29755: (news) Chamberlain: UN-New Spokeswoman (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By JUSTIN BERGMAN

   UNITED NATIONS, Jan 2 (AP) -- Michele Montas' husband was assassinated
six years ago in Haiti after he broadcast critical reports of the
government on his radio program. She continued the broadcasts herself until
gunmen opened fire on her home and sent her death threats, forcing her to
flee the country.
   On Tuesday, Montas began her new job on the other side of the
microphone, conducting her first media briefing as spokeswoman for U.N.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who succeeds Kofi Annan.
   Though she would have preferred to stay in Haiti, she sees her new
position as a way to further her causes in her home country and publicize
other human rights abuses around the world.
   "Working as a journalist in Haiti ... we touched people's lives on a
daily basis," she said in an interview with The Associated Press at U.N.
headquarters. "Of course, as a spokeswoman I will be talking about other
things besides Haiti. However, it's always there and it's part of me."
   Montas has been a spokeswoman before -- for the president of the U.N.
General Assembly from September 2003 until September 2004, soon after she
fled to New York.
   She looked comfortable in her new and much larger role as Ban's main
spokeswoman at Tuesday's media briefing, flashing a warm smile as she
bantered with a crowded room full of journalists and answering a barrage of
questions in her rapid-fire, accented English.
   The U.N. press corps did not go easy, peppering her with tough questions
about Ban's stance on the death penalty, the situation in Darfur and Ban's
appointments to senior U.N. positions.
   Montas began her journalism career in Haiti in the early 1970s with her
husband, Jean Dominique. Dominique's station, Radio Haiti-Inter, was
attacked several times in the 1980s and 1990s, and the couple was forced to
flee the country twice to briefly live in exile.
   Dominique, the country's most prominent anti-government journalist, was
assassinated in April 2000 after broadcasting increasingly strident
criticisms of then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's government on his
program.
   Montas took over the radio station, but shut it down in February 2003
and fled to New York after her bodyguard was gunned down in an attack on
her home and she received several death threats.
   The decision to stop broadcasting is still painful to her.
   "We all felt very strongly that we couldn't put any more lives in
danger. We had to do it, so we did it. It was not a choice," she said.
   Montas has not stopped speaking out about Dominique's slaying, though.
She helped director Jonathan Demme produce a 2003 documentary about her
husband's life called "The Agronomist."
   Media freedom groups have faulted the Haitian government for failing to
bring Dominique's killers to justice.
   Montas said the investigation has been "completely blocked" through
intimidation tactics such as the slaying of witnesses, threats against
judges and the attack on her home in Haiti.
   Whether she will eventually return to Haiti is also in doubt.
   "I would eventually want to go back. It's my country. Would the
conditions allow me to go back? At this point, no. Will it happen in the
future? I hope so," Montas said.