Cuban journalists under siege

Life as a journalist is full of stress.

Breaking stories.

Meeting deadlines

Paying bills on a reporter's salary.

In Cuba, journalists have an additional level of stress that I and other American journalists can only imagine: Knowing that their work, at any moment of the day, can earn them a knock on the door — and maybe a knock on the head — by the secret police.

It's happened at least twice recently to two different Cuban independent journalists:

• A police officer threatened to arrest Yoel Espinosa Medrano, based on reports that he was planning to host in his home a vigil on behalf of Cuban political prisoners. Espinosa denied the allegation — because the vigil was planned for a nearby home. Nonetheless, a couple of cops were assigned to keep watch on Espinosa's house, and the vigil was postponed to avoid trouble, according to a report from Licet Zamora Carrandi, Espinosa's colleague at Cubanacán Press.
• Zamora also reported that journalist Francisco Blanco Sanabria was ordered not to leave his home in Cienfuegos province because a British diplomat was visiting the area.

Cuba's independent journalists don't just tell stories. They are on the frontlines of the struggle for liberty, speaking truth to power. I will not pretend to know what to tell them to do, but I hope they realize how vital they are to that struggle.

And I pray that one day they know all their stress was worth it.