SUNDAY, JUNE 12 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU A1 7
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executive producer, “The Offer”In partnership with Paramount PlusModerated by Elahe IzadiTuesday, June 14 | Noon50th Anniversary of Watergate:
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117th Congress
Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Tex.)
Moderated by Leigh Ann Caldwell
Tuesday, June 14 | 10:30 a.m.
“The Offer”
BY WIDLORE MÉRANCOURT
AND AMANDA COLETTAPORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The
man wears a balaclava with a
wide, toothy grin on the front — a
stark contrast to the angry, threat-
laden rant he’s delivering.
If anyone in territory con-
trolled by his 5 Segonn gang is
killed, the amateur rapper known
as “Izo” warns, he’ll slaughter 30
people in revenge. He repeats the
message for his “soldiers.”
“You don’t have to wait for my
orders,” Izo says in a video posted
this month to tens of thousands of
followers on TikTok and Insta-
gram. He won’t show his gun on
camera, he says — or his video
might be reported to the plat-
forms’ moderators.
The violent armed gangs that
control much of Haiti are using
social media to expand their
reach and tighten their grip on
the beleaguered Caribbean na-
tion. Posts aimed at energizing
recruits, intimidating rivals and
terrorizing the population are
challenging the ability of the plat-
forms to police the problematic
content. Some here are calling for
tighter controls.
“The bandits would never have
been as powerful as they are in
Haiti without social media,” said
Yvens Rumbold of Policité, a pol-
icy think tank here. “We always
had bandits in Haiti, but without
these platforms, they would not
be as famous.”
Jimmy Cherizier is a former
police officer on whom the United
States has imposed sanctions for
allegedly leading armed groups in
“coordinated, brutal attacks in
Port-au-Prince neighborhoods,”
the U.S. Treasury said in a release,
including a five-day attack in May
2020 in which civilians were slain
and houses burned. When Cheriz-
ier united warring gangs here into
the G9 Family and Allies, he an-
nounced the alliance on YouTube.
In a Twitter post, an account pur-
porting to belong to him urged
backers to “ransack everything.”
As violence between gangs in
Port-au-Prince escalated in recent
months, gang members posted
photos of corpses on WhatsApp,
human rights groups say. Izo uses
several platforms to threaten and
mock rivals, police officers and
journalists.
Gangs use social media to pro-
mote themselves, push narra-
tives, show their strength, delegit-
imize state institutions and re-
cruit members. In some posts,
gang leaders flash cash, gold
chains and blinged-out watches,
signifiers of a lifestyle that is far
out of reach for the great majority
in this impoverished nation.
“Social media is responsible for
a lot of the insecurity climate that
we have here,” said James Boyard,
a political scientist at the State
University of Haiti. “Social media
has a huge responsibility ... to vet
their users, to analyze the images
on the accounts and to censure
them in some instances. They
need to do more, frankly.”
Cherizier, in an interview with
a sympathizer on YouTube, is
asked specifically about the utili-
ty of social media.
“I’m thanking those who create
these technologies,” he says. “Tech
today gives us an opportunity to
sell ourselves to the public. I’m
not selling lies. I’m who I say I am.
I do not do 99 percent of what
they said I’ve done. ... Technol-
ogies gave me an opportunity to
defend myself.”
The development troubles
some officials here.
In October, Frantz Louis Juste,
then Port-au-Prince’s top pros-
ecutor, wrote a letter asking sev-
eral platforms to “block or delete”
the accounts of several individu-
als, including Cherizier, who he
claimed were associated with
criminal groups.
“These gangs instill a reign of
terror in society,” he told The
Washington Post. “They need less
widespread publicity.”
The letter was made public but
wasn’t sent to the companies that
it named.
TikTok’s rules bar terrorist and
criminal organizations from us-Gangs in Haiti use
social media outlets
to recruit, terrorize
Groups have f aced little
moderation in spreading
violent messages, imagesing the app. The company re-
moved Izo’s account after The
Post asked about it. It said it was
reviewing others.
“There’s no place for violent
extremism or promotion of vio-
lence on TikTok,” a spokesperson
wrote in an email. “We will re-
move content and ban accounts
that violate our policies as we
work to foster a safe and welcom-
ing environment.”
Twitter said it was reviewing
accounts and tweets “in line with
our rules.” The company has re-
ported receiving one legal request
from Haiti to remove content.
That was in 2016.
After being questioned by The
Post, Meta, the parent company of
Facebook, Instagram and Whats-
App, removed from Izo’s Face-
book and Instagram accounts the
video in which he threatens to kill
30 people. It did not remove his
profiles, and the same video ap-
peared on another Instagram ac-
count with his name.
“We regularly review organiza-
tions to determine if they violate
our Dangerous Individuals and
Organizations policy and ban
them from our platforms if they
do,” the company said in a state-ment. “We use technology to de-
tect violations and deploy global
teams, which include native Cre-
ole speakers, to review content.”
YouTube did not respond to a
request for comment.
Gangs have long had a pres-
ence in Haiti, but their power has
grown in recent years amid a
broader deterioration of demo-
cratic institutions and security
conditions. Analysts estimate
that they control 60 percent of the
country and are on the brink of
becoming, collectively, a “proto
state.”
In recent years, gang kidnap-
pings for ransom have skyrocket-
ed. No one has been immune —
victims have included American
missionaries, French clergy and
Haitians of all ages and back-
grounds.
Haiti’s Center for Analysis and
Research on Human Rights
counted 225 kidnappings in the
first quarter of 2022 — up nearly
60 percent from the same period
last year.
Since April, armed violence in
the capital between 400 Mawozo,
the gang implicated in the kid-
napping last year of 17 American
and Canadian missionaries withan Ohio-based charity, and Chen
Mechan, a rival gang, has escalat-
ed. The U.N. high commissioner
for human rights has called the
level of violence “unimaginable
and intolerable.”
Nearly 17,000 Haitians have
been displaced by the clashes,
according to the United Nations,
and at least 200 have been killed
— almost half of them civilians.
Deepening insecurity is one fac-
tor fueling an exodus of Haitians
on rickety boats bound for the
United States and elsewhere on
sometimes deadly voyages.
Haiti’s National Human Rights
Defense Network reported last
month that gang members in the
recent battles raped women and
girls, mutilated bodies and took
photos of these “macabre scenes”
to post on social media to “main-
tain terror among the popula-
tion.”
The nongovernmental group
showed photos to The Post that it
said were shared by gang mem-
bers in WhatsApp groups. The
images of scattered body parts,
decapitated heads and mutilated
corpses were forwarded many
times on the Meta-owned mes-
saging service.Analysts said messages from
gang members often appear on
WhatsApp first and are then
spread on other platforms or by
mainstream media organiza-
tions. WhatsApp’s encrypted
chats scramble messages so only
the sender and receiver can read
them, making it more difficult to
detect harmful content unless a
user reports it.
Twitter and TikTok said their
human content moderators and
tools that detect harmful content
cover several languages, but they
did not say whether Haitian Cre-
ole was among them.
“These social media [compa-
nies] need resources affiliated to
specific regions and countries,”
Rumbold said.
Still, some users are adept at
slipping around efforts to block
them.
After TikTok removed Izo’s ac-
count recently, he posted several
Instagram stories to share the
news and express his displeasure.
One Instagram story showed a
TikTok page — with several of the
videos from the deleted one.
“God forbid I had another ac-
count,” read the text of the story,
with several flexed biceps emoji.ODELYN JOSEPH/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Gang leader Jimmy Cherizier stands in a field of garbage last fall in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to call attention to local living conditions. The
United States imposed sanctions on Cherizier, a former police officer, for allegedly leading armed groups in brutal attacks in the city.BY SAMMY WESTFALLNew Zealand has more sheep
than people, by a factor of about
five. Now those sheep and other
livestock could be taxed for inces-
sant belching — a major source of
greenhouse gases for the Pacific
island nation.
The government Wednesday
announced a draft plan to charge
farmers for their livestock emis-
sions, in what would be the first
effort of its kind. The plan is part
of a larger emissions reduction
initiative proposed by the Minis-
try of Environment, which in-
cludes plans for its energy, trans-
portation, waste and job sectors
beginning in 2025.
New Zealand, with about 10
million cattle and 26 million
sheep, is a major agricultural ex-
porter. Agriculture makes up half
of New Zealand’s gross emissions,
and putting a price on those emis-
sions is one of the ways the coun-
try seeks to reach its 2050 net-zerotarget.
Revenue from the plan will be
invested in research, develop-
ment and advisory services for
farmers, who will also receive in-
centives for reducing emissions
through feed additives, Reuters
reported.
Cows and sheep are ruminants,
meaning they have special, com-
plex digestive systems with multi-
chambered stomachs to digest
their food. But as their feed fer-
ments within their bodies, theyproduce methane as a byproduct
— that needs to be belched out.
The process has them releasing
up to 500 liters of methane daily.
The greenhouse gas is extremely
effective at trapping heat in the
atmosphere, more than 25 times
more potent as carbon dioxide.
High-resolution satellites even
detected methane emissions from
a cattle lot in California — mean-
ing cow burps were observed from
space, according to the environ-
mental data company GHGSat.New Zealand’s upcoming emissions target: Livestock
BY MICHAEL SCHERERThe Democratic National Com-
mittee on Saturday said it rejected
applications from the state parties
of New York and Nebraska to help
kick off the 2024 presidential
nominating process, leaving 16
other states and one territory in
the running for the coveted spots.
The announcement, by the co-
chairs of the party’s Rules and
Bylaws Committee in a letter to
members, is the first winnowing
in a process established this year
that aims to shake up the Demo-
cratic nominating contest order,
which has been controlled in re-
cent decades by Iowa, New Hamp-
shire, Nevada and South Carolina.
Democrats Abroad, a collection
of expatriates who have a small
but independent role in the nomi-
nating process, was also told its
application could not move for-
ward.
The states and territory still un-
der consideration are Colorado,
Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia,
Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Michi-
gan, Minnesota, Nevada, New
Hampshire, New Jersey, Okla-
homa, Puerto Rico, South Caro-
lina, Texas and Washington state.
The party has said it hopes to
improve the nominating process
by rearranging the early states,
which have a disproportionate
ability to narrow the presidential
field and attract early spending.
The party has said that the 2024
starting states will be selected
based on the diversity of their
electorates, “including ethnic,
geographic, union representation,
economic, etc.”; the competitive-ness of the state in a general elec-
tion; and the ability of the state to
administer a “fair, transparent
and inclusive” process.
The letter, sent Saturday by co-
chairs Jim Roosevelt and Minyon
Moore, said New York was cut
because it was a large, solidly blue
state where it is expensive to cam-
paign. It also said it would be
“impossible to counterbalance the
disproportionate number of ur-
ban voters.”
Nebraska was cut because the
state party’s proposal envisioned a
party-run selection process, sepa-
rate from the current state-run
primary. The letter said that
“could create confusion by render-
ing the state-run process mean-
ingless despite Democrats being
on the ballot.”
As for Democrats Abroad, theco-chairs said the logistical prob-
lems of not having a set geography
created hurdles that were too high
to overcome.
The remaining states and Puer-
to Rico will make presentations to
the Rules and Bylaws Committee
later this month. A final decision
of the first four or five states in the
2024 process is expected in July.
In an effort to keep Iowa’s posi-
tion as the first-in-the-nation cau-
cus, Democrats in that state have
proposed drastically revamping
how voters there show preferenc-
es for their candidates. Instead of a
traditional caucus, Iowa Demo-
crats in 2024 would cast written
preference cards in the weeks
leading up to the event, either by
mail or at drop-off locations. The
results would be announced at the
caucus meetings.DNC says New York, Nebraska won’t have early primaries in 2024
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MagazineModerated by Jonathan Capehart
Friday, June 17 | 1 p.m.
50th Anniversary of Watergate:
Inside the StoryBob Woodward, associate editor,
The Washington PostCarl Bernstein, reporter and author
Moderated by Dan Balz