Station of Slain Haitian Journalist Again on Air

PETIONVILLE, Haiti (Reuters) - After a month of silence following the slaying of station owner and prominent Haitian journalist Jean Dominique, Radio Haiti Inter was back on the air Wednesday for World Press Freedom Day. "When Jean died we felt that it would be too easy for his enemies to obtain our silence -- if the objective was to keep us silent, we felt that we should do exactly the opposite, which means we should continue," Dominique's widow, Michele Montas, told Reuters. 

Dominique, 69, a longtime democracy activist and adviser to President Rene Preval, was gun downed by unknown assailants as he arrived for his morning newscast, which he co-hosted with Montas, on April 3. A security guard was also killed. Dominique's fiery political commentaries had earned him enemies across the political spectrum. His murder sent Haitians into shock and raised fears of spiraling violence. 

For the 30 days since the murder only the low hiss of static could be heard on the air of the popular station Dominique had founded in the 1970s and ran with his family. The station reopened at 7 a.m. Wednesday, the usual time of Dominique's newscast, and aired some of his popular programs throughout the day. Today is international press freedom day, we wanted to honor Jean, who died because he wasn't afraid to talk," said journalist Guerlande Eloi. 

Preval and his wife Guerda arrived as the station reopened, and sat with Montas most of the morning. "He came as a close friend of Jean's, a friend of the past 20 years, and not as a head of state," said Montas, sitting in the chair Dominique had occupied daily for his afternoon talk show 'Face a l'Opinion'. The bullet-ridden facade of Radio Haiti Inter in Petionville, the hilly suburb above the capital, was a chilling reminder of the persecution Dominique lived with for more than three decades. He kept the bullets fired at his station in a bowl on his desk. "We used to laugh about them. Then it was very possible, we expected death, like something that could happen any day. But we didn't expect it in this season," said Montas. 

Dominique, an agronomist by trade, twice fled into exile with his family, first during the regime
of exiled dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier and again during the military coup that overthrew Haiti's first freely elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991. "We don't know what the real objectives of killing Jean were... It is obvious that one of the objectives was to influence the political landscape in Haiti," Montas said. Haiti is expected to hold legislative and municipal elections in just two and a half weeks. 

After repeated postponements of the poll, many candidates have run out of campaign funds and little election activity is evident in the capital. But in the past month political related killings and other violence have escalated. "We are dealing with a situation that is very confused, particularly in an electoral situation that is not at all clear, to anyone, to any journalist, to any one in the street," Montas said.