PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - Haiti has created an independent commission to speed up stalled investigations into the slayings of journalists in the nation.
Eight journalists have been killed in the Caribbean
country since 2000, and ...
... the notoriously weak and corrupt justice system has yet to convict anyone in the deaths.
The nine-member body, made up of Haitian journalists, will review each case and issue public reports on ways to move the investigations forward, commission president Guy Delva said Friday.
"We want to push the justice system to act. If there are obstacles to these cases, we want to know what they are, who is responsible and how to fix them," said Delva a correspondent for the Reuters news agency and the head of a Haitian press freedom group. President Rene Preval pledged full support to the commission, the first of its kind in Haiti.
Delva said its first task will be to revisit the murder of Haiti's most famous journalist, Jean Dominique, who was gunned down along with a bodyguard outside his radio station on April 3, 2000.
Dominique's life was chronicled in the 2003 documentary "The Agronomist," directed by American filmmaker Jonathan Demmentary.
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