Fighting back in Haiti
By Charles Arthur Posted Apr 1 2003
On Christmas Day of 2002, gunmen attacked the home of Michele Montas, the widow of murdered journalist, Jean Dominique. Montas had taken over for her husband as director of Radio Haiti Inter when he was shot dead in April 2000, and since then has campaigned tirelessly to bring her husband’s killers to justice. She was unhurt but her bodyguard, Maxime Seide, was shot dead.
In February, six journalists from the central city of Gonaïves, who went into hiding in November, left the country claiming their lives were in danger as long as they remained in Haiti.
These incidents were just the latest in a string that is putting freedom of expression in Haiti under a severe strain. Since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s Lavalas Family Party won general elections in May 2000, the political scene has become increasingly volatile. Radio journalists are being threatened and attacked by members of pro-government gangs. These partisans claim that most of the Haitian media are working with the opposition political parties to discredit the government and fan the flames of public discontent.
Against this backdrop, and in a country with over 50 percent illiteracy where radio news reports do much to influence popular perceptions, Haiti’s journalists have found themselves in an uncomfortable position.
The growing tendency for journalists to be targets in a violent political arena prompted a group of journalists to revive the defunct Association of Haitian Journalists (Association des Journalistes Haitiens – AJH) in order to organize and defend themselves.
The head of the AJH is Guy Delva, a former Voice of America correspondent who now works for the country’s only daily newspaper, Le Nouvelliste. He explained how the association — that had been moribund since the period of the 1991-94 military regime — was reconstituted.
“After the murder of Jean Dominique, most of the country’s journalists met and consulted with each other,” Delva said. “It took a long time because we are journalists in a divided society, and some wouldn’t even speak to each other. These divisions made us weak and, of course, favored sectors who wanted to restrict press freedom.”
Since the AJH was reborn in January 2001, it has played a prominent role in highlighting human rights abuses against journalists and financing legal actions against those responsible.
Delva highlights the case of a journalist who was beaten up by a policeman in the town of Léogâne and the AJH’s efforts to press charges.
“It was first the time in Haiti’s history that a uniformed policeman had to testify in court, and the judge wasn’t happy,” he said. “To stop him from ordering the policeman’s release without charge, we had to get 20 journalists from the capital, Port-au-Prince, go to the court in Léogâne by bus and make our presence felt outside.”
Despite this and other efforts to spur Haiti’s lethargic judicial system into action, the AJH has faced criticism from government opponents for attending a May 2001 meeting with President Aristide. Delva remembers the accusations that he was doing a deal with the government, but he is adamant that the AJH was, and is, independent.
“We are one of the government’s biggest critics, but we are not in opposition to it,” he said. “We will condemn it if it limits press freedom, but at the same time, we will talk to it and anyone else in a context of mutual respect.”
The AJH has continued to walk a tightrope between proactively engaging with the authorities and making criticisms that are construed as politically motivated. This task became all the more difficult following the now notorious incidents in the town of Petit-Goâve on Dec. 3, 2001. In an altercation between rival political gangs, a government supporter was seriously wounded. In revenge a crowd grabbed a local journalist, known for airing the views of opposition politicians, and killed him with machetes.
Although members of a pro-government gang have since admitted their part in the murder of Radio Echo’s Brignol Lindor, and despite pressure from the AJH and international bodies such as Reporters Without Borders, neither the police nor the judicial authorities have yet to bring them to justice. This case is one in a string of other incidents in which gangs believed to be paid by the government to threaten and rough up journalists.
In the year following Lindor’s murder, the AJH recorded 64 cases of aggression against journalists, more than half of them carried out by members of pro-government street gangs. After stone-throwing attacks on radio stations and telephoned death threats that followed an alleged coup attempt in December 2001, over a dozen journalists fled the country. These incidents have cost Aristide’s government support at home and helped convince foreign donors to withhold development aid.
Maryse Balthazar, coordinator of the Association of Haitian Women Journalists (Amicale des Femmes Haitiennes Journalistes – AMIFEJH), is sure of what freedom of the press should mean.
“It implies being able to criticize the actions of the government and to highlight the good things. The government must admit its errors so that the country has a chance to move forward.”
Haiti’s bitter political struggle has put Haiti’s journalists right in the front line of accusations that they are paid to slant their news reports to favor one side or the other. For example, in October 2001, the Press Workers’ Association in Gonaïves announced a defamation suit against a Mochrenah Party official who accused them of taking bribes to praise President Aristide when he visited the city.
For Balthazar the root of this problem is clear.
“It’s the low wages journalists are paid that works against their independence of mind, ” she said. “It is absolutely essential to raise rates of pay because nobody is safe from corruption, for example by altering the news in return for money in order to supplement the monthly income.”
The AMIFEJH is part of the National Haitian Press Workers’ Union (SNTPH), which is affiliated with the International Federation of Journalists. The union has yet to try to force employers to increase wages. It remains hamstrung by the fact that many of the country’s journalists work part-time and by full-time journalists’ reticence to threaten strike action in a country with a national unemployment rate of around 75 percent.
With difficult times ahead of them, the Haitian journalists’ organizations, such as the AMIFEJH and the AJH, say they are counting on international solidarity and rapid response to call for protests against violations of journalists’ rights.