25480: FW: Wharram - news - Respected opinion-maker, foe of Aristide flees Haiti amid threats (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

> From Bruce Wharram <bruce.wharram@sev.org>

	Posted on Fri, Jun. 24, 2005

Respected opinion-maker, foe of Aristide flees Haiti amid threats

BY JACQUELINE CHARLES
Knight Ridder Newspapers

MIAMI - (KRT) - As one of Haiti's most prominent investigative journalists,
Nancy Roc is no stranger to assassination attempts, death threats or
harassment.

But when attackers recently shot up her Port-au-Prince home and her closest
friends got anonymous calls saying she would soon be kidnapped, Roc decided
she had seen and heard enough. The woman who rarely runs scared packed her
bags and promptly left for Miami.

Not even her bullet-proof bedroom door or her 24-hour body guards were
enough to make her feel safe in a country where kidnappings have become the
crime du jour following the Feb. 29, 2004, ouster of former Haitian
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. "The calls were saying - through people
who were connected to me - to tell me, that my kidnapping was a question of
hours, and they were going to kidnap me at any cost," said Roc, who took the
last American Airlines flight out of Haiti for Miami a week ago.

The alleged purported kidnappers: drug dealers.

"I wonder if it was not used as a diversion?" said the award-winning
journalist and author, keenly aware that even in Haiti, where drug smugglers
have taken over, things are rarely what they seem and rumors of pending
threats are proven to silence opponents.

No matter who is behind the rumors, Roc said she knows her life is in
danger. Her decision to leave Haiti illuminates the fear gripping Haitians
just months before the country's eight million people are scheduled to elect
a new president along with 30 senators, 90 representatives, 133 mayors and
266 vice mayors - two for every mayor position.

"The city is a hostage," said Roc, whose predominantly French-language radio
show Metropolis on Port-au-Prince-based Radio Metropole has made her a
household name.

"Haiti is a jail without bars; a country with no values. We need collective
psychiatric help," she said.

Diplomatic sources and Roc's boss, radio station owner Richard Widmaier,
confirmed the kidnapping plot rumors. But they are careful to point out that
journalists in Haiti are in no more danger than average citizens. They say
this is not the same kind of anti-press war that occurred under Aristide, a
time when several Haitian journalists were killed or forced to flee into
exile.

"A lot of those who participated in demonstrations in the overthrow of
Aristide last year, some in the media, are also being targeted," said
Widmaier, himself the target of a botched kidnapping two weeks ago.

"We have a situation here that is more similar to what you see happening in
Afghanistan and Iraq. It's terrorism," he said. "You have guys who pretend
to be supporters of former President Aristide, attacking people in the
streets, burning cars and kidnapping people."

As many as 200 people have been kidnapped in recent months in Port-au-Prince
as part of the mounting crime wave in the capital city.

Reached by telephone late Wednesday, Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue
declined to discuss Roc or her claims. But a Haitian police spokeswoman
could not immediately confirm or deny her allegations.

Roc is an easy target. As Aristide's former press secretary, she gained
notoriety as one of his staunchest critics after his return from exile in
1994.

The criticism nearly cost Roc her life.

She blames Haiti's decaying society on Aristide, Latortue's interim
government and the international community's failure to stabilize the
country following the former president's departure early last year. "The
transition has been a failure. Latortue didn't listen to the people on the
field. He was incompetent in his leadership and he's taking his orders from
the international community," Roc said.

Adding to Haiti's problems, she said, is a weak U.N. peacekeeping force,
corruption in the Haitian National Police and the "private sector mafia"
that wanted Aristide out but did little else to rescue the country.

"The violence is going to blow up in our faces," said Roc, who said she has
no plans to return to Haiti anytime soon.

---

JOURNALISTS UNDER ATTACK

The last high-profile Haitian journalist to flee:

Haitian journalist Michele Montas remains in self-imposed exile in the
United States, where she is working for the United Nations.

Montas left Haiti in February 2003 following a failed assassination attempt
on her life.

Montas is the widow of Jean Dominique, the revered Haitian journalist who
was gunned down in the courtyard of his Port-au-Prince Haiti Inter radio
station in 2000. She became the subject of Oscar-winning director Jonathan
Demme's film, The Agronomist.

Dominique's murder remains unsolved.

Montas shut down the station after gunmen tried to kill her as she made her
way home from a Christmas 2002 dinner. Her bodyguard was killed instead.

---

© 2005, The Miami Herald.

Visit The Miami Herald Web edition on the World Wide Web at
http://www.herald.com

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.



© 2005 KRT Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.kansascity.com