Interview with Tortured Haitian Photojournalist Jean Ristil by Eric Feise and Jeb Sprague

At 5pm on September 9, 2005 Haitian Photo-Journalist Jean Ristil, working for the Associated Press, and Pacifica Radio journalist Kevin Pina were arrested, carried away by masked SWAT members of the Police Nationale d'Haiti (PNH). The police claimed they were searching for "weapons" at the church where 600 to 800 children are fed daily, but the journalists felt it likely that they were planting weapons in an attempt to frame the church’s outspoken liberation theologian Father Jean-Juste.

Over the days following their arrest, activists and journalists mobilized for the freedom of the two journalists who had been placed into a tiny jail cell with seven other inmates. Organizations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) spoke out against the arrest, while the Associated Press reported, "In a letter to Haiti's justice minister on Monday, the head of the Association of Haitian Journalists questioned the judge's decision to arrest Pina and Ristil." On September 12, 2005 Ristil and Pina were released. Following his release Ristil continued on with his work photographing and documenting the repression and violence against his community in Cité Soleil while continuing to work with children in his community. In November of the same year he would be arrested again, this time undergoing torture at the hands of the interim government’s police. Ristil is one of the few, possibly the only, photojournalist to live and work within Cité Soleil on a daily basis.