"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
Showing posts with label world press freedom day. Show all posts
Showing posts with label world press freedom day. Show all posts
"Th newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis foorce an' th'
banks, commands th' milishy, controls th' ligislachure, baptizes th'
young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted, afflicts th'
comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward". - Mr. Dooley ( Finley Peter Dunne), 1902
On World Press Freedom Day
the map of press freedom prepared by Reporters Without Borders is bleak
with a darkening tide of censorship across the globe. Despite having a First Amendment to the Constitution that protects free speech and freedom of the press the United States today has 44 countries ahead of it with greater press freedoms. This confirms the observation of the late conservative polemicist Joseph Sobran, who passed away in 2010 that “the
U.S. Constitution poses no serious threat to our form of government.”
It gives me no comfort to be able to say, but hey Cuba, our next door
neighbor, is at 172 much less
free then the United States. As a citizen and a patriot this is one list that if
not number one, the U.S. should strive to be in the top ten. It
has not been there for some time. The ten most censored countries
in the world according to the Committee to Protect Journalists are also
terrible places to live not only for journalists but everyday people.
A free press is a benchmark of a free society that needs to be
celebrated and defended from both external and internal threats to its
good works. Since it is a free institution, it must be self-policing and
only answer to its customers on the basis of the quality of the
journalism.
The eight countries with the
greatest press freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders, in
contrast do not have refugee exodus crises.
Today is a day to honor courageous and professional journalists who take
their work seriously, but are willing to poke fun at themselves as
Finley Peter Dunne did 115 years ago. It is an ironic tribute that his
skewering of the self-important news media has been edited down and
turned into a challenge to some journalists to "comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable." On this day let us comfort journalists afflicted for practicing their trade in closed societies.
Lázaro Yuri Valle Roca and Sulmira Martínez Pérez jailed in Cuba
Lázaro Yuri Valle Roca was sentenced to five years in prison on July 28, 2022 for “enemy propaganda and resistance,” and he has been jailed since June 5, 2021. The Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following statement condemning the so-called "legal proceeding":
“Cuban authorities have already unjustly held journalist Lázaro Yuri Valle Roca behind bars for more than a year; now he faces years more in prison simply for sharing information,” said CPJ’s Latin America and the Caribbean program coordinator, Natalie Southwick. “Valle’s sentencing is a clear sign that the Cuban government is back to its old playbook, using the extreme measure of jailing journalists to maintain its censorship regime.”
Sulmira Martínez Pérez, a 21-year-old Cuban black woman, was detained on January 10, 2023 by State Security for sharing memes on her Facebook page in which she expressed her intentions to organize a nonviolent demonstration in Cuba, reported Melissa Martin, Ph.D. in her April 5, 2023 Op-Ed, "U.S. Demands Release of Cuban Sulmira Martínez Pérez Unlawfully Jailed by State Security – Let Her Go" in The Published Reporter. On March 17, 2023 Sulmira was transferred to Guatao prison in Havana, reported journalist Mónica Baró who cited the 21-year-old’s mother, Norma Perez. Nearing the three month mark of her arrest, she remains in custody. According to her mom, the charges against Sulmira have changed from “propaganda against the constitutional order” to “instigating a crime,” a more serious charge applied to many July 11, 2021 protestors.
"Article 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this
right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to
seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and
regardless of frontiers." - Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948
May 3rd, since December 1993 has been recognized by the international community as World Press Freedom Day. It is observed on the anniversary of the Declaration of Windhoek, a statement of press freedom principles drafted by African Journalists
and passed on May 3, 1992 at a UNESCO seminar on "Promoting an
Independent and Pluralistic African Press," held in Windhoek, Namibia.
The theme for World Press
Freedom Day 2021 is “Information as a Public Good.” This is a timely
theme considering the challenges confronting the free press in the free
world due to technological changes, and a new media environment.
The three topics to be highlighted at this year’s World Press Freedom Day 2021 Global Conference, as per UNESCO are:
Steps to ensure the economic viability of news media;
Mechanisms for ensuring transparency of Internet companies;
Enhanced
Media and Information Literacy (MIL) capacities that enable people to
recognize and value, as well as defend and demand, journalism as a vital
part of information as a public good
Today, this CubaBrief will focus on press freedoms in Cuba, or better put their systematic absence.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
released the 2021 edition of their World Press Freedom Index. revealing
that Cuba in 2021 out of 180 countries remained 171st in press freedom, unchanged from that position in 2020 when the island nation
edged out Saudi Arabia to become ninth of the 10 worst ranked countries
in the index. Below is the 2021 entry by RSF on Cuba.
Constant ordeal for independent media
Cuba
has continued year after year to be Latin America’s worst media freedom
violator. Miguel Díaz-Canel’s election as president in April 2018,
after 59 years of authoritarian socialist rule under Fidel Castro and
his brother Raúl, has made no difference. The regime maintains an almost
total monopoly of news and information and uses every means possible to
obstruct independent media. Journalists who don’t toe the official line
are subjected to arbitrary arrest, the threat of imprisonment,
persecution and harassment, illegal home searches, and
confiscation and destruction of
journalistic material. Independent bloggers and journalists are watched
by state security agents, who try to restrict their freedom of
movement, and often take them in for questioning and delete information
on their devices. The authorities also control the coverage by foreign
reporters by granting accreditation selectively and expelling those
regarded as too “negative” about the government. The gradual improvement
in Internet access nonetheless constitutes one of the few grounds for
hope for the future of press freedom in Cuba.
It is within this existing reality that the plight of
Luis
Manuel Otero Alcántara is a great challenge because independent media
on the island is tightly muzzled, and subject to deportation, in terms
of international media outlets, or prison for brave independent
journalists that send their reports abroad, because mass media outlets
on the island are a monopoly controlled by the Cuban Communist Party.
BBC
News has provided a complete report on the events this past weekend,
but fails to provide context to why Luis Manuel's allies fear for his
safety. At 5:00am on Sunday, May 2nd state security agents forced their
way into his home. Officials are giving contradictory statements to
attempt to discredit the dissident. Activists and family members are
demanding proof of life.
The Center for a Free
Cuba issued a press release today providing historical context to the
danger Luis Manuel faces at the Calixto Garcia hospital in Cuba.
“In
the past, the Calixto García Hospital and other Cuban hospitals have
been the scene of the death of other opponents under the control of the
agents of the Ministry of the Interior, as was the case of the leader of
the Ladies in White Laura Pollán Toledo in October 2011. The
agents of the political police isolate the person, do not allow the
entry of their relatives or friends, and the treatment they apply or the
one they stop applying to lead them to death is unknown. There are
numerous cases of unexplained deaths in hospitals on the Island under
the custody of State Security. Another case was that of the blind
opponent Sergio Díaz Larrastegui in April 2012,” explained
Janisset Rivero, who for years has documented these cases and is a
collaborator of the Center for a Free Cuba.
In
both cases, that of Pollán and that of Díaz Larrastegui, whose homes
were headquarters in Havana of important human rights organizations,
their deaths meant the closure of the headquarters and a severe blow to
the civic movement.
Laura Pollán Toledo and Luis
Manuel Otero Alcántara
“In
the case of Otero Alcántara, his home is the headquarters of the San
Isidro Movement, an organization that in recent months has raised its
voice in favor of freedom of expression on the Island, achieving
numerous spontaneous and organized demonstrations in favor of their
demands. The regime that has brought this activist to the brink of death
cannot be trusted to now want to save him. We must demand that his
family or friends can see him and verify his situation,” said John Suárez, Executive Director of the CFC.
"Article 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this
right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to
seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and
regardless of frontiers." - Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948
May 3rd, since December 1993 has been recognized by the international community as World Press Freedom Day. It is observed on the anniversary of the Declaration of Windhoek, a statement of press freedom principles drafted by African Journalists and passed on May 3, 1992 at a UNESCO seminar on "Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press," held in Windhoek, Namibia.
Today, this blog will focus on press freedoms in Cuba, or better put their systematic absence.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) released the 2020 edition of their World Press Freedom Index. revealing that Cuba dropped from 169th in press freedom in 2019 to 171st in 2020 edging out Saudi Arabia to become part of the 10 worst ranked countries in the index.
The Paris based press freedom organization disclosed in their 2020 summary how coverage of Cuba in the international press is slanted and often repeating official news that echoes the dictatorship because those who are critical are expelled from the country creating a chilling effect on those who remain behind.
CUBA
Constant ordeal for independent media
A self-styled socialist republic and one-party state, Cuba has continued year after year to be Latin America’s worst media freedom violator. Miguel Díaz-Canel’s election as president in April 2018, after 59 years of repression under the Castro family, has made no difference. The regime maintains an almost total media monopoly and the constitution prohibits privately-owned media. The few Cuban bloggers and independent journalists are threatened by the government and watched by security agents, who often take them in for questioning and delete information in their devices. Journalists regarded as especially troublesome are often arrested and jailed. The authorities also control the coverage of foreign reporters by granting accreditation selectively and expelling those regarded as too “negative” about the government. The gradual improvement in Internet access nonetheless constitutes grounds for hope about the future of press freedom in Cuba.
Cuban journalists continue to be targeted and silence in the time of COVID-19 when independent journalism is more important than ever. Yoel Bravo Lopez, a citizen journalist from Villa Clara who in mid-April
reported over social media an increase in COVID-19 cases at a retirement
home in Santa Clara, was arrested on Monday,
April 20, 2020 by State Security, interrogated for several hours, fined
3,000 pesos ($120) and threatened with “going to prison just like Jose
Daniel Ferrer” if he continued disseminating information the government
considers “contrary to the public interest.” This is not an isolated
case. Mónica Baróon detained on Friday, April 17, 2020 was also interrogated, fined 3,000 pesos ($120)
under the Decree Law 370 rule that regulates the use of the internet in
Cuba, and also threatened with prison. Mónica Baró Sánchez was awarded the Gabo Prize 2019 for her article ’The blood was never yellow.’ Other journalists targeted in recent weeks are Yoe Suárez and Waldo Fernández Cuenca, of DIARIO DE CUBA; and Camila Acosta and Julio Antonio Aleaga, of Cubanet.
Little wonder that Cuba in 2020 is among the 10 worse countries for
press freedom in the world according to Reporters Without Borders.
However, it is also important to point out that this has been a terrible reality for the past 61 years with the arrival of the Castro dictatorship to power. Prisoners of conscience have been an every existent reality through all that time that continues into the present.
Roberto de Jesús Quiñones Haces
Since this is World Press Freedom Day we are focusing on the case of imprisoned Cuban journalist Roberto de Jesús Quiñones Haces, who is in poor health and has been in prison since September 11, 2019. His son, Roberto José Quiñones Castro, who resides in the United States, has been campaigning for his dad's release, picketing the Cuban Embassy in Washington DC.
Roberto de Jesús Quiñones Haces was unjustly imprisoned for five years for being an independent attorney in Cuba in 1998. No longer able to practice as a lawyer upon his release, he became an independent journalist.
Roberto Quiñones was physically assaulted on April 22, 2019.
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 22, 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 toldAPLP.
Picket on August 13, 2019 outside the Cuban embassy in Washington DC.
On April 27, 2020 Cubanet released a new video in Spanish by Roberto José Quiñones Castro warns that his dad's health is deteriorating and again calls for the release of his father, Roberto de Jesús Quiñones.
Below is a letter by three prominent international human rights organizations calling for the release of Roberto de Jesús Quiñones released today on World Press Freedom Day.
May 2, 2020
To: President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez
President of the Republic of Cuba
Office of the President
Hidalgo Esq. 6
Plaza de La Revolución,
CP 10400
Sent via email: despacho@presidencia.gob.cu
Dear President Díaz-Canel,
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Amnesty International, and Article 19 Mexico and Central America Office are writing to call for the immediate release of jailed journalist Roberto de Jesús Quiñones Haces amid the sweeping COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists’ most recent annual survey conducted on December 1, 2019, there were at least 250 journalists behind bars around the world, including in Honduras, Venezuela, and Cuba. On March 30, CPJ published an open letter to world leaders urging the release of all journalists imprisoned for their work. The situation of Cuban journalist Roberto Quiñones appears particularly dire, so we are reiterating that call to you on his behalf at this time of grave public health concern.
Roberto Quiñones, a lawyer and contributor to the news website CubaNet, has been imprisoned in the Guantánamo Provincial Prison since September 11, 2019, where he is serving a year-long correctional labor sentence. A Guantánamo court sentenced Quiñones in August 2019 after he refused to pay a fine for charges of “resistance” and “disobedience” stemming from his April 22, 2019, arrest while reporting on a trial.
In September 2019, Amnesty International named Quiñones a prisoner of conscience, imprisoned solely for peacefully exercising his freedom of expression, and called for his immediate and unconditional release. In November 2019, representatives of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, as well as the Special Rapporteurs for Freedom of Expression from the UN and IACHR, informed your government that the Working Group was investigating Quiñones’ case as a potential case of arbitrary detention and violation of due process.
Both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the American Convention on Human Rights guarantee the right to “seek,receive and impart information” freely, and include specific protections for journalists. Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Cuba signed in 2008, provides for the right to hold opinions “without interference” and the right to freely “seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds,” including on issues of public interest.
We remind you that Cuba must guarantee these rights, which are particularly relevant to the current global context.
Cuba also has a duty to protect its population amid the COVID-19 pandemic without discrimination, including those deprived of their liberty. According to the World Health Organization, “People deprived of their liberty, and those living or working in enclosed environments in their close proximity, are likely to be more vulnerable to the COVID-19 disease than the general population.”
Imprisoned journalists have no control over their surroundings, cannot choose to isolate, and are often denied necessary medical care. In addition, some individuals appear to be at particular risk of severe illness or death linked to COVID-19, including older individuals and people with pre-existing medical conditions, according to the WHO.
Roberto Quiñones is no exception. In letters published by CubaNet on October 1 and March 5, Quiñones has described his conditions at the Guantánamo Provincial Prison, which include overcrowding, poor food and water quality, and lack of adequate medical attention. Quiñones was reportedly subject to retaliation for publishing this information in the form of “disciplinary measures,” including denying access to phone calls and barring him from outdoor spaces in the prison.
Quiñones has served more than half of his year-long sentence, during which time he has suffered from escalating health problems, including psoriasis that, according to CubaNet, has worsened in detention, and significant weight loss due to gastrointestinal complications, according to his wife. With detainees at increased risk from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Cuban government must release Roberto Quiñones.
Mr. President, no journalist should have to choose between silence or prison. On this World Press Freedom Day, we urge you to release Roberto Quiñones, protect the free flow of information, and guarantee that all journalists in Cuba are able to perform their fundamental role in society, free of any reprisals.
Sincerely,
Committee to Protect Journalists
(CPJ)Amnesty International
ARTICLE 19 Mexico & Central America Office
"Th newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis foorce an' th'
banks, commands th' milishy, controls th' ligislachure, baptizes th'
young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted, afflicts th'
comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward". - Mr. Dooley ( Finley Peter Dunne), 1902
On World Press Freedom Day the map of press freedom prepared by Reporters Without Borders is bleak with a darkening tide of censorship across the globe. Despite having a First Amendment to the Constitution that protects free speech and freedom of the press the United States today has 43 countries ahead of it with greater press freedoms. This confirms the observation of the late conservative polemicist Joseph Sobran, who passed away in 2010 that “the U.S. Constitution poses no serious threat to our form of government.” It gives me no comfort to be able to say, but hey Cuba, our next door neighbor, is at 173 much less free then the USA. As a citizen and a patriot this is one list that if not number one, the United States should strive to be in the top ten. It has not been there for some time. The ten most censored countries in the world according to the Committee to Protect Journalists are also terrible places to live not only for journalists but everyday people.
A free press is a benchmark of a free society that needs to be celebrated and defended from both external and internal threats to its good works. Since it is a free institution, it must be self-policing and only answer to its customers on the basis of the quality of the journalism.
The ten countries with the
greatest press freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders, in
contrast do not have refugee exodus crises, even as is the case with Costa Rica
(6) and Jamaica (8) they are not materially the richest countries but
they are free peoples.
Today is a day to honor courageous and professional journalists who take their work seriously, but are willing to poke fun at themselves as Finley Peter Dunne did 115 years ago. It is an ironic tribute that his skewering of the self-important news media has been edited down and turned into a challenge to some journalists to "comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable." On this day let us comfort journalists afflicted for practicing their trade in closed societies.
The Vietnamese blogger Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, better known as Me Na or "Mother Mushroom" has been detained since October 2016 while trying to visit an imprisoned activist. She stands accused of "propagandizing against the state."
Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy, journalists for Al Jazeera who were arrested in Egypt in 2013, writing today in The Australian warn that a "tragedy is unfolding in Turkey. Independent journalism is being systematically stamped out. Prison doors are slamming, media outlets are being boarded up and a disturbing silence is falling over what has been a vibrant and diverse media landscape."
Be not silent before this atrocity against freedom.
George Orwell well understood that "Freedom of the press if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticize and oppose." He also understood what was not only "fake news" but also fake language and called it "newspeak" in his novel 1984.
We must recognize that there are hacks that can due great and lasting damage peddling "fake news" working in free newspapers. The ghosts of Walter Duranty and Herbert Matthews continue to possess
the Gray Lady with their enduring and shameful legacies in Ukraine and Cuba. Walter Duranty won the Pulitzer covering up Stalin's 1930s manufactured famine in Ukraine that claimed eight to 10 million lives. With his reports denying the reality all around him this New York Times journalist was complicit in genocide. Twenty years later in Cuba Herbert Matthews engaged in a fallacious propaganda campaign disguised as news reporting to turn Fidel Castro into a national figure presenting him as an anti-communist and a democrat. The total number of dead is still being added to 58 years later for the lies he reported in the 1950s.
However this hacks are small time purveyors of fake news compared to governments that manufacture entire news agencies, black mail journalists with the threat of expulsion. The way to counter fake news is with more press freedom to challenge it along with greater reader discernment to weigh the facts and seek the truth. Facts matter, recognizing objective truth exists and getting the story
right regardless of agendas is the best way to serve readers.
Believing the government can be dangerous to your freedom. President Ronald Reagan said it best, "trust but verify." He applied that to his dealings with the Russians, but it should be expanded when dealing with all governments.
However the threats to a free press are not only state actors, but also technology and artificial intelligence that threatens to simulate writing and overwhelm the net with inferior prose designed to push an agenda or a product and not inform a readership is a future threat. However, an ever present threat today thanks to the greed of Western technology companies such as Yahoo, Sun Microsystems, Google and others that helped erect the Great Fire Wall of China. Modernizing totalitarianism and giving it new life into the 21st Century. Google is now collaborating with the Cuban intelligence service and military allowing them to store their servers. This means that journalists can write their articles but no one will be able to find them in their online searches. Russia is also now adopting their own version of the great fire wall. This is also a profound threat to press freedom.
The belief that legitimacy is no longer found in objective truth but in "positive results" has proven a destructive meme in schools of journalism that in the final analysis rejects reality as a social construct are bearing fruit in declining readership and sales.
These are great challenges but can be overcome if confronted and resisted.
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