Following a wave of repression unleashed in March by the Cuban government against journalists and political dissidents that led to 75 people, among them 28 independent news men and women, being sentenced following summary trials, “the IAPA reaffirms its support for the free press in Cuba,” declared the organization’s president, Andrés García, editor of the Cancún, Mexico, daily newspaper Novedades de Quintana Roo.
García said the meeting with a group of consuls in Miami is part of the framework of the organization’s immediate objective to urge governments to secure the journalists’ release from prison. Among those sentenced to 20-year terms is Raúl Rivero, a member of the IAPA Board of Directors and regional vice-chairman for Cuba of its Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information.
“The privation of fundamental liberties in Cuba can clearly be seen at this time in the journalists, who for a long time now have been restricted, punished and savagely attacked for exercising the right to express themselves and now are being held in prison serving unjust sentences,” García remarked.
Since March the IAPA has been calling for international support from the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Court of Justice at The Hague, and the Heads of State throughout the Americas in its bid to bring an end to the repression in Cuba.
The IAPA President said that the meeting with the members of the Consular corps
in Miami is also in line with a proposal made at a recent meeting with nine
international press freedom organizations, who resolved “to demand the
immediate release of the imprisoned independent journalists, to request the
immediate intercession of democratic governments … to call upon the government
of Cuba to end its hostile actions against freedom of expression and of the
press, as well as to demand an end to all harassment of any Cuban journalist
that wishes to exercise his or her human right to freedom of expression and
of the press” – a reference to the ongoing coercion to which those
journalists who continue writing in Cuba are subjected.
FUENTE: nota.texto7
