Haitian criminal networks organized a counter-movement called Zam Pale — meaning “Guns Speak” in Haitian Creole — in response to the Bwa Kale vigilante killings, targeting suspected members of the anti-gang movement and their families in retaliatory attacks that escalated the cycle of violence engulfing Port-au-Prince. The UN secretary-general warned that the emergence of Zam Pale alongside Bwa Kale had created a new and alarming dynamic that was expanding the conflict and drawing more civilians into its orbit.
Zam Pale’s targets were communities identified with the Bwa Kale movement, particularly in neighborhoods where anti-gang organizing had been most active. Attacks on these communities combined gang territorial expansion objectives with explicit retaliation against those perceived to have participated in or supported the killing of gang members. The attacks displaced thousands of residents and forced the closure of schools, health facilities, and community organizations in affected areas.
The emergence of Zam Pale as an organized counter-movement to Bwa Kale illustrated the self-perpetuating logic of vigilante violence. Community self-defense that killed gang members provoked gang retaliation that killed community members that provoked further community response in an escalating cycle with no institutional mechanism for interruption. The state, which might in a functioning governance environment have provided a legal alternative to vigilantism, was absent from this dynamic entirely.
Human rights organizations called on all parties — gang networks, Bwa Kale participants, and Zam Pale operatives — to cease violence against civilians and on the Haitian government and international community to provide the security that communities were attempting to create for themselves through means that inevitably produced their own human rights violations.