Lack Of Free Press In Cuba

Lack Of Free Press In Cuba
09 May 2006

In its 2006 annual report, the independent Paris-based monitoring group
Reporters Without Borders says, "The right to inform the public is
recognized in every country except Cuba – still the world's second
biggest prison for journalists after China."

In March 2003, the Communist government of Fidel Castro arrested over
one hundred dissidents. Among them were twenty-seven journalists who
were given prison terms ranging from fourteen to twenty-seven years. The
Reporters Without Borders report points out that the arrests "dealt a
heavy blow to Cuba's independent press, which had started to emerge on
the island in the early 1990s with the creation of small news agencies."

Many of those arrested in Cuba remain in prison. Paul Rivero, founder of
an independent news service, is now serving a twenty-year term in a
Cuban prison. Oscar Mario Gonzalez Perez, of the Grupo de Trabajo Decoro
independent news agency, faces up to twenty years in prison under Law
Eighty-Eight, which claims to protect "Cuba's national independence and
economy." Yet no precise charge has been brought against him.

Three years after the crackdown, says Reporters Without Borders, the
unofficial Cuban press has not given up. In fact, it constitutes the top
news source on the status of human rights on the island. However, the
report says, "its clandestine situation has forced it to be a press
'from the inside for the outside,' one nearly inaccessible to those whom
it covers on a daily basis."

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack says the lack of press
freedom in Cuba "lies with one person":

"Fidel Castro, and the policies that he has forced upon the Cuban
people. So it's a sad situation where the Cuban people are suffering and
freedom of expression is virtually nonexistent in Cuba."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says that in Cuba and elsewhere the
United States "hail[s] the courageous sacrifices made by journalists. .
. .to report the facts, even at the cost of their lives and their
freedom." Ms. Rice says that the U.S. "will continue working to advocate
for greater global press freedom," but that "all free societies carry
the responsibility to press restrictive governments to allow an open
press."

http://www.voanews.com/uspolicy/2006-05-10-voa1.cfm