Whether of the right or the left, a dictator's "enemies list" always includes journalists who don't tow the party line.
The persecution of independent newsmen and women is currently state policy in Cuba.
In the 1970s and into the 1980s, the same was true in Argentina, with perhaps much more deadly results.
Today, the 30th anniversary of a coup in Buenos Aires that brought seven years of military dictatorship, Reporters Without Borders pays tribute to 98 journalists who died during the regime's "dirty war" on its enemies.
“Thirty to forty thousand people lost their lives in this terrible dirty war,” Reporters Without Borders said. “We salute the memory of all those - politicians, social workers, trade unionists, civil society activists and ordinary citizens - who were considered subversive by the military regime and who were said to have ‘disappeared’.”
The press freedom organisation continued : “We also join in the mourning of the Argentine press, which lost 98 journalists between 1973 and 1980. Although Argentina is one of the few Latin American countries to have brought its leading torturers to justice, many military officers involved in serious human rights abuses never served any sentence thanks to amnesty laws passed by democratic governments.”
The military dictatorship fell in 1983 in the wake of the disasterous Falklands war.
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