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information

Information is Power

por Carlos Miguel Casas Sancesario 17 agosto 2019
escrito por Carlos Miguel Casas Sancesario

Have you heard of a country without newspapers and information? A country where journalists are so careful with their words and publications that they stop fulfilling part of their social function? A country where there’s only one TV news bulletin which repeats the same news over and over, and when it reproduces the news from another medium it nearly always shows only the image, covering news text and offering their view of the issue and not anybody else’s?

Their mass media are clones, more focused on international problems than on their own issues; shortcomings are masked with appeals for increased effort and commitment with the social model. In the country I speak of, a person doesn’t know whether their neighbor is a serial killer or a pedophile because that kind of information is not published. Such crimes probably happen less than in other countries, but they do happen, and unless the police knocks on a door to investigate, there’s no telling who they share a building or a block with, or how many murders happen daily, or rapes, suicides, chases, corruption cases in the upper echelons, disagreements between the government and the population… but they do hear about unfortunate events involving mass killings, clashes between politicians or school shootings… in ‘the enemy’s’ country. They not told about themselves, but they are told how they’re expected to vote in a referendum.

The State owns all these media of mass communication, or should we say: of mass repetition.

Someone could say: ‘what do you mean there are no newspapers? I read them every day’, to which one could respond using the very information provided by the nationally distributed dailies on their front pages: ‘Official Medium of the Party (we will not say which one, to respect the country’s anonymity)’, ‘Newspaper of the Youth (careful, ‘youth’ here does not mean all youths)’, and so on…

They are all owned by a political institution or organization, so they will obviously not speak ill of it… as they themselves illustrate, they’re not newspapers.

You could think that television is more liberal, but it is also subordinated to whom it logically shouldn’t be; not to the Ministry of Culture or the Ministry of Communications. It’s not even independent; it is subordinated to the Party itself. In case it’s not been made clear, we’re speaking about a one-party country.

Yes, this is also a country under a harsh blockade by a world power, and I do not subtract any importance from that. It’s more an instance of historical cruelty by a Goliath against a David who grows stronger in the face of adversity. Decades ago, you could justify this way of making ‘journalism’ for the sake of avoiding its attacks, overcoming the lies or fighting ‘against media terrorism’, but it seems now the opposite is true.

Propaganda?

Yes, a lot of it, maybe even too much, for political purposes, for not letting history be forgotten, for staying vigilant against threats –none of that is any less real–, but it fills the programming and becomes as repetitive as it is boring. The Blockade and all that involves it –which is a lot– is one of the topics you will predictably find in any news item, whether as the cause or the key factor.

And what about the world? The world is doing badly. When we see in the news that a demonstration in a first-world country was repressed… could there be a reason or a possibility in this unspecified country to demonstrate against a government measure? That’s a question you never ask, and much less see it asked. There’s distortion of international dates, such as May Day. In that country, the propaganda not only invites, it almost orders you to go to the squares and ‘march’ to defend the social system, the Homeland and whatever political afterthought is in vogue, but never to demand a raise of wages, or better working conditions, as it happens in the rest of the world.

Access to the internet was an aspiration which seemed unattainable, partly because it would unsettle their information monopoly. Highly controlled at the beginning, and only available for privileged institutions, tourists and some intellectuals here or there… it now seems widespread in the population and, without mentioning the issue of the price –which not all can afford–, it is still an undervalued resource by those whose only concern is to communicate with family and friends, not finding out how the world is doing. Maybe that apathy was created by so much listening to the same rambling in those media for years.

It would be ideal to live in this news-bulletin world where problems are solved or don’t even exist, where no one is left helpless and the greater justification or concern –almost the only one– is the Blockade.

Do you want to know the country’s reality without embellishments or pretexts? Don’t read the newspapers. Go to the show of any renowned comic. And many ask themselves why young people don’t watch the news.

There are more than enough arguments to praise this country, and all the other good ones –which are numerous and very important. These repetitive pamphlets make good work of not letting anyone forget that. So, those of us who prefer independent media are the ones who explore what’s barely ever mentioned, but does exist in the daily lives of the population.

Maybe that’s why some important personality –one of those who appear on television– continues to repeat slogans that are decades old. Maybe because all he sees is the news. We should invite him to read in a website run by young people, which even has ‘young’ in its name along with the country’s, and I think he would learn a lot.

I apologize if I have misled you with these arguments. Maybe nobody knows what country I speak of. Maybe it doesn’t even exist and it’s the product of a riddle without an answer. Either way, can you imagine a country like that?

(Translated from the original)

17 agosto 2019 0 comentario 365 vistas
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femicide

Femicide in Cuba?

por Yasvily Méndez Paz 21 julio 2019
escrito por Yasvily Méndez Paz

The femicide of young Leidy Maura Pacheco Mur in Cienfuegos in September 2017 still causes shock in the population of that Cuban province. “My girl was kidnapped on Tuesday, raped on Tuesday and killed on Tuesday”, maintains her father with infinite sorrow for the loss of her daughter. Back then, the local media followed up on the case, even though that’s not the usual modus operandi of official news outlets; in fact, the incident had greater national resonance through social and alternate media. The death of this young girl of only 18 years of age is not an isolated episode; other cases reported in Havana, Matanzas, Camagüey and Cienfuegos indicate so. Is there femicide in Cuba or not? The issue has caused controversy in the social networks. Although there are very few official statistics, news of the cases spread in the population through word-of-mouth or are recorded by unofficial news outlets.

From the beginning of this century, femicide has become a matter of international interest. The very word “femicide” is in dispute, but there’s consensus in that the term refers to a specific type of homicide where a male murders his victim for reasons of gender or for the fact of her being a woman. Because of its characteristics and the connotation it acquires, the issue has had differences in its treatment from the legal, sociological and journalistic points of view, among others. Authors such as Diana E. H. Russell have proposed a number of designations for different instances of femicide, taking into account the causes which generate the crime and the types of relationships between the perpetrator and the victim.

The figures of femicides reported in Latin America in the present year are not encouraging; however, some progress in the region with regard to the issue is indisputable. Several Latin American countries have classified femicide or aggravated murder for reasons of gender as a specific crime. Faced with the gravity of the problem, the UN has insisted on the need that countries in the region give priority to public policies oriented towards preventing, penalizing and eradicating this scourge.

Since the 1990s, Cuba has paid differentiated attention to gender-motivated violence. However, the same has not happened with femicide, and it is not considered a legal-penal category. The Cuban Penal Code sanctions with imprisonment from fifteen to thirty years, or with the death penalty, any person who kills another in a number of defined circumstances, which include “acting on impulses of sadism or of brutal depravity”, but its wording does not devote special treatment to the issue at hand. The subject has become invisible, which has brought about much criticism in the social networks and the media. Classifying femicide as a crime is not enough for its eradication, but not having official and specialized outlets where the Cuban population may access annual femicide rates is a problem that has led to speculation in the levels of information.

Recently, national and international news media have shown themselves hopeful about the issue. For the first time, Cuba has acknowledged the existence of femicide in the Informe Nacional sobre la implementación de la Agenda 2030 (National Report on the Implementation of Agenda 2030). In the document –presented in April during the meeting of the Latin American and Caribbean Forum on Sustainable Development– it is stated that “in the case of femicides, the number of deaths caused by the partner or ex-partner has dropped between 2013 and 2016 by 33.0 percent. In this last year, the femicide rate was 0.99 per 100 000 female inhabitants of 15 years or older”. It is curious that those years are taken as a reference and that updated statistics are not included. If we compare the data provided with other sources, we are able to corroborate that, for 2016, the femicide rate in Cuba was low in comparison with countries such as El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico or Brazil, and high if compared to that of Peru, Chile or Panama. Cuba has concealed the femicide rates so as not to endanger the credibility of the Cuban political system. Nevertheless, people want to know and to make their own decisions, in an era when it is impossible to hide the information, for it can reach us in multiple ways.

As E. H. Russell said, “the purpose of detailing such atrocities is not to horrify the reader, but to try to make our resistance advance by acknowledging that women are currently living in a time of growing and brutal femicides; a time when the myth persists among many young women, privileged students, that the feminist revolution has been fulfilled and that they have the same options and opportunities as men”. Acknowledging the existence of the problem makes it a public issue which requires the attention of governments and specialized institutions and, at the same time, it allows to analyze the subject specifically and to find solutions which target the causes that generate it. It is something worth thinking about.

(Translated from the original)

21 julio 2019 0 comentario 442 vistas
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