Cuban journalist Luz Escobar, a member of the editorial staff of 14ymedio and winner of the Press Freedom Award of the Spanish newspaper The worlddeclared this Wednesday night that, thanks to independent reporters, Cuba has “its own voice.”
The 20th International Journalism Awards ceremony dinner, chaired by Isabel Díaz Ayuso, president of the Community of Madrid, was held at the Prado National Museum. During the celebration, the exiled Russian reporter Alexey Kovalev, director of investigations of the newspaper, also received the Best Journalistic Work Award. jellyfish.
Escobar alluded in his speech to the difficulties of Cubans to leave the Island, subjected to the control of the regime and “hostages of a power that treats us like small children who are prohibited from traveling.”
He also pointed out that, in Cuba, the word “journalist” is equivalent to that of “enemy”, and described the official media as “propagandistic spaces of the only party allowed.” “In journalism faculties it is taught to revere the government without questioning and the list of prohibited subjects exceeds those on which one can inquire and publish an article,” he pointed out.
Regarding the dangers of the profession, Escobar denounced the “strangling of the press” by the government, whose objective has been “to impose a single narrative on what was happening inside and outside the island.” “Assassination of journalism,” he says, has been the task of those who have spent six decades plotting a “triumphant narrative about the national situation” while attributing to Europe and the rest of the Western democracies a “catastrophist” scenario.
As examples of the media manipulation of the regime, the journalist recounted the treatment of “special military operation” that the official media gave to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, following direct instructions from the Kremlin, which justified the conflict and denigrated opposition reporters such as Kovalev.
Independent journalism was born as an alternative to that story, he explained. According to Escobar, its origins are in the prisons of the regime, “when a political prisoner sent the first piece of precariously written paper reporting a beating”, issued “a complaint through restricted telephone calls” or “painted a symbol on a wall “.
Founders such as the poet and journalist Raúl Rivero, one of those convicted during the so-called Black Spring of 2003, or his own father, Reinaldo Escobar, censored by the regime in 1988, have served as his inspiration when assuming the “high cost personal, family and social” of their work.
Escobar denounced the arbitrary arrests, the threats and the police siege that he has suffered in his own home, in addition to the campaigns to “shoot my reputation”
Escobar denounced the arbitrary arrests, the threats and the police siege that he has suffered in his own home, in addition to the campaigns to “shoot my reputation.” “After July 11, 2021,” he said, “Cuban authorities have become much more sensitive to information,” in addition to paying more attention to social media and independent media content.
In addition to a thorough repression against those who expressed their desire for change and freedom on that date, the regime has forced dozens of reporters to resign from their profession in what the journalist described as “a turn of the screw of censorship.”
However, “we have shattered the regime’s old monopoly on telling the truth,” said Escobar, who also alluded to his work in drafting 14ymediowhich has not stopped its work “despite repression, threats and the blocking of its website on Cuban servers.”
The newspaper has helped to “raise the standards of the press on the Island,” in addition to demonstrating that “it can be reported and done with immediacy and quality.”
For his part, Alexey Kovalev, forced into exile after legislation by the Russian Parliament that criminalized independent journalism, stated that Putin’s war against Ukraine “is based on a lie”, so his job is to defend the truth. . The reporter, whose family remains in Moscow, thanked The world for his recognition of the importance of a free press.
In praising the winners, Isabel Díaz Ayuso pointed to Escobar and Kovalev as “examples of journalism as a fourth power and commitment to freedom.” “Democracy is not something that can be conquered forever, but must be defended and it is not possible without freedom of the press,” she added.
He claimed that in international spaces it is necessary to “call things by their name,” which implies “saying that Cuba is a dictatorship and its government a tyrant.” As for Escobar, she said that in addition to being a journalist, she was a mother, something that the regime has used against her. She also commented that those responsible for The world They had had to take numerous steps so that the reporter could attend the ceremony with her daughters.
At the awards reception dinner, organized by Joaquín Manso and Marco Pompignoli, directors of The world and from the Unidad Editorial group, respectively, Escobar’s relatives and colleagues attended, as well as Cuban activists and intellectuals such as Dagoberto Valdés, Yoandy Izquierdo, Yunior García Aguilera, as well as Venezuelan politician Leopoldo López, and Spaniards Adolfo Suárez (son), Inés Arrimadas and Edmund Ball.
The guests also attended the temporary exhibition another renaissancewhich collects in the Prado Museum the work of Spanish artists in Naples at the beginning of the Cinquecento.
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