Mike Armstrong, BA 93, GrDip (journ.) 95, is the Quebec
correspondent for Global National with Kevin Newman.
A longer version of this article can be found here
Mike Armstrong and colleague Wilf Dinnick reporting from war-torn Haiti on Global National with Kevin Newman.
You start to question yourself when you’re on a plane that seats about 200 and instead there are fewer than 10. It turned out my flight on February 26 into Port-au-Prince, Haiti, was the last for more than a week — with good reason. I had touched down in a country in chaos.
Montreal Gazette reporter Sue Montgomery and photographer Marcos
Townsend had managed to scam a room for Global National reporter
Wilf Dinnick and me at the luxurious Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince.
The Montana was full of reporters: Canadians, Americans, Italians,
Danes, Brits, Australians, French. From our comfortable perch we saw
poverty and violence in every direction.
Our first full day we hooked up with a convoy of journalists in three vehicles, each driven by a local fixer, for a trip into town. Looking back, I probably should have gotten out as soon as we left the hotel gates and our fixer started praying.
The first manned checkpoint was our initial face-to-face with Chimeres, the roving pro-Aristide gangs terrorizing the city. They were holding pistols and yelling. Our driver got out and smoothly convinced them to let us by. We sped through the city, doing great until we stopped. Then the gunfire started. I heard people yelling to get in the jeep, so I did and swung the door closed.
A pickup packed with eight Chimeres had come barrelling down the road, firing in the air. Our driver started his smooth talking, but it wasn’t working. Much of the next few minutes are a blur, but parts are so clear I wish I could forget them. I remember realizing we were on our own. The other two vehicles had been able to speed off.
I remember hearing, “Give us your guns. Give us your gold.” I remember seeing the driver roughed up. I remember Sue unable to get her door closed, and seeing a Chimere pull his mask up and try to kiss her. Then came the guns, pointed at me through the windows. I remember thinking the others were going to have to come back to get pictures of our bullet-ridden bodies.
By now the crowd had grown, but so did the number of sane people.
A few convinced the Chimeres to let us go. In the end all they took
was a little local money and a first-aid kit. We were there for almost
15 minutes. It felt like 30 seconds. The trip back, on the other hand,
took about 20 minutes but felt like two days. Around every corner
could have been another Chimere gang.
The survival story was my “in.” In a hotel full of war correspondents, I could feel more comfortable at the table. I spent the next five nights soaking up tales about Kosovo, Somalia, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Iraq.
I learned how valuable a journalist’s work can be. Make no mistake, in the worst parts of the city there were saints doing incredible work. All we were doing was emptying wine bottles around a table. But that was also important. One Scottish reporter told a story about almost being executed in Kosovo, but the gun jammed. He went on to discover mass graves. A Danish TV reporter told stories about being bombed in Iraq. He was embedded with Americans and bombed — by Americans. Within days of the crisis in Haiti breaking out, France, the U.S. and Canada agreed to send troops — due to pressure from reports about hospitals being closed, morgues filling up, orphanages being ransacked.
Two significant things have happened since I returned. First, Ricardo Ortega, a Spanish reporter, was killed just a few days after I left. Second, my wife gave birth to our second son. The first pediatrician who came to check on him was from Haiti. There was something right about that.
