Haiti: journalist flees after threats

The French-based group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) announced on Nov. 20 that journalist Joseph Guyler Delva fled from Haiti on Nov. 9. Delva said he’d started receiving death threats on Oct. 25. On the evening of Nov. 5 he found himself being followed by several people in a car. When he stopped at a gas station, some of his pursuers got out of their car and approached his vehicle. Delva drove away, and decided to leave for the US.

Delva has been a correspondent for the BBC and Reuters and hosts a a news program on Melodie FM, a Port-au-Prince radio station. He heads the Independent Commission for Supporting Investigations into Murders of Journalists (CIAPEAJ), which President Rene Preval helped set up on Aug. 10 to investigate the unsolved murders of several journalists. According to CIAPEAJ spokesperson Jean Wilner Morin, the commission’s work had been proceeding well in the cases of Jean Leopold Dominique, Jacques Roche, Abdias Jean, Alix Joseph, Ricardo Ortega and Brignol Lindor. Morin said Delva would return soon. (MSF press release, Nov. 20, Agence Haitienne de Presse, Nov. 15)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, Nov. 26

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