Last Thursday at about six in the evening friends from around the world were sending us text messages reporting on the results of a Resolution about Syria in the United Nations General Assembly. Cuba appeared there on the list of the 13 governments voting against it, in comparison to an overwhelming 137 countries voting to approve it and 17 abstentions.
At 8:00 pm I wanted to see how the National News on TV reflected the event and to my surprise (?!) the announcer said that at that hour the debate at the UN was still continuing, without mentioning the results of the vote.
I wonder if this is how they are fulfilling the agreements of the First Conference of the Cuban Communist Party to eradicate secrecy in our media. If they deny us information that was already shared with the rest of the world, and if it doesn’t even have anything directly to do with some Cuban secret in the military or economic sphere, how are we going to expect them to talk to us about those uncomfortable issues that occur in our own country at sites where there are no foreign correspondents and so we could only be informed through the official media.
We Cubans had to wait another day to learn that the international community condemned the abuses of the Syrian government against its own people. How long will we have to wait to learn that in the village of San Juan y Martinez State Security is preventing the Ladies in White from attending church on Sunday? How long to learn about the final number of fatalities in the building collapses in Havana, or the missing taxi drivers, the bank embezzlements, those responsible for corruption, the crop failures, the evictions — in preparation for the Pope’s visit — along the road between Santiago de Cuba and the Sanctuary of El Cobre…?
20 February 2012
