Another Journalist Hit By Bullets In Haiti

News Americas, HOUSTON, TX, Tues. Nov. 19, 2019: Another journalist was shot at in Haiti during new anti-government protests on Monday as the country marked the Battle of Vertieres Day.

Reports indicate Emmanuel Joseph, a journalist at Radio Capital, was one of four shot during protests in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on November 18, 2019.

Several hundred people were marching from the Delmas to Petionville neighborhoods when shots were fired from nearby. Joseph was hit along with a police officer and two protesters. They, however, luckily survived and were rushed away with bullet wounds.

Joseph is just the latest journalist to be attacked as violent protests continue in Haiti. On October 10th, Radio Vision 2000 Néhémie Joseph’s body was found in his vehicle in Mirebalais, about 60 miles northeast of the capital city, Port-au-Prince, AP News reported.  Gunmen reportedly made him climb into the trunk of his car and then fired off several rounds, one of them hitting him fatally in the face.

A presenter with Mirebalais-based Panic FM and the Mirebalais correspondent of the Port-au-Prince radio station Méga, Joseph recently reported on social networks and online discussion forums that Mirebalais residents had threatened him. He was very critical of the government and often denounced the way the Mirebalais authorities were dealing with the effects of Haiti’s political crisis.

On September 30th, Haitian broadcaster Radio Sans Fin (RSF) said, RSF video journalist Edmond Joseph Agenor was shot while covering a protest in the capital after police opened fire on protestors.

Joseph was taken to a hospital where doctors diagnosed that he had several fractures in his wrist from the bullet, according to Jacques Desrosier, secretary general of the Association of Haitian Journalists, the local journalists’ union.

And on September 23rd, Senator Jean Marie Ralph Féthière, a lawmaker from the ruling party of President Jovenel Moise, fired a handgun during a protest and wounded Associated Press photographer Dieu-Nalio Chery.

On September 16th, Elmon Zidor, a journalist with Radio Hozana FM, was stabbed in the southern town of Jacmel.

“Haitian authorities cannot keep standing idly by while journalists are threatened, shot at, and even killed. They must show they are taking decisive action by investigating and ensuring that those responsible are brought to justice, which they have so far failed to do,” the Committee to Protect Journalists, (CPJ), has said.

In June, Pétion Rospide, a reporter for Radio Sans Fin, was shot and killed on his way home while gunmen attacked two radio stations, Télé Zénith and Radio Télé Ginen, also in June.

No significant progress has been reported in the investigation into the disappearance of Vladjimir Legagneur, a freelance reporter and photographer who went missing in the capital on 14 March 2018. Haiti is ranked 62nd out of 180 countries in Reporter’s Without Borders, (RSF)’s 2019 World Press Freedom Index.

Many Haitians are calling on President Moise to stand down after what they describe as a failure to address Haiti’s myriad problems.