MIAMI, United States. – The repressive wave against the independent press in Cuba has reached several journalists and community media attached to the Cuban Institute of Freedom of Expression and Press (ICLEP), according to several reports released this Tuesday.
According to Martí Newsthis Monday, several ICLEP reporters, including Orlidia Barceló Pérez, Mabel Páez Díaz, Juan Manuel Moreno, and Antonio Suárez Fonticiella, were summoned to police stations. According to them, the authorities ordered them to cease their journalistic work and stop the distribution of community bulletins.
Páez related that the threats included his family: “They told me to think more about my son and to forget about ICLEP.”
For its part, the organization warned that intimidation is not limited to these journalists. Normando Hernández, director of ICLEP, condemned the repressive actions and noted that “these actions not only seek to silence our voices and restrict the exercise of independent journalism, but they also send a direct message of intolerance.”
The legal advice center Cubalex also warned about the growing persecution of ICLEP journalists, which reflects a pattern of harassment towards the independent press on the Island. Last week, several journalists from CubaNet, Neighborhood Journalism and The Touch They were threatened, interrogated, forced to resign from their work and return sums of money supposedly received from training programs or collaborations with international media.
In addition to economic extortion, State Security has forced the interrogated journalists to sign surrender certificates, in which they acknowledge having received funds from “subversive” projects, thus fabricating evidence against them. In some cases, they are forced to publicly renounce continuing to practice independent journalism and to record their confessions on video, according to the victims, according to an editorial published by The Touch last friday.
The use of these methods, according to observers, seeks to discredit journalists and independent entities, and prepares the ground for a possible criminal investigation against them. It is feared that the videos obtained during the interrogations will be used in television programs to discredit the victims, following the pattern of media harassment that has been used in the past.
Just last Friday, October 4, came into force the Social Communication Law approved by the Cuban regime, which has been criticized as a new instrument by the Cuban authorities to limit freedom of expression and access to information.
Since its approval, journalists and various non-governmental organizations have indicated that the law will represent a tightening of restrictions on independent digital media in Cubawho will continue not to be recognized by the regime and whose journalists are subject to harassment and threats of jail by the authorities.
“It is ironic that the new Social Communication Law comes into force just when the repression against freedom of expression in Cuba intensifies,” wrote on Facebook the entrepreneur Katia Sánchez Martínez. “In recent days, several journalists, communicators and entrepreneurs have suffered interrogations, abuses, confiscations and threats, evidencing attacks against any form of independent expression. “Today is a sad day, but this does not end here,” the young woman also said.
