For Radio Journalist, Haiti Is 'Place of Permanent Peril'

Still, she kept going to work, pressing officials on lapses in public accountability and devoting her one-hour show "Opinion" to Haitians who needed to air their grievances.

"As a journalist in Haiti, a place of permanent peril, you cannot look yourself in the mirror if you stay home," she said. "They could attack me even if I went off the air, so I made a choice. The choice you make is to help your country get out of this mess somehow."

Her mother, undergoing cancer treatment in Paris, and her father, living in Connecticut, called her daily and urged her to leave Haiti.

"I could not get myself to leave. . . . I was responsible for my co-workers, and I could not abandon my listeners," she said.

Aristide supporters drew up a list of six prominent journalists targeted for execution. "We even knew how they were going to kill us, Christine Jeune-style," Bonhomme said, referring to a police officer who was raped and killed in 1996 after speaking out against gangs during a televised meeting hosted by Aristide.

Bonhomme's office was riddled with machine-gun fire; bullets are still lodged in her thick metal file cabinets. On Feb. 28, a fire was set in the radio's basement, partially burning the facility.

On Feb. 29, Aristide finally left the country.

"We need leaders who can create trust," Bonhomme said. "You don't vote for a man, you vote for a program."

On Tuesday, Vital Voices also remembered Fern Holland, an American lawyer brutally killed with her friend and colleague Salwa Oumashi in Iraq in March.

Holland's sister, Vi Holland, said: "People often ask me how my sister was murdered. I know my sister does not want to be remembered for her death, but for the way she lived her life and her dedication to helping others."

Fern Holland left her practice to develop centers in Iraq where women could congregate safely to debate and pursue roles in their communities.

Vital Voices inaugurated an award in Holland's name. The first recipient ,Fatima Hassan Miqdadi, a member of Baghdad's city council and an activist imprisoned under former president Saddam Hussein, accepted the honor in a taped speech from Iraq.