Haitians Mourn Assassinated Writer

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - Thousands of people jammed into a soccer stadium Saturday to remember a prominent Haitian journalist who was assassinated this week outside his radio station. President Rene Preval and former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, both allies of slain broadcaster Jean Dominique, were among the 15,000 people who attended the three-hour service in Port-au-Prince. 

``You died for Haiti,'' Dominique's sister, Madeleine Paillere, said tearfully over his casket. ``You died because you told the truth.'' Preval did not speak, but his administration awarded Dominique the Honor and Merit Medal - Haiti's highest distinction ``in consideration of his inestimable contribution to the construction and reinforcement of democracy.'' 

Dominique, 69, the country's most influential journalist and opinion maker, was gunned down Monday morning as he pulled into the courtyard of Radio Haiti Inter, the station he owned and directed. He was about to do his morning newscast when the two unidentified gunmen killed him and the station caretaker. 

The assassination followed street violence in the capital last week as the government continued to delay calling for elections. Officials have been bogged down in organizing the long-delayed vote to install a new parliament and have not been able to set a date. 

Radio Vision 2000, a station well-known for its anti-government stand, has called on police to give reporters security after repeated death threats. 

The government honored Dominique with a three-day period of national mourning that began Thursday. Stores shut down Saturday to honor the man who had championed free speech against civilian and military dictatorships for the past 40 years and was one of most influential figures in this strife-torn Caribbean nation. Mourners filed by to pay their respects to Dominique, whose open casket was displayed under a white canopy in the middle of the soccer field.

``He struggled to change the system radically,'' said Sony Esteus, who worked at Dominique's radio station. ``If he was killed it is proof that the system has not changed.'' 

During the otherwise peaceful and solemn ceremony a few dozen militant Aristide supporters shouted death threats at opposition politician Evans Paul and vowed revenge on the people who did the killing. After the service, hundreds of protesters threatened to ransack Paul's party headquarters.

Dominique was cremated and his ashes were to be scattered in the Artibonite River in central Haiti, where he obtained a degree in agronomy before his radio career and passionately followed the government's attempt at land reform to settle disputes between peasants and landowners. 

In the 1970's, Dominique spearheaded the free-speech movement against the dictatorial regime of Jean-Claude Duvalier. Duvalier shut his station down in November 1981, and Dominique fled into exile. He returned after a popular uprising toppled Duvalier and reopened his station, which was closed down again in September 1990 when the army ousted then-president Aristide, whom Dominique supported and followed into exile in the United States. A U.N. force led by 20,000 U.S. troops moved into Haiti in 1994 and restored Aristide to power. Dominique was a close ally of the administration of Aristide and his successor Preval.