29798: Deibert on Montas

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

> From michaeldeibert@gmail.com:


Given the amount of energy and bile which supporters of Haiti's former
government direct at those they deem to be their adversaries, I suppose that
it was only a matter of time before the cause du jour activists, safely
ensconced away in North America and more than a few of them continuing on
the payroll - publicly or otherwise - of various disgraced Haitian political
actors under various guises, added Michele Montas to their ever-expanding
list of legitimate targets. Ms. Montas now appears to have been added to the
roll call of those at whom the most ugly and baseless vilification can be
directed (often anonymously) for daring to demand a decent country for eight
million Haitians, and not the gangster's paradise that the unscrupulous
political opportunists and their alternately avaricious and clueless foreign
and domestic advocates have attempted to force down the people's throat over
the last several years.
Having commenced visiting Haiti in 1997, and having worked there as a
journalist regularly since 2000, I was privileged in those years to watch
the immense example of resilience and courage that was displayed in the wake
of Jean Dominique's murder, not only by Ms. Montas, but by the entire staff
of Radio Haiti-Inter and the Haitian press in general, who soldiered on,
facing down very real violence in a nation where, as Ms. Montas pointed in a
March 2002 radio broadcast ,"principles and moral guidelines are compromised
every day by political opportunism," a trait intimately familiar that those
who attack Ms. Montas now. And as she also commented that day, in what may
be a useful history lesson for those whose recent interest in Haiti has come
not from a sincere desire, born of humility, to understand this endlessly
complex country and its resilient people, but rather as part of a larger
facile project to advance pompous theories and rhetoric learned in the
safety of universities and spouted endlessly and impotently from behind
computer screens (making sure, as always, to steer well clear of any danger
themselves), Ms. Montas explained how "those ideals shared by Jean
(Dominique), including a generous but rigorous socialism, respect for
liberties within the framework of democracy, nationalist independence, based
on a long history of resistance, those ideals that Jean used to call
'Lavalas' are trampled every day in this balkanized state where weapons make
right, and where hunger for power and money takes precedence over the
general welfare."

I suggest that we do not surrender the country to such wolves as now
surround it without a fight, and I would like to take this moment to again
salute Michele Montas, the staff of Radio Haiti-Inter and all the courageous
street-level journalists whom I was lucky enough to work with in Haiti over
the years. They have given more to their country than those who now vilify
them ever could or would, in some cases all that they had. As Jean Dominique
himself once said, paraphrasing Shakespeare, the truth will always make the
devils' face blush.

Sincerely,
Michael Deibert


--
Michael Deibert
Journalist/Journaliste/Periodista
www.michaeldeibert.com
www.michaeldeibert.blogspot.com