PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) -Haiti’s former national palace security chief, Vladimir Paraison, was appointed national police chief by the country’s transitional government on Friday, as the Caribbean nation looks to battle armed gangs that have displaced over a million people.
“We the police will not sleep,” Paraison, who has the reputation of a seasoned and determined professional, told an inauguration ceremony. “We will provide security across every corner of the country.”
Paraison replaced Rameau Normil, whose tenure of just over a year was marked by tensions with a faction of the country’s presidential council, notably with Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime, who separately coordinated a task force responsible for explosive drone operations against gangs.
Most of Haiti’s capital is controlled by the gangs, who have largely grouped behind an alliance known as Viv Ansanm, which Washington has designated a terrorist organization responsible for mass killings, rapes, kidnappings and extortion.
Haiti’s cash-strapped national police and fledgling army have struggled to hold back their advances beyond Port-au-Prince, even with limited support from a U.N.-backed force.
Some 1.3 million Haitians have been displaced due to the conflict, which killed more than 3,100 people in the first half of this year.
Paraison was met with a round of applause as he officially took up the job at the ceremony in Haiti’s Villa d’Acceuil, stepping to the podium using a cane after he was wounded in the leg while fighting armed gangs.
The building serves as the government’s temporary seat of power after the national palace in downtown Port-au-Prince became too insecure.
Council President Laurent Saint-Cyr, who took up the final six-month rotational leadership of the transitional government a day earlier, thanked the outgoing Normil.
“This change is not a sanction but called for by the urgency and the necessity to give new breath to the Haitian National Police,” Saint-Cyr said. “Everything rests on one thing: security.”
(Reporting by Harold Isaac; Writing by Sarah Morland; Editing by Natalia Siniawski and William Mallard)
