14894: (Chamberlain) Haiti radio station stops broadcasts over threats (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Michael Deibert

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb  21 (Reuters) - Almost three years after
the murder of her journalist husband, the head of one of Haiti's most
popular radio stations said on Friday the private station was going off the
air indefinitely because of threats against its staff.
     "We will shut down tomorrow because we have been subject to constant
threats," Michele Montas said in a statement read on the air on Radio Haiti
Inter early on Friday morning.
     "We have lost three lives -- Jean Dominique, Jean-Claude Louissaint
and Maxime Seide -- and we refuse to lose another one."
     Dominique, Montas' husband and Haiti's most famous journalist, was
gunned down as he arrived at the station along with Louissaint, the
station's caretaker, on April 3, 2000.
     Seide, Montas' bodyguard, was killed when armed men attacked her home
on Dec. 25 2002.
     Radio Haiti Inter airs sharp political commentary and investigative
reporting, and was one of the first stations to feature programming in
Haiti's Creole language rather than French.
     "We don't know exactly when we will go back on the air," Montas said.
"But we will not take exile for a third time, because we have only freedom
of expression as a weapon."
     Dominique and Montas were forced to flee Haiti twice as a result of
attacks on Radio Haiti Inter, once during the dictatorship of Jean-Claude
Duvalier in 1980 and again under the military government that ruled Haiti
in the early 1990s.
     Earlier this week, another main station, Radio Metropole, stopped
broadcasting news for 24 hours to protest attacks against its journalists
by supporters of President Jean-Betrand Aristide, who became Haiti's first
freely elected president in 1991 and began his second term in 2001.
     The investigation into the Dominique slaying has become an emotional
flashpoint in this impoverished Caribbean nation of 8 million. Three judges
investigating the case have quit, saying they have been subjected to
threats, pressure and obstruction from people close to the Aristide
government.
     Brignol Lindor, a journalist in the provincial city of Petit Goave,
was hacked to death by a group of Aristide supporters in December 2001.