Case Background
Jean Mario Paul is a journalist and radio correspondent from Petit Gôave, a coastal commune 42 miles southwest of the capital Port-au-Prince. Paul was well-known for his broadcasts on Radio Antilles exposing local official corruption. He also founded a local youth organization aimed at opposing military authority, and wrote as a political analyst for two newspapers, Petit Gôave Info and May Nan May, the latter of which is a Catholic journal.
Paul’s home was burnt down in the wake of the September 1991 military coup that ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. On November 9, 1991, Paul was arrested while covering a demonstration in Grand Gôave and was charged with setting fire to a court house and police station and with possession of firearms. Paul denied the charges and no credible evidence of his guilt was ever produced. Paul was, however, brutally tortured while in police detention and was briefly hospitalized as a result. Two weeks after PEN America announced that Paul had received the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award in April 1992, he was released and all charges against him were dropped. In August 1992, Paul traveled to New York where PEN hosted a press conference on his behalf, at which he accepted his award.