Remembering Missing Cuban Journalist on International Day to End Impunity

"What I fear most is power with impunity. I fear abuse of power, and the power to abuse." - Isabel Allende

Missing since 2004: Omar Darío Pérez Hernández

 The Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly on December 18, 2013 passed by consensus a resolution on the safety of journalists and the issue of impunity. The resolution includes a call to make the International Day to End Impunity an official UN day, to be commemorated each year on 2 November. Today is the first time it is being observed.


On the Inaugural International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, IFEX asks:

If killing journalists is killing the messenger, what message are governments sending when their killers get away with it? 

Ending impunity for crimes against journalists, media workers and others is a critical priority for the 88 civil society groups that compose IFEX, the global network that defends and promotes freedom of expression.

On this day wish to remember one case of an independent journalist who went missing in Cuba more than ten years ago and who had received threats from state security. His family following his disappearance in December 2003 was intimidated into silence. His name is Omar Darío Pérez Hernández.

Omar can be seen briefly in a video conducting an interview with students expelled from university for signing the Varela Project. One of the youths interviewed Harold Cepero would die on July 22, 2012 alongside Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas in circumstances that would lead one to believe they were murdered by state security.

Cuba: Former prisoner of conscience & journalist arrested and pressured to leave his country

 "Independent journalist Bernardo Rogelio Arévalo Padrón just arrested, held at police headquarters of Aguada de Pasajeros." -  Iván Hernandez Carrillo over twitter on September 6, 2014

Former political prisoner and journalist arrested, pressured to leave Cuba

10 September 2014
Reporters Without Borders

 

Bernardo Arévalo Padrón, an independent journalist based in Cienfuegos, 250 km southeast of Havana, said police pressured him to leave Cuba when they arrested him on 6 September because of his reporting for the opposition newspaper El Cubano Libre, de Hoy.

Arévalo told Reporters Without Borders that the Cienfuegos police threatened him with a four-year jail sentence if he did not leave the island.

“I don't want to leave Cuba, I don't want to,” Arévalo said. “My decision is irrevocable. I would rather go to prison than leave the country. I want to die in Cuba.”

Arévalo spent six years as a political prisoner, from 1997 to 2003, after being convicted of insulting Fidel Castro and then Vice-President Carlos Lage. Between then and last weekend, he had only been detained once – for eight hours in February 2010. 

 

Bernardo Arévalo Padrón

“We condemn the pressure being placed on Arévalo,” said Camille Soulier, the head of the Reporters Without Borders Americas desk. “Cuba is reestablishing relations with the European Union and EU member countries but its treatment of independent journalists has not changed. Exile or prison, that's freedom of information in Cuba today.”

In its latest monthly report, the Havana-based Hablemos Press independent information centre said there were a total of 609 politically-motivated arrests in Cuba in August, bring the total to 6,805 since the start of the year.

One of the latest victims, independent journalist Miguel Guerra Pérez, was released on 1 September after being held for a week. Several Hablemos Press reporters have been the targets of threats. They include José Leonel Silva Guerrero, who was briefly detained and threatened with reprisals against his family if he did not stop working as the Hablemos Press correspondent in Holguín.

After the Hablemos Press monthly report was slammed by a recent “Mesa Redonda” programme on state television, the centre's director, Roberto de Jesús Guerra García, demanded the right to respond to the criticism on 1 September without holding out any hope of his request being granted.

Four journalists are currently detained in Cuba. One of them, Juliet Michelena Díaz, is still waiting for a court decision. Cuba is ranked 170th out of 180 countries in the 2014 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index – the lowest position of any country in the Americas. 

 

https://www.ifex.org/cuba/2014/09/10/padron_arrested/