Cuban Jailed Journalists

In a communist state, the media is used as a tool for propaganda by the government. But in these states we find out what true independent journalism really is. Since the 1980s, more and more independent journalists have sprung up in Cuba; however, they face many obstacles from the government for publishing information that is not pro-government. More recently, many journalists from Cuba have been imprisoned for violating laws targeted towards silencing journalists. These independent journalists have found support from groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists and from journalists in other Latin American countries. The reason these people are supporting the independent journalists is because it is important to have an independent voice in any country. It doesn't matter if you are living in a democracy or a communist controlled state, people want and will seek independent voices to find an alternative perspective of information, or one that's completely absent from the media.

When Cuba gained its independence from Spain in 1898, the people in Cuba saw this opportunity as a chance to shape their own country. But the Platt Amendment by the United States limited the advancements of the country because Cuba had to gain the approval of the United States for their state decisions. So here you have a country that finally has gained their independence but has to follow stipulations by another country. So the United States for over thirty years intervened in internal Cuban affairs and as a result of the decisions of the United States government, it led Cuba into a series of corrupt politics (Brief History).

As with other countries in Latin America, it is always hard for the press to distribute accurate information when the country has political and government instability. Cuban journalists started to go through this in 1933, when Sergeant Fulgencio Batista led a revolt to take control of the country. They have continued to struggle with their government to this day with Fidel Castro's regime which has been in power since 1959. When you live in a country where the press has no freedom of information law, then the role of the press is to provide an alternative voice, independent of the government, providing criticism on policy making and to let people know if the government is not doing their job. So in the late 1980s, journalists in Cuba started the independent press movement which broke the Cuban government's use of the media as its mouthpiece.

In 1985, Yndamiro Restano was banned from official journalism after he challenged the concept of state-controlled journalism, and in 1987, he created the first non-official journalism organization in Cuba. He also started a human rights movement and was imprisoned for passing out information about it. He later gained his independence in 1995, with help from the CPJ and other press freedom organizations (Bilello). But what Restano did was give light to other journalists who also had been banned from official journalism to start other independent media outlets.

Since these alternative media groups started non-official journalism organizations, they had to gain support from news agencies abroad. They even had to publish their stories in other countries in hope that somehow it would find its way back into Cuba through other publications or broadcasts.

But as more journalists began to start working for independent news agencies, the Cuban government began to target journalists and imprison them for violating laws aimed at silencing journalists.

Law 88 passed in February of 1999, directly aimed at punishing not only journalists, but writers of any kind who "collaborate in any way with foreign radio or television stations, newspapers, magazines or other mass media with the purpose of...destabilizing the country and destroying the socialist state." It also reprimands people for distributing or reproducing information of "subversive character" from outside countries. And even though this law was disguised to be used to fight against the United States economic war on Cuba, it is clearly aimed at the growing independent journalists in Cuba (Oppenhiemer).

But the law widely used to sentence journalists with crimes against the state is Article 91 of the Penal Code. It says "the person who, in the interest of a foreign State, commits an act with the intent to cause damage to the independence of the Cuban State or the integrity of its territory, shall be punished with 10 to 20 years in prison or death" (Article 91).

These two laws are clearly geared toward the non-official journalists in Cuba and since their creation, have allowed Cuba to arrest and imprison 29 journalists in the span of one month in 2003.

During the United States invasion of Iraq in late March to early April of 2003, the Cuban government arrested 75 people in Cuba, 29 of those were journalists. The government did this because they knew they the world attention would be thousands of miles away and so they began "the crackdown on the independent press."

The journalists were given a one day trial between April 3rd and 4th. After these quick trials, all of the journalists were given sentences ranging from 14 to 27 years in prison. It was also documented that the defense lawyers were given little to no time to prepare a case for their clients and could not even access their clients before their sentencing (Special Report). What was going on in Cuba was baffling, and immediately the CPJ and other press freedom organizations began to contact the government and demand that the journalists be released from prison.

One of the journalists the CPJ helped free after the crackdown was Raul Rivero, a well known journalist and poet in Cuba who was the director of the Cuba Press independent news agency. Rivero was charged with violating Article 91 of the Penal Code in Cuba and the prosecutors said Rivero and fellow journalist Ricardo Gonzбlez Alfonso were accused of, among other charges, creating the journalists' organization Sociedad de Periodistas Manuel Mбrquez Sterling and its "subversive" magazine, De Cuba (Special Report). They were both given 20 year sentences in prison.

In November of 2004, Rivero was released from prison on medical parole. He was one of five journalists that were released during late November to early December while Cuba was resuming formal diplomatic contacts with Spain, a possible precursor to normalizing relations with the European Union (Rivero Released). That year, Rivero also received the Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize from UNESCO.

Rivero and four other journalists have been freed from prison on medical parole. Carmelo Dнaz Fernбndez was one of those journalists granted medical parole but was warned that he would be sent back to prison if he recovered