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Cuba and the double standard of disinformation. By José Manzaneda

The latest report of the International Federation of Journalists, which denounces the murder of 65 professionals in 2020, 17 more than the previous year, has hardly gone beyond any agency note.

The media have rather focused on the recent press conference of the Inter-American Press Association,. in Miami, placing Cuba at the top of the list of “worst countries for journalism”… Cuba, a country without murders of journalists for… 63 years!

They are not the blackouts in Cuba, where the electric service is severely affected by economic sanctions or U.S. threats to oil tankers. They are those of Puerto Rico, which, four years after Hurricane Maria that left the island without electricity for a year and still experiencing protests due to the poor service managed by a private company. Will we hear from them as always, “that the Cuba system does not work”?

Can you imagine if in Cuba there were almost 200 deaths in a prison riot, as well as the suicide of four prisoners? If the Cuban government, in order to stop crime, decreed a state of emergency and took the army to the streets? If its president appeared in the Pandora Papers, as the holder of accounts and companies in tax havens? We would have a media storm. However, everything has occurred in Ecuador, its president a friend of the USA, and of course there is no storm at all.

Under orders from Washington, Canada imprisoned Meng Wanzhou, an executive of the Chinese company Huawei, for three years. Journalist Julian Assange has now been surrounded and imprisoned for nine years by the UK… and by Washington’s orders, Cape Verde arrested, imprisoned, and handed over the Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab. But does the press speak out about “illegal detentions”, “kidnappings” or “torture” by the US “regime”? Never. Those expressions are reserved for the Cuban government if it decides to apply its laws to coup plotters -so-known as ” dissidents”- paid… by Washington.

Andalusian journalist Fonsi Loaiza has been sentenced to a fine of 2,100 euros for a tweet in which he blamed the Spanish police for the death of an immigrant street vendor after a chase. It is one more sentence in the long list of sentences, several to send to prison, including tweeters, journalists, and artists in the Spanish state. Any protests have been published in the press? Not a single one. If in Cuba those people that call for the economic blockade or a military invasion of their country are taken to court, then yes, we will read heated denunciations against the “lack of freedom of expression” on the island.

In the annual report of the organization Global Witness, Colombia once again occupies first place in the world in the number of environmental leaders murdered, 65. In addition, according to data from Indepaz, this year 136 social leaders have already been murdered, not a single one of these people…is a Cuban.

Javier García, head of the Spanish news agency EFE in Beijing for years, has announced his retirement from journalism, after denouncing the “shameful information war against China” and the submission to “the U.S. media and the State Department”. You will not see a single interview or news in the Spanish press.

And finally, a photograph: a citizen of a poor capitalist country (Haiti), hunted with a rope by a policeman from the richest capitalist country in the world (USA) Have you guessed the title of the photograph? It is crystal clear: “Capitalism”. See you next time.

source La Pupila Insomne

translation Red en Defensa de la Humanidad

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