Guillermo Martinez in the Sun-Sentinel:

News Media ignores plight of Cuban dissidents on island

The emphasis of the American news media on the third anniversary of the imprisonment of American contractor Allan Gross in Cuba for attempting to give internet access to the island's small Jewish community is natural. American journalists always follow up stories.

At the same time, American reporters who travel to Cuba have launched an attack on what is left of the American embargo on the island while totally ignoring the plight of a growing Cuban dissident movement on the island.

It is as if this is the price these reporters pay for being allowed into the country.

An internet search shows that outside of South Florida, stories about the plight of the Cuban dissidents are small wire service stories.

The same search shows multiple stories on the embargo or the growing entrepreneurship in Cuba. It is as if the United States unilaterally were to lift the embargo, remove Cuba from the list of terrorist states, and release five Cuban convicted and admitted spies, relations between the two countries would magically enter a honeymoon stage.

What is most surprising is only one foreign media recently has gone to Cuba and done an investigative piece on the plight of dissidents — in this case the Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White) who march peacefully after Sunday mass in many churches throughout the island asking that the government release political prisoners.

While many American journalists ignore Cuban dissidents, Al-Jazeera snuck an undercover reporter and camera into Cuba and did a documentary on the abuses of the government against these peaceful women.

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