Violence Mars Haitian Funeral
Violence broke out Saturday following the funeral of prominent Haitian journalist Jean Dominique, with protesters throwing stones and setting fire to an opposition party's headquarters as political tensions continued to flare over delayed elections.
Dominique, 69, was assassinated this week. The jammed memorial service had just ended at a Port-au-Prince soccer stadium when about 100 militant supporters of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide ran down the street throwing stones and then set fire to the nearby offices of the Confederation of Democratic Unity party. Party supporters shot into the air before fleeing.
Police were present but did not intervene.
A few protesters also gathered outside Radio Vision 2000, a station known for its anti-government stand, and threatened to burn it down. The radio station had called on police earlier this week to give reporters security after repeated death threats.
Street violence has raged in the capital this week as the government continued to delay calling elections. Officials have been bogged down in organizing the long-delayed vote to install a new parliament and have not been able to set a date. At least nine people have died in political killings.
Dominique, the country's most influential journalist and opinion maker, was gunned down Monday morning as he pulled into the courtyard of Radio Haiti Inter, the station he owned and directed. He was about to do his morning newscast when the two unidentified gunmen killed him and the station caretaker.
Police were still investigating the killings but had not made any arrests.
About 15,000 people attended Saturday's service, including President Rene Preval and Arisitide, both allies of Dominique.
"You died for Haiti," Dominique's sister, Madeleine Paillere, said tearfully over his casket. "You died because you told the truth."
The journalist's slaying, "coming in the midst of an electoral campaign, is an attack on freedom of the press in Haiti as well on democracy," the Organization of American States electoral observation mission said.
The government honored Dominique with a three-day period of national mourning that began Thursday. Stores shut down Saturday to honor the man who had championed free speech against civilian and military dictatorships for the past 40 years and was one of most influential figures in this strife-torn Caribbean nation.
Mourners filed by to pay their respects to Dominique, whose open casket was displayed under a white canopy in the middle of the soccer field.
"He struggled to change the system radically," said Sony Esteus, who worked at Dominique's radio station. "If he was killed it is proof that the system has not changed."
During the otherwise peaceful and solemn ceremony a few dozen militant Aristide supporters shouted death threats at opposition politician Evans Paul and vowed revenge on the people whdid the killing. After the service, hundreds of protesters threatened to ransack Paul's party headquarters.
Dominique was to be cremated and his ashes were to be scattered in the Artibonite River in central Haiti.
In the 1970's, Dominique spearheaded the free-speech movement against the dictatorial regime of Jean-Claude Duvalier. Duvalier shut his station down in November 1980, and Dominique fled into exile.
He returned after a popular uprising toppled Duvalier and reopened his station, which was closed down again in September 1990 when the army ousted then-president Aristide, whom Dominique supported and followed into exile in the United States.