Haiti

New York, December 12, 2008--A Port-au-Prince court sentenced journalist and press freedom advocate Guyler Delva to one month in prison on Wednesday for defaming a former senator. Delva said he has received death threats he believes are linked to the case. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the court's decision today, and urged Haitian authorities to investigate the threats against Delva.

Haiti's best known press freedom activist, Guyler Delva, sent out a frantic call for help yesterday morning. At least 70 journalists and media workers in the northern city of Gonaïves are living in dire circumstances, Delva said in his e-mail. They need food, clothes, and shelter, as well as equipment, he specified. In short, "they have lost everything in the recent floods."

On the other side of Hispaniola Island from the lavish tourist resorts in the Dominican Republic, Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas. Politically, the harsh Duvalier dictatorships and the controversial Aristide era devastated the country. This year, starving mobs protested the high prices of basic food staples as the international press reported that many are surviving on mud cakes. 

New York, July 16, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists is encouraged by the decision of Spanish authorities to reactivate the investigation into the 2004 murder of Antena 3 correspondent Ricardo Ortega, who was fatally shot in Haiti while covering the ouster of former President Jean Bertrand Aristide. As part of this process, CPJ European consultant Borja Bergareche was one of several journalists who briefed Judge Pablo Ruz of the Central Criminal Court in Madrid on CPJ’s research into the case.

New York, April 9, 2008—Two Haitian reporters were injured by rubber bullets while covering clashes between protesters and Haitian and U.N. forces in Port-au-Prince Tuesday, according to news reports and interviews. A third journalist was wounded by pellets that were fired by protesters, a press advocate said. The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Haitian and U.N. authorities to provide the necessary protection to allow journalists to work safely.

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New York, December 14, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes Wednesday’s conviction of two men for the December 2001 murder of Haitian journalist Brignol Lindor.

The court in the western city of Petit-Goâve sentenced to life in prison Jean Rémy Démosthène and Joubert Saint Juste, members of the local political organization “Domi Nan Bwa,” which had ties to former president Jean Bertrand Aristide’s Famni Lavalas party, according to reports in the Haitian press.

Several unidentified gunmen shot at the Port-au-Prince offices of local station Radio-Télé Ginen, causing minor damages to the building’s infrastructure and to a car owned by the station, according to reports in the Haitian press. No one from the station’s staff was injured but a passerby was taken to a local hospital in critical condition.