In Miami, Salim Lamrani discusses media war against Cuba
By Lorenzo Gonzalo
On a sunny afternoon, about 150 people, almost all of them Cuban, gathered in a Miami hotel to listen to a young professor from two French universities.
Prof. Salim Lamrani, born in France to Algerian parents, a lover of facts, of reality and forever questioning what the printed press, television and the media in general impart to the public, gave a simple but emphatic lecture, full of concrete facts about the European Union’s relations with Cuba and the manipulation of facts committed by the press.
The media war against Cuba was the central theme to his criticism of the international media in general and Europeans in particular. The cover-up done by the media as it provides information lacking in references, designed to create an opinion that justifies the European Union’s aggressive policies against Cuba, was shown with evidence so obvious that those implicated in the plot should feel ashamed to call themselves journalists.
The central theme used by the press to attack Cuba is human rights.
Professor Lamrani said that he agreed that the topic should be discussed but added that the debaters should be objective in the midst of partiality. For that reason, the professor said, he would stick to the facts.
Starting from the fact that in Cuba – as in any other part of the world – human rights are occasionally transgressed, the media should turn to the organizations devoted to investigate such violations and ascertain if what happened in Cuba is really an indescribable atrocity, as Europe and the United States picture them to be, he said.
Recent reports from Amnesty International, an organization with which Cuba is not in agreement and which Cuba describes as biased, described in detail the violation of human rights, jailings, tortures, State kidnappings and similar activities in Europe, country by country.
One by one, Professor Lamrani showed the different violations committed in the various countries of Europe and compared Amnesty’s data with the data available on Cuba. A tally of serious violations of human dignity (murders, torture, kidnappings, repression of speech, etc.) gave this result: of the 27 countries in the E.U., 23 have committed atrocious violations of human rights. Cuba has not reported a single case of this nature.
The E.U. condemns Cuba and makes demands involving human-rights observance; yet the press, which echoes the E.U.’s political accords, does not present a comparative analysis that justifies that attitude.
In the wake of the coup d’état in Honduras, about 500 persons were murdered, most of them journalists, human-rights activists and social defenders. The press does not report such matters.
Not long ago in Colombia, about 2,000 bodies were found in the largest mass grave in history. Much evidence proves that the hand of the State was involved in that major crime. The press mentioned the case briefly and, just as quickly, turned the page over and went on to other matters.
Inmate Orlando Zapata committed suicide in a Cuban prison cell by means of a hunger strike that ended with his death on Feb. 26, 2010. Professor Lamrani pointed out that in his native country, France, the cradle of human rights, more than 20 prison inmates committed suicide between Jan. 1 and Feb. 26, the date Mr. Zapata died. A 16-year-old boy was among them. The French press has written about Zapata constantly, yet has not given the slightest coverage to those suicides, in comparison with the Cuban case.
Professor Lamrani concluded that it wasn’t a question of saying the Cuban government is right but of saying that the French press (which evidently is an instrument of the interests that control the State) is wrong. According to the professor, only two of all the French newspapers show a profit; the rest, including the major dailies, show losses.
Professor Lamrani wondered how was it possible that the large corporations that own those media are willing to bankroll their deficits, unless we infer that the newspapers are only an instrument to impose on society a specific type of mentality that allows the parent corporations to cling to power.
The professor said the limitations of the press and anomalies regarding human-rights issues in Cuba pale in comparison with the denunciations made by Amnesty International in other parts of the world, beginning with the Americas.
As part of his presentation, he did not fail to mention the five Cuban prisoners who were given sentences unrelated to the charges raised against them. He criticized the fact that, although they were investigating the terrorist activities of Cuban-origin fanatics who live in the United States, the press has never pointed to that fact with the vehemence demanded by the violation of human rights committed against them.
He said that fighting for the freedom of those five prisoners does not at all mean support for the Cuban government. It is an act of elementary humanity, he said, with which all honest people in the world should identify.
The presentation, devoid of ideological shadings, lacking any adulation for Cuba or its government, made perfectly clear that the recent performance of the world’s press and the revival of the so-called Common Stance by the European Union are part of a dirty campaign that attempts to quash the sovereignty wielded by the government of Cuba.
It is a clear example that the issue is not to rectify alleged violations in Cuba but to create a favorable environment for the overthrow of that country’s government.
Lorenzo Gonzalo is deputy director of Radio Miami.
