After the Black Spring, Cuba's new repression

[Bacchus39]

http://www.cpj.org/reports/2011/07/after-the-black-spring-cubas-new-repression.php

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When the last of 29 journalists jailed in a notorious 2003 crackdown was finally freed this year, it signaled to many the end of a dark era. But Cuban authorities are still persecuting independent journalists through arbitrary arrests, beatings, and intimidation. A CPJ special report by Karen Phillips

Such is the state of repression in Cuba today. As President Raúl Castro’s government seeks greater international engagement, it has freed in the last year more than 20 imprisoned independent journalists and numerous other political detainees who had been held since the notorious Black Spring crackdown of 2003. Government officials talk of political and economic reform, pointing to a plan to introduce high-speed Internet service to the island this summer. But though the government has changed tactics in suppressing independent news and opinion, it has not abandoned repressive practices intended to stifle the free flow of information.

A CPJ investigation has found that the government persists in aggressively persecuting critical journalists with methods that include arbitrary arrests, short-term detentions, beatings, smear campaigns, surveillance, and social sanctions. Today’s tactics have yet to attract widespread international attention because they are lower in profile than the Black Spring crackdown, but the government’s oppressive actions are ongoing and significant.

CPJ examined government activities in March and April 2011, two months with sensitive political milestones, and found that journalists were targeted in more than 50 instances of repression. The majority of cases involved arrests by state security agents or police officers, according to CPJ research and documentation by the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation and Hablemos Press, a news agency that focuses on human rights. Most frequently, these journalists were detained on their way to cover a demonstration or political event and were held in local police stations for hours or days. In at least 11 cases, the arrests were carried out with violence, CPJ research shows.

During this period, more than a dozen journalists endured house arrest, preventing them from reporting on the Communist Party Congress in April and the eighth anniversary in March of the Black Spring crackdown that led to the imprisonment of dozens of journalists and dissidents. Although no journalists have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms in the last year, Cuban authorities in May ominously sentenced six political dissidents to prison sentences of two to five years.

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[Bacchus39]

1. Journalists in exile 2011: Iran, Cuba drive out critics

Two of the world’s most repressive nations each forced at least 18 journalists to flee their homes in the past year. In exile, these journalists face enormous challenges. A CPJ special report by Elisabeth Witchel.


Nearly 70 journalists were forced into exile over the past 12 months, with more than half coming from Iran and Cuba, two of the world's most repressive nations, a new survey by the Committee to Protect Journalists has found. Iran, which has waged a massive, two-year-long crackdown on the independent press, and Cuba, which freed journalists from prison only to force them to leave their homeland, each sent 18 journalists into exile.

"I feel unstable because there is nothing for us here," said Cuban reporter Victor Rolando Arroyo Carmona, 59, who served more than seven years in prison on baseless charges before being freed last September and forced into exile in Spain. There, he has experienced significant professional and economic challenges, a common experience among the 67 journalists forced into exile worldwide in the past 12 months. "We don't even have our professional titles," Arroyo Carmona said. "We live in limbo."

Imprisonment, or the threat being jailed, was the leading cause of journalists leaving their home countries during the period examined by CPJ—June 1, 2010, to May 31, 2011—accounting for 82 percent of cases. Another 15 percent fled following physical attacks or threats of violence. Prolonged harassment such as frequent interrogations or surveillance drove 3 percent of journalists in the survey to leave their countries.

http://www.cpj.org/reports/2011/06/journalists-in-exile-2011-iran-cuba-drive-out-crit.php

[joshcryer]

5. The political kidnappings are common, pure intimidation tactics.

You can read the Cuban bloggers and the stories of near daily pickups of people who voice a political opinion that goes contrary to the state in any way. Yes some of these stories are drunken people who are venting and whatnot (and we'd arrest a drunk guy spouting off about Obama, too). But most of the ones I've seen are much more innocuous.

So it's not just a journalist thing, it happens on a regular basis.

[naaman fletcher]

2. thanks,

Now we know why the pre-emptive smear against CPJ the other day.

[Bacchus39]

3. right on n/t

s

[joshcryer]

4. While CPJ is then touted heavily with regards to their criticism of Colombia.

:shrug: