An Alumna Stands Firm in Haiti

Reprinted with permission from 116th & Broadway, the newsletter of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism (Winter 2001)

By John Henry

Since her husband, Jean Léopold Dominique, Haiti's most renowned journalist, was assassinated last April outside the radio station they owned in suburban Port-au-Prince, Michèle Montas, J '69, who now runs the station, and her employees have had their mettle tested again and again.

Late last year, for example, with the murder of the charismatic journalist still unsolved, she and the rest of the 45-member staff at Radio Haiti received a death threat. Montas's response was to air the threat on the station, along with an editorial reaffirming her commitment to continue defying intimidation

The actor Danny Glover cited the threat and Montas's reply to it as he presented her with a National Coalition for Haitian Rights Award at the school on Dec. 10. Keeping Radio Haiti, that nation's "premier voice for freedom and democracy," on the air requires "a daily act of courage," said Glover, who, according to the New York-based coalition, has been involved in Haitian issues for several years.

His presentation followed the showing of part of a documentary about Dominique and Montas called "The Agronomist" that is being made by Jonathan Demme, the Academy-Award-winning filmmaker. Fighting back tears as she accepted her award, Montas, who worked with her husband for the 28 years they were married, told a standing-room-only crowd in the Lecture Hall, "It's very difficult to speak after that film." She added later: "Jean is still alive thanks to the film."

Montas said that the police had assigned 12 people to protect her, her daughter, who is the station's executive director, and the rest of Radio Haiti's staff. (The number of security guards had grown to 14 by February, she disclosed in a recent phone interview.)

Asked by someone in the audience what the response of the U.S. media has been to her plight, Montas said, "A lot can be done from here." She noted the support she had received from human rights groups and her Journalism School classmates. Forty-two members of the class wrote an open letter to Haiti's president at the time, René Préval, that was published last June in Port-au-Prince's major daily paper asking him to commit whatever resources were needed to bring Dominique's killers to justice. (See "Death, and Friends' Support," 116th & Broadway, Summer 2000.)

The audience at the school in December must have taken her words to heart.

Merrie Archer, the coalition's associate director for programs and development, said the award ceremony, which cost $100 a person to attend, and contributions to the group afterwards raised approximately $40,000 for Radio Haiti. And by February, Montas's classmates, some of whom had witnessed the ceremony, were preparing another open letter to be published in Haiti - this time addressed to its new president, Jean-Bertand Aristide - asking him to make solving Dominique's murder a priority.