French President Emmanuel Macron, who is visiting several South American nations during his attendance at this week’s G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is castigating members of Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council for ousting the country’s second prime minister, Garry Conille, this year — the country’s third since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

In a video posted on social media and that French sources confirm to the Miami Herald was filmed on Tuesday while Macron was on the streets in Brazil, the French president calls the members of the council “dumb” for firing Conille.

“They are completely dumb,” Macron said in French during an exchange with a passerby.

Macron defended Conille, who after weeks of an intense standoff with the ruling nine-member council was fired last weekend and replaced by Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, a local entrepreneur. A new government was installed in Port-au-Prince days later.

A former United Nations development expert, Conille had “integrity” and France wanted him to stay, the president said.

“The prime minister was superb,” said Macron, whose views on the firing have been quietly expressed by others in the international community. “It’s terrible... They should never have removed him.”

Conille, he said, was “formidable.”

The French president also said that Haitians bare the brunt of their current crisis, where armed gangs are gaining ground in the capital, and a French medical charity, Médecins Sans Frontières/ Doctors Without Borders on Tuesday announced it was suspending its medical services due to attacks and threats from Haitian police against its staff and patients.

“It was the Haitians who destroyed Haiti,” Macron said.

Leslie Voltaire, the current president of the presidential council, did not respond to a Herald request for comment.

Macron’s comments sparked controversy online with critics rehashing the country’s history. Macron isn’t immune to criticism about Haiti, once France’s richest colony before the enslaved African population waged a 12-year revolution to win their freedom on January 1, 1804.

The exchange with Macron took place on the 221st anniversary of the Nov. 18, 1803, Battle of Vertières, the final confrontation between Napoleon Bonaparte’s army and Haiti’s revolutionary fighters that ultimately put an end to slavery.

After the new nation was declared free, it was renamed Ayiti, or Haiti, and France later demanded an exorbitant amount to compensate its former slave owners. The debt hobbled Haiti’s economy for generations.

The history of the two nations has led to a fraught relationship. France has preferred to quietly lobbying behind the scenes on Haiti’s behalf while also being one of its most vocal supporters in forums like the U.N.

On Wednesday, France was among the countries at the U.N. Security Council that expressed concerns about the intensified violence that has been gripping Haiti over the last two months. The expansion of armed gangs, which attempted to attack Haiti’s wealthy Pétion-Ville suburb on Tuesday, is exacerbating an already dire humanitarian crisis, France’s U.N. ambassador said.

“France takes notes of the appointment of Mr. Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, as PM,” said Jay Dharmadhikari, France’s new deputy permanent representative to the U.N. “It calls upon all Haitian political actors to work together to make progress on organizing elections, on combating corruption and impunity and on respecting human rights.”

The country joined in the call for the current Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission in Haiti to be transformed into a formal U.N. peacekeeping mission to get the funding needed to help the Haiti National Police take on warring gangs.

The last-minute Security Council meeting was called by China and Russia, and coincided with a new crisis in Haiti that has led to the closure of the capital’s two airports and a Federal Aviation Administration 30-day ban on all flights to Haiti.

Late Wednesday, the FAA issued a modified notice adjusting the area in Haiti where U.S. civilian aircraft and U.S. pilots can operate. The new notice prohibits operations below 10,000 feet in specified areas of Haiti until Dec. 12th. Prior to the changes, the FAA had prohibited operations in the entirety of the territory and airspace of Haiti below 10,000 feet for 30 days.

The FAA ban had grounded U.N. humanitarian flights, which restarted on Wednesday after the organization received a waiver. The U.N.’s human rights chief said that at least 150 people have been killed, 92 injured and about 20,000 forced to flee their homes over the past week.

“The latest upsurge in violence in Haiti’s capital is a harbinger of worse to come. The gang violence must be promptly halted. Haiti must not be allowed to descend further into chaos,” Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said, noting that the verified casualty toll of the gang violence so far this year is “a shocking 4,544 dead.”

During the Security Council discussions, both China and Russia acknowledged that the situation in Haiti is tragic. But they each reiterated that they do not favor the deployment of peacekeepers to the volatile country despite the support the measure has received from the U.S. and other nations, including those on the security council and in the Latin America and Caribbean region.

“Ultimately, it is up to the Haitian people themselves to get Haiti out of their predicament. No amount of external help can solve their fundamental problems,” said Geng Shuang, China’s’ deputy permanent representative on the council.

No decision was made on the peacekeeping mission, which is being pushed by the United States and Ecuador. After more than two hours of debate, Security Council members went into closed-door consultations to discuss the U.S.’s desire for an assessment by Secretary General António Guterres on what a peacekeeping mission in Haiti would look like.

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