Haiti

HAITI Violations of press freedom continued during the last six months. The most serious incident was the assassination on April 3 of Haiti’s most prominent journalist and political commentator, Radio Haiti Inter owner Jean Leopold Dominique. The incident shook the international community and constituted the strongest blow in the last half year against the press in the impoverished Caribbean nation. In the last days of his life, Dominique had criticized “political sectors that prevented the advance of democracy” in his country. He was killed alongside his bodyguard, Jean-Claude Louissaint, as they were about to enter the radio station in the Delmas district of Port-au-Prince. The existence of the so-called “zenglendos” ― armed criminal groups acting on behalf of certain political and economic sectors in the guise, sometimes, of being members of community organizations ― pose the main threat to press freedom in Haiti. At the beginning of June, heavily armed, hooded men painted slogans on the walls of private radio station Vision 2000 and seriously threatened newsroom employees. The raid followed threatening and offensive phone calls which compelled two radio station employees to leave the country out of fear for their safety. In their attacks, the “zenglendos” stated that the station’s editor, Leopold Belanger “is a renowned macout who supported the Duvalierist sector and prevents the country’s democratic advance.” In August, unidentified gunmen hurled a firebomb at the National Television of Haiti. damaging the installations. In June, police officers beat the correspondent of Radio National of Haiti and seized his tape recorder in Leogan, about 20 miles south of the capital. This case, together with another violent assault on a journalist from the Haiti Progrès newspaper, is being tried in court. On April 4, the private Radio Unité station was sabotaged by hooded, heavily armed men who stole transmitters and destroyed much of the recording studios and electrical installations. The station, located in the central Haitian Artibonite province, had become the voice of peasants who campaigned for agrarian reform. A similar assault occurred on May 3, World Press Freedom Day, on the community radio station Vwa Peyizan Sid (Voice of the Peasants of the South), directed by a Roman Catholic priest, the Rev. Yves Edmon. During the first week of June, the private radio station Horizon PM, issued an open nationwide alert, noting that its editor and several of its employees had received anonymous verbal threats. In most cases, the journalists and news organizations have been attacked because of their reporting on drug trafficking, administrative corruption, the linking of certain political sectors with the past dictatorial regime.