Cuban journalist Yadiris Luis Fuentes denounced on Friday in Madrid before the 78th General Assembly of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) that the Cuban regime has forced dozens of journalists into exile under the threat of trials for fabricated crimes, which further violate their rights and freedoms restrict.
“They don’t want us in jail, they want us to leave the country,” said Luis Fuentes, who assured in his presentation at the IAPA event that “most of independent Cuban journalism is in exile.”
Luis Fuentes graduated in Journalism from the University of Hermanos Saíz Montes de Oca in Pinar del Río in 2015 and has been published in media such as Cuban DNASituated Journalism and El Toque.
During her last months in Cuba, before going to Spain, the young journalist was interrogated by the regime’s state security, threatened and forced to get her to give up the practice of independent journalism and leave the island.
According to Luis Fuentes in his presentation in Madrid, Cuban journalists who work from abroad in Cuba-related media but are outside the control of the Communist Party “go to jail if they return to the island”.
Regarding the impact of threats and forced exile on the well-being of independent journalists, as well as activists and opponents who are the object of the regime’s repression, the journalist reiterated that this is a scenario that in many cases leads to severe trauma.
“Most of us are in exile, we have to leave Cuba and then we don’t dare to tell our stories, we have to do therapy and get used to a new society, integrate and live as immigrants, which is quite difficult”, he claimed.
Luis Fuentes also referred to the legal mechanisms used by the regime to criminalize freedom of the press and expression on social networks, such as the new penal code, new criminal figures and intimidating penalties for the free exercise of journalism and criticism on the prevailing system on the island.
He also alluded to the communications campaigns in the media under the control of the Communist Party to assassinate the reputation of independent journalists and brand them as “mercenaries” and “traitors to the fatherland”.