10 de septiembre 2024
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International Journalists' Day is celebrated on September 8, in honor of the Czechoslovak journalist and writer Julius Fucik, author of the iconic “Report from the Gallows.” He was arrested and executed in Berlin by the Gestapo in 1943, in Nazi Germany dominated by Adolf Hitler.
Eight decades later, in Guatemala, journalist José Rubén Zamora, editor of El Periódico, one of the contemporary heroes of press freedom, has spent 765 days under arbitrary detention for investigating and exposing corruption. Meanwhile, in Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela, the independent press has been criminalized and is exercised mainly from exile.
The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) awarded the “Grand Prize for Press Freedom 2024” to Journalism in Exile this year, as a tribute to Latin American colleagues and media who are increasingly forced to relocate or emigrate due to violence, threats, and persecution by criminal groups, corrupt officials, and authoritarian governments.
The IAPA Executive Committee and Awards Committee “recognized the defense of freedom of expression and commitment to the truth under extreme risk and adversity.” The IAPA has documented a growing increase in the number of exiled journalists, mainly from countries such as Nicaragua, Venezuela, Guatemala, Cuba, Ecuador, and internally displaced persons in Mexico and Colombia. The phenomenon also includes newsrooms in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, some of which have moved their operations abroad because they are victims of systematic persecution.
On the program Esta Semana, broadcast this Sunday, September 8th, on CONFIDENCIAL's YouTube channel due to censorship in Nicaragua, we spoke with journalists Luz Mely Reyes, director of Efecto Cocuyo from Venezuela, and Carlos Manuel Álvarez, director of El Estornudo from Cuba. We discussed how journalism survives under the dictatorships of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and what their main challenges are to continue doing quality journalism.
The Criminalization of Journalism
On September 5 in Nicaragua, 135 citizens, including journalist Víctor Tícay, were released from prison and exiled to Guatemala. Tícay had been imprisoned for 17 months for broadcasting images of a religious procession on his Facebook account. Among others imprisoned and sentenced for expressing opinions on social media was university professor, sociologist, and philosopher Freddy Quezada. What is the situation regarding these countries’ criminalization of press freedom and freedom of expression? In Venezuela, are journalists imprisoned or persecuted following the electoral fraud on July 28?
Luz Mely Reyes: Yes, the situation in Venezuela has reached levels of repression that were previously unseen. Currently, there are 12 journalists behind bars and 13 journalists facing legal charges. Most of these cases occurred after the July 28 fraud and involved journalists or press workers doing their jobs or reporting at the time.
The National College of Journalists and the National Union of Press Workers have denounced these arbitrary detentions, as journalists are being accused of being “terrorists” and of hate crimes.
In Cuba, there are imprisoned journalists for their coverage of the 2022 protests. Others have been persecuted long before that date. Is it possible to practice independent journalism without the risk of being persecuted or imprisoned?
Carlos Manuel Álvarez: No, the risk is ever-present. There has been a dismantling of the independent press that had gradually formed in Cuba over the past decade. This was due to a varied ecosystem that allowed different media outlets and channels of information to operate outside state control. Much of this communication network has been exiled, some have been imprisoned, and all forms of communication, regardless of their origin, are being heavily criminalized.
Protests have occurred not only in 2021 and 2022; this year, there have been significant social protests in the eastern part of the country, and many people who shared information on social media or spoke to the independent press have been imprisoned. We are talking about young Cuban citizens who, for posting something on Facebook, are sentenced to 10 or 15 years of imprisonment.
We are reaching levels of repression against any kind of information that the Cuban totalitarian apparatus cannot control, which also affects the independent press. Although still fragile and a minority, the independent press seems to resist despite everything.
The Independent Press Amidst Censorship
Despite this persecution and censorship in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, journalism continues, and audiences are following independent media. How is this possible? In Nicaragua, three media outlets, including CONFIDENCIAL, have been confiscated; dozens more have been shut down, and over 200 journalists are in exile. All independent media in Nicaragua operate from exile. In Venezuela, some independent media are working within the country; can they reach their audiences, or is internet access and communication being blocked by the state?
Luz Mely Reyes: Most independent media in Venezuela have been blocked on the internet. Traditional radio and television media are censored, and one or two radio stations close in the country every day.
However, journalists continue their work. They have had to take precautions; for example, independent media are not signing their reports to avoid retaliation against journalists by name. However, some teams within the country still have opportunities to report, stay close to people, and conduct interviews.
The criminalization has reached a level we have never experienced before. We had seen patterns of harassment and some cases of legal action, but not of deprivation of freedom.
This red line has been crossed, along with intimidation, harassment to inhibit journalists, and exposure to public disgrace, which is now taking on not only disinformation but defamation of all kinds, making it more complicated to be on the streets and say, “I am a journalist from this media outlet.” However, there is still a tiny space where many journalists in Venezuela are managing to carry out close reporting with the people.
In Cuba, can an independent journalist identify himself/herself when reporting, or is that something that is completely prevented? And on the other hand, is there official censorship, Internet blocking or self-censorship?
Carlos Manuel Álvarez: Yes, undoubtedly each of those three things is present. We have been developing sort of hybrid newsrooms where a good part of what it means to be a journalistic medium is done from exile. We have a few reporters in the country, most of them without giving their names. Some reporters enter the field when covering stories where first hand accounts are necessary, but they are in a background in terms of the confrontation with the political police. When it comes to the issues that are more critical, we try to cover all the reporting from outside, certain phone calls, certain conversations by WhatsApp or Telegram groups. With some information, if we can somehow cushion the exposure of the reporters we have inside, we usually do it from the outside.
Many pieces have a collective authorship, because the ways of gathering information for that report, for that specific text, carries a sort of tentacular reporter, formed by many skills and possibilities according to this type of writing. Undoubtedly, these are newsrooms that resists and are located in a place that is not the natural place from which journalism is normally done. Still, ways have been found to continue reporting and to continue being discomforting for each of our regimes.
But can the Cuban audience access these media?
Carlos Manuel Álvarez: The media are blocked. We are facing an audience that has had for decades such a shortage of information, outside the official Cuban apparatus, that many times Cuban citizens tend to ask, for example, to their relatives abroad, more than sending remittances, supplies, food, a few phone recharges that allow them to connect to the Internet. In other words, there is so much thirst for information that it can even overcome hunger or scarcity, which is already more than enough inside Cuba.
How do you value the quality of the independent press in Venezuela, in Cuba, investigative journalism, narrative and innovation in journalism?
Carlos Manuel Álvarez: In the Cuban case, the investigations of impact in recent years, the most important reports, have been made by newsrooms in exile. These media were formed in Cuba, and had to be abruptly cut off, their newsrooms were dispersed and had to choose forced exile rather than jail, after a long time of persecution, interrogations, kidnappings, and also arrests.
This generated an impasse of confusion, to continue practicing independent journalism and to sustain the media, but it was evident that we had to find other mechanisms of subsistence and generate structural changes within the newsrooms to be able to continue reporting or informing. After that moment when indeed several Cuban independent media suffered a considerable blow, they have managed to stabilize again. The persecution and the demonization of many journalists in terms of character assassinations, persists with the same intensity, which is always a sign that we continue to be a kind of counterweight to the official information.
This year the Inter American Press Association, IAPA, has awarded the Grand Prize for Freedom of the Press to the exile press in Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Guatemala and other countries. What are the main challenges? Are there alliances and support for exile journalism to survive?
Luz Mely Reyes: That is the big question that we have to start answering, this trend of countries expelling their journalists, because they not only have to do with authoritarian governments, but also, for example, with factors such as organized crime, as has happened in the case of Ecuador or with power groups, as happens in Colombia, or the same situation in Mexico, where organized crime also expels its journalists.
We have countries where democracy works, but there is no space for journalists to be free and safe enough to exercise their profession. The great challenge is precisely to understand that this is a pattern and a trend that is expressed in the continent and to begin to identify host countries, other systems that can respond to the needs of those who go into exile.
We are working with ICFJ on the issue of journalists in exile and journalists tell you several things. One has to do with their legal migratory situation, that they have to spend too much time trying to have some stability. Then, the need to be able to support themselves, and not have to give up the journalistic profession, because you have to dedicate yourself to earn a living to be able to support yourself with other things.
There are some very practical, logistical things that the States that are committed to freedom should begin to take into account. We are proposing to create some hubs, some host countries, which are sanctuaries for journalists and where journalists can not only have space for the free exercise of their function, also serving the audiences of the countries from which they have had to flee, but also have some kind of special treatment, we are not asking for privileges, what we are asking is that they be taken as a particularly vulnerable and sensitive population and that they can be given in the host countries, an immediate refugee treatment that allows this journalist to continue doing his work.
This article was published in Spanish in Confidencial and translated by our staff. To get the most relevant news from our English coverage delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe to The Dispatch.
