International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists: Taking a closer look at Cuba

"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest." - Elie Wiesel, Nobel Lecture 1986

The United Nations has declared November 2nd the "International Day To End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists" and a call has been raised for accountability. Cuba has a terrible record with regards to journalism and journalists. For the sake of brevity will focus on a recent case, a cold case, and a brief summary of what happened to the press in Cuba over the past six decades.

On August 7, 2019 Roberto de Jesus Quiñones was sentenced to a year in prison in a rigged trial. Amnesty International has recognized the jailed journalist as a prisoner of conscience. On September 11, 2019 he began serving his time in prison. Roberto is in prison for being a journalist and covering a story in Cuba.

Cuban Independent journalist Roberto Quiñones in prison since September 11th

On April 22, 2019 Roberto de Jesús Quiñones was beaten up for covering the trial of a religious couple sentenced to prison for homeschooling their kids. The Committee to Protect Journalists reported on April 24th what had happened:

On April 22nd at around 2:00 p.m., Cuban police agents detained Quiñones, a contributor to the news website CubaNet, as he was standing outside of the Guantánamo Municipal Tribunal, according to CubaNet and the Association for Press Freedom (APLP), a Cuban press freedom organization. At the time of his detention, Quiñones was covering the trial of two Cuban evangelical pastors facing charges for homeschooling their children, CubaNet reported. While being transported in the police car, agents beat Quiñones, injuring his mouth, tongue, and right thumb and causing an inflammation in his right ear, his wife told APLP.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists in the same report "Cuba is one of the most hostile environments for the press in the world, and ranks among CPJ's 10 Most Censored Countries."

Roberto Quiñones was physically assaulted on April 22, 2019.

Providing historical context on journalism in Cuba over the past sixty years

Prior to 1959, Cuba had problems – an authoritarian dictatorship imposed in 1952 that was unwanted – however it did have numerous newspapers, radio stations and television that challenged the Batista regime along with a vibrant civil society that struggled and protested against the dictator.

Now with the arrival of the Castro regime in 1959 promising the restoration of democracy and the rule of law – the exact opposite was done. Mass executions were broadcast and filmed to terrorize the population. Independent newspaper editors, were first warned that their lives were at hazard if they wrote critically against the regime and within a year and a couple of months all of the independent newspapers were shutdown, on occasion by violent mobs organized by the dictatorship and replaced with regime publications subordinated to the communist party line.

On August 3, 2011, José Ignacio Rivero passed away in exile in Miami he was the last publisher of Cuba’s legendary Diario de la Marina from 1944 to 1960. It was a family paper handed down from father to son over three generations. José Ignacio was the son of Pepín Rivero (publisher from 1919-1944) and the grandson of its founder Nicolás Rivero. It was Cuba’s longest running newspaper with the highest circulation with roots back to two newspapers: 1813 with El Lucero de la Habana (The Havana Star) and the Noticioso Mercantil (The Mercantile Seer) whose 1832 merger established El Noticioso y Lucero de la Habana, which in 1844 was renamed the Diario de la Marina.

This newspaper gave voice to a wide range of opinion. It gave a platform to many distinguished Cuban intellectuals. From 1902 to 1959 it defended the best interests of a democratic Cuba, while opposing the dictatorships of Gerardo Machado in the 1930s and Fulgencio Batista in the 1950s. It was the only newspaper in Cuba that published the letters of Huber Matos, one of the commanders of the revolution, denouncing the emerging communist dictatorship written from his prison cell after his October 1959 arrest for “counter-revolutionary treason”.

On May 12, 1960—the Diario de la Marina newspaper was closed, a day after José Ignacio Rivero took refuge in the Peruvian Embassy in Havana. The day following the closing of La Marina, Cuba's last remaining privately-owned newspaper (Prensa Libre) “Free Press” was attacked by a mob and shut down. La Marina’s offices and equipment were confiscated by the dictatorship and used to publish its dictatorship controlled newspapers.

Things did not improve over the next six decades. 

The Cold Case: Omar Darío Pérez Hernández
Omar Darío Pérez Hernández was an independent journalist in Cuba and he has been missing since 2004. He was just 39 years old at the time of his disappearance. They said that the secret police were threatening him with prison and that he and three others had set out to leave the country on December 7, 2003 but they were never heard from again.

Omar Darío Pérez Hernández missing since 2003

One of the things that had outraged Castro's secret police was Omar Darío's video interview of young university students expelled from school in November of 2002 for having signed the Varela Project.

In a grainy video Omar asked Roger Rubio Lima, Joan Columbié Rodríguez and Harold Cepero Escalante about what had happened. In Cuba asking who, what, where, when and why can get you jailed, killed or in the case of Omar Darío disappeared.

Sixty one days after his disappearance his poor 60 year old mother, Zenaida Hernández Nápoles, exclaimed: ""I'm desperate, I have the hope that they are alive, although sometimes I think the worst."

Fifteen years with no answers. Fifteen years without justice. Fifteen years of impunity.

Nine years later on July 22, 2012 Harold Cepero Escalante, one of the students who had been expelled from university for signing Project Varela and interviewed by Omar, was killed along with Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas.

We the living have an obligation to ask: What happened to Omar Darío Pérez Hernández? We also have an obligation to demand that Roberto de Jesús Quiñones be freed immediately, and finally we must continue to demand that a free and independent press be legal once again in Cuba.

Please tell the Castro regime to end impunity for crimes against journalists, free jailed reporters, and recognize that Cubans have a right to a free press.