28886: RV (comment) RSF, IRI, Dominique (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

> From revolisyonè vre (revolisyone@hotmail.com):

Jeb Sprague and Diana Barahona's article "Reporters Without Borders and 
Washington’s Coups" huffs and puffs about revelations regarding the 
press-freedom group Reporters sans frontières and the N.E.D. and I.R.I. 
However, if one looks at RSF's own website under the "Income and expenditure" 
section here:

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=17794

The reader notices the following quote:

"Grants from private foundations (Open Society Foundation, Center for a Free 
Cuba, Fondation de France, National Endowment for Democracy) were slightly up, 
due to the Africa project funded by the NED and payment by Center for a Free 
Cuba for a reprint of the banned magazine De Cuba."

So if RSF admits they receive funding from the National Endowment for 
Democracy, what is the revelation here, exactly?

As to the statement that "Jean Dominique was murdered in April of 2000, many 
months before Aristide was even elected," have Sprague and Barahona ever heard 
of the Camille brothers? How about Philippe Markington, the member of the 
Aristide Foundation for Democracy who was arrested as one of the participants 
in the Dominique killing? Or the statements of individuals such as Michele 
Montas, Mario Andresol and Claudy Gassant - people with firsthand knowledge of 
the case - that Aristide was personally responsible for blocking the 
investigation into the murder? Did Sprague and Barahona do any research at all 
before rushing into print with this, or did just simply omit these facts 
because they found them inconvenient?

Approaching the second anniversary of Dominique's slaying, in her editorial on 
Radio Haiti-Inter titled "Is Another Assassination of Jean Dominique about to 
Take Place?" on March 3, 2002, Michele Montas said that "All the resources, 
i.e. logistical, technical, and financial made available in this judicial case 
by the preceding government (i.e. the first Préval government) have been 
cancelled." This is just one of many damming charges made in the editorial.

The full text of Ms. Montas' statement can be read here:

https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/haiti-news/2006-April/001457.html

Speaking to Radio Signal FM in December 2002, Mario Andresol, then in exile 
under Aristide, now Préval's police chief, said that "Under the current 
(Aristide) government in Haiti, there will be no progress in the Dominique 
case."

The full text of Andresol's interview can be read here:

http://www.haitipolicy.org/content/489.htm

Speaking to Newsday's Ron Howell in January 2004, Claudy Gassant said that 
"With President Jean-Bertrand Aristide nothing will happen precisely because he 
has done everything to block any effort to find who was involved in killing 
Jean Dominique."

The full text of Gassant's interview can be read here:

http://www.haitipolicy.org/content/1494.htm?PHPSESSID=c0b17a109d8ada1e66d669fd868903fd

Would Sprague and Barahona have us believe that Montas, Andresol and Gassant 
(and by extension René Préval himself) are themselves compromised because they 
sought justice in a case whose tentacles pointed at the very heart of the 
government that Sprague and Barahona have appeared to make it their mission - 
at the expense of an honest presentation of the facts - to defend?

RV

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