Rivero, an independent Cuban journalist and resident regional vice chairman for Cuba of the IAPAs Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, in addition to reporting the incidents also published an article in which he criticizes the Cuban official press. Under the title "The Red Badge of Boredom" Rivero declares that "the press here is not a passion, it is a political chore with an agenda and its own objectives, and the reporter is not a restless investigator but just one more member of the ranks who serve to shore up an ideology. Cuba has in this field qualified and creative professionals who keep quiet in the newsrooms, where loud-mouthed fanatics and verbal henchman abound, professional insulters, card-carrying discrediters, who have never known the risks and the beauty of real journalism."
The other articles concern an incident on August 5 in which independent journalist Jadir Hernández Hernández was sentenced to house arrest in the town of Guines and the threats he had received earlier, preventing him from working as the correspondent of the independent news agency Havana Press.
In late July and early August three independent journalists belonging to the Manuel Márquez Sterling Journalists Association - Jorge Olivera Castillo, Graciela Alfonso and Jesús Alvarez Castillo - were beaten and interrogated by security agents in a bid to stop them reporting.
The articles on the Web site http://cuba.sipiapa.org
may be reproduced by the more than 1,300 IAPA newspaper members and other publications
with due credit to the source.
FUENTE: nota.texto7
