Harassment Against Foreign Correspondents in Cuba
Although it has not come as a surprise for those who have been clear
about what the Marxist-Leninist tyranny imposed in Cuba by Fidel Castro
more than forty-seven years ago represents, the world, particularly the
world that has been thinking about a possible democratic change in Cuba,
has granted significance to the measures taken by the government against
press correspondents, some of them being named and others in general. In
an outrageous way, with a total lack of respect for freedom of the
press, the authorities of the dictatorship have cancelled the
credentials of journalists Gary Marx of the Chicago Tribune, César
González Calero, a Spanish journalist from the Mexican daily El
Universal, and British citizen Steppens Gibbs from the BBC world service
in London.
El Universal de México commented that "…originally there was a threat of
cancelling the journalist's visa and expulsion from Cuba for the
correspondents of British media BBC and Reuters, the Chicago Tribune
from the U.S., El País, from Spain, French Agency AFP and the daily
newspaper Universal from México." The Cuban authorities have informed
about new regulations for foreign correspondents stating that they can
suspend accreditation when journalists undertake activities they
consider inappropriate or display ''a lack of journalistic ethics and/or
objectivity in their dispatches.'' In other words, according to the
dictatorship, these correspondents that generally are extremely prudent
because they realize their position, should be innocuous in their
reports to avoid touching the tyranny, "not even with a rose petal", as
the Spanish saying goes.
It is interesting to bear in mind this situation that challenges
international public opinion and, particularly, the media of the free
world, confirming the existence of this tyranny for almost half a
century now. Therefore, it seems that there is no reason to hope for a
change in the Cuban situation, not even slightly, with respect to human
rights that have freedom of information as one of their basic tenets.
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