Attacks on the Press - Committee to Protect Journalists

attacks on the press in 2009americas: cubain the United States on espionage charges, according to AP. Later that week, anopinion piece by former President Fidel Castro in the state-owned daily JuventudRebelde seemed to row back the Cuban response. Fidel Castro said Obama had“misinterpreted” his younger brother, and he asserted that all political prisoners inCuba were actually “mercenaries at the service of a foreign power.”Before the Trinidad and Tobago Summit of the Americas in April, CPJ lobbiedthe Obama administration to ensure that human rights in Cuba, includingthe release of political prisoners and free press conditions, would be part of theagenda. CPJ did much the same before a March visit by Louis Michel, Europeancommissioner for development and humanitarian aid. CPJ urged Michel to callon Cuban leaders to improve human rights, ensure humanitarian organizationscan visit Cuban prisons, and release all jailed journalists. In June, as the Councilof the European Union passed a resolution calling for a results-oriented dialoguewith the island state, CPJ reiterated its call on European leaders, underscoringthat the Cuban government must grant all Cubans freedom of information andexpression, including uncensored access to the Internet.But regional and international organizations had only limited success inlinking human rights to improved relations with Cuba. In June, the Organizationof American States (OAS) lifted its 47-year suspension of Cuba as amember. The reincorporation, regional leaders warned, would not be immediatebut would happen through a mechanism that would require Cuba to improveits human rights record, international press reports said. The Castro administrationresponded by declining OAS membership. In January, ManfredNowak, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhumane, ordegrading treatment or punishment, announced that following an invitationfrom the Cuban government, he would visit the island before 2010, accordingto the Spanish news service EFE. Nowak told reporters that he planned tomeet with all kinds of prisoners and their families, as well as members of thedissident movement and government officials. By year’s end, though, a visithad not been scheduled.Twenty-two journalists remained jailed in 2009 in Cuba, making it one of theworld’s leading jailers of journalists. Among the imprisoned were 20 journalists detainedduring the 2003 crackdown. In May, Albert Santiago Du Bouchet Hernándezwas given a three-year sentence on charges of disrespect and distributing enemypropaganda. Du Bouchet Hernández had previously spent a year in jail.Imprisoned journalists in Cuba continued to live in inhumane conditions,inside tiny, windowless cells or alongside dozens of common criminals in giganticwarehouses. Food was often rotten and sanitary conditions were poor. Manyjailed journalists suffered from significant ailments, including heart, lung, andskin diseases, which had developed or worsened during their imprisonment.CPJ research found that at least 10 had engaged in lengthy and dangerous hungerstrikes in 2009 to protest the poor conditions of their imprisonment. Manysought greater access to priests and doctors, along with better food.Among the reporters who remained behind bars was Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez,who in 2008 was awarded CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award. MasedaGutiérrez, 66, a founding member of the independent news agency Grupo deTrabajo Decoro, was arrested during the second day of the massive governmentcrackdown in 2003. Despite several appeals from his family to Cuban authorities,the journalist was being held at the maximum security Agüica Prison in westernMatanzas province without medical attention for high blood pressure and aworsening skin condition, his wife, Laura Pollán Toledo, said. Maseda Gutiérrezcontinued to smuggle reports from prison describing poor conditions and humanrights violations.Outside prison walls, journalists’ families continued to be harassed. In August,72-year-old Graciela González-Degard, whose brother, Ricardo GonzálezAlfonso, was being held at Havana’s Combinado del Este Prison, described toCPJ a two-week trip to Cuba. González-Degard said state security agents questionedand threatened her, while prison authorities denied her planned visits andrebuffed family requests to provide the journalist with clean clothes. She saidCuban authorities had blacklisted her brother’s wife and two teenage sons fromworking, and routinely revoked González Alfonso’s privileges as punishment forhis protests. Other families whose members are vocal human rights activists toldCPJ that secret police agents follow them, tap their phones, and hack into theire-mail accounts.Independent journalists reporting from the streets were similarly targetedby local authorities. State security officers repeatedly detained and questionedRoberto de Jesús Guerra Perez, director of the Havana-based Hablemos Press.After a four-day detention in March, Guerra Perez told CPJ that he had beencontinuously and aggressively threatened before being released. His wife, IsmariSalomón Carcases, said her husband had been detained at least 50 timesin 2008.Other independent reporters in Havana and the provinces were briefly detainedduring the year. In May, state security agents warned independent journalistJulio Beltrán that if he continued writing, he would be imprisoned, theMiami-based news Web site Cubanet reported. A month earlier, Yudelmis Fonseca,a 25-year-old reporter in Havana for the independent news agency Centrode Información de Derechos Humanos de Cuba, was fired from her state jobwithout explanation, Cubanet reported. Fonseca said she had previously been detainedseveral times.Nonetheless, like the young independent blogging community, other Cubans8 08 1