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It was Greene who provided our abiding images of that exotic blighted island in the Caribbean called Haiti.

He called his novel The Comedians but there was nothing amusing about the Haiti Greene wrote about … a land of voodoo and secrets, where freed slaves struggled under the grip of a series of dictators – culminating in the frightful family known as the Duvaliers.

As Greene said himself, it was impossible to darken the night of the 30-year Duvalier regime.

Haiti re-emerged into the light ten years ago, when a simple parish priest – the charismatic Jean Bertrand Aristide – became the country’s first freely-elected leader.

What happened next is a story as colourful, as intriguing, as anything the master might have imagined. In Haiti, as we discovered, truth is far stranger than fiction.

Music

00:00

Michele Montas

Byrne: In one of the most violent countries in the world, journalist Michele Montas is a marked woman.

00:09

Music

Byrne: A year ago she narrowly escaped death when gunmen assassinated her husband -- Jean Dominique -- outside the radio station they both run.

00:20

Radio Haiti Building

Today her husband’s murder is seen as a test case for Haitian justice.

00:35

Will the country’s charismatic leader, Jean Bertrand Aristide, catch and punish the killers, … or will he stoke the culture of violence and use it to become Haiti’s next President for life?

00:44

Michele Montas in studio

Tomorrow is the anniversary of Jean Dominique’s assassination. Today, Michele begins her broadcast as she has every day since his death.

01:05

Jean Dominique: It’s seven o’clock … I say hello to everybody.

Michele: Hello Jean … hello everybody. This is Monday, April 2nd, 2001. Tomorrow will mark the first anniversary of the assassination of a lucid journalist – a political journalist with courage and vision.

01:14

Byrne: A journalist who had, moreover, become a troublesome thorn in the government’s side.

01:33

And though Jean Dominique has gone, Michele has continued her dead husband’s campaign against corruption and the use of violence by the Aristide administration

01:40

Michele: From the Jean Leopold Dominique studio, here is the news.

Michele: Jean was someone who shot straight. And they feared Jean because of Jean’s ability to take some dirt out.

02:01

Michele Montas

He had many enemies. And I think he still has them. I think they still get very irritated when I say ‘Bonjour Jean’ in the morning. They get very irritated is listening to his voice over the airwaves and his voice is still around.

02:11

Jean Dominique’s office

Super:

Jennifer Byrne

Byrne: This is Jean Dominique’s office at Radio Haiti and it is absolutely unchanged since the day of his murder. The paper is still in the old telex machine, and on his desk the bullet casings and grenades from various attacks on the station. His absence is a powerful presence -- = sometimes it is the voice from the grave that speaks most loudly.

02:26

Michele Montas

Michele: Yes it is a symbol that if we don’t say ‘no’ to this crime then there will be other crimes. It is essential that somehow we stop what we call in Creole the death machine – machine la mort.

02:52

Archival footage - Haiti

Music

03:09

Byrne: Haiti was the world’s first independent black republic. It overthrew its slave-masters only to fall to a chain of dictators.

Worst among them, Papa Doc Duvalier. Succeeded by his son Baby Doc, the Duvaliers terrorised Haiti for decades, killing some 40,000 people.

03:25

Their accomplices -- their goon squad --was the Tontons Macoutes, named after the bogeyman in Haitian nursery stories.

03:38

It was Jean Bertrand Aristide who led the popular uprising against the dictators. He called his movement Lavalas, the cleansing flood. After just seven months, he was thrown out in a bloody military coup.

03:48

Three years later, in 1994, twenty thousand US troops invaded Haiti and returned Aristide to power.

04:09

Aristide: There is no question that the people of Haiti want to embrace democracy SYNCH - let us embrace peace when? Now.

04:22

Byrne: It should have been a happy ending -- Aristide back, democracy restored. But this is not at all how things worked out in Haiti.

Church of St. Jean Bosco

Byrne: This was the church of St. Jean Bosco on the outskirts of Port Au Prince where in the '80s, during the Duvalier years, a fiery young priest named Jean Betrand Aristide stood before his desperately poor parishioners.

04:47

He preached freedom, revolution and hope. He called for an end to oppression, and terror. He inspired Haitians, who made him their first democratically elected President. But the President Aristide who rules Haiti today is a very different man.

05:01

Esperance

Esperance: he’s not the same man anymore. Now you feel he’s a man who will do anything to stay in power. Any which way he is a man thirsty for power … sick for power.

05:18

Haitian jail

Byrne: Pierre Esperance is Haiti’s leading human rights investigator. He sees the abuses first-hand. In the jails, for instance, where the majority of prisoners haven’t even been convicted, and bail does not exist.

05:34

It’s a dangerous job which, under Aristide’s new Lavalas, has become life threatening.

05:51

Esperance

Esperance: I was on the way to the office when I saw a car following me. Then, two men in the car that was following us got out and started to shoot at our car. They fired twelve bullets – and two of the bullets hit me. I got hit in the left knee. I don’t have a kneecap anymore – I lost it The other bullet hit me in the left shoulder.

05:57

Haitian jail

Man in cell: Yo, yo, this is a very bad prison, man. Do you hear me? We don’t have no bed to sleep, do you hear me?

06:36

Byrne: It is the story of Haiti -- crimes not solved, killers not punished, justice denied.

06:47

Election violence

All mixed in with a shadowy and violent form of politics which erupted, again, during late last year.

06:54

Chiefly responsible were the Chimeres - street thugs loyal to Aristide, controlled by the Lavalas which uses them – much as Duvalier did the Macoutes -- to disrupt and terrorise opponents.

07:05

Aristide thanked God for his landslide victory. But international observers declared the election rigged, and cut off foreign aid.

07:25

Aristide: I am the president of all Haitians.

Byrne: And suspicion grew that Haiti may have found its next President for life.

07:40

Esperance

Esperance: We have to wait . We’re not saying president for life we have to keep an eye on what he’s doing. But at the moment while he’s president he’s not being demographic because his allies are using violence and he’s encouraging it.

Byrne: It was this violence – and corruption within the new Lavalas -- that Jean Dominique denounced, and which many believe led to his assassination.

08:04

Michele Montas

Michele: He was shot right here, in front of that pillar, and he fell right on the ground, over there. He was holding his hand over his face. That’s how I found him. So I don’t know whether he had time to see his killers, whether he realised he was being shot at, I don’t know and I probably will never know.

08:14

Byrne: the only witness was a radio Haiti bodyguard, who was also gunned down. Many believe the order for the hit came from within Lavalas -- though few accuse Aristide directly. At least, not for this crime.

08:43

Jean-Baptiste

Jean-Baptiste: We fought for him to become president because we thought he would advance the cause of the poor. And what we realised is that he betrayed the struggle of the poor – and me – he fooled me. And he fooled the Haitian people.

08:59

Byrne: That betrayal has made peasant leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste a formidable enemy. Once, he and Aristide called each other brother and stood together against the Duvaliers. No longer.

09:22

Jean-Baptiste: Of course, Aristide hasn’t committed as many crimes yet as Duvalier – but it’s a dictatorship in a lot of ways, and more deceptive than the Duvalier dictatorship because we thought Aristide was going to fight against dictatorship -–and here he is a dictator himself.

09:35

Haitian countryside

Music

09:57

Byrne: Chavannes has rallied some 300,000 peasants into a cooperative called the MPP. Its headquarters is in Haiti's isolated and rugged Central Plateau. It is a very long journey.

10:10

Music

Byrne: Just one road runs to the central plateau -- hopelessly potholed, controlled by bandits.

10:29

Music

Byrne: Seven hours after leaving Port au Prince, we are in the heart of rebel territory.

10:43

Music

Byrne: Elius Louis has been a member of the MPP for years. The cooperative controls and shares the yield from thousands of hectares of banana plantations, manioc, and tree farms. Like Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, Elius once supported Aristide.

11:02

Elius

Elius: Everyone believed in the 1990 Aristide. The Aristide of today, everyone in their right mind can see, is a president who can only tell stories. He knows how to talk pretty but he doesn’t know how to work.

11:24

Byrne: With a wife and six children to support, Elius works in the fields from dawn to dusk. The soil is thin. The tools are primitive.

11:50

Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas. Aristide’s failure to deliver a better life has built the MPP into a force prepared to fight.

Jean-Baptiste

Jean-Baptiste: Ninety percent of the population today don’t agree with what is going on in the country and I say it is going to be a war. It’s already a war - a handful of people against the population.

12:15

Voltaire

Voltaire: I think that the people of Haiti have endured a lot of things. They have endured slavery, they have endured dictatorship. I think they have a very high capacity of enduring.

12:35

Byrne: Leslie Voltaire is a minister in the Artistide government, and a founder of the old Lavalas. He believes Haitians are willing to give Aristide more time.

12:47

Voltaire: He is still the father of Haiti, because he thinks that he has a mission and he cannot fail in his mission. He think that God gave him permission to emancipate the people, so he is very jealous of that emancipation, and anybody who jeopardise this mission, he will not let you mess around with his people.

Byrne: If life does not improve under Lavalas what will happen?

13:20

Elius

Elius: I don’t know what might happen in the country, but there are people thinking if there is not a civil war in this country I don’t know what is going happen because hungry dogs don’t play.

13:22

Byrne: While the countryside is the stronghold of the MPP, it’s also Jean Dominique territory.

13:55

Dominique was trained as an agronomist, he knew this land. As a journalist he used Radio Haiti to fight for the rights of peasants.

14:04

Elius

Elius: When Jean Dominique talked he talked for all of the Haitian people. He was a man who didn’t like to see injustice.

14:19

He was a man who wanted to se everyone respect everyone else. They assassinated him in Port-au-Prince. The authors of the crime are here. If there was real justice they’d have charged them already. I cannot tell you whether they are guilty or not but they are here – and they are in power.

Byrne: Who are these people in power ? Who is to blame for Jean Dominique’s death?

14:46

Elius: It is coming from Lavalas. It is Lavalas who assassinated him. They sent a commando to assassinate him.

14:50

Port-au-Prince

Drum music

14:58

Byrne: Back in Port Au Prince, where anniversary events for Jean Dominique have begun, people whisper rather than speak openly of their suspicions.

15:11

Drum music

15:19

Byrne: Few doubt that Lavalas had a hand in the murder. But did Aristide know? Or has he perhaps lost control of the party he created?

15:27

Drum music

Cite Soleil

Byrne: In the nearby slum of Cite Soleil, Aristide’s heartland -- the true believers -- cling to their faith. Titide, they call him, which in Creole means trust.

15:43

Cherisa

Cherisa: He is the salvation of the people. He will come to deliver the people because he is intertwined with the poor. He will deliver the people.

15:54

Cite Soleil

Byrne: Yvonne Cherisa has lived in Cite Soleil, without running water or regular power, her entire life. She raised nine children here.

16:09

It was poor Haitians like Yvonne who put Aristide in power, believing his promise of a revolution which would deliver dignity and an end to misery. Yet their own eyes tell them differently.

16:22

Cherisa: The most common disease is bacteria … malnutrition … and fever – Typhoid. It’s widespread … it’s widespread in this area. . It’s widespread in Cite Soleil.

16:36

Voltaire

Voltaire: Poor people cannot wait. The Aristide revolution is a ten year revolution. But people want a revolution now.

Byrne: And?

Voltaire: And he can’t deliver that because of national forces and international pressure. He cannot deliver that.

16:53

Jean-Baptiste

Jean-Baptiste: We are facing as economic catastrophe where more than 80% of the population is living in absolute misery. And with the environment of fear they are trying to create we feel that little by little the country is sitting on a barrel of powder -. And it can explode … anything is possible. We could have a civil war that could be deadly for the country, and we can say that Haiti is in danger of dying.

17:15

Aristide’s Palace

Byrne: The humble priest who crisscrossed the country by donkey now lives here. He has a wife and children.

17:49

On the eve of the anniversary of Jean Dominique’s assassination, Aristide has invited the nation’s press to the Palace. Clearly they are excited.

18:01

And surprised. This is only Aristide’s second public appearance since his inauguration. He has refused all interview requests from the foreign media.

18:12

Byrne: And what a splendid palace you have. It's magnificent.

Aristide: And we want the country to be like the palace.

18:22

Byrne: The purpose of the party is to declare the anniversary of Jean Dominique’s death, tomorrow, “National Day of the Press.”

18:30

The irony is that a senator in his own Lavalas party has been publicly named as prime suspect in the murder.

18:38

Press conference

Byrne: I wanted to ask you first, are you concerned what that says of the justice system, both to people within Haiti and outside, and secondly, how high a priority it is for yourself and your government to find the killers?

18:48

Aristide: Thank you. As you know our judicial system is sick. We are still working to find who did it, this thing for Jean Dominique. One year later we still have to work hard to find out who paid for that crime, who did it.

19:09

Byrne: How hard are they working? Well, let’s ask the man they’ve assigned to uncover the truth, investigating judge Claudy Gassant.

19:32

Claudy Gassant

Gassant: I don’t have a telephone here … I don’t have a fax – the other offices don’t either. Thus the minimum … the minimum, is not provided by the government.

19:40

Byrne: What the government does provide, after two attempts on his Judge Gassant’s life, is a 24-hour guard.

20:02

Gassant: In my view, this is a test case for Haitian justice. The success and completion of this case would give an impetus to justice in Haiti.

20:08

Voltaire

Voltaire: I am very shocked, very, very shocked that somebody in my party could do it. But if somebody within the party did it, he should be punished.

Byrne: Whoever that is.

Voltaire: Whoever did it. Even if it was my father.

20:30

Radio Station

Music

20:43

Byrne: For the first time Michele Montas is not in the studio at Radio Haiti. Today, on the anniversary of his death, Jean Dominique reclaims the airwaves.

20:56

Michele Montas at anniversary

Byrne: Flowers for the widow. And as if to confirm how much Jean Dominique has come to symbolise in Haiti, the first are brought in person by the former Prime Minister, Rene Preval.

21:22

Byrne: One woman’s pain has become a nation’s fight. The search for the killers will continue, but in Haiti, they also have their own way of dealing with death.

21:41

Music/Singing:. Give me justice … for Jean Do Give me justice … for Jean Dominique.

21:55

Byrne: Voodoo is the old religion, the true religion of Haiti. Tonight, in the very parking lot where he was gunned down, the drums are sounding for Jean Dominique. Tonight, he will become a voodoo god.

22:11

Singing

Michele: For the Haitian people there is very little separation between life and death. They call on him to do justice. They call on him to solve problems because somehow they think he can do something about it where he is.

22:35

Michele Montas

I’m not sure I know what the death of Jean means. I’m not sure I know what his assassination means in terms of him not being alive. To me he is alive and very much so.

22:55

Singing

23:12

Credits:

"Haiti"

Reporter: Jennifer Byrne

Camera: Dave Martin

Editor: Garth Thomas

Research: Dugald Maudsley

Producer: Dugald Maudsley

23:29