MEDIA-HAITI: Journalists Confront Dire Situation

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Bert Wilkinson

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 25 2002 (IPS) - Sitting upright and looking tense in a hotel room on the outskirts of this capital, top Haitian journalists Guy Delva and Leopold Berlanger do their best to explain just how dangerous life has become for the free press here over the past two years.

Since mid-2000, people apparently linked to the government of President Jean Bertrand Aristide, the former grassroots Catholic priest turned two-term president, have executed two prominent media practitioners.

Since December, at least 15 others have been forced to flee the 27,000-square-kilometre country and to seek asylum in France, Canada, and the United States – refuge to large numbers of the Haitian diaspora.

Delva and Berlanger believe that a recent string of attacks on journalists, radio stations and other media outlets that are seen either as independent or as anti-government, stems from the growing power and influence of a media community that is now shaking off decades of self and official censorship.

Unaccustomed to journalists challenging official versions of events and to the proliferation of radio and television call-in programmes, supporters of Aristide have turned their wrath on the media, publicly threatening them, beating and accosting them on the streets, and trying to run their vehicles off roads.

Police officers said to be assigned to the National Palace also have pointed cocked rifles at journalists.

“Only people who are practising here would understand what we are going through,” says Delva, sweating slightly, pulling at his tie, and recounting a recent incident in which a store clerk bearing Delva’s last name was savagely beaten by pro-government activists in downtown Port-au-Prince.

One pro-government radio station even announced Delva’s death, prompting a flurry of frantic calls from worried relatives and friends in the United States.

“They mistook the fellow for me because he had the same last name,” he says. “You must remember that we have lost two of our brothers to political assassinations already. It is very serious and it is for real.”

The more relaxed Belanger adds, “Our lives are in real danger. What we are telling you is true.”

The media union has written the Trinidad and Tobago-based Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM) asking it to intervene and to get the message out that authorities have them in their sights – for intimidation, harassment and assassination, all with a view to eventually silence them.

But Jonas Petit, a spokesman for the governing Fanmi Lavalas Party, disputes this, saying that there is no systematic targeting of journalists. “That is not true at all,” he says. “There have been some incidents and we are investigating them.”

In one case early last month, a vehicle carrying staffers from Radio Signal FM was almost pushed off the road by one registered to the National Palace. Its occupants reportedly hurled expletives at the media team and pointed rifles.

Delva and Berlanger agree that, by and large, the media here have managed to operate freely but note that the atmosphere of insecurity is stifling.

Of the estimated 250 radio stations, only one is state-owned but dozens more are linked to officialdom.

Like no other professional journalists’ body in the region, the Haitian association is forced to take private criminal action against people involved in beatings and harassment of its members. This is because police often ignore their complaints or allow suspects to move around society with impunity, they say.

“We have seven cases before the courts,” says Delva. “We have given authorities information about the killings and other acts. Nothing has been done. If the government is not behind this, then why the silence? The silence is interpreted by popular organisations as a green light to attack journalists for doing their work.”

St Lucia Foreign Minister Julian Hunte, on a Caribbean Community (CARICOM) mission here earlier this month, told journalists: “There is a very negative atmosphere for journalists in Haiti. I plan to tell the CARICOM leaders about it. It is clear to me that the pillars of Haitian society are weak, the judiciary, the police and the system of governance. The problems you have are that of a young democracy.”

Nevertheless, Caribbean leaders paid hardly any attention to the plight of the press at a subsequent summit in Belize. Instead, they called on the international community to release more than 600 million dollars in suspended aid because of the deteriorating political, social, and economic situation in the region’s most populous state.

Regional foreign ministers repeated the call in talks with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell but he flatly refused, saying that Aristide has not done enough to guarantee an atmosphere of security and to deal with electoral and other reforms dating back to May 2000 elections.

The killing of radio station executive Jean Leopold Dominique occurred in 2000 and that of radio journalist Brignol Lindor last December. No one has been charged in the murders.

Delva and Berlanger say the atmosphere has worsened in the past two months.

The Ecumenical Centre for Human Rights supports their assertion in a special report on the deteriorating situation since Dec. 17. That was the day on which the government said it repulsed an attempted coup in which ten people including law enforcement officials died.

The political opposition, civil society groups, and the media all heaped scorn on that account, saying the events had been contrived to provide a pretext for the government to crack down on them.

In the aftermath, according to the Ecumenical Centre’s report, Lavalas partisans turned their anger on the media, the opposition, civil society, and human rights activists.

Radio stations were burned and looted, as were the offices and homes of opposition officials. Government supporters pulled aside journalists at gunpoint. Workers from Radio Vision 2000 were forced to shout in public, “Long live Aristide”.

Earlier this month, jailed journalist Jennet Morin was released from detention after the association vouched he would appear in court. He was not even told what charges he faced. He works for Radio Magik Stereo FM, one apparently out of favour with the authorities.