Speaker 1: Previously on Silence.
Speaker 2: You have to realize also what Radio Haiti represented to
Speaker 2: the Hitian public. They stood on the tarmac and they
Speaker 2: said they wouldn't go. We didn't go. They felt that
Speaker 2: they had to protect us, and to them to go
Speaker 2: on that plane and do as if nothing had happened
Speaker 2: was the worst thing.
Speaker 1: Last time we heard from Michelle Montasse, she was fleeing
Speaker 1: for her prints with her husband, John Dominique. It was
Speaker 1: just after Aristide was overthrown by the military. Their station,
Speaker 1: Radio Haiti was a beacon to Haitians everywhere. It was
Speaker 1: an example to the vio broadcasters of what it meant
Speaker 1: to tell the truth despite the obstacles. John Dominique had
Speaker 1: this catchphrase, not.
Speaker 2: Kill the truth with the bullet.
Speaker 1: What would happened at Radio Haiti, though, would mirror the
Speaker 1: Vealeo murders and test the limits of hope that before
Speaker 1: we get there, We're going to start with a love
Speaker 1: story from Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts. This is Silenced. I
Speaker 1: was Velocian and.
Speaker 3: I'm Anna Arana. This is episode seven The Flame. It
Speaker 3: was the nineteen seventies and Michelle Montage had just graduated
Speaker 3: from Columbia journalism school in New York City. Haiti was
Speaker 3: suffering under the brutal du Valier regime, but even so,
Speaker 3: Michelle's heart was still for her. It was home, so
Speaker 3: she went back back in port of friends. She sometimes
Speaker 3: went from one movie theater to another, watching films all day.
Speaker 3: That's how she first met John Dominique.
Speaker 2: I remember going to one movie house meeting that one
Speaker 2: guy who is pipe.
Speaker 3: That's Michelle in a documentary called The Agronomist about her
Speaker 3: and John's life. John was tall and lean, often with
Speaker 3: a pipe dangling from his mouth.
Speaker 2: I would go to another film in another movie house
Speaker 2: three hours later, and that was.
Speaker 3: That was that same guy. Michelle met the man with
Speaker 3: the pipe again when she went to interview for a
Speaker 3: job at a newly launched radio station, Radio A t.
Speaker 2: A VI press a.
Speaker 4: La France.
Speaker 3: John had started Radio II and he interviewed Michelle for
Speaker 3: a job at the station.
Speaker 5: I told her we need professional journalists.
Speaker 2: Can you help us?
Speaker 5: And she came. She became more and more involved in
Speaker 5: the radio radio HAIDI in this fight that I felt
Speaker 5: compelled to do.
Speaker 3: It was the beginning of a long partnership, first professional,
Speaker 3: then romantic.
Speaker 2: It was love at your site. It was passion at
Speaker 2: your site, and I think it was the same for him.
Speaker 3: Michelle and John were both from middle class families. They
Speaker 3: were both educated abroad, but they both believed passionately in
Speaker 3: the promise of Haiti. They were revolutionaries. John was working
Speaker 3: with Haitian peasants to defend their land rights. He spent
Speaker 3: six months in jail for that work. They were kindred spirits.
Speaker 3: Together they built Haiti's first independent radio station, and John
Speaker 3: inspired a whole generation.
Speaker 6: Gean Dominique was one of those people that my idol.
Speaker 6: One of the reasons I'm a journalist.
Speaker 3: His radio was the radio I went to to complaint
Speaker 3: because the mayor did want us to study under du
Speaker 3: Lempo study more.
Speaker 6: I listened to listen to historya in the morning for
Speaker 6: me to.
Speaker 1: Hear radio hating maneuver it around the dictatorship for decades.
Speaker 1: They survived shutdowns, arrests, and shootings to keep the station going.
Speaker 1: John and Michelle were exiled and returned. They celebrated Arist's
Speaker 1: victory in the streets, then washed in horror as he
Speaker 1: was overthrown. They fled the country yet again and were
Speaker 1: living in New York when Aristide was finally reinstated as
Speaker 1: president in nineteen ninety four, and that's when they got
Speaker 1: a phone call.
Speaker 2: Jean was invited by Augustine personally to fly down with him.
Speaker 1: The US was going to fly Aristeed back to Haiti
Speaker 1: with a military escort. Did Jean want to join him?
Speaker 2: He said no, for a lot of reason. He would
Speaker 2: never have gone back in a foreign plane, even if
Speaker 2: it meant going with Aristide.
Speaker 1: For Jean, Aristy's victory had represented independence from dictatorship and
Speaker 1: from foreign meddling. Returning to Haiti on an American plane
Speaker 1: would put his beliefs and his support for Aristide at odds.
Speaker 1: Jean and Michelle returned separately and once again got the
Speaker 1: station back up and running.
Speaker 2: Jean would wake me up every morning, We'll give me
Speaker 2: coffee in bed, and every time he would read me
Speaker 2: the editorial he had written to have my opinion on it.
Speaker 1: One spring morning in two thousand, Jean brought Michelle the
Speaker 1: editorial as usual, but she felt it needed more work,
Speaker 1: so he left for the station to refine it before
Speaker 1: going on air.
Speaker 2: He left me to get dressed because I usually went
Speaker 2: down to the station later than he did, and I
Speaker 2: just was listening to the station. It was the Creole news.
Speaker 2: It started at six, and then suddenly I hear the
Speaker 2: anchor person saying something has happened, Something has happened, and music.
Speaker 2: I called the station and I said, what's happening? And
Speaker 2: they tell me Michelle come immediately.
Speaker 1: Nothing to prepare Michelle for what she saw when she arrived.
Speaker 2: So I just drove down and there was John's body.
Speaker 2: Seeing bodies of people you do not know in the street,
Speaker 2: it's scary, yes, that that is so very different from
Speaker 2: seeing your own husband on the ground, this blood running.
Speaker 1: They rushed him to a nearby hospital.
Speaker 2: I went to the hospital and I remember I was
Speaker 2: I was holding I was holding Jean's feet because he
Speaker 2: was always cold. His feet were always cold, so I
Speaker 2: was holding his feet. I knew he was gone.
Speaker 1: Jean Dominique and a security guard at the radio station,
Speaker 1: Jean Claude Louison, were both shot and killed that April morning.
Speaker 2: It was as if I was a ghost. Oh I was.
Speaker 2: There was a part of me that was functioning in
Speaker 2: another part that was already dead.
Speaker 1: But like Tony after Fritz's murder, Michelle was back on
Speaker 1: the airwaves soon after Jean's assassination.
Speaker 2: He would say, Michel, I would say, that's how we
Speaker 2: started our broadcast, and I kept on saying.
Speaker 1: Delivered Radio Haiti's first editorial after Jean's death. It had
Speaker 1: the title, Jean Dominique is Alive. Dominique fire radiated within
Speaker 1: Jean every day of our lives at Radio Haiti. Like Prometheus,
Speaker 1: Jean had stolen that fire from the gods. After Jean's murder,
Speaker 1: there was an outpouring of national grief. Fifteen thousand people
Speaker 1: filled Haiti's main soccer stadium for his funeral. This community
Speaker 1: gave Michelle strength, and so did her colleagues at Radio Haiti.
Speaker 2: I noticed one thing is that my reporters, they didn't
Speaker 2: want to leave me alone. They didn't want me to
Speaker 2: feel alone, and we thought that support I would have
Speaker 2: made it, but they were there.
Speaker 1: The whole team felt a deep responsibility to keep going
Speaker 1: to find injustice for Jean, because from the very beginning
Speaker 1: they knew.
Speaker 2: It was not someone just run of the meal. Bendy
Speaker 2: took him in and shot him. It was obvious then
Speaker 2: it was a gun for hire.
Speaker 1: And I'll never forget Michelle telling us how she kept
Speaker 1: saying hello to Jean every morning on air, even after
Speaker 1: he'd been gunned down. It makes me think about what
Speaker 1: Tony john Tenau told us about talking into the void
Speaker 1: in the studio where Fritz used to stand.
Speaker 3: Yes, the parallels are stunning. This was another targeted assassination
Speaker 3: of a journalist to send a message in Haiti. This
Speaker 3: was the equivalent of murdering Walter Cronkite mixed with jfk.
Speaker 3: You cannot overstate how much of a shock it was
Speaker 3: to everyone.
Speaker 1: Right and in the Aftermathew actually sent to Haiti by
Speaker 1: the Inter American Press Association to find out who orchestrated
Speaker 1: the killing. Why tell me about the situation on the
Speaker 1: ground when you first got there.
Speaker 3: It was messy. When I first started reporting, rumors were
Speaker 3: swirling and fingers were pointed at the military and the
Speaker 3: old regime followers. It was the most obvious explanation. They
Speaker 3: were enemies of the pro democracy movement that John Dominique
Speaker 3: and his counterparts in Miami, like Fritz and the others,
Speaker 3: had all been part of. But early on in my
Speaker 3: investigation I got a tip and it pointed in a
Speaker 3: very unexpected direction toward the people who were in power
Speaker 3: now Aristide's own political party you have to understand about
Speaker 3: the events leading up to John Dominique's assassination and how
Speaker 3: it seemed to come out of nowhere.
Speaker 2: We never felt really threatened in two thousand, never did.
Speaker 3: Just a few years before, Haiti had his first peaceful
Speaker 3: transition of power. Aristein's former Brinemans, who had gone into
Speaker 3: exile with him, was now president.
Speaker 2: We never thought that Jean would be killed under a
Speaker 2: democratic regime. We did not think it could happen, so
Speaker 2: we were not taking any special precautions. We were not
Speaker 2: being we didn't have bodyguards. We didn't feel that we
Speaker 2: were in danger.
Speaker 1: But that didn't mean everything was perfect. From the moment
Speaker 1: Aristide returned on the US plane in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: Michelle remembers a creeping sense that he was beginning to
Speaker 1: turn his back on his political routes.
Speaker 2: The first time that Aristide spoke at the National Palace,
Speaker 2: Rohy and I were there. He was behind those glass partitions,
Speaker 2: isolated from the people who put him in power.
Speaker 1: The early Aristet was a radical liberation theology priest. He
Speaker 1: was at one with the slum dweller as a porter
Speaker 1: prince and the farmer of the Haitian countryside. But now
Speaker 1: he was employing totally different iconography, that is, the traditional politician,
Speaker 1: wary of his own people, separated from them by last partitions.
Speaker 2: We realized much later that the Aristide who came back
Speaker 2: was not the Aristil we had elected.
Speaker 3: Remember, as a condition of returning to power, Oristate had
Speaker 3: to give amnesty to many of the cocaine kernels and
Speaker 3: frap types, the very people who had been involved in
Speaker 3: his coup. He was also pressured to accept devastating economic
Speaker 3: terms imposed by the US. Just one example, Haiti had
Speaker 3: long been able to grow more than enough rice to
Speaker 3: feed his people. That Oristate had to lower import tariffs,
Speaker 3: and that opened up Haiti to a flood of cheap
Speaker 3: American rice. Haitian rice production collapsed, Farmers who had tilled
Speaker 3: the land for generations were suddenly jobless, and Haiti became
Speaker 3: so substantially more dependent on the US.
Speaker 2: The issue that Jehan had with Aristide, the Aristin who
Speaker 2: came back, he felt was no longer respecting what Jean
Speaker 2: called the mandate. The mandate was what the Democratic movement
Speaker 2: gave him.
Speaker 3: Not only that, but there were rumors that the people
Speaker 3: around Aristide were now involved in drug trafficking. John Dominique
Speaker 3: does not want to stay quiet and a famous interview
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety six, two years after Aristid returned to Haiti,
Speaker 3: John challenged him about corruption in his own political.
Speaker 1: Party, Communicate Communicate.
Speaker 3: I spoke with Gary Pierre Pierre, a Haitian American journalist
Speaker 3: who founded the Haitian Times. He remembers hearing that interview.
Speaker 6: I remember one thing he told Aristid. He called him Cid,
Speaker 6: which was like the trem of endearment that his had
Speaker 6: for our gentlemen. Said, you know, this is not what
Speaker 6: we talked about. This is not what the movement was
Speaker 6: supposed to be. And you could feel arrested and anxiety
Speaker 6: and answering that question. And there was a very cringe
Speaker 6: worthy interview. He was being secured by gian Do Minique Bash.
Speaker 5: Next up Braggado.
Speaker 2: He asked him the questions. He says, isn't that what
Speaker 2: you call the pets, the projects of the presidency. Isn't
Speaker 2: that corruption? Aren't you trying to buy the good will
Speaker 2: of the people who actually overthrew you? And Ristig was begging,
Speaker 2: embarrassed by it.
Speaker 3: Harry Steele was being called out by one of his
Speaker 3: oldest allies live on air on one of the country's
Speaker 3: most influential radio programs. This was not acceptable to a
Speaker 3: president whom Michelle says increasingly had one goal.
Speaker 2: His objective became to stay in power, and we felt
Speaker 2: it was at all costs because he didn't want another coup.
Speaker 1: And so, yeah, they were not going to let him live.
Speaker 6: The movement failed the country in some ways and they
Speaker 6: had to get rid of him.
Speaker 1: So, Anna, when you arrived in Haiti to investigate John
Speaker 1: Dominique's death, you landed in the middle of a very
Speaker 1: complicated practical dynamic.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Our state's party had finally returned to power and
Speaker 3: they seemed desperate to hang on to it, and the
Speaker 3: murder of John Dominique put people on edge. Really, Haitians
Speaker 3: were used to people in power using violence, and even
Speaker 3: though this was a new regime, few people wanted to talk,
Speaker 3: and those who did felt they were taking huge risks.
Speaker 1: You told me one of your first steps was to
Speaker 1: go see the investigating judge, a guy called Tori Gasson.
Speaker 3: Yes, I went to see him, and he offered to
Speaker 3: let me see two cardboard boxes he had at that
Speaker 3: time with all the documents in the case and I
Speaker 3: was kind of amazed that he'd let me do that.
Speaker 3: But then in the middle of the interview, he started crying.
Speaker 1: Why do you think he was so candid?
Speaker 3: I think he was really afraid that something was going
Speaker 3: to happen to him because the truth was very damaging
Speaker 3: to many powerful people.
Speaker 1: You told me that you also felt scared while you
Speaker 1: were reporting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a scary trip. From the beginning. I
Speaker 3: suspected I was being surveilled. I had to change hotels, cars.
Speaker 3: I got out of there in ten days because I
Speaker 3: couldn't stay any longer as I felt that some of
Speaker 3: the suspects powerful people in Haiti were keeping tabs on me.
Speaker 1: And then you wrote your report laying out the theory
Speaker 1: that was out in the open but difficult for anyone
Speaker 1: to acknowledge.
Speaker 3: The conclusion I came to after speaking to various sources
Speaker 3: and reading the core documents was that the intellectual authors
Speaker 3: of the crime likely did come from Aristeed's own political party.
Speaker 3: Nine people, including some lower level members of Aristeed's party
Speaker 3: and the alleged gunmen, were eventually charged.
Speaker 1: Wow, so the million dollar question is Daroused know about
Speaker 1: this murder in advance? Was involved?
Speaker 3: I couldn't go there during my short time in Haiti.
Speaker 3: But a lot of the debate has been center around
Speaker 3: whether our state knew and approved the murder. But oftentimes
Speaker 3: with political assassinations, people who are followers and aspiring for
Speaker 3: power take it upon themselves to carry out killings, hoping
Speaker 3: that they'll benefit from it. It's like the scenario we
Speaker 3: built up around the murders of the four broadcasters in Miami,
Speaker 3: used police reports and court documents.
Speaker 1: I understand that the riff between Jean Aristeed was growing,
Speaker 1: and Aristi's political party seemed to be mine in the
Speaker 1: same corruption they campaigned against. But why would he kill
Speaker 1: one of his own movement's allies.
Speaker 3: Well that Landmark nineteen ninety six interview Jean did with Aristide,
Speaker 3: it seemed to be a factor, and some of Aristide's
Speaker 3: people seemed concerned that John may be interested in running
Speaker 3: for office himself. That was a huge political threat. John
Speaker 3: was incredibly popular with the people. But Michelle pointed out
Speaker 3: to us that this didn't make any sense.
Speaker 2: How could you not be a candidate? He was killed
Speaker 2: in April, the election was in.
Speaker 3: Me Another theory is that John Dominique had touched at
Speaker 3: third rail that he was planning to publicly name drug
Speaker 3: traffickers within Aristide's own party. By Michelle Montasque categorically denis this.
Speaker 3: She said, John would never have been so naive as
Speaker 3: to call that out. Ultimately, we can't really know for
Speaker 3: sure who was responsible. All I know is I saw
Speaker 3: the documents from the investigation and they explicitly name high
Speaker 3: ranking members of our state's party.
Speaker 1: Michelle montag told us that Your Peace backed up some
Speaker 1: of her own suspicions.
Speaker 2: What Anna which facts came up with was? She said
Speaker 2: it was.
Speaker 1: From that camp, Aristet's camp.
Speaker 2: And I had reason to believe she was right. However,
Speaker 2: I kept on asking myself, not only is it h
Speaker 2: it was a crime, but it was stupid. You don't
Speaker 2: kill Don Dominique, who is one of the most popular
Speaker 2: figure in Haiti for what And to me, that was stupid.
Speaker 1: Michelle still grieves both her personal loss, but also the
Speaker 1: loss of the dream of helping Haiti out of the
Speaker 1: darkness the de valiate dictatorship. She moans the hope she
Speaker 1: and so many others had penned on Aristeid.
Speaker 2: It was a betrayal of uh so much that we
Speaker 2: thought he stood for all of the Democratic movement fought four,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, basic ideals of human rights. To me,
Speaker 2: power is not worth it, but maybe to some it is.
Speaker 1: After Anna published her report, Michelle Montasse was still on
Speaker 1: air Radio Haiti.
Speaker 2: I'd been asking for justice day in and day out
Speaker 2: for almost three years. I don't think I remember ever
Speaker 2: being scared. Everything was so intense that you don't have
Speaker 2: time to be afraid.
Speaker 1: But since John's assassination, Michelle had been forced to take precautions.
Speaker 2: We had to accept bodyguards because after John's assassination, we
Speaker 2: felt maybe we should have bodyguards.
Speaker 1: And then on Christmas Day two thousand and two, Michelle
Speaker 1: was coming back to her house.
Speaker 2: I went through the gate at my house. My bodyguard
Speaker 2: was next to me, was a young guy twenty six
Speaker 2: years old.
Speaker 1: Maxim sayed. He always joked with Michelle that he would
Speaker 1: defend her because he was bigger than her. That's what
Speaker 1: they called him at the station. Big Maxim spotted a
Speaker 1: group of men approaching the house with guns drawn, and he.
Speaker 2: Did something extraordinarily brave.
Speaker 1: He asked the other guard to close the gate, keeping
Speaker 1: Michelle safe inside, and then he ran down the street,
Speaker 1: distracting the men with guns and leading them away from
Speaker 1: the house.
Speaker 2: And he was killed. The worst day of my life
Speaker 2: was the day I went to see his mother after
Speaker 2: he was killed. That mother had been waiting for him
Speaker 2: with the Christmas meal. I found her laying down on
Speaker 2: the mat on the ground, and she was crying. She
Speaker 2: was willing, and I told myself, she's going to hit me,
Speaker 2: She's going to just kick me out. Instead of that,
Speaker 2: she threw her arms towards me and she said, Mama.
Speaker 2: She called me mother. So I laid down next to
Speaker 2: her on the mat. We cried together.
Speaker 1: Maximum was young, just twenty six years old. He loved
Speaker 1: to talk about books and international affairs with Michelle. She
Speaker 1: said the day he was killed was worse than the
Speaker 1: day her husband was killed. Michelle's up response his death.
Speaker 2: He was a young man who didn't ask to die.
Speaker 1: It was a turning point.
Speaker 2: I thought I would be on the air every single
Speaker 2: day fighting for justice until I got justice.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize until Maxim was killed that I was
Speaker 2: putting other people in danger as well.
Speaker 1: Within a couple of months, Michelle decided that the only
Speaker 1: way to keep her team safe was to close down
Speaker 1: Radio Haiti. At the meeting. When she told the staff
Speaker 1: that she decided they should stop, they started pouring their
Speaker 1: hearts out.
Speaker 2: One of them told me that his mother had kicked
Speaker 2: him out of the house because he was endangering his
Speaker 2: brothers and sisters. Another one told me that his wife
Speaker 2: I'd ask him not to come to the house anymore
Speaker 2: for the same reason.
Speaker 1: They were all used to risk, even inure to it. Michelle,
Speaker 1: John Dominique, and of course Jean Claude, Fritz and Donna.
Speaker 1: Through all the death and violence, they'd pushed and pushed
Speaker 1: and pushed until finally things broke.
Speaker 2: After Maximum was killed, I realized that the people wanted
Speaker 2: us silenced would not stop at anything. It was not me.
Speaker 2: Twas going to be someone else, and I couldn't bear
Speaker 2: the thought of another one of our journalists or anyone
Speaker 2: around us be killed.
Speaker 1: Radio Haiti shut down in two thousand and three after
Speaker 1: broadcasting on and off for thirty five years, and not
Speaker 1: long after Michelle left Haiti for the US for her
Speaker 1: third and final exile. I first met Michelle at a
Speaker 1: diner in New York City. She wanted to meet and
Speaker 1: talk before agreeing to an on the record interview about
Speaker 1: such a painful and still controversial topic. We sat together
Speaker 1: for two hours on that occasion, and at the end
Speaker 1: Michelle agreed to a recorded interview at her apartment. We
Speaker 1: had this version of.
Speaker 4: This conversation a couple of weeks ago, and it was
Speaker 4: obviously extremely painful.
Speaker 1: For you, and yeah, you decided to sit down.
Speaker 5: And have it again.
Speaker 4: Is that something you feel you owe to Jean to
Speaker 4: to fight for justice to what what what.
Speaker 2: He bids me. I feel that I owe it to Jean,
Speaker 2: and I feel I owe it to the Hitian people
Speaker 2: somewhere somehow, because they were always there for me. They
Speaker 2: were always there for us when we were building that station,
Speaker 2: when we were airing the news, when we were you know,
Speaker 2: we're not superheroes. We're just people who just felt embolvedened
Speaker 2: because they were supported by other people. It was just
Speaker 2: the effort of so many of us towards some basic ideas,
Speaker 2: not up in the sky, just basic rights, fighting for them.
Speaker 2: I think it's worth it to continue.
Speaker 4: I mean makes you think about the nineteen ninety one incident,
Speaker 4: whether people were choosing to go on the plane.
Speaker 1: Unless you and John not on the plane.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Max sing with your bodyguard, but when he saw
Speaker 4: the guys with guns there step to one side.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, his.
Speaker 4: Mother could have kicked out the house, and so she
Speaker 4: caught you, my mom. So that the flame that you
Speaker 4: lit was was extremely strong.
Speaker 2: Yes, that we all together lit it was an extremely
Speaker 2: strong one. Yes.
Speaker 3: Michelle Montaze lives in New York now. Her apartment is
Speaker 3: filled with art, some African and some Haitian. One picture
Speaker 3: in particular, Cut My Eye as a painting of her husband,
Speaker 3: John Dominique.
Speaker 2: The person in the big blue coat is Jean, and
Speaker 2: next to him there is another figure. We're supposed to
Speaker 2: represent the Haitian peasants. The cut rope is a sign
Speaker 2: that Jean has helped liberate Haitian peasants from their chains,
Speaker 2: like you know, our ancestors were liberated from the chains
Speaker 2: of slavery.
Speaker 3: And the painting John Dominique is at one with the
Speaker 3: Haitian people, a partner in their historic victory freeing themselves
Speaker 3: from slavery. But the movement he contributed so much to
Speaker 3: still hasn't been realized.
Speaker 2: People. After the overthrew of laud Valier, they were all
Speaker 2: saying the same thing. They were saying, babu lat b babuk.
Speaker 2: Yet it's the gag that we had had over our faces,
Speaker 2: all our lives. It was not just about going to
Speaker 2: put someone else in the National palace. It was defending
Speaker 2: freedom of speech and freedom of association.
Speaker 3: But the murder of John Dominique killed the dream. Some
Speaker 3: in the diaspora started to think that Haiti was not
Speaker 3: a place that they could ever return to.
Speaker 1: In the end, Aristide was ousted one final time in
Speaker 1: two thousand and four. A French diplomat alleges that the
Speaker 1: Bush administration was involved in a coup against him. Since then,
Speaker 1: whatever was left to the pro democracy movement has mostly retired, dispersed,
Speaker 1: or died. To this day, the intellectual authors of John
Speaker 1: Dominique's murder have never been caught, but there are demonstrations
Speaker 1: every year in Haiti demanding justice, and in Miami the
Speaker 1: radio broadcast as murders still need to be solved.
Speaker 3: Impunity It silences people. That's what ties together all of
Speaker 3: the threads, Michelle and John Dominique, the Little Haiti murders.
Speaker 3: When people are harmed or killed for their beliefs and
Speaker 3: the perpetrators aren't helld responsible, everyone is less and less free.
Speaker 3: Fear is a powerful strait.
Speaker 7: Jacket and I think that that was probably part of
Speaker 7: the bravery of these radio folks.
Speaker 3: It reached Danticut, Haitian writer. She was also a producer
Speaker 3: on the Agronomous documentary and knew John Dominique.
Speaker 7: And I think that's what we're so brave about that
Speaker 7: because you're shadowing a kind of silence, you're taking a
Speaker 7: lot of risk that personally people are unable or unwilling
Speaker 7: to take.
Speaker 1: While we're reporting the story, yet another assassination happened. This
Speaker 1: time it was Haiti's President, jauven El Moyiz in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one.
Speaker 7: There is a painful circularity to the political situation in
Speaker 7: Haiti sometimes that you'll see parallels or reincarnations of different
Speaker 7: groups of different moments.
Speaker 1: The assassination is a complicated story, but it has telltale
Speaker 1: US fingerprints all over it. At least one active FBI
Speaker 1: informant and one former DEA informant have since been charged
Speaker 1: with the murder. It seems to form part of a
Speaker 1: pattern tracing back to the Duvaliers and even before them,
Speaker 1: of the US picking winners in Haiti.
Speaker 7: And it's a very complicated story with the international power
Speaker 7: starting with the US, where Haiti was never allowed to
Speaker 7: fulfill its full potential.
Speaker 1: But at which says there is still hope, hope that
Speaker 1: lies in the hands of Haitians.
Speaker 7: When we think about all that's happened in Haiti, like
Speaker 7: from eighteen oh four to this moment. We need to
Speaker 7: break a cycle in a certain way so that these
Speaker 7: young people who are lying on the floor now are
Speaker 7: not going to be the one shooting the guns tomorrow.
Speaker 7: But all of us who love Haiti, we want to
Speaker 7: find that daybreak, you know, we want to we want
Speaker 7: to see that dawn. Just even in the last ten twenties,
Speaker 7: a lot of people have lost their lives with that
Speaker 7: dream in their heads. So hopefully it will happen one day,
Speaker 7: you know, like we'll see a country emerged to be
Speaker 7: what it's, what it was meant to be, what our
Speaker 7: ancestors wanted it to be.
Speaker 1: Next time, a conversation with Gary Pierre Pierre of the
Speaker 1: Haitian Times about what happened to the vo movement led
Speaker 1: by Jean Just and the radio broadcasters, and about where
Speaker 1: Haiti goes from here.
Speaker 3: A special thanks to Trenton Daniel Now of the ass
Speaker 3: Shaded Press. He was working for Reuters and the Haitian
Speaker 3: Times and Haiti when I was there investigating John Dominique's murder,
Speaker 3: and without Trenton's help, my own reporting would not have
Speaker 3: been completed.
Speaker 1: Silenced is a Kaleidoscope Content original produced by Margaret Catcher,
Speaker 1: Jen Kinney and Kadmini Rugunov. Research assistants from Isabella Phipps,
Speaker 1: Jeremy Bigwood and Kira Sinnis edited by Lacy Roberts, executive
Speaker 1: produced by Kate Osborne, reported and hosted by Annie Arana
Speaker 1: and me Oz Valoshin. Fact checking by Nicole Pasulka. Music
Speaker 1: by Oliver Rodigan aka Kdenzer, Mix and sound design by
Speaker 1: Kyle Murdoch. Thanks to mangoesh Ha, Tikta Costaslinas and viny Shuri.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers at iHeart are Katrina Novel and Nikki Etor.
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