The Flame

Previously on Silence.

You have to realize also what Radio Haiti represented to the Hitian public. They stood on the tarmac and they said they wouldn't go. We didn't go. They felt that they had to protect us, and to them to go on that plane and do as if nothing had happened was the worst thing.

Last time we heard from Michelle Montasse, she was fleeing for her prints with her husband, John Dominique. It was just after Aristide was overthrown by the military. Their station, Radio Haiti was a beacon to Haitians everywhere. It was an example to the vio broadcasters of what it meant to tell the truth despite the obstacles. John Dominique had this catchphrase, not.

Kill the truth with the bullet.

What would happened at Radio Haiti, though, would mirror the Vealeo murders and test the limits of hope that before we get there, We're going to start with a love story from Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts. This is Silenced. I was Velocian and.

I'm Anna Arana. This is episode seven The Flame. It was the nineteen seventies and Michelle Montage had just graduated from Columbia journalism school in New York City. Haiti was suffering under the brutal du Valier regime, but even so, Michelle's heart was still for her. It was home, so she went back back in port of friends. She sometimes went from one movie theater to another, watching films all day. That's how she first met John Dominique.

I remember going to one movie house meeting that one guy who is pipe.

That's Michelle in a documentary called The Agronomist about her and John's life. John was tall and lean, often with a pipe dangling from his mouth.

I would go to another film in another movie house three hours later, and that was.

That was that same guy. Michelle met the man with the pipe again when she went to interview for a job at a newly launched radio station, Radio A t.

A VI press a.

La France.

John had started Radio II and he interviewed Michelle for a job at the station.

I told her we need professional journalists.

Can you help us?

And she came. She became more and more involved in the radio radio HAIDI in this fight that I felt compelled to do.

It was the beginning of a long partnership, first professional, then romantic.

It was love at your site. It was passion at your site, and I think it was the same for him.

Michelle and John were both from middle class families. They were both educated abroad, but they both believed passionately in the promise of Haiti. They were revolutionaries. John was working with Haitian peasants to defend their land rights. He spent six months in jail for that work. They were kindred spirits. Together they built Haiti's first independent radio station, and John inspired a whole generation.

Gean Dominique was one of those people that my idol. One of the reasons I'm a journalist.

His radio was the radio I went to to complaint because the mayor did want us to study under du Lempo study more.

I listened to listen to historya in the morning for me to.

Hear radio hating maneuver it around the dictatorship for decades. They survived shutdowns, arrests, and shootings to keep the station going. John and Michelle were exiled and returned. They celebrated Arist's victory in the streets, then washed in horror as he was overthrown. They fled the country yet again and were living in New York when Aristide was finally reinstated as president in nineteen ninety four, and that's when they got a phone call.

Jean was invited by Augustine personally to fly down with him.

The US was going to fly Aristeed back to Haiti with a military escort. Did Jean want to join him?

He said no, for a lot of reason. He would never have gone back in a foreign plane, even if it meant going with Aristide.

For Jean, Aristy's victory had represented independence from dictatorship and from foreign meddling. Returning to Haiti on an American plane would put his beliefs and his support for Aristide at odds. Jean and Michelle returned separately and once again got the station back up and running.

Jean would wake me up every morning, We'll give me coffee in bed, and every time he would read me the editorial he had written to have my opinion on it.

One spring morning in two thousand, Jean brought Michelle the editorial as usual, but she felt it needed more work, so he left for the station to refine it before going on air.

He left me to get dressed because I usually went down to the station later than he did, and I just was listening to the station. It was the Creole news. It started at six, and then suddenly I hear the anchor person saying something has happened, Something has happened, and music. I called the station and I said, what's happening? And they tell me Michelle come immediately.

Nothing to prepare Michelle for what she saw when she arrived.

So I just drove down and there was John's body. Seeing bodies of people you do not know in the street, it's scary, yes, that that is so very different from seeing your own husband on the ground, this blood running.

They rushed him to a nearby hospital.

I went to the hospital and I remember I was I was holding I was holding Jean's feet because he was always cold. His feet were always cold, so I was holding his feet. I knew he was gone.

Jean Dominique and a security guard at the radio station, Jean Claude Louison, were both shot and killed that April morning.

It was as if I was a ghost. Oh I was. There was a part of me that was functioning in another part that was already dead.

But like Tony after Fritz's murder, Michelle was back on the airwaves soon after Jean's assassination.

He would say, Michel, I would say, that's how we started our broadcast, and I kept on saying.

Delivered Radio Haiti's first editorial after Jean's death. It had the title, Jean Dominique is Alive. Dominique fire radiated within Jean every day of our lives at Radio Haiti. Like Prometheus, Jean had stolen that fire from the gods. After Jean's murder, there was an outpouring of national grief. Fifteen thousand people filled Haiti's main soccer stadium for his funeral. This community gave Michelle strength, and so did her colleagues at Radio Haiti.

I noticed one thing is that my reporters, they didn't want to leave me alone. They didn't want me to feel alone, and we thought that support I would have made it, but they were there.

The whole team felt a deep responsibility to keep going to find injustice for Jean, because from the very beginning they knew.

It was not someone just run of the meal. Bendy took him in and shot him. It was obvious then it was a gun for hire.

And I'll never forget Michelle telling us how she kept saying hello to Jean every morning on air, even after he'd been gunned down. It makes me think about what Tony john Tenau told us about talking into the void in the studio where Fritz used to stand.

Yes, the parallels are stunning. This was another targeted assassination of a journalist to send a message in Haiti. This was the equivalent of murdering Walter Cronkite mixed with jfk. You cannot overstate how much of a shock it was to everyone.

Right and in the Aftermathew actually sent to Haiti by the Inter American Press Association to find out who orchestrated the killing. Why tell me about the situation on the ground when you first got there.

It was messy. When I first started reporting, rumors were swirling and fingers were pointed at the military and the old regime followers. It was the most obvious explanation. They were enemies of the pro democracy movement that John Dominique and his counterparts in Miami, like Fritz and the others,

We never felt really threatened in two thousand, never did.

Just a few years before, Haiti had his first peaceful transition of power. Aristein's former Brinemans, who had gone into exile with him, was now president.

We never thought that Jean would be killed under a democratic regime. We did not think it could happen, so we were not taking any special precautions. We were not being we didn't have bodyguards. We didn't feel that we were in danger.

But that didn't mean everything was perfect. From the moment Aristide returned on the US plane in nineteen ninety four, Michelle remembers a creeping sense that he was beginning to turn his back on his political routes.

The first time that Aristide spoke at the National Palace, Rohy and I were there. He was behind those glass partitions, isolated from the people who put him in power.

The early Aristet was a radical liberation theology priest. He was at one with the slum dweller as a porter prince and the farmer of the Haitian countryside. But now he was employing totally different iconography, that is, the traditional politician, wary of his own people, separated from them by last partitions.

We realized much later that the Aristide who came back was not the Aristil we had elected.

Remember, as a condition of returning to power, Oristate had to give amnesty to many of the cocaine kernels and frap types, the very people who had been involved in his coup. He was also pressured to accept devastating economic terms imposed by the US. Just one example, Haiti had long been able to grow more than enough rice to feed his people. That Oristate had to lower import tariffs, and that opened up Haiti to a flood of cheap

The issue that Jehan had with Aristide, the Aristin who came back, he felt was no longer respecting what Jean called the mandate. The mandate was what the Democratic movement gave him.

Not only that, but there were rumors that the people around Aristide were now involved in drug trafficking. John Dominique does not want to stay quiet and a famous interview in nineteen ninety six, two years after Aristid returned to Haiti, John challenged him about corruption in his own political.

Party, Communicate Communicate.

I spoke with Gary Pierre Pierre, a Haitian American journalist who founded the Haitian Times. He remembers hearing that interview.

I remember one thing he told Aristid. He called him Cid, which was like the trem of endearment that his had for our gentlemen. Said, you know, this is not what we talked about. This is not what the movement was supposed to be. And you could feel arrested and anxiety and answering that question. And there was a very cringe worthy interview. He was being secured by gian Do Minique Bash.

Next up Braggado.

He asked him the questions. He says, isn't that what you call the pets, the projects of the presidency. Isn't that corruption? Aren't you trying to buy the good will of the people who actually overthrew you? And Ristig was begging, embarrassed by it.

Harry Steele was being called out by one of his oldest allies live on air on one of the country's most influential radio programs. This was not acceptable to a president whom Michelle says increasingly had one goal.

His objective became to stay in power, and we felt it was at all costs because he didn't want another coup.

And so, yeah, they were not going to let him live.

The movement failed the country in some ways and they had to get rid of him.

So, Anna, when you arrived in Haiti to investigate John Dominique's death, you landed in the middle of a very complicated practical dynamic.

Yeah. Our state's party had finally returned to power and they seemed desperate to hang on to it, and the murder of John Dominique put people on edge. Really, Haitians were used to people in power using violence, and even though this was a new regime, few people wanted to talk, and those who did felt they were taking huge risks.

You told me one of your first steps was to go see the investigating judge, a guy called Tori Gasson.

Yes, I went to see him, and he offered to let me see two cardboard boxes he had at that time with all the documents in the case and I was kind of amazed that he'd let me do that. But then in the middle of the interview, he started crying.

Why do you think he was so candid?

I think he was really afraid that something was going to happen to him because the truth was very damaging to many powerful people.

You told me that you also felt scared while you were reporting.

Yeah, it was a scary trip. From the beginning. I suspected I was being surveilled. I had to change hotels, cars. I got out of there in ten days because I couldn't stay any longer as I felt that some of the suspects powerful people in Haiti were keeping tabs on me.

And then you wrote your report laying out the theory that was out in the open but difficult for anyone to acknowledge.

The conclusion I came to after speaking to various sources and reading the core documents was that the intellectual authors of the crime likely did come from Aristeed's own political party. Nine people, including some lower level members of Aristeed's party and the alleged gunmen, were eventually charged.

Wow, so the million dollar question is Daroused know about this murder in advance? Was involved?

I couldn't go there during my short time in Haiti. But a lot of the debate has been center around whether our state knew and approved the murder. But oftentimes with political assassinations, people who are followers and aspiring for power take it upon themselves to carry out killings, hoping that they'll benefit from it. It's like the scenario we built up around the murders of the four broadcasters in Miami, used police reports and court documents.

I understand that the riff between Jean Aristeed was growing, and Aristi's political party seemed to be mine in the same corruption they campaigned against. But why would he kill one of his own movement's allies.

Well that Landmark nineteen ninety six interview Jean did with Aristide, it seemed to be a factor, and some of Aristide's people seemed concerned that John may be interested in running for office himself. That was a huge political threat. John was incredibly popular with the people. But Michelle pointed out to us that this didn't make any sense.

How could you not be a candidate? He was killed in April, the election was in.

Me Another theory is that John Dominique had touched at third rail that he was planning to publicly name drug traffickers within Aristide's own party. By Michelle Montasque categorically denis this. She said, John would never have been so naive as to call that out. Ultimately, we can't really know for sure who was responsible. All I know is I saw the documents from the investigation and they explicitly name high ranking members of our state's party.

Michelle montag told us that Your Peace backed up some of her own suspicions.

What Anna which facts came up with was? She said it was.

From that camp, Aristet's camp.

And I had reason to believe she was right. However, I kept on asking myself, not only is it h it was a crime, but it was stupid. You don't kill Don Dominique, who is one of the most popular figure in Haiti for what And to me, that was stupid.

Michelle still grieves both her personal loss, but also the loss of the dream of helping Haiti out of the darkness the de valiate dictatorship. She moans the hope she and so many others had penned on Aristeid.

It was a betrayal of uh so much that we thought he stood for all of the Democratic movement fought four, which is, you know, basic ideals of human rights. To me, power is not worth it, but maybe to some it is.

After Anna published her report, Michelle Montasse was still on air Radio Haiti.

I'd been asking for justice day in and day out for almost three years. I don't think I remember ever being scared. Everything was so intense that you don't have time to be afraid.

But since John's assassination, Michelle had been forced to take precautions.

We had to accept bodyguards because after John's assassination, we felt maybe we should have bodyguards.

And then on Christmas Day two thousand and two, Michelle was coming back to her house.

I went through the gate at my house. My bodyguard was next to me, was a young guy twenty six years old.

Maxim sayed. He always joked with Michelle that he would defend her because he was bigger than her. That's what they called him at the station. Big Maxim spotted a group of men approaching the house with guns drawn, and he.

Did something extraordinarily brave.

He asked the other guard to close the gate, keeping Michelle safe inside, and then he ran down the street, distracting the men with guns and leading them away from the house.

And he was killed. The worst day of my life was the day I went to see his mother after he was killed. That mother had been waiting for him with the Christmas meal. I found her laying down on the mat on the ground, and she was crying. She was willing, and I told myself, she's going to hit me, She's going to just kick me out. Instead of that, she threw her arms towards me and she said, Mama. She called me mother. So I laid down next to her on the mat. We cried together.

Maximum was young, just twenty six years old. He loved to talk about books and international affairs with Michelle. She said the day he was killed was worse than the day her husband was killed. Michelle's up response his death.

He was a young man who didn't ask to die.

It was a turning point.

I thought I would be on the air every single day fighting for justice until I got justice.

Oh.

I didn't realize until Maxim was killed that I was putting other people in danger as well.

Within a couple of months, Michelle decided that the only way to keep her team safe was to close down Radio Haiti. At the meeting. When she told the staff that she decided they should stop, they started pouring their hearts out.

One of them told me that his mother had kicked him out of the house because he was endangering his brothers and sisters. Another one told me that his wife I'd ask him not to come to the house anymore for the same reason.

They were all used to risk, even inure to it. Michelle, John Dominique, and of course Jean Claude, Fritz and Donna. Through all the death and violence, they'd pushed and pushed and pushed until finally things broke.

After Maximum was killed, I realized that the people wanted us silenced would not stop at anything. It was not me. Twas going to be someone else, and I couldn't bear the thought of another one of our journalists or anyone around us be killed.

Radio Haiti shut down in two thousand and three after broadcasting on and off for thirty five years, and not long after Michelle left Haiti for the US for her third and final exile. I first met Michelle at a diner in New York City. She wanted to meet and talk before agreeing to an on the record interview about such a painful and still controversial topic. We sat together for two hours on that occasion, and at the end

This conversation a couple of weeks ago, and it was obviously extremely painful.

For you, and yeah, you decided to sit down.

And have it again.

Is that something you feel you owe to Jean to to fight for justice to what what what.

He bids me. I feel that I owe it to Jean, and I feel I owe it to the Hitian people somewhere somehow, because they were always there for me. They were always there for us when we were building that station, when we were airing the news, when we were you know, we're not superheroes. We're just people who just felt embolvedened because they were supported by other people. It was just the effort of so many of us towards some basic ideas, not up in the sky, just basic rights, fighting for them.

I mean makes you think about the nineteen ninety one incident, whether people were choosing to go on the plane.

Unless you and John not on the plane.

Yeah, Max sing with your bodyguard, but when he saw the guys with guns there step to one side.

Yes, yes, his.

Mother could have kicked out the house, and so she caught you, my mom. So that the flame that you lit was was extremely strong.

Yes, that we all together lit it was an extremely strong one. Yes.

Michelle Montaze lives in New York now. Her apartment is filled with art, some African and some Haitian. One picture in particular, Cut My Eye as a painting of her husband, John Dominique.

The person in the big blue coat is Jean, and next to him there is another figure. We're supposed to represent the Haitian peasants. The cut rope is a sign that Jean has helped liberate Haitian peasants from their chains, like you know, our ancestors were liberated from the chains of slavery.

And the painting John Dominique is at one with the Haitian people, a partner in their historic victory freeing themselves from slavery. But the movement he contributed so much to still hasn't been realized.

People. After the overthrew of laud Valier, they were all saying the same thing. They were saying, babu lat b babuk. Yet it's the gag that we had had over our faces, all our lives. It was not just about going to put someone else in the National palace. It was defending freedom of speech and freedom of association.

But the murder of John Dominique killed the dream. Some in the diaspora started to think that Haiti was not a place that they could ever return to.

In the end, Aristide was ousted one final time in two thousand and four. A French diplomat alleges that the Bush administration was involved in a coup against him. Since then, whatever was left to the pro democracy movement has mostly retired, dispersed, or died. To this day, the intellectual authors of John Dominique's murder have never been caught, but there are demonstrations every year in Haiti demanding justice, and in Miami the radio broadcast as murders still need to be solved.

Impunity It silences people. That's what ties together all of the threads, Michelle and John Dominique, the Little Haiti murders. When people are harmed or killed for their beliefs and the perpetrators aren't helld responsible, everyone is less and less free. Fear is a powerful strait.

Jacket and I think that that was probably part of the bravery of these radio folks.

It reached Danticut, Haitian writer. She was also a producer on the Agronomous documentary and knew John Dominique.

And I think that's what we're so brave about that because you're shadowing a kind of silence, you're taking a lot of risk that personally people are unable or unwilling to take.

While we're reporting the story, yet another assassination happened. This time it was Haiti's President, jauven El Moyiz in twenty twenty one.

There is a painful circularity to the political situation in Haiti sometimes that you'll see parallels or reincarnations of different groups of different moments.

The assassination is a complicated story, but it has telltale US fingerprints all over it. At least one active FBI informant and one former DEA informant have since been charged with the murder. It seems to form part of a pattern tracing back to the Duvaliers and even before them, of the US picking winners in Haiti.

And it's a very complicated story with the international power starting with the US, where Haiti was never allowed to fulfill its full potential.

But at which says there is still hope, hope that lies in the hands of Haitians.

When we think about all that's happened in Haiti, like from eighteen oh four to this moment. We need to break a cycle in a certain way so that these young people who are lying on the floor now are not going to be the one shooting the guns tomorrow. But all of us who love Haiti, we want to find that daybreak, you know, we want to we want to see that dawn. Just even in the last ten twenties, a lot of people have lost their lives with that

Next time, a conversation with Gary Pierre Pierre of the Haitian Times about what happened to the vo movement led by Jean Just and the radio broadcasters, and about where Haiti goes from here.

A special thanks to Trenton Daniel Now of the ass Shaded Press. He was working for Reuters and the Haitian Times and Haiti when I was there investigating John Dominique's murder, and without Trenton's help, my own reporting would not have been completed.

Silenced is a Kaleidoscope Content original produced by Margaret Catcher, Jen Kinney and Kadmini Rugunov. Research assistants from Isabella Phipps, Jeremy Bigwood and Kira Sinnis edited by Lacy Roberts, executive produced by Kate Osborne, reported and hosted by Annie Arana and me Oz Valoshin. Fact checking by Nicole Pasulka. Music by Oliver Rodigan aka Kdenzer, Mix and sound design by Kyle Murdoch. Thanks to mangoesh Ha, Tikta Costaslinas and viny Shuri.