Havana Cuba. – A program ―yet another one― of Cuban television returned to the charge against the independent pressparticularly against staff who used to work for the media The touch, and who has resigned en masse after receiving pressure from the political police. among the many mea culpa that they uploaded to social networks, making their separation from the media public, one of the most common reasons was the fear that they would be prohibited from leaving the country.
In the current scenario that Cuba is going through, where everything tends to worsen to levels never seen before, the prospect of being locked up on the prison-island was enough for some of those young colleagues not only to resign, but to offer information to the Security of the State to help them shape their biased, distorted and hate-filled audiovisual messes against those who have chosen the path of denunciation and criticism for the good of Cuban society.
It’s not that you have to hide that the independent journalists, like the official ones, receive remuneration for their work. The problem is that this practice, normal and fair in democratic countries, is criminalized here, and each of the testimonies offered by the former colleagues of The touch can be manipulated to present independent journalists as mercenaries, a crime that could be punished with up to 10 years in prison.
One detail that caught our attention in several of the self-incriminations is that their authors were practically unknown. Some did not work for two years in the media and suddenly appeared, with the summons in front of them, denouncing police harassment. In certain cases, a single “interview” was enough for them to agree to give up their profession, and the withdrawal was so massive that either those boys were not aware of what it means to do independent journalism in Cuba, or The touch it was used as one more experiment by State Security to, among other purposes, dissuade young people who might be considering the option of joining the alternative press, particularly graduates of the Faculty of Communication of the University of Havana.
Each person has a tolerance limit for harassment, that’s true. But it is also inevitable to compare the low resilience of young people in The touchwho allowed themselves to be intimidated by a piece of paper and an “interview”, with that of other independent reporters who have received tons of subpoenas and endured aggressive interrogations, house arrests, raids, fines, seizures, regulations and even a couple of days in a dungeon .
Everyone has “their little heart”, but even at the risk of being politically incorrect, it must be recognized that the boys of The touch they lacked the bomb for a dignified withdrawal if they had no other choice but to leave. Like others before them, they had the opportunity to go quietly, without giving details, without cooperating; but instead they chose to support a dangerous speech against colleagues who stay in “the hot.”
Everything has been too rare and sudden not to distrust. Just a few days after the dollar gave a sudden and inexplicable drop from 200 to 165 pesos, the ruling party once again blamed The touch by inflation, and he is even right when the public exposure of his collaborators coincides with the decline of the US currency.
The touch, apparently, was the scapegoat. No other independent media outlet has suffered so many casualties in such a short time, despite the repression. Only one journalist, also “forced” to cooperate some time ago, looked as calm in front of the cameras of the political police as the boys from The touch. Then some are offended when they are accused of “opposition Light”, or they are told that dissidence in Cuba gives a visa, or that the independent press has become a springboard to emigrate.
Wholesale resignations and self-incriminations, without even knowing what a dungeon smells like. A “touch” was enough to deflate one of the most widely read independent media in recent times. Blessed are the journalists who navigate with fear, but also with courage, in these turbulent waters that will turn hellish starting in December, when the new Penal Code comes into force, criminalizing freedom of expression and the press to the extreme.
OPINION ARTICLE
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