Jean Leopold Dominique was a Haitian journalist and activist for human rights and democracy in Haiti.
23 Facts About Jean Dominique
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Jean Dominique was born in Port-au-Prince to Leopold Dominique, a trader originally from Riviere Froide, and Marcelle Dominique.
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Jean Dominique's elder brother Philippe was an officer in the Haitian army who, along with fellow officers Alix Pasquet and Henry Perpignan, was killed in an attempt to occupy the Casernes Dessalines and overthrow Francois Duvalier in July 1958.
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Jean Dominique's eldest sister, Madeleine Dominique Paillere, was a well-known author and intellectual.
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Jean Dominique then received a scholarship to studied genetically modified cacao and coffee plants at the Ecole Superieure d'Application d'Agriculture Tropicale in Paris.
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Jean Dominique returned to Haiti in 1955 leaving his girlfriend while she is pregnant and began to work as an agronomist in in the Nord department with the Institut Haitien de Credit Agricole et Industriel as well as the Societe Haitiano-Americaine de Developpement Agricole, primarily on sisal and rubber production.
7.
Jean Dominique worked alongside agronomist Edner Vil, who was arrested and killed by the Duvalier regime for promoting the rights of peasant farmers.
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Jean Dominique, who had been working with the ti peyizan to defend their land rights against the chefs de section and wealthy landowners, was arrested a few weeks after his brother's attempt to overthrow the regime, and he spent six months in prison in Gonaives.
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In 1961, Jean Dominique co-directed and narrated Haiti's first documentary film, Mais, je suis belle, an ironic film about Caribbean beauty pageants.
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Jean Dominique remained a staunch supporter of Haitian cinema, and collaborated with Haitian filmmakers such as Rassoul Labuchin.
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Jean Dominique was married to fellow journalist Michele Montas, who became the co-director of Radio Haiti after Jean Dominique's assassination.
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Jean Dominique had a son, the novelist Denis Boucolon from a relationship with an Afro-Caribbean student from Guadeloupe, Maryse Boucolon.
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An order was issued for Jean Dominique to be killed on sight.
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Jean Dominique spent two months in asylum at the Venezuelan embassy, before he joined Montas in New York, where they married in 1983.
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Jean Dominique devoted a great deal of airtime and analysis, for example, to the July 1987 massacre of peasant farmers by landowners and Macoutes in Jean Rabel.
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Jean Dominique collaborated with the American filmmaker Jonathan Demme on the interviews that would eventually become the documentary The Agronomist, and on an unfinished project on the History of Haitian Cinema.
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In June 1993, Jean Dominique was part of Aristide's entourage at the Governors Island meeting between the democratically elected government in exile and the leaders of the military junta.
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Jean Dominique returned to Haiti in 1994, after Aristide's return to power, and reopened Radio Haiti the following year.
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Jean Dominique investigated Pharval Laboratories, a pharmaceutical company, for selling cough syrup contaminated with diethylene glycol that was responsible for the poisoning of two hundred children, of whom sixty died.
20.
Jean Dominique denounced the importation of medical-grade ethanol that was being sold as counterfeit clairin, sickening and killing people who consumed it while undercutting the livelihood of Haiti's sugar planters and distillers.
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Jean Dominique did strongly support grassroots peasants' rights groups, especially KOZEPEP whose leader, Charles Suffrard, was a close friend and collaborator of Dominique.
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On 3 April 2000, at the age of 69, Jean Dominique was shot four times in the chest and neck as he arrived for work at Radio Haiti.
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The Centre de Production Agricole Jean L Dominique in Marmelade, in the north of Haiti, created in 2001 by former President Rene Preval in memory of Dominique, is an agricultural training center for coffee and cacao producers.