Haiti journalist dies after being hit in the head with police tear gas canister

A journalist died Sunday in Haiti after getting seriously injured when chaos broke out at a police substation in Port-au-Prince – and he was hit in the head with a police tear gas canister, a Haitian journalists association confirmed.

The journalist was identified as Romelson Vilcin and he was a correspondent for Generation 80, a radio station based in the northwestern city of Port-de-Paix, the Association of Haitian Journalists said in a communique that raised concerns about the manner in which Vilcin died. The association said several journalists were injured when police opened fire when they gathered at the Delmas 33 police substation to demand the release of an arrested colleague.

“The Association of Haitian Journalists strongly condemns these antidemocratic and repressive acts … by the Haiti National Police against the press,” said Jacques Desrosiers, secretary general of the association, who referred to the incident as police brutality.

Haiti National Police spokesman Garry Desrosiers confirmed the death of Vilcin, but did not provide any additional details about the circumstances leading to his death nor the arrest of journalist Robest Dimanche. Vilcin and the others had come to demand Dimanche’s release from detention when the incident happened. Initially, it was believed that Vilcin had been injured by a police bullet. But several sources told the Miami Herald that it was a tear gas canister that hit his head.

“A journalist being attacked inside a police substation is grave,” said Marie Yolène Gilles, a human rights activist who noted that the canister hit Vilcin’s head as he ran out of the police substation station.

“We have a lot of concerns about what is happening to journalists and we have concluded that the police are advancing at the expense of journalists,” said Gilles, who runs the human rights group Fondasyon Je Klere, or Eyes Wide Open Foundation. “They are firing tear gas at them, shooting bullets at them, hitting them with clubs and nothing is done. No sanctions are ever taken against them.”

Vilcin’s death marks the third time in days that journalists in Haiti have been victimized. On Tuesday, Roberson Alphonse, a leading investigative journalist at the country’s only daily, Le Nouvelliste, survived an assassination attempt in Delmas 40B when his vehicle was peppered with bullets as he drove to work. Alphonse, who was shot in both arms, is recovering. The next day, the newspaper announced that it was temporarily halting publication of its print product, because of “the impossibility” to stock up on fuel and the country’s “serious security problems.”

Authorities in the southern city of Les Cayes also found the body of missing journalist Garry Tess, a journalist from LeBon radio, who had gone missing.

“Today, you have the sense that the freedom of expression in Haiti is under threat,” Gilles said.

The advocate note that up to now, no investigations have been done, and in the case of Tess, journalists in Les Cayes are afraid to sleep at home out of fear that they too could become victims. She said the attack on Vilcin is the latest in a series of troubling incidents involving journalists and the police, who have become “very aggressive” toward reporters in the country.

“The Inspector General needs to hold police accountable. We already lived through this during the dictatorship and we don’t want to relive this,” Gilles added.

The United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti has also expressed its concerns about attacks on the press, citing the two recent attacks in a communique following the Friday night assassination of well-known political leader, Eric Jean-Baptiste.

Vilcin was among a group of journalists, some of them working for online media, who went to the Delmas 33 police substation to show support for Dimanche when chaos erupted. Dimanche had reportedly been arrested with several members of a political militant group in Delmas during a protest.

It is unclear if Dimanche, who works at Radio Tele Zenith, was covering the demonstrations when his arrest happened.

Teams from both the Inspector General of the Haiti National Police, the equivalent of internal affairs, along with the Bureau of Criminal Affairs from the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police (DCPJ) were deployed to the scene to launch an investigation, a source told the Miami Herald.

Jacques Desrosiers, who heads the Association of Haitian Journalists, said he had been told that at least five journalists were injured Sunday when a specialized unit of the Haiti National Police began firing tear gas onto the crowd. Desrosiers said the association is demanding that Haitian “authorities identify the police officers who are responsible for this act” and hold them accountable.

“Journalists and media need protection and security,” he said.