They call themselves ciberdisidentes -- cyber dissidents.
They are Cuban journalists who risk harassment and prison to publish
independent news accounts on the Internet -- a medium that few of them have even
seen.
By Julia Scheeres. Wired
News. May 29, 2001 PDT
More than 100 independent reporters defy Castro's regime by filing their
articles on overseas websites, giving the world a glimpse into the harsh reality
of the communist island.
"Their rise has paralleled the rise of the Internet,"
said Régis Bourgeat, the Latin American liaison for
Reporters Without Borders, an organization
that monitors press freedom worldwide.
Castro has been broadcasting his propaganda to the world for the past 40
years; now the Web has given the opposition a voice as well. The unofficial
press is illegal -- but tolerated -- in Cuba, Bourgeat said.
"A crackdown would be a political price that the government doesn't
want to pay," he said. "If tomorrow they threw 100 journalists in
jail, it would be a bad P.R. move."
Only a handful of journalists have been formally tried and sentenced to
prison on charges such as "insulting Fidel" or being "socially
dangerous." But in 1999, the regime raised the bar by passing a gag law
that mandates a 20-year prison term for anyone who collaborates with foreign
media.
Cuban authorities routinely detain independent reporters as a means of
intimidating them, Bourgeat said. Reporters are harassed by their fellow
citizens through "Acts of Repudiation" in which pro-Castro hordes
gather outside reporters' homes to hurl rocks and insults. Their friends and
family members also risk social ostracism and job loss for merely associating
with "counter-revolutionaries."
But the Cuban government is careful not to turn these journalists into cyber
martyrs. When Reporters Without Borders sent a journalist to Cuba last year to
report on the independent press, airport authorities detained her as she left
the country, confiscating her video camera and notes.
News-gathering and dissemination is an onerous task for the unofficial
press, said Charles H. Green, the director of the
International Media Center at Florida
International University.
They are barred from political meetings and forced to report on events by
gathering scraps of information from people who were present and willing to talk
to them. Because they have no access to government officials or documents,
independent journalists do few investigative pieces, but excel at documenting
quotidian struggles on the hermetic island.
"They ride their bikes to interviews and jot notes down on scraps of
paper using pencil stubs," Green said. "All the time, they're looking
over their shoulder at what might happen any minute. It must be a very
uncomfortable situation."
Some people, including Raúl Rivero, the respected director of the
independent Cuba Press news agency, have questioned the motives of some
reporters who openly taunt the government with anti-Castro tirades that contain
little news.
"What's being done in Cuba, with the exception of the foreign press and
a few independent journalists, is propaganda," Rivero said in an interview
with AFP earlier this month.
Rivero accused many independent journalists of posing as reporters in order
to anger Cuban officials into letting them leave the island and gain political
asylum in the United States. Apparently, the tactic is effective: More than 50
journalists have been expelled from the island since 1995.
Indeed, stories such as "Communism Compared
to HIV" are more rant than unbiased news.
But academics such as Green say the reporters don't have a good model to
build on -- the only journalism they know is the government press, which has its
own slant.
"A lot of them have never worked for the free press before. They don't
understand how a free press really works and don't understand the idea of
balance."
The government takes some comfort in the fact that few Cubans will see their
reports; Internet access on the island is basically limited to communist
officials, researchers and tourists.
But sometimes the U.S. government-funded radio stations in Miami, such as
Radio Martí that bombards the island with Democratic proselytizing, read
the articles on-air. Although Cuban authorities do their best to jam the
stations' frequencies, some items leak through.
The two main websites that carry independent press reports are
CubaNet and
CubaFreePress, both based in Miami.
At CubaFreePress, articles are dictated over the phone and translated into
English and Russian by a stable of volunteers.
"We don't promote the overthrow of any government or ending anyone's
life," said Juan Granados, the founder of CubaFreePress. "We simply
support the work of people who are struggling for freedom of the press, the
freedom to create a unit of civil society."
One of Granado's main contributors, José Orlando González Bridón,
is currently jailed and facing trial for "spreading enemy propaganda."
The charges stem from an article in which he blamed the police for the death of
an activist who worked for an illegal trade union, the Democratic Workers of
Cuba.
González Bridón, the union's general secretary, accused the
police of refusing to intervene when the woman was routinely assaulted and
finally killed by a former lover.
"For their refusal to act, the authorities familiar with the case have
become accomplices and indirect perpetrators in a death that could have been
avoided," Gonzalez Bridon wrote in the
story.
His publisher vacillated before publishing it: Gonzalez Bridón had
been arrested 12 times in as many months last year for his activities and
articles, but the article was by far his strongest criticism of government to
date.
"I read the article and said, 'Hey, Jose Orlando, do you really want to
publish this?' and he said yes. I feel very proud of him. This man is very
courageous."
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