MADRID, Spain.- The director of the Inter-American Press Association (SIP), Michael Greenspon, denounced the situation in several Ibero-American countries and especially Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, regarding freedom of expression.
In these countries “there is no freedom of expression and there is only freedom to express yourself in the way that the government allows you to. Guatemala may not be at one extreme like those three countries, but there is a hardening of freedom of expression,” the head of the IAPA specified in this regard.
In an interview with the agency EFE Greenspon further noted that “threats to free speech are out there more than we’ve seen in probably 20 years.”
“Until 2015 we were seeing an improvement in democracy and a relaxation with press freedoms, but in the last five or seven years there has been an increase in authoritarianism in the American continent and people manipulating and closing the media when they can,” he said. Michael Greenspon, for whom “the first and main mission” of the IAPA “is the defense of freedom of the press and of expression.”
Regarding authoritarian governments, which can be democratically elected, when “they don’t want a free and open democracy, one of the first things they do is limit the means and we are seeing it more and more throughout the American continent.
Last June, Cuba was ranked as one of the worst countries in Latin America in terms of press freedom, according to the book Chapultepec Index of Freedom of Expression and Press of the Inter-American Press Association.
The document explained that this result was a consequence of the application of Decree-Law 370 to censor criticism of State policy, and Decree-Law 35, which legalizes censorship on the Island.
Already in April of this year, the IAPA had denounced the repression against independent journalists in Cuba.
During its Mid-Year Meeting, it presented a report on the violations of freedom of expression on the Island, in which it stated: “The epidemic that most affects the country is repression, which rebounded in the last semester with severe sentences for the citizens who participated in the protests of July 11, 2021”.
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