The Committee to Protect Journalists tonight honored imprisoned Cuban journalist Hector Maseda Gutierrez with the International Press Freedom Award. Maseda, 65, was arrested during the "black spring" of March-April 2003 and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
His "crime?"
"(D)oing what everyone here today is doing — his job as a reporter," said Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The same goes for other Cuban journalists in the Castro gulag.
In its citation honoring Maseda, CPJ writes:
Maseda Gutiérrez, an engineer with a degree in nuclear physics, was demoted from a high-level government job in 1992 because of his political views. He began working as an independent journalist in 1995. Four years later, working with veteran journalist and 2003 CPJ awardee Manuel Vázquez Portal, he helped found the independent news agency Grupo de Trabajo Decoro.Maseda Gutiérrez wrote about social, economic, environmental, and historical issues that were ignored by the official Cuban press. His articles appeared in independent Cuban media based abroad, such as the newsmagazine Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana and the news Web sites Encuentro en la Red and CubaNet. Before being jailed, he worked on a series of articles exposing brutality in Cuban prisons.
While in prison himself, Maseda Gutiérrez managed to write a memoir, Enterrados Vivos (Buried Alive). The book was smuggled out of prison, one page at a time, and published in the United States in 2007.
CPJ's Simon said his group would start a campaign demanding Maseda's release from prison, according to an Associated Press story on the awards. The group has similarly honored other imprisoned Cuban journalists with its press freed award, most recently
Manuel Vázquez Portal in 2003; he accepted the award in 2005 after his release.
Read more about Maseda here.
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