#3983: Haitian's widow vows to press on... (fwd)

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From:nozier@tradewind.net

Published Tuesday, May 30, 2000, in the Miami Herald 
 Haitian's widow vows to press on
 Slain radio host's station resumes freedom legacy  BY DON BOHNING 


 PORT-AU-PRINCE -- The red and blue banners flapping in the breeze above
the teeming streets of Port-au-Prince tell the story: Jean Dominique
Fell. The Fight Continues, proclaims one. Jean Dominique. You Are Gone
But Your Ideas Will Go On, says another. Early the morning of April 3,
an unknown assassin gunned down Dominique, stilling the always
controversial and sometimes confrontational voice of Haiti's
 most famous radio journalist, as he arrived at Radio Haiti Inter in
suburban Petionville. But his wife Michele Montas, his partner in the
radio station as well as in life, vows to make sure that Dominique's
fight continues and that his ideas survive. ``Considering what I have
lost, there is no other way for me but to go forward,'' Montas said in a
recent interview in her second-floor office on the busy Delmas
 street. ``What was important to Jean was that this station, which has
been running since 1972, continued to do what he wanted for this
station; what he wanted for this country, emphasizing the same things we
always emphasized.'' She added, ``I think it is important to stress that
the issues we were doing investigative reporting about and Jean was
commenting about, those reports still will continue.'' She acknowledged,
however, that ``we cannot hope to replace Jean.'' Nor can Haiti, where
one foreign journalist described Dominique as the country's ``Walter
Cronkite.'' ``There is no doubt in my mind that his death was a huge
loss that resonated outside of Haiti as well, with the communities in
New York, Miami and elsewhere,'' said Jocelyn McCalla, the Haitian-born
director of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights. ``Jean was a
pioneer as a journalist,'' said McCalla, noting that in the mid-1970s
 he was the first to begin broadcasts in creole, the language of the
majority of the population. ``Of all the journalists I knew in Haiti, he
was more committed to freedom of expression and freedom of speech and,
even though he disagreed, he allowed dissident views to be broadcast.''
 McCalla said he was concerned that Dominique's assassination, coming at
the beginning of a cycle of violence leading up to recent elections, has
created ``fear on the part of remaining journalists to be overly
cautious in reporting the news.'' Radio Haiti Inter returned to the air
under Montas' direction, May 3, World Press Freedom Day and a month to
the day after Dominique's assassination. The first 10 days were
dedicated to rebroadcasts of Dominique's commentaries.
 ``I just announced that we were going to start again on the same line
that Jean had always run this station. . . . We were going to prove that
nothing had changed and that Jean was still alive.''

 NATIONAL FUNERAL 

 President Rene Preval, a Dominique friend of 20 years, declared
Dominique's a National Funeral, the highest designation in Haiti for a
final rite. It was held in the 18,000 seat soccer stadium, and later his
ashes were scattered in the Artibonite Valley, home of the Haitian
peasants he so frequently championed and defended. ``I realized after
Jean died how important he had been to people in this country,''
 Montas said. ``We took Jean's ashes to the Artibonite where several
people had asked us to come and talk about Jean.'' After the ashes were
scattered in the river, Montas said, the peasants said that
 you could find ``Jean's energy in every single grain of rice produced
by the Artibonite Valley.''  Montas, a 1969 graduate of Columbia
University Journalism School in New York, met Dominique in 1973 after
her return to Haiti. They began living together then and were married in
1983 in New York after the station was shut down and they
 were exiled in 1980 by President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier.

 They returned to a triumphal reception and reopened the station
immediately after Duvalier fled the country in February 1986. ``I have
been in charge of the newsroom for years, but Jean was the dynamic force
behind us,'' Montas said. But the pressures continued under a successive
military government. The evidence is visible on the bullet-riddled
facade of the station's studios on Delmas street. It occurred in
November 1987 as the military terrorized the country to prevent the
first democratic elections after the fall of Duvalier. At least three
dozen people died, many of them murdered as they stood in line to vote.

 EXILED AGAIN 

 A 1991 military coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide sent them
packing into New York exile again, returning to Haiti for the last time
following the 1994 U.S.-led invasion that made Aristide's return
possible. The one thing that has changed since Dominique's death is
security, provided by the Haitian National Police, both at the station
and at Montas' home in Petionville. Dominique, said Montas, ``was always
against armed men guarding the station. His idea was that a radio
station, since it was supposed to be open to the public as the media in
general, it should not be guarded by weapons.'' She has ``no clear
view'' of who might have been responsible for Dominique's assassination.
She said she believes the killer will probably be found, ``but maybe not
the one who paid for the crime.'' In terms of security, she added,
things were ``harsher but easier'' under previous authoritarian regimes
``to the extent that you knew where the bullets were coming from. Now it
is much more difficult . . . and I don't know where Jean's assassination
came from.''