'The Agronomist': the life and work of Jean Dominique.

• Author: Bell, Udy

On 3 May 2004, eminent writers and reporters gathered at UN Headquarters in New York City to observe World Press Freedom Day (see box on page 31), an annual event which serves as an occasion to inform the public of violations of the right to freedom of expression, and as a reminder that many journalists brave death or jail to bring news to people.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who was also in attendance, affirmed that it is first and foremost a day on which journalists who have been killed in the line of duty, or whose reporting has led to their imprisonment or detention, should be remembered. He also mentioned the disturbing statistics documented by the New York City-based Committee to Protect Journalists: 36 journalists killed and 136 imprisoned in 2003. Some of them, he said, were deliberately targeted because of what they were reporting or their affiliation with a news organization.

Such was the fate of Haitian journalist Jean Dominique, who ran the country's first independent radio station, Radio Haiti-Inter, and became a national hero, championing the cause of the poor and powerless; he was assassinated in 2000 at the age of 69. However, his constant struggles to bring democracy to Haiti were captured in a somber yet mesmerizing documentary entitled The Agronomist, filmed by Oscar Award-winning director Jonathan Demme of The Silence of the Lambs. Indeed, there was not a seat vacant for the noontime showing of the documentary, which took place at the Dag Hammarskjold Library auditorium at UN Headquarters.

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The Agronomist represents a labour of love for Mr. Demme, who first met and filmed the late journalist in 1987. As owner and operator of his nation's only free radio station, Mr. Dominique had been frequently at odds with Haiti's various repressive regimes and spent much of the 1990s in exile in New York City, where Mr. Demme continued to film him over the years. Watching the documentary, one learns of key events in Haiti's history; Mr. Dominique's life and Haitian history itself appear to be very much intertwined.

Agronomy is a branch of agriculture dealing with field-crop production and soil management, and Mr. Dominique started out his life as an agronomist in his native Haiti. In the 1950s, he studied plant genetics in Paris, and upon his return worked for eight years to improve crop growth under the dictatorship of "Papa Doc" Francois Duvallier, who assumed power in 1957, the period when politics entered...