One of the best online sources of information about events in Cuba today, especially the activities of anti-Castro activists and efforts by the dictatorship to stop them, is the website for the Centro de Informacion Hablemos Press, or CIHPRESS, which this weekend is celebrating its fourth anniversary.
Despite many technological and political obstacles, CIHPRESS director Roberto de Jesus Guerra and his colleagues bravely gather and distribute information about dissident activties on the island. They definitely have a point of view -- their goal is clearly a free Cuba -- but they pursue it with the courage and determination to which all journalists should aspire to imitate.
Along with their news reports, CIHPRESS each month releases an accounting of political repression on the island, releasing the names and other details about each politically motivated arrest, detention, etc. it learns about. With all the reporting by the international media of "reforms" and other "changes" in Cuba, CIHPRESS injects a needed dose of reality about actual conditions on the island.
The journalists of CIHPRESS have paid a heavy price. Guerra and others have been arrested numerous times, and one of the agency's star reporters, Calixto Ramon Martinez, has been jailed without charges being filed since he was arrested Sept. 16 while trying to report a story. Amnesty International last week designated him as a prisoner of conscience, "solely detained for peacefully exercising his freedom of expression."
I am indebted to the journalists of Hablemos Press, for reporting that serves as the basis for many posts on this blog, and for setting an example for journalists and Cubans everywhere.
Felicidades, mis hermanos de CIHPRESS, y VIVA CUBA LIBRE!
Recent Comments