Journalism 3
Cuban journalist Albor Ruiz has passed away
Cuban writer and journalist Albor Ruiz has passed away
He worked hard from the United States to achieve the Dialogue of 1978, a space that marked the beginning of an irreversible process of rapprochement between Cuba and its emigrants
Author:
Web Editor | digital@juventudrebelde.cu
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
He had, in the words of the Progreso Semanal editorial, “a life rich in many adventures and deep commitments” with the Homeland. Author: Internet Published: 09/01/2021 | 05:10 PM
his Friday night, January 8, Albor Ruiz Salazar died of severe pneumonia at Homestead Hospital in Florida.
He left Cuba at the age of 20 on November 20, 1961. He studied Political Science and Philosophy in Florida. He was a columnist for the Daily News and El Diario La Prensa in New York, writing about issues related to the Latino community in the United States, while he lived in that city, and more recently, for AL DÍA News Media. He is a member of the Hall of Fame of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in the U.S. But his most prolific work was in defense of the land of his birth and his people. Albor Ruiz, who turned 80 years old on Nov. 27, had, according to the Progreso Semanal editorial, “a life rich with many adventures and deep commitments” to the Homeland.
He played an outstanding role in organizing the movement of young Cubans who gathered around Areito. He was one of those who worked hard from the United States to achieve the Dialogue of 1978, a space that marked the beginning of an irreversible process of rapprochement between Cuba and its emigration. In this regard, Albor himself said: “Returning to Cuba was to remove a huge, gigantic weight that had been crushing me all along. It was a brutal change. Even more so when, without realizing it, the kind of propaganda that they make in the United States about Cuba is getting through to you, even though you know it is a lie, and you do not agree. But when I arrived and saw that, despite the tremendous problems, people were going to the movies, eating ice cream, having parties in the blocks with the children, the old people, the Chinese, the blacks, etc. For me it was a tremendous relief, I don’t really know how to explain it. I felt that these were my people.
As a result of that love and deep commitment to Cuba, he published his book of poems “In case I die tomorrow.
“Back to the Soil, Cuban Land
I am a foreigner and she calls me
Everyone knows that Cuba claims me
In case I die tomorrow”
(excerpt from the poem “Por Si Muero Mañana”, by Albor Ruiz)
Please accept our condolences to his family and friends.
The most dangerous professions
The most dangerous professions in the world in 2020
None of the murdered, disappeared, assaulted, or imprisoned communicators without cause, despite what the barometer of Reporters without Borders indicates, is Cuban
Author: Raúl Antonio Capote | internacionales@granma.cu
January 4, 2021 23:01:57
Julian Assange resists the oppression of journalism professionals committed to the truth Photo: reuters
According to the barometer of press freedom violations, website of the NGO, Reporters without Borders (RSF), 51 journalists were killed in 2020 and 400 were imprisoned. The source itself stops to list arbitrary detentions, disappearances, torture, mistreatment and other methods, country by country.
The subject of the moment draws attention, that of the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, who suffers a marked deterioration of his health in the prison where he is held, in Great Britain, for which the judge in the case, Vanessa Baraitser, accepted the diagnosis of the psychiatrists and ruled to prohibit the transfer to the U.S., due to the high risk of suicide.
The same judge described the judicial process as defective and punitive, but did not grant him bail, since the Australian journalist faces charges in the U.S. country for the leaking of thousands of classified documents in 2010 and 2011.
The other side of the story is the proposal by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who asked for Assange’s freedom and offered his country to grant him political asylum.
However, RWB does not refer to the case, but marks Cuba in black along with other countries, symbolized as the worst violators of that freedom, although none of its figures include the Cuban archipelago.
The explicit contradiction in the information on the RSF website demonstrates the double standards and political intent with which this data is measured and the information is manipulated with the aim of demonizing the Cuban Revolution.
On the other hand, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) reported, on December 23, that 59 journalists were killed in 2020, four of them women. There is a difference of eight between the two reports.
According to UNESCO data, during the last ten years, 888 journalists and media workers, that is, one every four days, were killed.
These crimes continue to be committed with total impunity, according to the report on the safety of journalists, published in November by the UN agency, which shows that in 2020 there were no consequences in 87% of the cases.
The agency reflected the increase in harassment and attacks on information professionals, for example, in the attacks they suffered during the coverage of protest demonstrations in Chile, where 90 attacks were reported, and the case of the Black Lives Matter mobilizations, where up to 500 different attacks against the press occurred.
The document of the multilateral organization detailed that, in the first half of the year, press workers were attacked in 125 protests held in 65 countries.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations recently asked all the governments of the world to release, immediately, the journalists who have been arrested for carrying out their professional work. “Many have been subjected to harassment, acts of intimidation, sanctions, killings and also arbitrary arrests. We know that prisoners, detainees and prisoners, in general, are very vulnerable to the rapid spread of the virus,” said António Guterres.
It should be noted that none of these murdered, disappeared, assaulted or imprisoned communicators without cause, despite what the barometer of Reporters without Borders indicates, is Cuban. The last journalist murdered in the Greater Antilles fell victim to Fulgencio Batista’s police in 1958.
Health workers, the most dangerous job in 2020
Although practicing journalism remains an extremely dangerous profession, in the year that ended, health workers contributed, through their dedication and courageous stand in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the greatest number of victims.
At least 7,000 of them have died from COVID-19 in the world, with Mexico being the hardest-hit country, according to a recently released study by Amnesty International.
Behind Mexico, the study places the United States (1,077 deaths), United Kingdom (649), Brazil (634), Russia (631), India (573), South Africa (240), Italy (188), Peru (183), Iran (164) and Egypt (159). Cubans did not add to this last statistic either.
It is not a matter of informative curiosity, a simple coincidence or mere chauvinism on our part, it is a reality marked by results, it has to do with the culture of socialism that places human being in first place, in the center of all priorities.
Sources: RT, RSF Barometer and reports from the UN.
French Journalist Jean Daniel has died
Jean Daniel, Founder of Le Nouvel Observateur and One of the Most Influential Journalists of the 20th Century, Has Died
February 20, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Daniel was active during the last few years. Photo: AFP.
Jean Daniel, founder of the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, a legendary journalist who lived some of the most transcendental events of the second half of the 20th century, died at the age of 99, the French publication reported Thursday.
Born in Blida (Algeria) in 1920, Daniel was one of the most influential intellectuals on the left in France and is especially remembered for his proximity to figures such as the writer Albert Camus. In 2004 he received the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities.
Daniel gained international prestige thanks to an interview he conducted with John F. Kennedy, whose assassination he soon learned about live alongside Cuban leader Fidel Castro in November 1963.
During the Second World War had joined the resistance against the Nazi occupation. He fought alongside General Leclerc in the liberation of France and at the end of the conflict he studied philosophy at the Sorbonne University in Paris.
In 1947 he founded a cultural magazine, Caliban, with the support of Camus, and directed it until 1951.
In 1954 he started working for the weekly newspaper L’Express, covered the Algerian war and declared himself in favor of negotiating with the independence fighters of the National Liberation Front (FLN).
With the notoriety gained from his cross-relationship with Kennedy and Fidel Castro, Jean Daniel teamed up with businessman Claude Perdriel in the 1964 purchase of France Observateur (recently renamed L’Obs), which they turned into Le Nouvel Observateur, which became the leading weekly newspaper of the French left.
He remained as director until 2008 and continued as an editorialist practically until the end.
(With information from EFE)
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