22636: (Chamberlain) Reporters Without Borders on press freedom in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

(6 July 04)



HAITI


Press freedom returns:  a gain to be nurtured

Fact-finding mission reports



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 said today.

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."