Press Freedom in Cuba Is the Most Threatened in the Americas

Press Freedom in Cuba Is the Most Threatened in the Americas / 14ymedio
Posted on April 21, 2015

The Island is among the top ten countries of the world with the greatest
censorship

14ymedio, Havana, 21 April 2015 – The control that the Cuban government
exercises over the media was one of the strictest in the world in 2014
and the most rigid in the Americas, according to the report published
Tuesday by the Committee For the Protection of Journalists (CPJ). The
nonprofit organization with headquarters in New York, which works to
protect the world's press freedom, puts Havana in 10th place on the list
of States with the highest levels of censorship but notes "significant
progress" in recent years.

The CPJ's report stresses that "print and broadcast media are totally
controlled by the single party and have to be 'in line with the
objectives of the socialist society.' Although the Internet offers some
space for critics, the service providers block the undesired content,"
as is the case with 14ymedio. The organization highlights the difficult
situation of independent journalists and bloggers who have to use
websites hosted outside of the Island or access foreign embassies or
hotels in order to have an unfiltered Internet connection. In spite of
the opening of some critical spaces, this content mostly continues to be
inaccessible to Cubans who still do not have a high speed Internet
connection.

The research by CPJ highlights that visas for international journalists
are awarded selectively and that the Government "continues to persecute
critical journalists through harassment, surveillance and short-duration
detentions," citing the cases of Juliet Michelena Diaz and Angel
Santiesteban Prats.

The greatest worry in the case of Eritrea centers on the possible death
of five journalists arrested in May 2001, about which exiled colleagues
raised the alert. Faced with the impossibility of being able to confirm
it, the CPJ keeps the professionals on the list of prisoners in order to
prevent the case from falling into oblivion.

North Korea, with tightly controlled and centralized information,
occupies second place on the list. The official number of people
possessing mobile telephones (excluding those that arrive as contraband
from China) is about 9.7%. The control of information in the Asian
country is so remarkable that all mention of Jang Song Thaek, the ousted
and then executed uncle of the leader Kim Jong-Un, has been eliminated
even to the point of editing the audio-visual material in which he
appeared in order to suppress images of him.

The tactics used by Eritrea and North Korea are repeated to different
degrees in other countries with strong censorship. The repressive
regimes cling to power thanks to a combination of monopoly over the
media, harassment, surveillance, threats of prison for journalists and
restrictions on the entry of and movement by foreign correspondents.

Seven of the ten countries with the greatest censorship – Eritrea,
Ethiopia, Azerbaijan, Vietnam, Iran, China and Burma – are also among
the world's greatest jailors of journalists, according to CPJ's annual
prison census.

In Saudi Arabia – the country with the third greatest censorship – the
monarchy in power does not limit itself to silencing domestic
dissidence, and partners with other Governments of the Gulf Cooperation
Council in order to assure that criticism of institutions in each of
these countries is harshly repressed.

In Ethiopia – fourth in the ranking of countries that censor – the
threat of prison has contributed to a strong increase in the number of
exiled journalists. The anti-terrorism law approved in 2009, which
criminalizes any coverage that according to authorities "foments" or
"offers moral support" to illegal groups, has been imposed on many of
the 17 journalists who are prisoners of the country's jails.

Vietnam – the sixth most-censored country – uses a vague law against
"the abuse of democratic liberty" in order to incarcerate bloggers, and
Burma – the ninth – is supported by the Official Secrets Act of 1923 in
order to prevent criticism of its military forces.

In Azerbaijan – the fifth most-censored country – the criminal
defamation laws have been extended to social networks and can carry up
to six months in jail. Iran, seventh on the list, has one of the world's
strictest Internet censorship regimens, with millions of websites blocked.

The other four countries (Belarus, Equatorial Guinea, Uzbekistan and
Turkmenistan) were close in finishing the ranking, since they all have
every few independent media outlets.

Translated by MLK

Source: Press Freedom in Cuba Is the Most Threatened in the Americas /
14ymedio | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/press-freedom-in-cuba-is-the-most-threatened-in-the-americas-14ymedio/