LAVALAS' GHOSTS

MIREILLE BERTIN'S DAUGHTER
Fifteen years after bloodthirsty dictator Jean-Bertrand Aristide murdered a prominent human rights lawyer in broad daylight, one of her children is now a serious contestant in Miss Universe pageant - August 19, 2010

Bertin was born in Haiti, the daughter of Mireille Durocher Bertin, a lawyer. She has worked for the International Alliance for Haiti's Recovery and is currently a law student living in the Dominican Republic. She speaks French, Spanish, English, and Creole fluently.

Bertin's mother, who was an outspoken critic of then president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was murdered on March 28, 1995 in Port-au-Prince. She was shot in broad daylight while being driven by a client, Eugene "Junior" Baillergeau, away from the U.S. military's Camp Democracy headquarters. Baillergeau, who was killed along with Durocher Bertin, was in litigation with the U.S. military over damages a U.S. helicopter had allegedly done to his private plane. (Sources : wikipedia)

JEAN L. DOMINIQUE

The assassination triggered a week of rampage and political turmoil in Haiti: Jean Dominique, 69, the country’s most revered journalist, was gunned down in early April in Port-au-Prince outside the radio station he had founded. His mourners demanded answers.

Dominique, an outspoken democracy advocate, had twice been forced into exile because of his democratic views and his friendship with Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the ousted and than reinstalled former president of this impoverished, unstable nation. His killing is believed to have been politically motivated.

“The only weapon I have is my microphone and my unshakable faith as a militant for change, veritable change,” Dominique once said. As a political adviser to Haiti’s President René Préval, he advocated holding elections this year but was criticized for his call to postpone them in order to ensure their fairness. [At press time, elections were scheduled for June.—WPR]

Dominique was born in Port-au-Prince to a well-to-do family and attended private school in Haiti and France, studying agronomy. In the early 1960s, he founded Haiti’s first independent radio station, Radio Haïti Inter—the first broadcast outlet in Creole, the language of 70 percent of Haitians.


 DR  ROGER LAFONTANT  KILLED IN JAIL

Stained by the ashes of burned buildings, tires and bodies, Haiti's capital city slowly returned to normal Tuesday after mobs rampaged, demolishing even church properties, after an attempted coup d'etat. The death toll exceeded 50, according to an official who counted 44 burned and mutilated bodies in the city morgue alone.

At least 34 people reportedly died in street violence, according to other sources, during the coup attempt. State-run radio said 26 Haitians were killed in a shoot-out at the headquarters of the Union for National Reconciliation, the party headed by the coup leader, Roger Lafontant.