Haitians Fear for Homeland After Slaying

Haitian exiles reacted with shock and sorrow Monday to the news that a beloved Haitian journalist was killed at daybreak in a hail of bullets outside his radio station in Petionville, Haiti. For many, the murder of Jean Dominique, 69, gives new and terrifying meaning to the current reign of chaos in Haiti. "When I heard the news of his murder, I said, 'Jean Dominique survived Duvalier. He survived the struggle for Aristide, but he could not survive the Haiti of today,' " said Jean-Robert Lafortune, chairman of the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition, a Haitian advocacy group in Miami. Like many Haitians, Lafortune credits Dominique with being among the bravest voices in Haiti to stand up to the Duvalier dictatorship during the 1970s and '80s. Through his outspoken reporting on Radio Inter in Haiti, Lafortune says, Dominique inspired thousands of Haitian youths like himself to envision fairness and democracy in Haiti. "When we were voting adults in 1991, we thought of Jean Dominique and what he had done to get us to that point," Lafortune said. But many are questioning whether the assassination of Dominique signals the death knell for getting to "that point" in Haiti.

When the tragic news reached Jocelyn McCalla, president of the National Coalition of Haitian Rights, at his Manhattan office early Monday, McCalla says he was struck with grief. Then fear. "If this could happen to Jean Dominique after surviving so much, then no one in Haiti is safe," McCalla said. McCalla visited Dominique in Haiti in September, and the two talked about how Dominique had survived three decades of threats against his life. He went into exile in 1980 to escape death threats and again in 1991, after his radio station, Radio Haiti Inter, was riddled with bullets while he was in it.

RETURNED HOME 

He returned to Haiti in 1994 after Jean Bertrande Aristide was restored to the presidency. Dominique rebuilt his station, which had been destroyed by those wanting to silence him, and continued broadcasting. "He was forever undeterred in his faith that most Haitians would know the truth when they heard it," McCalla said. But McCalla says Haiti in the year 2000 is a place where few people still have faith. It's a country, he says, beset by criminal enterprise, where thugs kill anyone, right wing or left wing, who gets in their way, and where it's all but impossible to figure out where the truth lies. "It sends a shiver down my spine," McCalla said. "Jean Dominique's death is proof that the enemy in Haiti is everywhere, and no one can see who it is." For decades, the slogan of Radio Haiti Inter has been "broadcasting for all of Haiti," which has a double meaning. Not only is the station heard in the most rural areas of Haiti, where broadcasts out of Port au Prince are rare, but it's also a station known for its egalitarian point of view for "all of Haiti." 

WORTH THE PAIN 

More than once, Jean Dominique was jailed and tortured in Haiti for this point of view. But when Haitians voted for their president in 1991, Dominique told The Herald that he felt every terrible thing he had been through had been worth it. "You must understand, for Haitians to vote is more than it is in your country," he said. "It is the way for millions of people who live in dirt and poverty to prove to themselves that they are human. It is the difference between eternal darkness and light." But with the death of Dominique on Monday, a huge source of light in Haiti is gone. Marleine Bastien, president of the Miami advocacy group Fanm Ayisyen Nan Miyami (Haitian Women of Miami): "Haitians in the United States have always thought about when we could return to Haiti. But the murder of Jean Dominique makes us think only about how to get our families out."