NYABJ
2002 Freedom of the Press Award
BRIGNOL LINDOR
Radio Echo 2000
Petit Goave, Haiti

To residents in Petit Goave, a small town 40 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Brignol Lindor was a voice of objectivity in a land famous for its despots and its poor.

Lindor was news director for Radio Echo 2000 and hosted "Dialogue," a weekly broadcast examining political and social issues. “Dialogue” provided the sort of public discourse that earned Lindor some enemies. They threatened his life. He continued reporting what he believed were the daily brutalities meted out against Haiti’s people.

"He seemed very motivated and wanted to bring a contribution through his show," said Guyler C. Delva, secretary general of the Haitian Journalists Association. "He would discuss a lot of problems like the political crisis or the crisis of energy or development. He was very listened to in the city."

What listeners heard, for example, was Lindor routinely inviting members of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s Lavalas Party and its political opponents to appear on his show. He also agitated for an investigation of the April 2000 death of Jean Leopold Dominique, another Haitian journalist whom some suspect was assassinated.

In that climate, Lindor, on Nov. 28, 2001, aired an interview with members of the Convergence Party who were demanding Aristide’s resignation. The next day, a local official in Aristide’s government staged his own protest rally and a press conference, urging "zero tolerance" of Lindor. It was, Delva said, an overt call for Lindor’s public lynching.

Five days later, Lindor, who moonlighted as a customs agent and was trained as a lawyer, told colleagues at the local customs office that he was headed to lecture at the Law School of Miagoane in a nearby city. Given the death threats, Lindor’s colleagues tried to dissuade him from taking the trip.

But Lindor would not be deterred. The Haitian Press Association reported that Lindor said his enemies "could kill Brignol Lindor but they could never bury the right of free speech and freedom of the press.”

Emmanuel Espoir Cledamor, a Haitian journalist who was Lindor’s driver that day, said a crowd of 700 students were protesting in the streets of Petit Goave as the two men tried to make their way to the law school. A mob surrounded the vehicle carrying the journalists. Cledamor said he escaped to a sugar cane field and Lindor sought refuge in the home of a city commissioner but was delivered instead to the crowd.

Witnesses said some in the mob stabbed and slashed Lindor with a pickax, machetes and knives. He was 31 years old.

No one has been charged with Lindor’s murder.

His family fled to Paris and remains exiled there. His father, Belozier Lindor, told a commission the Haitian Press Association created to investigate the killing that he and other relatives will continue to seek justice for his son.

"Brignol meant everything to us," his father said. "I have filed a complaint to God and to the invisible Tribunal. If justice is not granted on this earth, God will answer."

– Sherri Day