CUBA
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21 March 2007
Cuban Repression of Journalists Deemed To Have Worsened
By Eric Green
USINFO Staff Writer
Washington -- On the fourth anniversary of the Cuban regime’s crackdown on dissidents, observers of Cuba agree that the country’s communist government continues to attack press freedom, and that harassment and repression against independent journalists have worsened.
U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a March 20 statement that 59 of the 75 "independent thinkers, journalists, librarians and academics" who were imprisoned in the crackdown remain behind bars. McCormack said: "Those who have been released know that it is ‘conditional’ and live with the constant threat of being sent back to jail. They also know, as all Cubans do, that repression is on the rise."
Cuban experts described the two-week period of what was called "Black Spring," which began on March 18, 2003, as the most severe repression of peaceful dissent the island had seen in recent years.
McCormack said: "Cuba’s future will be decided by the Cuban people. For this process to begin, it is time for Cuban authorities to stop the cycle of repression, to end the practice of holding political prisoners and to release all political prisoners to their homes and families in Cuba."
Four years after Black Spring, Cuba still has 270 "prisoners of conscience," including 25 journalists, which makes the country "the second-biggest prison in the world for journalists after China," the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said.
Greg Wiegand, a human rights officer at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, told USINFO March 19 that the overall press freedom situation in Cuba has not improved since Fidel Castro named his younger brother Raúl acting president of the country on July 31, 2006.
Another official, working in the State Department's Office of Cuban Affairs, told USINFO that the plight for journalists in Cuba is "just as dismal as ever." (See related article.)
According to the Havana-based nongovernmental group the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, the number of independent journalists in prison has dipped slightly since Raúl Castro took power, but the Cuban regime has "ratcheted up" the level of harassment against independent journalists, human rights and labor activists, and others.
Wiegand said that (usually brief) detentions, interrogations and official warnings are among the forms of harassment that have increased.
He added that the Cuban government made headlines in February by refusing to renew the credentials of three foreign journalists who had been working in Cuba and asking them to leave the country.
In a February 27 speech, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez said Cuba has no freedom of association, freedom of speech or free flow of information. Gutierrez, who co-chairs with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice the U.S. Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, said the lack of press freedom in Cuba is reflected by the treatment of the three foreign journalists in February.
The United States believes that "Cubans, like others throughout the world, deserve fundamental freedoms," including freedom of speech, press and worship, Gutierrez said.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) March 14 urged Raúl Castro to release all jailed journalists in Cuba immediately and unconditionally and "to stop persecuting the independent press."
According to the group, the Cuban government has labeled these journalists "mercenaries" who have acted against the interests of the state.
"This is an arbitrary and vague charge unsupported by any evidence," CPJ said, adding that its analysis of trial documents "further indicates that the journalists were prosecuted for engaging in professional activities protected by international law."
Another New York-based group, Human Rights First, issued a statement March 15 saying that "it is past time" for those locked up during Black Spring to be free. It added that many of those in prison are "suffering from serious health problems, which have been triggered or exacerbated by harsh prison conditions."
Human Rights First said the imprisonment of "these activists [and journalists] was and continues to be widely condemned by the international community, including the United Nations, foreign governments and independent human rights organizations."
The State Department’s annual human rights report for 2006 says the Cuban government subjected independent Cuban journalists to travel bans, detentions, harassment of family and friends, equipment seizures, imprisonment and threats of imprisonment. Occasional physical attacks on independent journalists, mainly by assailants in plain clothes, occurred during the year, the report says.
The Cuba section of the State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2006 is available on the department’s Web site.
The full text of Gutierrez’s remarks is available on the Commerce Department Web site.
More information on the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba is available on the White House Web site.
The statements by Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Human Rights First are available on the groups’ Web sites.
For more on U.S. policy, see Cuba and the United States and Freedom of the Press.
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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