored vehicles and hundreds of soldiers deployed the previous day in Manenberg and Hanover Park to help police end a surge of gang violence that has killed hundreds of people.

Police and army spokesmen did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the operation.

“The army is a good thing for now, but when they are gone the gang fights will start again,” said Nizaam Sharmar, a 32-year-old construction worker.

Cape Town is famous for its tourist attractions, including Table Mountain, but has some of South Africa’s highest murder rates, official data shows.

There is an entrenched gang culture with thousands of young men belonging to street gangs with names like “Hard Living” and “Young Americans”.

Bloodshed over the past seven months in mainly poor black and mixed-race areas has killed more than 2,000 people, almost half gang-related, Western Cape provincial officials said.

The South African National Defense Force said last Friday it would deploy a battalion with support elements to communities in a vast area called the Cape Flats, where high unemployment rates and drug abuse have fueled gang activity in apartheid-era townships and working-class suburbs including Manenberg and Hanover Park.

“Innocent people are being shot and we need drastic change, but it’s just like they showing their faces and then leaving,” said 28-year-old mother of two Ledgeme, who did not want to give her full name for fear of reprisals.

The soldiers were promised following a visit by Police Minister Bheki Cele to the Cape Flats shantytown of Philippi, after almost a dozen people were killed earlier this month.

(Reporting by Wendell Roelf; Editing by MacDonald Dzirutwe and Angus MacSwan)

Special Report: As Mexico oil sector sputters, crime and violence rattle industry towns

Broken windows of an abandon bar, due to the local violence are seen in front of the Pemex oil port known as Dos Bocas en Paraiso, Tabasco, Mexico April 24, 2018. Picture taken on April 25, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

By Gabriel Stargardter

PARAISO, Mexico (Reuters) – Until recently, Edgar Barrera enjoyed a life many Mexicans could only hope for.

In a few short years, the 36-year-old bookkeeper rose from handyman to white-collar worker at what seemed to be one of the most stable companies in Latin America: state-owned oil firm Pemex.

Thanks to Pemex, Barrera met his wife, vacationed on the Mayan Riviera and envisaged a rewarding career without leaving his hometown in Tabasco, a rural state at the southern hook of the Gulf of Mexico where more than half the population lives on less than roughly $92 a month.

Then everything changed.

Oil prices plummeted, forcing Pemex to cut his and thousands of other jobs across Mexico. An energy reform, meant to spur business with private competitors, struggled to attract immediate investment. And the gang violence that has crippled Mexico over the last decade finally spread to Tabasco, previously a relatively peaceful corner of the country.

Mounting consequences, from an economic recession to soaring murder rates, have rapidly made Tabasco one of Mexico’s most troubled states. Its small, but once seemingly solid, middle-class now struggles with a downturn and lurid violence.

Barrera himself, after brushes with extortionists and kidnappers who may have once been Pemex colleagues, recently sought asylum in Canada.

Paraiso, or “paradise,” is the Tabasco town where Barrera grew up and worked at a Pemex port. It is “now a hell,” he said.

Women take a stand for a photograph with the letters of Paraiso in Paraiso, Tabasco, Mexico April 25, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

Women take a stand for a photograph with the letters of Paraiso in Paraiso, Tabasco, Mexico April 25, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

It’s little surprise that industry turbulence would hurt Tabasco, home to Mexico’s first petroleum discovery and a state where more than half the economy, and nearly half the jobs, rely on the oil sector.

But the extent of the problems has caught locals, industry executives and government officials off guard, especially as criminals increasingly exploit what’s left of any prosperity by targeting Pemex resources, equipment and employees.

“The oil debacle hit us hard,” said Tabasco Governor Arturo Nunez. “It caused social problems that without question are contributing to higher crime.”

President Enrique Pena Nieto, now in his last year in office, made an overhaul of the energy industry his signature initiative, ending Pemex’s longstanding grip on exploration, production, refining and retail fuel sales. Proponents long argued that operators besides Pemex are needed to reverse more than a decade of declining crude output and unlock potential in untapped deposits.

But the reform, finalized in 2014, came into law just as global oil prices collapsed, dampening companies’ willingness to invest. Despite a recent rebound, the price of crude in global markets plummeted by as much as 76 percent as of June of that year.

Since then, Pemex has slashed nearly 18,000 jobs across Mexico, about 13 percent of its workforce, according to company figures. In Tabasco, Pemex let go 1,857 workers, or roughly 12 percent of the 16,000 jobs the state shed between 2014 and 2016, according to government data. Many of the other layoffs were among suppliers and other businesses that rely on Pemex.

Combined, the cutbacks gave Tabasco Mexico’s highest unemployment rate and mired the state in recession. In 2016, the most recent year for which data is available, Tabasco’s economy shrank by 6.3 percent. It is the only state where both poverty and extreme poverty, defined by the government as monthly income of less than about $50, have risen in recent years.

Compounding troubles nationwide, the woes have eroded support ahead of a July 1 presidential election for Pena Nieto’s successor as the candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. Instead, a leftist former Mexico City mayor – and native son of Tabasco – dominates polls. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the 64-year-old frontrunner, promises to build a refinery in his home state.

Although Pemex has recently begun to hire back a few workers, other companies have been reluctant to invest in states like Tabasco, where oil production is now nearly 70 percent below a peak in the early 1990s. With supply abundant worldwide, and an ever-growing flow of crude from U.S. shale, would-be investors are wary of Mexico’s crime, corruption and violence.

“We decided not to start,” said Javier Lopez, a Texas-based attorney who recently scrapped plans to launch a business trucking fuel from the United States into Mexico. “We really were afraid we’d get a truck stolen, a driver killed.”

For more than a decade, Mexico’s government has deployed police, the military and intelligence forces to topple powerful drug kingpins. As they fell, cartels morphed and moved into new rackets, including theft and extortion of businesses in industries from agriculture to mining and oil.

Earlier this year, Reuters reported how fuel thieves are crippling Mexico’s refineries and unleashing bloodshed in formerly calm centers of Pemex operations.

In Tabasco, police registered 388 murders last year, over triple the number in 2012. Despite a population of 2.4 million people, small compared with many of Mexico’s 30 other states and giant capital district, Tabasco had the fourth-highest kidnapping tally and sixth-highest number of extortions reported last year.

Current and former Pemex workers are at both ends of the crimes – some as victims but others as instigators, participants or informants. Emboldened by the impunity and graft that have enabled crime nationwide, some locals have turned to illicit businesses, joining or seeking to start gangs that steal Pemex fuel, machinery and supplies. Others are targeting relatively well-off current and former Pemex workers, such as Barrera.

In a statement, Pemex said it “has zero tolerance with any worker involved in any crime.” The company said it cooperates with local, state and federal police to investigate illegal activity, but declined to comment on specific episodes or cases involving individual workers mentioned in this story.

During a recent interview, Carlos Trevino, Pemex’s chief executive, conceded that employees are increasingly at risk because of their jobs and pay. “Petroleros have a better salary than many other people,” he said, using the Spanish term for oil industry workers.

Across Mexico, Trevino added, the company is increasing measures to ensure the security of personnel and property. It has taken its name and logo off trucks. It told workers to stop wearing Pemex uniforms off site.

Still, he said, “it’s hard to have a completely safe operation.”

“This thing in Tabasco,” he added, “it’s not good.”

CRUDE HISTORY

Mexico’s first known oil discovery took place in Tabasco in 1863. Manuel Gil y Saenz, a priest, was rushing to see his ill mother when his horse’s hoof got stuck in black sludge, according to a local history of the find.

Despite warnings by natives that a witch there turned people into salt, the priest returned and began tapping the oil. With partners, he later sold his venture to a British oil company.

In 1938, Mexico expropriated foreign-owned oil assets and created Petroleos Mexicanos, as Pemex is formally known. Over the following decades, production grew in other regions along the Gulf coast. In 1972 prospectors found a giant deposit known as the Mesozoic Chiapas-Tabasco oilfield, prompting a rush to develop the state.

To handle growing output from Tabasco, Pemex in 1979 began building the Dos Bocas port and terminal in Paraiso, a hot, marshy town of 94,000 people surrounded by cacao and coconut plantations.

For locals, who previously subsisted on small-scale agriculture and fishing, “Pemex came and changed our lives,” said Ricardo Hernandez Daza, head of a local union of roughly 3,000 workers who staff many industry sites.

Barrera, the auditor now seeking asylum, joined Pemex in 2004.

That year, the country’s oil output reached a record high and opportunities seemed boundless. Mexico was one of many producers poised to benefit from steadily climbing prices as the global industry, before the shale boom, faced “peak oil,” the assumption that most of the world’s supply was known and diminishing.

First hired as a maintenance worker, Barrera worked his way up through other positions, got on-the-job training and eventually began reviewing company accounts for a salary of about $2,000 a month. He married a fellow Pemex auditor, bought two cars and enjoyed regular seafood outings with his wife, their daughter and two stepsons.

Until oil prices plunged.

Barrera weathered initial Pemex layoffs, but in November 2015 was let go. He immediately sought other jobs, but with many others already scrambling for work, he found only occasional freelance assignments.

Soon, Paraiso was reeling.

Two brothers, Mario and Pedro Maciel, emerged as local crime bosses, according to state prosecutors. Rumors swirled they had set up a branch of the Jalisco New Generation cartel, known for drug trafficking, fuel theft and countless other crimes across Mexico.

Some Gulf of Mexico oil workers, many of whom come from inland states, were already getting extorted by the cartel on trips into Jalisco New Generation territory.

Alayn Herver, a 28-year-old native of the central state from which the cartel took its name, until last year worked on offshore oil rigs that dot the Tabasco shoreline. Because of the intense schedules required there, Herver would spend two weeks on the rigs and then two weeks on leave back home in Jalisco.

In October 2016, while in a bar in his hometown of Ciudad Guzman, a stranger approached him and demanded roughly $1,000, about half his monthly salary. “We know you earn well,” the man said. “Do you want something to happen to you?”

At first, Herver thought the man was joking. Outside, though, some of the man’s colleagues awaited in an SUV, ready to take him to an ATM. Herver realized they were members of the Jalisco cartel.

He paid the men, who told him a similar payoff would be expected each month. For half a year, Herver complied. The transaction became so routine that the gang members appeared to lose interest.

Herver didn’t report the extortion. Like many Mexicans, he was wary of widespread corruption in police ranks and feared they would only make matters worse.

The following April, he decided to skip a payment.

On his next trip home, in May 2017, local police pulled him over, Herver said. They handcuffed him and put him in their patrol car. “You’ve got yourself into trouble,” he recalled one officer telling him.

Alejandro Romero, a senior officer with the Ciudad Guzman police force, declined to comment on the incident. The Jalisco state attorney general’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment.

As another policeman followed in Herver’s car, a 2007 Mini Cooper, the officers drove to a spot near the city dump, he said. There, six armed men, including the gang member who first approached him, pummeled Herver.

“Pull his pants down,” one of the gangsters said.

They beat his bare buttocks with a paddle and repeatedly threatened to rape him. One of the assailants put a gun to his head, while another grabbed his cell phone and began posting live video to Herver’s own Facebook feed.

Horrified, friends and family watched, the raw footage shifting from Herver’s drained expression to close-ups of his bloody behind.

“I thought they were going to kill me,” Herver said.

Instead, they let him go, keeping the Mini as payment.

“A PIECE OF THE ACTION”

In Paraiso, the Maciel brothers denied connections to the cartel or any such crimes. They published an open letter on Facebook stating they were law-abiding citizens.

“We are a family,” they wrote in the letter, “dedicated to its work for Pemex at Dos Bocas,” the port.

A worker named Pedro Maciel did, in fact, work for Pemex in Tabasco as recently as 2017, according to a database of company workers reviewed by Reuters. Mario’s name didn’t appear in the registry.

For locals, the brothers’ reassurances made little difference.

It was already apparent that a Pemex job wasn’t what it once was. Others besides the Maciel brothers were suspected across Paraiso of using their oil-industry positions as perches from which to steal fuel, extort workers and commit other crimes.

Those familiar with the industry say it makes sense that criminals, not just victims, could emerge from the Pemex payroll. Even if not committing atrocities themselves, some employees are believed to cooperate with gangs for their own cut of the proceeds or, merely, out of fear.

“They know the guts of the place, so they can provide information,” said Raul Munoz, a former Pemex chief executive, who now has private business with the company in Tabasco and says he faces regular security problems. “Everyone wants a piece of the action.”

Barrera, the auditor, and his family soon were swept up in the action. Last October, kidnappers captured a brother-in-law. Days before, after three decades of Pemex service, he had received a retirement bonus of roughly $20,000.

Within days, the family cobbled together a ransom of about $30,000. The kidnappers released him. With contact information stolen from his telephone, though, they began calling friends and family, demanding more.

The brother-in-law declined to speak with Reuters about the kidnapping.

Like Herver, the family opted not to go to the police.

“Pemex’s workforce is contaminated,” Barrera said, echoing family members who believe the kidnapping was planned with inside information. “The workers are feasting on one another.”

Last November, Barrera secured a few weeks’ work as a Pemex contractor. The threats grew closer.

A colleague told Barrera’s wife, who still works at Pemex, that suspicious men had been asking about her outside the office gates. Colleagues then told Barrera that armed men were waiting outside the office for him, too.

Terrified, he slept in the office that night.

Enough, he thought.

Barrera booked a ticket to Canada, where Mexicans can travel with no visa. He landed in Toronto last Christmas and applied for asylum. He hopes to bring his family, who moved to Villahermosa, Tabasco’s capital, in order to avoid the gangsters in Paraiso.

Herver, the rig worker whose beating was streamed live on Facebook, also fled to Canada.

“I was doing well at Pemex,” he said. But after the assault, “my only alternative was to leave.”

He, too, applied for asylum.

A spokeswoman for the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada declined to comment on either case, citing privacy laws.

On January 31, coordinated shootings erupted overnight across Paraiso.

Among the dead: the Maciel brothers. Local prosecutors said they were killed in a fuel-theft dispute. Their assassins, prosecutors added, died two months later in a shootout with police.

Even what should be legitimate business is getting more violent.

Daza, the local union boss, said his sprawling collective of construction, welding, tubing and other laborers has grown aggressive to protect its share of dwindling oil work. The union is one of many independent labor groups that represent workers and compete with one another for industry jobs.

Among other tactics, he admits to assaulting rival union members to keep them from job sites. They wield baseball bats, not firearms or knives, to avoid felony charges, he said.

When strangers in out-of-state rental cars arrive in Paraiso, the union and others like it send members to their hotel to demand work at whatever project they’re planning. If they don’t deliver, the unions sometimes shut sites down.

The tactics are not out of the ordinary in a country and industry where corrupt labor leaders are known to bribe both companies and members in exchange for keeping positions filled.

But they have also fueled job losses.

Because of the unions’ demands, oil services companies Oro Negro and Constructora y Perforadora Latina left, depriving Paraiso of 300 jobs, according to a local newspaper report. Neither of the companies, based in Mexico City, responded to requests for comment.

Daza said he has little choice but to use force at a time when the oil business is both the root of Paraiso’s problems and its only hope of recovery. “We’re in danger of extinction,” Daza said. “If nobody comes to save us, we’re screwed.”

(Additional reporting by Shadia Nasralla in London. Editing by Paulo Prada.)

Sweden’s far-right eyes election gains as gang violence rises

FILE PHOTO: Police officers stand at the scene of an explosion after what is believed to have been a robbery attempt on an ATM, in Genarp, southern Sweden March 21, 2016. REUTERS/Johan Nilsson/TT News Agency/File Photo

By Simon Johnson and Johan Ahlander

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – A surge in gang violence has stirred anti-immigration sentiment before an election in Sweden, putting a far-right party on course for big gains in one of Europe’s most liberal countries.

Dozens of people have been killed in the past two years in attacks in the capital Stockholm and other big cities by gangs that are mostly from run-down suburbs dominated by immigrants.

In the latest bloodshed, three men were shot dead and three were wounded outside an internet cafe in the city of Malmo on June 18. A fourth man was shot dead days later and another man survived because he was wearing a bullet-proof vest.

FILE PHOTO: Police technicians examine the car which people who were injured were traveling in, after a shooting in southern Malmo, Sweden September 25, 2016. TT News Agency/Emil Langvad via Reuters/File Photo

FILE PHOTO: Police technicians examine the car which people who were injured were traveling in, after a shooting in southern Malmo, Sweden September 25, 2016. TT News Agency/Emil Langvad via Reuters/File Photo

With public calls growing for tougher policies on crime and immigration, support has risen for the Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots that wants to freeze immigration and to hold a referendum on Sweden’s membership of the European Union.

Their worried mainstream rivals have started moving to the right on crime and immigration to try to counter the Sweden Democrats’ threat in the Sept. 9 election. But so far, they are playing into the hands of the far-right.

“Right now they (mainstream parties) are competing over who can set out the most restrictive policies,” said Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lovin, whose Green Party is part of a minority government led by the Social Democratic Party.

“It clearly benefits the Sweden Democrats.”

Opinion polls put the Sweden Democrats on about 20 percent support, up from the 13 percent of votes they secured in the 2014 election and the 5.7 percent which saw them enter parliament for the first time in 2010.

The Sweden Democrats’ rise on the back of anti-immigration sentiment mirrors gains for right-wing, populist and anti-establishment parties in other European countries such as Italy, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and Austria.

Immigration has risen back up the political agenda since far-right parties entered coalition governments in Austria and Italy, and will be discussed at a summit in Brussels this week.

Though the Sweden Democrats are unlikely to win power, the growing popularity for a party opposed to the EU is a concern for Brussels although Swedes broadly support EU membership, polls show.

FILE PHOTO: Police officers stand guard at a cordoned area after a masked man attacked people with a sword at a school in Trollhattan, western Sweden October 22, 2015. REUTERS/Bjorn Larsson Rosvall/TT News Agency/File Photo

FILE PHOTO: Police officers stand guard at a cordoned area after a masked man attacked people with a sword at a school in Trollhattan, western Sweden October 22, 2015. REUTERS/Bjorn Larsson Rosvall/TT News Agency/File Photo

BACKLASH

Five years ago, Sweden saw itself as a “humanitarian superpower” that generously welcomed migrants, many of them fleeing conflict in the Middle East and Africa.

But as in Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has been cracking under pressure from her coalition partners to tighten immigration curbs, Sweden’s government now faces a backlash over the scale of immigration.

About 400,000 people have sought asylum in the wealthy Scandinavian country of 10 million since 2012, and it took in 163,000 asylum seekers in 2015 alone. Some voters fear schools, hospitals and welfare services cannot cope, and Sweden’s reputation for tolerance and social equality is threatened.

The Sweden Democrats still trail the Social Democratic Party but has overtaken the main opposition Moderates in many polls. All mainstream parties have ruled out working with them.

But they could emerge from the election as kingmakers, and a strong election showing could force the next government to take their views into consideration when shaping policy.

Their policies include a total freeze on asylum seekers and accepting refugees only from Sweden’s neighbors in the future. They also want tougher penalties for crime and more powers for police, and say tax cuts and higher spending on welfare could be funded by cutting the immigration budget.

Jimmie Akesson, the leader of the Sweden Democratic party, has described the situation as “pretty fantastic”.

“We are dominating the debate even though no one will talk to us,” he told party members.

RUTHLESS CRIMINAL UNDERCLASS

There were 129 shootings in Stockholm in 2017. Nineteen people were killed in the attacks, almost twice as many as in 2016, according to official figures.

In Malmo, where about 45 percent of the 330,000 inhabitants have an immigrant background, police say three or four gangs are operating. Swedish media say nine people have been shot dead in the city this year after 21 in the previous two year-period.

A 2017 police report into Sweden’s most deprived areas pointed to a heavily armed and ruthless criminal underclass.

All the areas identified by police are socially deprived suburbs with large immigrant populations, places where poverty and long-term youth unemployment are big problems.

Among these is the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby, where two men walked into a pizzeria packed with families in January and shot a man dead in what police said was a gang killing.

When it was built in the 1970s, Rinkeby was a symbol of modernity, part of what became known as Sweden’s Million Homes project to replace run-down inner-city slums with clean, well-planned suburbs with their own schools, shops and healthcare facilities.

With ninety-one percent of its 16,000 inhabitants born abroad or to parents born outside Sweden, only half of them working, the area is now synonymous with failed integration, unemployment and social exclusion.

Police say people in Rinkeby live in fear of a group known as the Death Patrol gang.

“A few individuals have kept an entire neighborhood terrified,” said Mohamed Nuur, 26, a local Social Democrat politician. Witnesses of the pizzeria shooting were afraid to testify against the suspects, he said.

Rinkeby was one of several suburbs in northern Stockholm hit by riots in 2013 which fueled debate about how Sweden is coping with youth unemployment and the influx of immigrants, issues raised by urban violence in France in 2005 and Britain in 2011.

“RIGHT-WING PATH”

Many Swedes were horrified in early 2017 when U.S. President Donald Trump linked immigration to rising crime in Sweden, but an increasing number now agree with him.

The Sweden Democrats have succeeded in linking the two in the minds of many voters, even though official statistics show no correlation between overall levels of crime and immigration.

Sweden has one of the highest levels of lethal gun violence in Europe, World Health Organisation data showed. But while the number of foreign-born citizens has risen for decades, murder rates are roughly flat.

The government denies it has lost control but Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has not ruled out sending the military into problem areas.

Moving to the right, he has tried to deal with the threat posed by the Sweden Democrats by saying immigration – down to 26,000 in 2017 – should halve from last year’s level.

The government has also proposed tougher punishments for gun crimes and sexual assaults, wants to stop financial support for undocumented foreigners, put more of those whose identity is unclear in holding centers and accelerate repatriation of failed asylum seekers.

The Moderates have also toughened their stance on crime and immigration, promising a crackdown on welfare for asylum seekers and a ban on begging. Both main parties say Sweden will not return to liberal asylum rules suspended in 2015.

“Sweden is going down a more right-wing path,” said Nick Aylott, a political scientist at Sodertorn University said. “It is almost impossible to avoid according some sort of influence to a party with around 20 percent of the vote.”

(Editing by Timothy Heritage)

Photographer killed in Mexico as journalist death toll nears record

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The bullet-riddled body of a news photographer was found in central Mexico on Friday, state officials, putting 2017 on track to become the deadliest year yet for journalists in the notoriously violent country.

Edgar Daniel Esqueda, 23, who worked with Metropoli San Luis and Vox Populi SLP in the state of San Luis Potosi, was found in the state capital with at least three bullet wounds in the back of his neck, authorities said.

The news outlets where Esqueda worked reported had reported his abduction from his home by gunmen on Thursday morning.

San Luis Potosi’s governor, Manuel Carreras, told a press conference an investigation was underway. He did not say whether Esqueda’s murder was linked to his work as a journalist.

With Esqueda’s killing, 2017 could become the bloodiest year yet for reporters in Mexico, according to press freedom and journalists’ advocacy group Articulo 19.

The photo journalist was the 11th reporter killed so far this year, the group said. That matched the total in 2016, which was the highest number on record in a country torn by runaway levels of criminal and drug-related bloodletting.

Over the past 17 years, 111 journalists have been killed in Mexico, 38 of them under the current government of President Enrique Pena Nieto.

Reporters Without Borders and the Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) both rank Mexico among the deadliest countries in the world for reporters.

Activists have repeatedly criticized Mexican prosecutors for failing to fully investigate many journalists’ murders, allowing the killers to operate with impunity.

Mexico’s human rights commission has asked state authorities to provide protection for Esqueda’s family members, who were at home with the photographer when he was taken by force, according to Articulo 19.

Witnesses who spoke with the group said Esqueda asked his kidnappers for their identity when they broke into the home where he was asleep with his wife, and they responded that they were police officers.

The state police force said via Twitter that “there has not been any police action against a reporter in the capital.”

“Criminals, sometimes connected with state actors, know that they can get away with killing journalists in Mexico because of chronic impunity for these crimes. Until that changes, the violence will continue,” Alexandra Ellerbeck, the CPJ’s program coordinator for North America, said in a statement.

Esqueda had reported threats months ago to a government-run human rights group in San Luis Potosi, one of his colleagues told Reuters.

(Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon and Christine Murray; Editing by Tom Brown)

U.S. attorney general ties gang violence to immigration

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks on the growing trend of violent crime in sanctuary cities during an event on the Port of Miami in Miami, Florida, U.S. on, August 16, 2017. REUTERS/Joe Skipper/File Photo

By Nate Raymond

BOSTON (Reuters) – Protesters gathered outside a federal court in Boston on Thursday where U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions came to address law enforcement about what he called the need to tackle transnational gang violence and to secure the Mexican border.

Sessions reemphasized what he said was a need to target cross-border criminal organizations, specifically the gang MS-13, which the Justice Department says has more than 30,000 members worldwide and 10,000 members in the United States.

Tying the effort to fight the gang and Republican President Donald Trump’s administration’s efforts to crackdown on illegal immigration, Sessions said the Justice Department was directing more prosecutorial resources to the U.S.-Mexican border.

He also made an apparent reference to Trump’s campaign promise to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, saying such a wall would help protect against gang members who are smuggled across it.

“Securing our border, both through a physical wall and with brave men and women of the border patrol restoring an orderly and lawful system of immigration, is part and parcel of any successful crime fighting, gang fighting strategy,” he said.

He also said the Trump administration was examining the “exploitation” of a program that helps unaccompanied refugee minors by gang members using it to “come to this country as wolves in sheep clothing” and to recruit new members.

Outside the courthouse, around 40 people gathered in a protest organized by the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, holding signs saying “Jeff: Go Home” and “Racism is #Notwelcome.”

MS-13, also called La Mara Salvatrucha, has taken root in the United States in Los Angeles in the 1980s in neighborhoods populated with immigrants from El Salvador who had fled its civil war.

In Boston, federal prosecutors have since January 2016 brought racketeering, drug trafficking, weapons and other charges against 61 people linked to MS-13 in Massachusetts including leaders, members and associates of the gang.

 

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; editing by Diane Craft)

 

13 killed in gang battles in two Mexican states

Police officers stand guard as they carry out inspections at a checkpoint after 13 people were killed in battles between rival gangs in two states in central and western Mexico, in Uruapan, in the state of Michoacan, Mexico, September 13, 2017. REUTERS/Alan Ortega

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – At least 13 people were killed in battles between rival gangs in two states in central and western Mexico, officials said on Wednesday, as murders climb to record levels this year.

Five people were gunned down in a bar on Tuesday night in the capital of central Guanajuato state while seven people were found dead in two different places in the western state of Michoacan, according to officials at state prosecutors offices.

Three dismembered bodies, including a woman’s, were found in the community of Angahuan near the drug-gang hotbed of Uruapan, the Michoacan prosecutors’ office said.

Michoacan has been one of the bloodiest states in Mexico because of battles between rival gangs involved in drug trafficking, kidnapping, extortion of local businesses as well as mineral theft and illegal logging.

Neighboring Guanajuato state has seen a spike in violence. Murders were up 37 percent in Guanajuato in the first seven months of the year compared to the same period last year.

The murder rate has already risen above levels seen in 2011, which was the deadliest year under former president Felipe Calderon who sent the army out to battle drug gangs.

Nationally, there were 14,190 murder investigations in the first seven months of the year, the highest total through July for any year in records going back to 1997.

The increase in violence has hit the popularity of President Enrique Pena Nieto and his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ahead of next year’s presidential election.

(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz; Editing by Sandra Maler)