Cuba second only to China in number of jailed journalists

Cuba second only to China in number of jailed journalists

Paris.– Cuba remained in 2005 the Latin American nation where
news-gatherers have most to fear from the state, holding onto the
dubious distinction of being "the world's second-largest prison for
journalists" after China, according to Reporters Without Borders.

The wave of repression launched by the Castro regime in the spring of
2003 continued last year, as three additional independent reporters
joined the ranks of the 21 jailed at the beginning of the crackdown, the
Paris-based group says in its annual report.

RSF, as the organization is known, is releasing the document to coincide
with Wednesday's observance of World Press Freedom Day.

"Independent media continue suffering regular harassment by State
Security and the National Revolutionary Police," RSF said of the
Caribbean island nation, adding that "when they are not incarcerated,
Cuban journalists can choose between parole and exile."

And though the remaining Latin American nations formally recognize
freedom of expression and information, gathering and reporting the news
remains a risky occupation, the group said.

Last year, RSF said, Mexico surpassed Colombia in the number of
journalists killed, with two slain outright – Dolores Guadalupe and Raul
Gibb – and a third, newspaper editor Alfredo Jimenez Mota, missing since
April 2005 and presumed dead.

"The scourge of drug trafficking weighs heavily on the freedom of
movement and expression of journalists in Mexico," the report says.

RSF laments that in Colombia, reporters must tread carefully as they
address "certain issues as taboo as they are omnipresent, such as
corruption, drug trafficking and the exactions of armed groups."

Journalists covering the Andean nation's four-decade-old civil war are
pressured by leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and other
combatants who "try to use the media as propaganda tools," the
organization said.

Eight Colombian reporters were forced to relocate – some fleeing abroad
– in the course of 2005, RSF notes, adding that the murder of radio
newsman Julio Palacios Sanchez is a reminder that "journalism continues
to be a matter of life and death."

The Paris-based group cites 80 cases of "aggression, threats or
intimidation" against Peruvian journalists last year, many of them
attributable to officials at various levels.

Concerns are also raised about Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez's
leftist government enacted a press law RSF describes as "very
restrictive in the matter of freedom of expression."

"Although so far the government has not had to resort to this new
repressive arsenal, its mere existence is sufficient to create a climate
of self-censorship in the communications media," RSF says.

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