Last Updated: May 20, 1999
Printer-friendly version
So what’s the state of free expression in Cuba?
Put simply, freedom of speech and press are not at the top of Cuba’s
bill of rights.
Asked about such rights, Justice Minister Roberto Díaz Sotolongo
had to thumb through Cuba’s constitution for nearly a minute to find them.
Then he read to his ASNE visitors not the rights themselves but limitations
on them.
Article 53, the constitution’s first mention of these rights, forewarns:
“Citizens recognize freedom of speech and press conform to the needs of
the state,” it explains and then declares that these freedoms can be exercised
only in the state media.
The limitations, which the minister read aloud, are in Article 62 and
apply not only to freedom of speech but all other rights: “No recognized
freedoms can be exercised against the constitution or the law, nor against
the decision of the Cuban people to build socialism and communism.”
Other than that, the minister said, Cubans are free to speak and write
what they want.
Well, almost. The constitutional limits are spelled out in laws. A recent
one is the new Dignity Law, which provides three- to ten-year jail terms
for anyone “who, in a direct or indirect form, collaborates with the enemy’s
media.”
Who’s the enemy? It is us.
What all this means is that the government media don’t criticize and
independent journalists are often harassed, sometimes arrested and even
beaten and forced into exile.
Independent journalists do manage to get their reports out of the country,
but their words are never seen in Cuba. U.S. correspondents now almost
routinely get visas, although The Miami Herald had not received one for
more than two years before the ASNE trip. A St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times
correspondent was kicked out earlier this year but later permitted to return.
While most Cubans have few choices beyond the state-owned media, foreign
publications are available at tourist hotels and can be purchased by ordinary
Cubans if they can afford them, according a leading independent journalist.
CNN has a bureau in Havana, but no U.S. print publication has been granted
permission for one, although more than a dozen newspapers have asked.
President Fidel Castro was cautious. “If conditions (between the United
States and Cuba) were to improve, the possibility of bureaus would be true,”
he said. “(This) is a matter of confidence to be built step by step.”
It would be “good,” he said, to have a foreign press in Cuba that was
“independent and objective.” But he also commented: “We have had a lot
of experience with (American) journalists who are biased.” At another point
he pondered, “I wonder if we can have this country full of reporters. Once
they are established, it is hard to remove them.”
Castro was harshly critical of a Forbes report that he has amassed a
billion-dollar personal fortune. “What right do they have to write this
slander? he asked.
— Edward L. Seaton
