March 21, 2013 Grassroots Watch/Kale Je
original article here
Two Haitian journalists were attacked by a man working for the humanitarian organization World Vision on Monday March 18 in the hamlet of Savanette, located about 160 kilometers west of the capital.
Evens Louis, a multimedia journalist with Acces-Medias, a section of Groupe Medialternatif, and Lafontaine Orvild, journalist and assistant coordinator of Haiti Grassroots Watch, were verbally attacked. The aggressor also hit one of the journalists.
The attack took place while the team was filming one of World Vision’s food distribution activities in Savanette.
“I was shoved and hit in the face by this person, who was wearing a World Vision vest,” Orvild said, noting that after the assault, the aggressor got into a World Vision vehicle.
The man had also tried to damage and confiscate the journalists’ equipment. Orvild and Louis were in Savanette to work on a Haiti Grassroots Watch investigation that also involves several community or rural radio stations and the AlterPresse online news agency, which is also part of Groupe Medialternatif.
“It is terrible to see freedom of the press menaced like this,” Orvild deplored.
Teacher Mimose Sanon witnessed the entire incident, telling AlterPresse that when the man shoved the journalists and hit one of them, he tried to intimidate them by telling them “to stop filming because supposedly the institution for which he worked would not allow it.”
The food distribution activity was being carried out on an open plot of land next to a river. Witnesses said the incident might have deteriorated if those present had not intervened.
Groupe Medialternatif strongly condemns the attack and considers it an attack on the freedom of the press and the freedom of information. Groupe Medialternatif will undertake the steps necessary to denounce the act, as well as discuss it with national and World Vision authorities who should know that the activities of any and all organizations which are of concern to the people in any and all regions should never be considered private operations.