Foreign Correspondents Face Special Challenges in Cuba

Foreign Correspondents Face Special Challenges in Cuba
Dalia Acosta and Patricia Grogg - IPS 9/18/03

HAVANA, Sep 17 (IPS) - Breaking the wall of silence that surrounds certain issues and events and finding a source who is willing to confirm news that everyone already knows about through the grapevine may be the biggest challenges facing foreign correspondents in Cuba.

Correspondents must come to this socialist island nation prepared to forget much of what they have learned while exercising their profession in other parts of the world, and to adapt to the new rules.

The idea that ''getting to know Cuba is not easy, and understanding it is even more difficult,'' is part of the popular wisdom in Cuba. Learning how to make one's way around and getting used to the unwritten rules is a challenge that all recent arrivals must come to grips with.

But reporters are also aware that they are risking their posts, not their lives. The last case of a reporter killed in Cuba occurred in 1958, prior to the 1959 revolution in which Fidel Castro swept to power.

Ecuadorian journalist Carlos Bastidas was killed in Havana in 1958 after spending two months reporting for El Telégrafo, an Ecuadorian newspaper, from the hideouts of Castro's guerrillas, who were fighting the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista (1952-1958).

However, around 10 accredited foreign reporters have been forced to leave Cuba in the past 20 years for a variety of reasons, which did not always have to do with the exercise of their profession.

French journalists Noel Lorthiois and Andre Birukoff, Santiago Aroca from Spain, Czech reporter Michel Zermack and Csaba Nagy from Hungary were all deported after being accused of distorting information about Cuba or disseminating a false image or false news items.

Another case was that of Konstantin Zhuravosky, a Russian correspondent for the ITAR-TASS agency who was expelled five years ago for alleged involvement in a gambling racket based on the illegal game ''la bolita''.

And early this year, Argentine journalist Fernando Ruiz Parra was detained and deported for working as a reporter without the necessary visa and accreditation.

''Cuba's migration laws make it clear that a special visa is needed to work as a journalist. To us, Ruiz Parra is not a reporter, but merely someone who broke the law,'' José Luis Ponce, director of the International Press Centre (CPI), commented to IPS.

The CPI, which was created 24 years ago, is the Foreign Ministry office in charge of relations with the foreign press.

A total of 164 foreign correspondents from 122 media outlets in 40 countries are currently accredited in this country of 11 million.

In 2002, the CPI welcomed more than 1,100 special envoys from 52 countries, and by May of that year, 650 journalists from 41 nations had passed through Havana on a transit visa.

Despite the enormous political distance between Cuba and the United States, the two countries both have strict requirements that must be met by foreign correspondents.

As in Cuba, foreign journalists need a special visa to work in the United States. They must also present a letter from the media outlet that employs them, certifying how long they plan to stay in the country and how much they earn, and showing that they have medical insurance, to guarantee that they will not become a burden to the state.

In February, Iraqi journalist Mohammad Hassan Allawi, accredited with the United Nations in New York, was forced to leave the country on grounds that his presence ran counter to national security interests, although no evidence was presented. A month later, the United States invaded Iraq.

While a foreign reporter can work in countries like Brazil, Chile, Argentina or Venezuela after entering on a tourist visa, both Washington and Havana have strict rules that can lead to deportation.

But Cuba differs from the rest of the countries of the Americas in terms of access to information.

In Cuba, the press is a state monopoly. The only exception to that is a limited number of Catholic publications, like Vitral and Palabra Nueva.

There are no radio or TV stations or newspapers providing the public with different versions or points of view.

Earlier this year, a number of independent Cuban journalists were handed lengthy prison sentences under Law 88, which provides for sentences of up to 20 years for those who divulge information that is deemed to be of service to the hostile U.S. policy towards Cuba.

However, that law does not apply to the foreign press, Ponce pointed out.

According to a special report by the international watchdog group Reporters Without Borders, the government of Fidel Castro has an entire arsenal of mechanisms to control the information that is sent abroad, and, thus, to exert control over foreign correspondents.

The list of mechanisms, drawn up on the basis of interviews with around a dozen foreign correspondents who had formerly worked in Cuba, includes a strict visa policy, taboo issues that must not be discussed, constant police surveillance, psychological pressure, and deportations.

But journalist Homero Campa stated in his article ''The Foreign Press in Cuba: Subtleties of the System'' that ''Hidden microphones, tapped telephones, the man behind us who is supposedly watching us are only questions of conversation or jokes.''

Campa, who worked as a correspondent in Havana for the Mexican magazine Proceso from 1992 to 1999, says ''there is no persecution and personalised surveillance -- or at least I am not aware of it.''

Besides taking care of the foreign correspondents' legal requisites and paperwork, the CPI acts as an intermediary between journalists and their sources, and enforces the rules that apply to the foreign press.

One of the most controversial of the set of rules approved in 1997 states that accredited journalists must act with ''objectivity, rigorously sticking to the facts, in line with the principles'' governing the profession.

If they fail to do so, ''the CPI could issue a warning or temporarily or permanently cancel their accreditation, depending on the circumstances and the consequences of the fault committed,'' it adds.

Although that rule has not yet served as grounds for the deportation of any journalist, it has led to more than one official reprimand.

A reporter who ''steps out of line'' might find, for example, that obtaining interviews has become more difficult or even impossible.

But Ponce said an interview with dissidents or publishing a statement issued by illegal opposition groups do not count as grounds for a warning by the government.

''No journalist duly accredited with the CPI has ever been rebuked for interviewing, visiting or meeting with one of these people (dissidents), or attending a press conference offered by them,'' said the official, who is himself a reporter.

But Campa states in his article that ''there are many examples of correspondents who -- at times in a subtle and friendly manner and sometimes less so -- receive complaints for writing reports containing interviews with dissident groups.''

Nevertheless, local authorities complain that the broad coverage given by the foreign press to dissident groups -- which according to the government are at the service of Washington and the anti-Castro Cuban exile community -- has helped catapult them to the international stage.

Foreign correspondents in Havana, on the other hand, say that the absence of available official sources forces them to seek out the views of dissidents, who are always willing to talk to the press.

''You have to invest infinitely more time to obtain (from the sources) much less than in any other country. If you compare the time invested and the results, it can be very frustrating,'' complained one Latin American journalist, who spoke on condition of anonymity, like the rest of the reporters interviewed by IPS.

At the same time, being in Havana now is like ''touching history with your own hands,'' commented another correspondent who came to Cuba in the early 1990s, expecting at any time to report on the collapse of socialism and the fall of Fidel Castro.

Ten years later, the reporter is still here, and still waiting to witness ''the great transition.''

''The important thing is not to come here, but to stay, to be here at the right time. The sacrifices you have to make towards that end do not matter,'' he said.

The ''sacrifices'' can entail sharing breaking news with other colleagues, deciding not to write on important developments due to a lack of sources willing to be identified, or casting around for the best way to say what you want to say, and even exercising self-censorship in some cases.

''In Cuba there are no taboo issues,'' said a Cuban reporter. ''That business of not being able to talk or write about one question or another is a thing of the past, although it IS still like that for the national press, which is considered the ideological arm of the (ruling) Communist Party.

''What you have to be clear on is that when you tackle ticklish issues, you have to do it properly, professionally, covering all the nuances and basing your work on sources who can be named. If you work that way, a certain official might not like it, but it won't go any farther than that,'' he said.

In any case, seeking a reaction, interview, statistics or official confirmation of a piece of news can take hours or even days of telephone calls, and there is no guarantee that the reporter won't come up empty-handed in the end.

Unlike what occurs in other countries, in Cuba, official sources never approach the press, nor are they interested in providing information, even if it only involves talking about their own viewpoints or experiences.

''As a journalist myself, I perfectly understand that situation, and we have tried to improve it,'' said Ponce.

But on many occasions, he said, sources ''have been manipulated by unscrupulous journalists'' who have quoted them out of context, or omitted or changed their words. ''There is a media war'' against Cuba, he maintained.

In Ponce's view, many sources decline to grant interviews or to express their opinions due to the smear campaign against Cuba, ''which is damaging for the reporters as well as the country itself.''

Local authorities are especially concerned about the international image of the Cuban revolution and the Castro government, and they frequently accuse the foreign press of manipulating or distorting reality.

''It is not easy to work thinking that every story you write is carefully evaluated by someone in the ideological apparatus. For that reason, some correspondents choose to avoid issues that could cause trouble, and even censor themselves,'' said another journalist interviewed by IPS.
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* Gustavo González in Chile, Mario Osava in Brazil, Thalif Deen in the United States, Viviana Alonso in Argentina and Humberto Márquez in Venezuela contributed to this report.