On March 6, the Cuban Institute for Freedom of Expression and Press (ICEP) announced that in 2017 there were at least 240 violations against freedom of the press on the island and that 97 independent journalists were subjected to repression. [1]
Of the 240 violations, 102 were threats and psychological attacks; 84, arbitrary detentions; 32, dispossessions of work media; 16, prohibitions to leave the country; 4, four, physical attacks; and 2, expulsions from jobs.
More generally the ICEP said, ”During the year of 2017, the Cuban regime maintained its monopoly on the mass media, and . . . article 53 of the Cuban Constitution that conditions the ‘freedom of speech and press according to the aims of the socialist society’ continues to muzzle all [journalists]. The judicial system uses a Penal Code that sanctions any type of press freedom, political police harass, arrest and threaten to imprison journalists for various, alleged, crimes.”
ICEP is a non-profit NGO that defends freedom of the press and has within Cuba the only network of community media that publishes, prints and distributes printed newspapers to the population with information about the most pressing problems the Cuban population suffers.
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[1] The ICEP denounces 240 violations in Cuba against freedom of the press in 2017, Diario de Cuba (Mar. 7, 2018).
