21349: (Chamberlain) Widow of Slain Haitian Hero Seeks Justice (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

Widow of Slain Haitian Hero Seeks Justice

By Evelyn Leopold



UNITED NATIONS, April 15 (Reuters) - Michele Montas has a day job as
spokesperson for the U.N. General Assembly president.

But she spends the rest of her waking hours defending the crusading
journalism she practiced in Haiti -- and that her husband, Jean Dominique,
paid for with his life.

Their years together are captured in the just-released Jonathan Demme
documentary, "The Agronomist," named after Dominique's first profession
that gave him his first insight into the subsistence existence of Haiti's
peasant population.

Dominique then spent three decades modeling a radio station, Radio Haiti,
into an instrument for political change from the years of ever-recurring
horrors.

"I am with the film constantly," Montas said. "Jean was an incredibly
strong person. There was so much energy in him. The joke was that even
though we had power shortages, you could just plug the radio on him and it
would work."

An opponent of the U.S.-backed Duvalier dictatorships and their Tonton
Macoutes henchmen who tortured and jailed him, Dominique campaigned for the
idealistic priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide as president. He then became
President Aristide's constant critic.

Dominique was shot to death, execution style, at the age of 70, on April 3,
2000, as he was about to enter Radio Haiti's garage, just outside of the
capital of Port-au-Prince.

The film suggests that a former police chief, who had demanded air time and
organized threatening demonstrations against Dominique, was involved in the
killing.

The tall, elegant Montas, now 57, is now addressing audiences at special
screenings and premieres of the film in New York, Amsterdam, Geneva and
London.

Sometime she appears with Demme who had worked on the documentary for
decades, before and between his directing of acclaimed films such as
"Philadelphia" and "Silence of the Lambs." He was first enchanted by Haiti
nearly 20 years ago, by its art and music and the cycles of political
torment.

Over and over again Montas watches herself on the screen take Dominique's
ashes to the Artibonite Valley, where he was adored by farmers, and pour
them into the river.
"It is difficult," she said in an interview at the United Nations, where
few know her story because, she said, "I separate my two hats. I usually
don't talk about it."

One of the last scenes in the film shows Montas keeping the radio going
with a defiant broadcast. She says Jean is alive, seen in the hills and
rivers of Haiti.

She played an audio tape of Dominique, who says: "They try everything -- to
gnaw at us, to bury us, to electrocute us, to drown us, to drain us. It's
been going on for more than 50 years. Is there a reason for it to stop? Yes
-- one: Things must change in Haiti. For freedom of the press: Radio Haiti,
at the service of the Haitian people."

After that, Montas opened her broadcast each morning with "Bonjour Jean"
and recited the number of days since his death without anyone brought to
justice.

"And then I could no longer count the days," Montas said.

She left the country with three close colleagues on Feb. 22, 2003, after
death threats against increased each day. "I felt we could no longer
continue. We had already paid a high enough price," she said.

Montas and Dominique come from Haiti's elite and became a champion of the
poor. She graduated in 1968 from the University of Maine, where she felt
like she was "a typical American girl" and was crowned homecoming queen.
She received a masters degree in journalism from Columbia University a year
later.

Their love story began when she returned to Haiti and he recruited her as a
journalist to the radio station. Their lives together mirror the horrific
history of Haiti.

First came expulsion from Haiti by the Tonton Macoutes in 1980. She was
shoved on a plane to New York while Dominique took refuge in the Venezuelan
Embassy before joining her. Six years later, in 1986, they returned as
heroes, with 60,000 people waiting at the airport after dictator
Jean-Claude Duvalier was thrown out of office.

Then came the election of Aristide in 1990 and a second forced three-year
exile in New York in 1991 when the president was overthrown by the
military. When Aristide was restored to power in 1994, husband and wife
returned to Haiti.    And now? Montas says Aristide had to leave office
because he had tolerated "too many deaths, too many killings."

But she sees nothing but disorder in her country with the former Macoutes,
the leaders of the 1991 coup and militia, many of whom should be in jail,
trying to run things again.

Montas takes heart that among the many unsolved crimes in Haiti, the case
of Dominique has stayed alive. The peasant leaders in particular "felt that
with Jean's death they were the ones who had lost the most."

"People who were not journalists ask 'Why did you do it?"' Never does a
journalist ask me that because they know why I did it," Montas said after a
recent screening at the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York.

"We all do things that are unsafe, that are dangerous but we do it because
it is part of being a journalist, part of the territory," she said.

But she says she will stay in exile a bit longer. "I know how to wait. Six
years one time, four years another time."