Denuncias / Reports

Balance Parcial 2023

El Balance Parcial 2023 elaborado por el Instituto Cubano por la Libertad de Expresión y Prensa (ICLEP), incluye a todos los que ejercen el periodismo dentro de Cuba ya sean de la prensa oficialista o cualquier otra forma de manifestación del periodismo alternativo y sus colaboradores.

En este Balance no se incluyen los casos en los que nuestra organización no pudo establecer, con rigor, que los hechos violatorios a la libertad de prensa no estuvieran relacionados directamente con el ejercicio del periodismo.

Todos los casos documentados y categorizados de violación a la libertad de expresión y prensa cumplen con estándares internacionales y se realizaron bajo una metodología periodística de consultas a fuentes directas e indirectas, así como la revisión de informaciones de medios digitales y audiovisuales.

Newly discovered North Korea propaganda footage sheds light on how the Communist regime trains state security agents on how to identify and silence Christians.

If not for a North Korean government training video, the testimony of Cha Deoksun’s life would never have been known. Produced to train state security agents how to identify and silence those who promote religion inside North Korea, the film denigrates anyone who practices religion. “This video illustrates very clearly why it is so important for Christians everywhere to pray for North Korea and Christians there," Todd Nettleton, host of VOM Radio and an author of the history of Christianity in North Korea, said. According to the film, Deoksun received Christ in China and returned to North Korea to share her faith. Cha lost her faith in the government during the Great Famine in the 1990s when she illegally crossed the border into China and found God at Seotap Church and then became a  believer who was inspired to return to North Korea and form an underground church.

Incredibly, the propaganda film gives many details about the life of this courageous Christian. It states that during North Korea’s “Great Famine” in the mid-1990s, when an estimated 2.5 million people died, Deoksun was a strong revolutionary whose faith in the government had wavered. After visiting a woman in the northwest to ask for help, she illegally crossed the border into China in search of her uncle. But instead of finding her uncle, who had died, Deoksun found the Seotap Church, where she heard the gospel for the first time. The video says she became a “fanatical believer” who was inspired to return to North Korea and form an underground network of Christians inside the country.

• A press release distributed by the OCDH in Madrid informs that Luis Barrios Díaz, 37 years old, died on Sunday afternoon due to medical neglect at the hospital La Covadonga, Havana. [Comunicado de Prensa en español después del texto en inglés]
• OCDH estimates that Cuba has more than 1,000 political prisoners and remembers that, under the UN Mandela Rules, the provision of adequate medical services to prisoners is the responsibility of the State.

Madrid, Nov.21.– The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH) reported this Monday the death of a political prisoner imprisoned for demonstrations against the government on July 11, 2021supposedly after the prison authorities would not give him the medical attention he needed.

Since last August, Barrios Diaz has been suffering from respiratory problems. The Observatory explained that, because of health problems, he was admitted to the infirmary of prison 1580 in San Miguel del Padrón and then transferred to the hospital. “The doctors of La Covadonga hospital informed the prison authorities that it was necessary to urgently process admission to the hospital due to the ill health of the prisoner but they decided to return him to prison, claiming that They do not have the fuel to guarantee permanent surveillance of political prisoners decision that led to his worsening health condition and death,” the press release detailed.

This is the press release in Spanish:

The Gulf Center for Human Rights (GCHR) welcomes the decision to award the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize to Iranian woman human rights defender Narges Mohammadi. In 2015, Mohammadi was imprisoned for standing against the death penalty but released for health reasons in October 2020 before being arrested again on November 16, 2021. Mohammadi has been sentenced to 31 years in prison and 154 lashes. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said it gave the Peace Prize to Mohammadi, “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all. Her brave struggle has come with tremendous personal costs.”