(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, RSF protested his supporters’ threats to five local journalists, including Guyler Delva, secretary-general of the Haitian Journalists’ Association.”We ask that you firmly condemn these threats and their authors and guarantee the safety of journalists,” RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard urged. He added that RSF would hold […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, RSF protested his supporters’ threats to five local journalists, including Guyler Delva, secretary-general of the Haitian Journalists’ Association.”We ask that you firmly condemn these threats and their authors and guarantee the safety of journalists,” RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard urged. He added that RSF would hold the Haitian government responsible for the fate of the five reporters. The organisation denounced “the growing atmosphere of terror in Haiti.”
RSF has learned that on 21 January 2002, members of the organisation Youth People’s Power (Jeunesse Pouvoir Populaire, JPP), which has ties to Aristide, gave Delva forty-eight hours to withdraw his legal complaint against JPP leader René Civil. They threatened to otherwise “teach him a lesson,” and added that he would face the wrath of all the other “popular organisations.” Delva lodged a complaint against Civil on 18 January after he threatened the journalist on a 15 January radio programme, accusing him of being “in the pay of foreigners” and “betraying his fellow Haitians.” Delva said that Civil’s words on the air – “Thank you Guyler Delva, thank you, thank you, Guyler Delva” – contained hidden threats in the Haitian Creole language. On 11 January, Figaro Désir, leader of the pro-Aristide grassroots organisation Bale Wouze (Clean Sweep), called Delva “a traitor in the service of white foreigners” and threatened to have him “necklaced” (a euphemism for setting people on fire). Désir retracted his threats on 21 January, saying that his earlier remarks had been misinterpreted.
In addition, four provincial journalists have fled to the capital and are in hiding after being threatened by government supporters. They include Charité André and Rémy Jean of Radio Eben-Enzer, Duc Jonathan Joseph, Radio Métropole correspondent in Gonaïves, and Ernst Océan, Radio Vision 2000 correspondent in St. Marc. Threats against journalists by supporters of the ruling Fanmi Lavalas party have increased since the alleged attempted coup d’état of 17 December. Radio Eben-Enzer, which broadcasts from the town of Mirebalais, went off the air on 15 January for security reasons. The persons threatening journalists accuse them of being biased against the government in their reporting of the news.
