Journalists: Raúl Castro tightens screws in Cuba
Cuba rejected admission for a French agency's correspondent, and a
reporter for Spain's El País newspaper was denied a license renewal to
work there.
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com
The Cuban government has denied entry to a French news agency
correspondent who had been assigned to Havana, part of what other
journalists on the island describe as a severe tightening of controls on
their work under Raúl Castro's rule.
Juan Castro Olivera, an Argentine correspondent last assigned to the
Miami bureau of the Agence France Press, was denied the Cuban
journalist's visa required for his new assignment to the AFP bureau in
Havana.
"Cuban authorities never explained the reasons for the refusal to grant
the visa," said Francis Kohn, AFP's regional director for Latin America.
"We have been in contact with the Cuban authorities . . . and we
defended our choice of Juan Castro Olivera."
Several Cuban and foreign journalists in Havana who work for
international news media have long complained of increased government
attempts to control their work since Castro succeeded his ailing brother
Fidel in 2006.
Spain's El País newspaper reported over the weekend that its
correspondent in Havana for the past 20 years, Mauricio Vicent, had been
denied a renewal of his press accreditation by the Foreign Ministry's
International Press Center (CPI).
Vicent's credentials in fact expired nearly two years ago, but the CPI
did not deny his renewal until now as a way of trying to pressure him
and his newspaper to moderate their reporting on the island, according
to fellow El País writers.
Cuba regularly uses the CPI accreditation as a pressure point to keep
journalists in line. Without one, Vicent, who is married to a Cuban, can
still live in Cuba but would be breaking the law if he publishes any
stories.
'Negative image'
CPI officials in Havana complained that Vicent's reports painted "a
partial and negative image" of Cuba, and likely rejected Castro Olivera
because of his previous assignment in Miami, other Cuban and foreign
journalists based in Cuba said.
They noted that since 2008 they have received an increasing number of
complaints about some of their stories on dissidents, and warnings to
stay away from others.
Authorities have been especially sensitive about stories on Orlando
Zapata Tamayo, a political prisoner who died in 2009 after a hunger
strike, and Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia, a dissident who died after an
alleged police beating in May, said the journalists.
Foreign journalists in Havana have reported virtually nothing on the
recent spate of complaints by dissidents in eastern Cuba of violent
crackdowns by pro-government mobs and security agents against opposition
activists.
CPI officials also have tightened some of the regulations on
correspondents, such as those governing the purchases of cars and
equipment such as air conditioners, according to the journalists, who
all requested anonymity to avoid government retaliations.
Just one year after Raúl Castro took power, his government withdrew the
accreditations of three foreign correspondents, including the Chicago
Tribune's Gary Marx and Cesar Gonzalez-Calero of the El Universal
newspaper in Mexico. They left Cuba.
The third was a correspondent for the British Broadcasting Corp. who
stayed in the country and managed to renew his accreditation later.
'Balancing act'
Some foreign journalists in Havana acknowledge in private that they must
watch what they write in order to avoid the wrath of the CPI, but argue
that the compromise is needed to continue providing at least some
coverage from the island.
"We recognize it's a tough balancing act for many of these foreign
journalists," anti-Castro activist Mauricio Claver-Carone wrote in his
blog, Capitol Hill Cubans. "But people who do not follow Cuba on a daily
basis are unaware of these nuances [and of the nature of the Castro
dictatorship] — thus, it sadly leads to disinformation."
El País, in an editorial Tuesday, noted that Cuba had rejected Vicent at
almost the same time that Iran expelled the newspaper's correspondent
there, Angeles Espinosa.
"When those regimes have turned into nothing more than a bad dream, as
they will sooner rather than later, the fact that they were ordered to
shut up will be a motive for pride for those who, like the two El País
correspondents, wrote the truth," the newspaper said.
"Because when a regime perceives the truth as a threat, it is because
the lie that supports it has only a limited amount of time left," it added.
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