Following an interview with former First Lady Michèle Bennett on a radio station in the Haitian capital, the family of journalist Jean L. Dominique, assassinated 26 years ago, has come forward and denounces a malicious attempt to tarnish his image.
In a press release, the family emphasizes that integrity is priceless and recalls Jean Dominique’s words, who often said: “They’ve tried everything… to break us, to drown us… They can still try… to gun us down… to slander us… to seduce us, to buy us…”
Indeed, the Dominique family emphasizes, they tried everything. First threats to silence him, then exile to tear him from his land, then they riddled him with bullets to destroy him, and today they attempt to deny him even eternal rest.
The family of Jean Léopold Dominique denounces “the malicious attempts to appropriate his name to serve interests that his microphone denounced relentlessly.”
The family believes that some think truth can be reinvented and integrity can be negotiated. They are “apprentice Machiavellis” of cynicism and lies, the family of Jean Léopold Dominique states, evoking the greatness and transparency of the struggle Jean Dominique led during his lifetime.
“Jean Léopold Dominique was not for sale. His memory is not for sale. His country is not for sale,” reads the press release, recalling that the journalist was assassinated 26 years ago because he firmly opposed all dictatorial regimes and all forms of corruption.
Some still attempt to use his name to serve their base purposes, the Dominique family laments, inviting the Haitian people to listen to the man himself, emphasizing that those who want to make people forget the shameless pillaging of state coffers, the repression of the right to speak and civil liberties are now unmasked.
The family recalls that his editorials, accessible to all on the Duke University website (https://repository.duke.edu/dc/radiohati), testify to the clarity of a mind that never bent before anyone.
JanDo’s voice is not a memory, it is a compass, his loved ones state.
This statement follows a declaration by the former First Lady, without naming her, Michèle Bennett, who claims that dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier regularly sent money, via Ernst Bennett, to Jean Dominique when the journalist was in exile following the events of November 28, 1980, when the Duvalier dictatorship launched a wave of brutal repression against the independent press and political opposition.
Several journalists, including Jean L. Dominique, were arrested and then exiled, and media outlets, including Radio Haïti-Inter which he directed, had to close their doors.
Dodeley Orelus
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