21472: (Hermantin)Miami-Herald-A stilled voice: 'Things must change in Haiti' (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Thu, Apr. 22, 2004


COMMENTARY/JIM DEFEDE


A stilled voice: 'Things must change in Haiti'


The Agronomist, the latest film by Academy Award-winning director Jonathan
Demme, opens with the voice of Jean Dominique, Haiti's most famous
journalist.

''They try everything,'' Jean says during one of his daily radio programs,
``to gnaw at us, to bury us, to electrocute us, to drown us, to drain us.''

The sound of a toilet flushing is heard on the program, followed by Jean's
distinct laugh. ''It's been going on for more than 50 years,'' he continues,
``and why should it stop? They can still try to crush us; to machine-gun us;
to ignore, slander, bully and seduce us; to deflate, empty and distort us.''

Again there is the sound of Jean's unmistakable laugh.

''It's been going on for more than 50 years,'' he says. ``Is there a reason
for it to stop? Yes, one. Things must change in Haiti.''

It's not entirely clear from the movie when that radio clip was produced.
Probably sometime in the late '80s or early '90s.

But as is often the case with Haiti, the realities vary little with time.
The movie, a rough cut of which was screened last year during the Miami Film
Festival, opens this week in theaters across the country.

Demme focuses on the life and death of Jean Dominique, gunned down on April
3, 2000, in the courtyard of his beloved station, Radio Haiti Inter. Michele
Montas, Dominique's wife, was in Miami this week for a showing of the film
and to be the featured speaker for the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center's
annual dinner.

She said Wednesday that even with the departure of Haiti's president,
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and the advent of foreign troops, ``lawlessness and
impunity rule the land.''

The current government, backed by the United States, has made little effort
to round up convicted killers and human rights abusers who were set free in
recent months, she said. Instead, the country's new prime minister refers to
them as ''freedom fighters'' while others in his government suggest pardons
for previous acts of mass murder.

There is no real central authority in Haiti. Instead, there are only
well-armed factions that control various parts of the country. Pro- and
anti-Aristide gangs reign in sections of the capital, along with ghosts of
the distant and recent past, the Duvalierists and the Macoutes, the army
officers and the members of FRAPH.

''They all are there,'' Montas told me Wednesday. ``They all want a share of
power.''

I asked her what she thought of Aristide being forced out of the country.
''Personally, I felt it was necessary that he left,'' she said. ``The spiral
of violence was such, and the entrenched positions were such, that I didn't
think a political solution was possible.''

Montas believes Aristide lost the support of the people when he began using
armed gangs to try to stay in power. Instead of maintaining power, he fueled
an opposition set on ousting him. In the end, most Haitians refused to take
sides. ''They were no longer going to defend Aristide even though they were
also not willing to support the opposition,'' she said. ``I think many
people just withdrew. They just wanted the violence to end.''

She, too, became frustrated with Aristide. For the longest time, she said,
she did not believe that Aristide had anything to do with her husband's
murder. ''Now I'm not so sure,'' she told me. She wonders if he created a
climate in Haiti where Jean's murder was an inevitable consequence by not
speaking out against violence.

Montas fled Haiti shortly after gunmen tried to kill her as she returned
home from Christmas dinner in 2002. One of her bodyguards was killed. She
now lives in New York and works for the United Nations. Does she still have
hope for Haiti's future?

''It is a difficult question, but I have made a habit out of hope,'' she
says. ``So I guess I cling onto it. To me, there are enough resources within
the Haitian people for us to bounce back. But it is getting more and more
difficult to bounce back.''

As Jean Dominique said: Things must change in Haiti.

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