PORT AU PRINCE, Nov 26, CMC – The SOS Journalistes says it has learned with “shock, indignation and concern,” the decision of the National Telecommunications Council (CONATEL) to order Radio Mega to suspend ‘Boukante La Pawòl’, an independent political opinion programme, broadcast here every evening.
In a statement, CONATEL accuses Radio Mega of using its frequency for “the purposes of massive dissemination of propaganda in favour of armed groups who sow terror across the Capital”.
CONATEL further orders Radio Méga to immediately suspend the programme and is also threatening to suspend its licence to operate, should the radio station fail to comply with the decision to stop broadcasting “Boukante La Pawòl”.
But SOS Journalistes said that the radio station has never carried out any propaganda in favour of criminal gangs, describing CONATEL’s note as “regrettable, shameful and despicable.
“The biggest sin the show has really been accused of seems to be its independence and its critical sense vis-à-vis those in power,” it said, adding that the host of the programme, Guerrier Henry and his teammate Jean Ismael Valestin “have long and often been targeted by men of power in Haiti”.
SOS Journalistes said CONATEL has evoked a decree, taken in October 1977, under the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier, to justify its decision to get the programme off the radio.
The media group said that the decree in question was repealed by the 1987 amended constitution in article 296 of its transitional provisions.
It said further that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 states that every individual has the right to freedom of opinion and expression, which includes the right not to be disturbed for his opinions and the right to seek, receive and disseminate, without regard to borders, information and ideas by any means of expression whatsoever.
“CONATEL and the administration led by the Transitional Presidential Council (TPC) and Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé seem to ignore these provisions of universal scope,”
SOS Journalistes said, describing CONATEL’s decision “as an arbitrary and desperate act.
“These actions are strangely reminiscent of the times of the worst dictatorships that were thought to be forever over in Haiti,” SOS Journalistes added.
CMC/gd/ir/2024