Monday, September 12, 2005

Jailing democracy

Time to counterbalance this morning's good news with a terrible incident of press repression. Rabble points out that two Haitian journalists have been jailed for particularly appalling reasons - Kevin Pina for shooting factual footage of Haiti since the 2004 coup, and Jean Ristil for reporting Pina's arrest. (More details of the arrests here, where it appears both reporters were covering a police search of the church run by presidential candidate Gerard Jean-Juste.)

Between the search and the arrests, it seems all too clear that the Lavalas party's position is being deliberately silenced in advance of the upcoming election. And Canada has been offered a leading role in trying to maintain order to allow the election to proceed. As a result, Canada has a great opportunity to take up that offer, on the conditions that reporters aren't jailed for doing their job, and that the elections aren't a complete and utter sham.

Stop by Marguerite Laurent's list of Canadian contacts, and let them know that Canada shouldn't be complicit in press intimidation.

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