Press freedom returns to Haiti
Monday, July 12, 2004
PARIS, France: Press freedom has
dramatically improved in Haiti since the fall of President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide earlier this year, a Reporters Without Borders fact-finding mission
has said. It warned however that rebel forces
still controlling half the country, as well as fervent supporters of the
ex-president, remained a threat to journalists and that if the government
failed to disarm them before elections planned for next year, the media might
become the target of new violence. The
report, "Press Freedom Returns: A Gain to Be Nurtured," said journalists
working in the provinces were being forced to censor themselves for fear of
the rebels, while those working the capital had very much more freedom.
The Haitian media has lived a nightmare since the April 2000 murder of the
country's best-known journalist, Jean Dominique. Aristide's street gangs
physically attacked journalists and radio stations and in early 2002 Aristide
was added to the Reporters Without Borders worldwide list of "predators of
press freedom." A few weeks before, a second journalist, Brignol Lindor, was
murdered and after Aristide protected the killers from punishment, the media
worked in an atmosphere of constant fear. The
report, after a 7-11 June visit to Haiti, said the new rulers were taking a
very different attitude to the murders of Dominique and Lindor and seemed
determined to solve the cases. If they did so, it would "show that a return to
the rule of law is under way for the whole society as well as for journalists,
who have no defence against armed groups."
The press freedom organisation welcomed the
"firm promises" made to the fact-finding mission and also awaited further
information on the case of Spanish journalist Ricardo Ortega, who was shot
dead, apparently by Aristide supporters, during an attack on an anti-Aristide
demonstration on 7 March. The report said
that though the media was now much freer, the task of consolidating the gains
- through disarmament and a return to the rule of law - was "enormous and goes
beyond the issue of press freedom. Nothing is yet certain," it warned. But for
the moment, one journalist told the mission, "we can breathe again."
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