THE human rights climate in Haiti has been placed under the microscope by Amnesty International in a special report released to coincide with this month’s second anniversary of the assassination of perhaps the best known Haitian journalist in the modern history of that Caribbean nation, Jean Dominique.

Dominique, a familiar voice on Radio Haiti, was shot to death in the courtyard of his radio station, along with the station’s security guard, Jean Claude Loussaint, on April 2, 2000 by gunmen suspected to be associated with the Lavalas Party of President Jean Bertrand Aristide.

Witnesses, who have apparently received death threats, have been scared off from testifying at the long overdue trial, while Lavalas continues to deny any involvement in the killings amid rising protests against political oppression of dissenting voices.

Dominique, once an ardent supporter of Aristide, the former Roman Catholic priest known as the “priest of the poor and oppressed”, has been described by the London-based Amnesty International as “an outspoken advocate for change throughout Haiti’s last four decades”.

Calls to brings those responsible for his murder and that of Loussaint, to justice have reached an unprecedented level in Haiti, and include regional, hemispheric and international media organisations.

Now, two years later, as noted by Amnesty, in a 22-page document currently being made available to human rights groups, media and governments, their deaths have “led to widespread questioning of the human rights situation in Haiti, seven years into democratic governance”, based on elections and without military involvement.

Said Amnesty: “Bringing the perpetrators of the killings of Dominique and Loussaint to justice is not only important in respect of the individual cases. It also sends a clear message that those who commit such acts will be held accountable.

“When investigations are not pursued and the perpetrators are not held to account, a self-perpetuating cycle of violence is set in motion under the cloak of impunity.”

Further, the objective of the investigation, as argued by Amnesty, should be to determine “the identity of the material perpetrators as well as those who ordered the crime, and to provide a full account of the truth to the victims’ families and society. And the results of the investigations should be made public.”

However, the bitter experience so far has been denial of the right to effective judicial remedy being sought by the families of the two murdered men, as the probe into their killings continues to confront a series of obstacles that are “symptomatic of the lack of respect for human rights in Haiti today”, Amnesty said.

These “obstacles”, as chronicled by Amnesty, include lack of independence of the police force and the judiciary; the failure of those institutions to confront the ruling (Lavalas) party activists responsible for threats and acts of political violence; violence by armed groups acting under the auspices of elected officials; repression of freedom of speech; targeted threats and attacks on journalists; and most obviously, ongoing impunity.