A Haitian Survivor Mourns, and Keeps Fighting

By DAVID GONZALEZ, New York Times

 

picture
Richard Patterson for The New York Times "I am fighting to get justice. Not just for Jean, but the country we fought for." MICHELE MONTAS

The meeting that would change her life came not at a radio station or newspaper, but at the movies, where she encountered a rugged yet rakish pipe-smoking man who, like her, thought nothing of seeing three movies in a day. He was Jean Dominique, a former agronomist who had become a groundbreaking radio journalist, broadcasting stories about politics and culture in Creole, not French.

She joined him at the station, and they became an elegant couple who did stories on controversial topics that tested how far they could push the limits — Jean called it sniffing. They paid for their daring, as advertisers fearful of government reprisals withdrew. By 1980, they were forced into exile in New York, where she worked producing radio programs for the United Nations.

They returned when Baby Doc left, and they resumed broadcasting, as Mr. Aristide built the popular movement that brought him to power in a 1990 election. A year later, he was ousted in a military coup, the radio station was shot at and ransacked, and the couple were once again in exile in New York.

"We were amazed that could happen," she said. "Everything we had put into this, our hopes, had failed. When Duvalier had left, we felt there would be a new life. Of course, that did not happen. But you had thought everything was possible."

She would find out upon her return in 1994 that Haiti seemed even harsher and Mr. Aristide, restored during an American-led invasion, seemed remote and cautious. Mr. Dominique soon worried about what he saw as corrupt politicians and businessmen getting too close to Mr. Aristide, who did little to distance himself, he said.

By late 1999, Mr. Dominique stepped up his criticism during his broadcasts, singling out for special scorn Dany Toussaint, a close adviser to Mr. Aristide long suspected of drug running and political murders. The following year, he was shot dead.

NOTHING surprises her now, least of all the fact that it took nearly three years to bring the indictments for the murder or that they did not identify who ordered the crime.

It is only the latest in a string of disappointments that started with seeing the leader she and her husband once loved become just another Haitian politician, she said, paying street groups to rally for him, or worse.

"When he first lost power, then came back, he felt that was not going to happen again," she said of the president. "If that meant corruption, so be it. Jean-Bertrand Aristide feels he can solve anything by throwing money at problems. That is so different from the man I once knew, the priest, the man of the people. Power is now the name of the game."

Mr. Dominique's death silenced neither Ms. Montas nor the radio station, until recently. As the government missed deadline after deadline for issuing indictments, a gunman attacked her home this past Dec. 25, killing her bodyguard. A few weeks later, she closed the station after her reporters continued to receive threats.

TODAY Ms. Montas waits in New York, refusing the government's entreaties that she return. "Members of the government ask us to reopen the station because they say we are giving them a bad image," she said. "People have died, but this is giving them a bad image?"

The only image she dwells on now, is the one of Jean on a video monitor, as she helps with "The Agronomist," a documentary about her husband produced by the American director Jonathan Demme. A few weeks ago, she sat inside Mr. Demme's suburban New York studio, unblinking as she watched Jean speak of Haiti, justice and exile.

When he smiled, she smiled. When he spoke, her shoulders moved ever so slightly as she breathed that much faster. And when his image faded away, she let out a nearly silent sigh as her eyes moved away from the screen.

"I feel sadness and betrayal," she said. "Anger. A lot of anger. Anger got me into this business in the first place. To me, Jean's assassination changed the meaning of my life. I am fighting to get justice. Not just for Jean, but the country we fought for."