Declaration of the Cuban Association of Journalists, UPEC

[Mika]

Declaration of the Cuban Association of Journalists, UPEC

In the run-up to the voting, for the eighteenth occasion, by the UN General Assembly on the Cuban Resolution on the need to end the US economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba, the National Ethics Commission of the Cuban Association of Journalists (UPEC), elected by all its members throughout the country, expresses the views of all Cuban journalists against the imperialist obsession of maintaining the dagger of the blockade deeply stuck in the heart of Cuba, with the aim of killing its people through hunger and disease.

The loss and damage inflicted on Cuba by the US blockade has surpassed US$ 96 billion. This criminal policy continues to be the main obstacle to the economic and social development of the country, enforced with the same objective and maintained by ten consecutive US administrations, despite the fact that the current US government has promised to undertake changes and take steps to strengthen cooperation among nations.

No sector of Cuban society has been exempt to the terrible effects of such a permanent and destructive hurricane. The Cuban media and journalists have also been affected by the powerful winds that hamper the appropriate undertaking of our duties, as revealed by the ideological war headed by the US administration and the powerful media companies that followed its orders.

It is an obsession that goes beyond all professional competition while searching evidence in words and images with the aim of discrediting the exercise of an objective and non-profit journalism and to present it in the eyes of the world usually flooded with epithets which, working as clichés invade the minds of millions of people who are being submitted to hegemonic and manipulated messages that demonize the treatment of news stories.

The blockade is a barrier to communication as it also limits our access to modern technologies for the development of the print and digital media, the programming of radio and television. The blockade even prohibits Cuban journalists from covering events in the United States, since they are not granted visas by US authorities.

In this regards, and unlike the case of the five Cuban antiterrorist fighters held in US jails, the US or the international media have not kept an absolute silence; though there is permanent manipulation of messages in order to distort reality. The blockade has been presented as an “embargo,” a bilateral issue between Cuba and the United States, with the intention of hiding the fact that such policy violates the sovereign rights of many other countries, due to its extraterritorial character.

The respect for the truth is one of the basic principles of codes of ethics that establish professional behaviour in nearly all media outlets and associations. If that principle were met in reference to the US blockade against Cuba, US society could learn about the details of a war unleashed against a small nation that has never been and will not be an enemy of its powerful neighbour to the North, despite the treatment received by the government of the United States.

Examples are more than enough, but let’s see what is happening with the tired old story about Internet access. Cuba has only been able to connect to the Internet via satellite, which is more costly and less operative than fibreoptic cables; this fact limits connection capacity for a large number of users. Furthermore, providers have been banned from accessing different free or paid services, due to the impossibility of executing any payment. Not to mention that the blockade also prohibits the purchase of PCs and US components or parts, which many times are necessary for medical equipment aimed at saving people’s lives.

The only ethical thing to do is lift the blockade, which will some reach 50 years since it was first imposed —it is anachronistic and unfair, and immoral and unjustifiable. As long as the blockade is in force, Cuban journalists will continue to work under the current limitations we face in fulfilling our mission of producing a worthy and honest journalistic work based on the rights of a nation to receive true information, and without yielding in our struggle against lies and manipulations.

As we have done so far, we will keep taking sides with the forces that aspire to achieve a better world, alongside professionals and institutions that follow ethical commitments marked by universal values of humanism.

Those flags constitute our most powerful weapon to achieve victory.

Comisión Nacional de Ética
Unión de Periodistas de Cuba
La Habana, 22 de octubre de 2009

[Judi Lynn]

1. This is really, really good, Mika. I'm saving it for files immediately. Thank you. n/t