Cuba / Americas

New York, July 30, 2008–The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned about the health of imprisoned Cuban journalist Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta, who has been on a hunger strike for 12 days to demand better prison conditions.

Dear Mr. Michel: In light of the European Union’s recent decision to lift 2003 diplomatic sanctions on Cuba, the Committee to Protect Journalists is writing to ensure that President Raúl Castro’s government will effectively improve human rights conditions on the island by unconditionally releasing all imprisoned journalists and by granting freedom of information and expression to all Cubans.

More than 80 journalists flee their home countries in the last year. Iraq and Somalia are the hardest hit. By Elisbeth Witchel and Karen Phillips

New York, April 11, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by the detention and deportation from Havana of Camagüey-based independent journalist Ernesto Corría Cabrera this week. Corría Cabrera, a reporter for the Miami-based press agency Nueva Prensa Cubana, told CPJ that he traveled from his home in the eastern city of Camagüey to Havana…

Five years after the Castro government cracked down on the independent press, more than 20 journalists remain behind bars for the crime of free expression.

Interviews by Borja Bergareche

CPJ asked Manuel Vázquez Portal, a Cuban writer, poet, and journalist swept up in the 2003 crackdown, to describe the year he spent in prison before being freed in 2004. He chose to describe his imprisonment in nightmare imagery. Vázquez Portal now lives and works in Miami.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights Adopted by General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) of December 10, 1948.

Compiled by María Salazar as of March 3, 2008