HAITI-Media group rejects the decision to suspend popular talk shows.

PORT AU PRINCE, CMC – The SOS Journalistes says it has learned with “shock, indignation, and concern” the decision of the National Telecommunications Council (CONATEL) to order Radio Mega to suspend ‘Boukante La Pawòl,’ an independent political opinion program, broadcast here every evening.

In a statement, CONATEL accuses Radio Mega of using its frequency for “the purposes of massive dissemination of propaganda in favor of armed groups who sow terror across the Capital.”

CONATEL further orders Radio Méga to immediately suspend the program and threatens to suspend its license to operate should the radio station fail to comply with the decision to stop broadcasting “Boukante La Pawòl.”

But SOS Journalists said that the radio station has never carried out any propaganda in favor of criminal gangs, describing CONATEL’s note as “regrettable, shameful and despicable.

“The biggest sin the show has been accused of seems to be its independence and its critical sense vis-à-vis those in power,” it said, adding that the host of the program, Guerrier Henry, and his teammate Jean Ismael Valestin “has long and often been targeted by men of power in Haiti.”

SOS Journalistes said CONATEL had evoked a decree taken in October 1977, under Jean-Claude Duvalier’s dictatorship, to justify its decision to remove the program from the radio.

The media group said the decree in question was repealed by the 1987 amended constitution in article 296 of its transitional provisions.

It said further that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 states that every individual has the right to freedom of opinion and expression, which includes the right not to be disturbed for his opinions and the right to seek, receive, and disseminate information and ideas by any means of expression whatsoever, without regard to borders.

“CONATEL and the administration led by the Transitional Presidential Council (TPC) and Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé seem to ignore these provisions of universal scope,”

SOS Journalistes said, describing CONATEL’s decision “as an arbitrary and desperate.

“These actions are strangely reminiscent of the times of the worst dictatorships that were thought to be forever over in Haiti,” SOS Journalistes added.