05 May 2003
Cuba Identified as World's Second-Worst Place to Practice Journalism
(Iraq heads top-10 list of current danger zones for reporters) (540)
Washington -- Cuba is the world's second-worst place to practice
journalism after Iraq, says the New York-based Committee to Protect
Journalists (CPJ).
In a statement that was timed to coincide with the May 3 observance of
World Press Freedom Day, the CPJ said a crackdown by the regime of
Cuban dictator Fidel Castro put an "unprecedented" 28 journalists
behind bars in March, after they were sentenced to prison terms of up
to 27 years.
The non-profit, non-partisan group said that in March, with
international attention focused on the war in Iraq, Cuban authorities
"launched a sweeping crackdown on dissidents, including the island's
fledging independent press." The journalists were arrested on charges
of subversion, convicted during one-day summary trials, and dispersed
to serve their sentences in the many jails of the Cuban "gulag," said
the CPJ.
The crackdown, while unprecedented in scale, is the "culmination of
years of repression and intimidation, including jailings, forced
exile, confiscation of property, suspension of phone service, and
orchestrated harassment by pro-government mobs," the CPJ said.
The group said journalists who dictate and fax their stories about
human rights violations and petty corruption to their colleagues
abroad "pose a direct challenge to the information monopoly" that
Castro's government maintains on the island.
Following Cuba on the CPJ list were Vietnam, Afghanistan, Chechnya,
the West Bank and Gaza, Eritrea, Togo, Colombia, and Belarus. Joel
Simon, the CPJ acting director, said: "Many journalists who report
from these places have made the ultimate sacrifice; others are in jail
serving long sentences. But their colleagues persevere, confronting
government crackdowns, physical violence, harsh press laws, and
indiscriminate gunfire to bring us the news."
Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a nationally televised
interview May 4 that the United States has been speaking out "very
strongly" against the Castro government's treatment of its own people.
The Cuban regime, Powell said on the NBC program "Meet the Press," has
been jailing people "who choose to speak their own mind." Cuba is an
"anachronism" in the Western Hemisphere and on the "face of the
earth," he said, "and the whole international community should be
condemning Cuba."
The secretary added that Cuba "sits there isolated, getting poorer and
broker, more irrelevant on the world stage, and sooner or later this
[Castro] regime will pass" into history.
The Organization of American States (OAS) and the United Nations
issued their own joint statement May 3, expressing "profound regret
and grave concern" over the recent sentencing of more than 80 Cuban
dissidents by Cuban authorities. The two organizations said the
arrests and jailings "constitute a severe erosion of the right to
freedom of opinion and expression" in Cuba.
Meanwhile, the CPJ said that Colombia's 40-year-old civil war has
taken a "brutal toll" on that country's press. More than 30
journalists have been killed in Colombia during the last decade
because of their reporting; the latest attacks left two Colombian
journalists dead on the 28th and 29th of April. Those murders were
also strongly condemned by the OAS.
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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