Cuba

José Luis García Paneque is one of five Cuban dissidents who will be released and sent to Spain, international news reports said today. A disillusioned plastic surgeon-turned-headstrong editor of an independent news agency, García Paneque, at left, has been jailed since March 2003. At 45, he leaves prison with a dismal array of illnesses.

Take a look at this story in The New York Review of Books—it gets inside the challenges bloggers face as they are considered a “threat to the Cuban government’s international image,” and cites CPJ’s findings about imprisonment (Cuba has 22 journalists in jail, more than anywhere in the world except China and Iran). Read “Can the Internet Bring Change to Cuba?” here.

CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon testified today before the U.S. House of Representatives' Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, saying that while democracies are prevalent in Latin America, the press continues to operate with few institutional protections. This statement was submitted into the record on Monday.

When I asked Cuban journalist Oscar Sánchez Madan to describe in one sentence his three years in jail, he told me: “I don’t wish on anybody the dreadful experience I had in prison.” A municipal court in Unión de Reyes, province of Matanzas, freed him on Sunday after he completed a three-year prison term. Around 6 a.m., the journalist, at left, picked up his clothes and other personal belongings and left Combinado del Sur, a prison for common criminals in Matanzas, northern Cuba. He also took along with him the cruel memories of his time behind bars.

Mark Twain once said, “In our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.” In the witty genius’ land, the United States, such irony suggests that people should not to waste the opportunities that democracy offers. But in Cuba’s case any humorous comment is meaningless, since neither freedom of expression nor freedom of conscience exist … like almost all other freedoms. Any “imprudent” or brave attempt to act as if these freedoms were available is suppressed with direct brutality. Journalists and political dissidents who are jailed, tortured, and harassed serve as an example. 

Another year has passed and we are now remembering the seventh anniversary of the Black Spring. After seven years, have there been any changes? Yes and no. Law 88, a provision calling for the protection of Cuba’s national independence, is still in force. Known as the gag law, it is used to silence Cuban citizens, most notoriously in the cases of dozens of dissidents and journalists jailed for expressing their ideas freely in 2003.

There are those who say that time will ease the pain. But such a claim cannot withstand the human drama emerging from the prisons where 22 Cuban journalists remain jailed.