MADRID, Spain.- The Cuban journalist Alberto Cabrera Toppin I quit to collaborate with independent media under pressure from State Security, which forced him to write and sign a text renouncing it.
“As I have been told, with this thread I make public my resignation to collaborate with any media outlet that addresses the Cuban reality,” said the reporter, who graduated in Journalism from the University of Havana in 2017.
Through several tweets, Cabrera Toppin denounced that this weekend he was summoned to a police station where, in addition to signing the aforementioned document, he had to hand over his work equipment, even though these have not been donated by any institution or government project.
13)…text. Of the rest, no.
As I have been told, with this thread I make public my resignation to collaborate with any media that addresses the Cuban reality. https://t.co/DH2VZTJNxj
— Alberto C. Toppin (@toppin1893) January 14, 2023
The journalist, who generally writes about technology, explains that this coercion occurs despite the fact that last October he had ended his relationship with The touch.
“As a doctor himself can feel pride when he heals,” he explains, “I felt satisfaction in many things. In getting on the last of the Vedado Methodist Church to photograph one of the entrances to the Havana subway —which is today the horrible hotel that they sold us as 100% Cuban capital, whose construction did not stop during the pandemic and which has broken a part of the 23rd street sidewalk—; to travel the streets of Moa on a motorcycle while, together with my colleague @quarry89, found heartbreaking testimonies that reaffirmed the neglect of the government in one of the most prosperous industrial areas of Cuba, and with the worst environmental quality; in learning to represent statistical information in interactive graphs almost self-taught; in interviewing people inside real technological innovations, like the defunct Snet and the Weekly Package; writing that report on ETECSA for 19 marathon hours together with @cabezamestiza.
However, he laments, “you get scared when someone stares at you because you are photographing the river where industrial waste is dumped. One fears that someone will reject giving you an opinion in a bad way simply because you say that you work for an independent medium. You walk with your eyes wide open, as if predicting the moment when State Security is going to fall on you to prevent you from continuing, to intimidate your family, to truncate the life projects that you could devise based on your work”.
8)…you say you work for an independent medium. You walk with your eyes wide open, as if predicting the moment when State Security is going to fall on you to prevent you from continuing, to intimidate your family, to truncate the life projects that…
— Alberto C. Toppin (@toppin1893) January 14, 2023
Alberto Cabrera Toppin was a web editor at technical youthcollaborator of The sneeze and reporter in YuccaByteamong others.
Among the numerous international organizations that denounced during 2022 the repression of the Cuban regime against independent journalists, highlighted the Inter-American Press Association (YEP).
During its Mid-Year Meeting, the IAPA presented a report on violations of freedom of expression on the Island, in which it stated that “the epidemic that most affects the country is repression.”
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