RSF and CPJ demand light around attacks on the press in Haiti

On Thursday, November 14, 2019, the Committee to Protect
Journalists and Reporters Without Borders sent a letter to the Minister of Justice and Public Security, Jean Roudy Aly to ask him to assume their responsibility by shedding light on the various cases of aggression, assassination of journalists and press worker who keep repeating these times in Haiti.

« We urge you to exercise your authority as Minister of Justice and Public Security to ensure that the police respond appropriately to reported threats against the press, to undertake thorough and independent investigations into cases of violence against journalists and to make the results of these investigations public in a timely manner, « encourage the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, through this correspondence sent Thursday to the Minister of Justice.

« The few investigations that have been opened, these organizations continue, all have in common progress very slowly and in the utmost opacity.The public generally has access to little information, when the investigation does not simply end without any formal conclusion or prosecution, « they argue.

CPJ and RSF want proof from the statement, a week after the murder of journalist Rospide Pétion, the former commissioner of the government of Port-au-Prince Paul Eronce Villard that the investigation was » on track  » without any progress being made, more than four months later. They also underline the silence around the conclusions of the forensic examination carried out on the remains of a body presumed to be that of the journalist Vladjimir Legagneur, disappeared in March 2018. « In the case of the journalist Néhémie Joseph, found dead in his car in Mirebalais on October 10, witnesses designate the Haitian security forces or officials as accomplices or even the sponsors of the attack. Before being murdered, Néhémie Joseph had declared on social networks that he had received threats from two political figures, including a senator currently in office « , detail these organizations defending the rights of journalists.

No action has been taken on complaints of threats against journalists. « Even when journalists report credible death threats to the relevant authorities, these cases rarely go beyond filing complaints and journalists do not benefit official measure ensuring their security ».

Moreover, they are worried that in the full exercise of their profession, press workers have been abused by agents of the National Police of Haiti (PNH) while they are supposed to protect them ». It is worrying that the police and the security forces who are supposed to protect journalists during the course of their work may be the aggressors themselves ».

« At the beginning of this month, members of the National Palace Security (USGPN) beat journalist Raynald Petit-Frère while attempting to cover a public event and threatened to kill him if he photographed the USGPN’s license plates » recall organizations in the letter.

« In order to support press freedom and put an end to the vicious circle of violence and impunity, the authorities must send a clear and unambiguous message to society in general, and to the people placed under their control in particular, and mean that violence against journalists will not be tolerated in Haiti and that those who harm journalists will have to answer in court » to the judicial and police authorities through this correspondence which bears the signature of Joel Simon of the Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ), Christophe Deloire, and Emmanuel Colombié of Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

Marc Andris Saint-Louis
drissaintlouis78@gmail.com