While the elite reporters and journalists of the MSM sit in the luxury of their cublicles in their large office buildings with everything they need at arms reach to bring you yet another regurgitated news “story”, some of their peers, such as Jaine Leygonier, whom I posted about here, are actually risking their lives to report on events transpiring around them. Factual events, perhaps, that their governments wish not be reported.
Others, still, have been incarcerated for the simple act of reporting certains events, certain truths. There were 16 arrests in Cuba last year alone of independent journalists:
Cuba (16)
• Bikont Anna, Freelance Journalist, 1 December
• Battistini Francesco, Journalist, Corriere della Sera, 20 May
• Blumsztajn Seweryn, Editor-in-Chief, Gazeta Wyborcza, 19 May
• Cruz Cruz Florencio, Editor, Línea Sur Press agency, 11 August
• González Oscar Mario, Journalist, Grupo de Trabajo Decoro, 24 March and 22 July
• Jerzy Jurecki , Publisher and Journalist, Tygodnik Podhalanski, 19 May
• Lamasiel Gutierrez Romero, Journalist, Nueva Prensa Cubana, 9 July
• Lopez Sánchez, Journalist, 18 June
• Norton Nelly, Journalist, 1 December
• Wojciech Rogasin, Journalist, Newsweek, 19 May
• Roque Ernesto, Journalist, Unión de Periodistas y Escritores Cubanos Independientes, 21 June
• Veitia Ana Rosa, Journalist, Unión de Periodistas y Escritores Cubanos Independientes, 21 June
• Hernández Albert Santiago du Bouchet, Journalist, 6 August
• Sarna Maciej, Interpreter, 19 May
• Cichocka Marta, Interpreter, 19 May
• Modelski Wojciech, Human Rights Activist, 19 May
Today, hundreds of reporters languish in jail cells around the world for simply doing their jobs. For telling the truth. With that in mind and in an attempt to make a difference, the World Association of Newspapers has declared today to be World Press Freedom Day:
Imagine the unthinkable. Armed men barge into your office or home, lock you in handcuffs and abduct you. You are interrogated and thrown into a cell. There, you wait for hours, days or even weeks before you are charged. You are a nuisance. You are a threat. Someone wants you out of the way.
More than 500 publishers and journalists were arrested and jailed in this way in 2005 and they number several thousand over the past decade. Dozens of them remain in prison today, serving sentences as long as 20 years.
Locking up journalists instils fear and sends a clear message: Don’t meddle with affairs that don’t concern you. Government corruption, for example, or criminal activity linked to influential personalities, or the absence of political pluralism and human rights.With the exception of a handful of prominent cases, our colleagues who, deep in prison cells, are paying the price of their excessive curiosity or attachment to press freedom, are faceless and unknown other than to their families and colleagues.
The World Association of Newspapers believes that each and every one of these courageous men and women deserves our attention and solidarity and that we owe it to them to campaign for their release.
We need your help in doing this. On 3 May 2006, World Press Freedom Day, we ask you to support our efforts to highlight these shameful abuses, around the theme: ‘Don’t Lock Up Information: Stop Jailing Journalists!’
Thank you in advance – on behalf of our imprisoned colleagues – for your help.
Timothy Balding
Chief Executive Officer
World Association of Newspapers
Remember that, in the case of Cuba, while foreign tourists frolick among the quaintness of Old Havana and dig their toes into the sands of Varadero Beach, there are Cuban journalists in prison cells for reporting on what those same omnipotent tourists chose to ignore.
More at Uncommon Sense.
Update: Here’s a related item from the Organization of American States.
Great post Val, I will link to you later in the day…helping spread the word.
I am awestruck that at least six of those names are Polish. As a Polish-American myself, I am looking at those names like red fire dots burning through the computer screen. I know very well that they are probably all real Cubans who just have Polish names – I met TWO such people in Venezuela and both were intransigently against the communism of Hugo Chavez. There is something pretty fierce about Eastern European heritage. Or more likely, Eastern Europeans NEVER forget the evils of communism, they know them all too well. How interesting that these six Polish names are so prominent on the list of Cuban freedom fighters of the press. I hope they scared the hell out of the bearded bastard.