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Opinion: The subtle brutality of Cuba’s war on

press freedom

A woman walks near a mural with the Cuban ag in Havana on Jan. 12. (Yamil Lage/AFP, Getty Images)

Opinion by Jason Rezaian

Global Opinions writer

Today at 7:00 a.m. EDT

Since mid-July, whenever Cuban journalist Camila Acosta looks out her window,
there are five people watching over her home in Havana: two policemen, two women
dressed in everyday clothes and one man — always a man — also in plain clothes;
she’s certain he is from Cuba’s state security agency.

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Acosta was arrested while covering anti-regime protests that erupted in the Cuban
capital in July. It was the biggest show of defiance in decades against the communist
era that began in 1959.

Like hundreds of others, Acosta was detained. Officially, she says she is facing
charges of “public disturbance” and “inciting crime.” She spent four harrowing days
in prison, during which she was interrogated for hours each day.

“They wanted to know who I work for. How much I earn. And what I report on. They
weren’t asking me about my supposed disorderly conduct,” Acosta told me on a call
from her home, where she has been under house arrest since July 16.

Simply put, Acosta — who is a Havana correspondent for the Spanish daily ABC and
reports for CubaNet, an independent digital outlet based outside the country — was
arrested for practicing journalism.

For three and a half months, she has only been allowed to walk out her front door to
seek medical care or meet with her lawyer. Each time, she’s stopped by the agents
guarding her home.

“They ask me where I’m going. They check to make sure I have permission,” she told
me. “And they follow me everywhere I go.”

Internationally, there is sometimes a perception that Cuba is less repressive today

than it was in the past. Following the detente with the United States that began in
2015, fewer artists and intellectuals were imprisoned, and with much more
connectivity to the rest of the world via the Internet, it’s seductive to think that Cuba
is no longer the closed society it became under Fidel Castro’s leadership.

But that is a digital mirage.

The Internet brought hope to Cuban society that there would be greater openness,
but, perhaps inevitably, a backlash came along with it.

“When there are people in prison, it’s scandalous. When we’re in our home, the
international community thinks we’re free,” Acosta told me. “I’m not free; I’m
imprisoned in my house.”

This is what suppression of free expression looks like in Cuba today. Rather than
making splashy arrests that can spur global condemnation, Cuba now treats
crackdowns on journalists as a war of attrition that they seem to believe they can
win.

“What’s new in Cuba this year is that the country experienced the most massive
protests it’s had in decades. And that made things change. It was a real uprising that
is having clear consequences on press freedom,” Ana Cristina Núñez, Central and
South America Program senior researcher at the Committee to Protect Journalists,
said.

While long jail sentences may no longer be the preferred way to silence independent
Cuban voices, threats, intimidation, and the targeted blocking of Internet and
cellular communication have become commonplace.

“The Cuban government has modernized their techniques of censorship. It’s more
nuanced now, but it’s having the same chilling effects. They have blocked all
independent news websites,” Núñez said. “They may be more sophisticated, but the
result is the same. They have evolved with the times. I wouldn’t say it’s any better to
be a journalist in Cuba today than it was 15 years ago.”

Authoritarians have learned that the arrests of high-profile individuals can easily
become international scandals that amplify the impact a dissident has. Instead,
Cuban and other governments are simply shutting off connectivity for critical voices.
With telecommunications serviced nationalized and under complete state control, it
is easy for tyrants to disrupt or even shut down local networks. And, in a relatively
small nation such as Cuba, critics are more easily targeted with personalized
Internet shutdowns, or intimidation to discourage them from reporting.

Ultimately, their goal is clear: to remove anyone highlighting abuse or calling for
change. The most convenient way to do that is not imprisoning critics, but rather
sending them into exile. Given the choice, so many Cubans fed up with their
leadership have made the same decision for decades: They leave.

But Acosta says she’s not deterred and refuses to be silenced.

“The regime thinks of journalists as leaders of opposition. They want to get rid of
anyone who speaks up. They tell us, don’t do this or you will be destroyed,” Acosta
told me. “But I’m just as Cuban as them. I have the right to live here.”

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Global Opinions

Opinion: Why the arrest of an ex-

president may be one crisis too many
for Georgia

Georgian police o cers escort former president Mikheil Saakashvili after he was arrested in Rustavi, Georgia, on
Oct. 1. (AP)

Opinion by Carl Bildt

Contributing columnist

Yesterday at 2:23 p.m. EDT

Ever since Georgia gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991,
the country has aspired to full membership in European and transatlantic
institutions. Saturday’s local elections come at a critical moment:
Democratic institutions are under serious stress. And if that weren’t enough,
now another crisis looms. On Friday, the authorities announced that they
had arrested ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili.

Saakashvili excites intense emotions among his compatriots. He came to

power in the Rose Revolution of 2003, which swept away a corrupt and
stagnant predecessor regime. He and a group of dedicated reformers
proceeded to accelerate the modernization of the country, making it the envy
of advocates for change around the world. Yet the U.S.-educated Saakashvili
also proved a highly polarizing figure, one who showed little tolerance for
criticism or opposition.

Georgia’s progress was stalled by a Russian invasion in 2008, which was

triggered in turn by conflict in the breakaway region of South Ossetia.
Thirteen years later, Russia still occupies a fifth of Georgia’s territory. But
the war did not destroy Georgian democracy. Saakashvili left the presidency
at the completion of his mandate, ensuring a peaceful transition of power.
Before that, the Georgian Dream party, created by billionaire Bidzina
Ivanishvili, had already taken over parliament and government.

The Ivanishvili regime soon turned into little more than an anti-Saakashvili
regime, and the new leaders began to take revenge against the former
reformers. Saakashvili was forced to flee the country and move to Ukraine,
where he was awarded citizenship in return for a promise to help that
country implement reforms similar to those he had engineered in his
homeland. But he proved unable to deliver, souring his relations with the
government in Kyiv.

Meanwhile, Georgia’s political divides have steadily deepened. This

polarization has endangered not only its progress toward democracy but
also its continuing economic reforms. Relations with Russia have become
extremely tense, and the Orthodox Church has emerged as a strongly
reactionary element in Georgian society.

In the spring of 2021, European Union President Charles Michel launched a

mediation effort aimed at overcoming some of the most destructive aspects
of the events that have taken place since the 2020 election. With U.S.
support, an agreement was reached, offering hope of a new beginning.

Yet success has been elusive. Georgian Dream, still the ruling party, has
reneged on parts of the agreement, and the United National Movement,
once the party of Saakashvili, has managed to generate only limited
enthusiasm for it. The agreement stipulated that new parliamentary
elections should be held if support for Georgian Dream was seen to be
waning.

Saturday’s election has been accompanied by the usual allegations of

irregularities, but the international community should allow the vote count
to be fully completed before the next stage of the process can begin. At best,
there could be a new start in the efforts to restart the democratic path of the
country. At worst, a new phase of destructive polarization could start.

Saakashvili’s fate is likely to play a crucial role in what happens next. A

Georgian court convicted him on charges of abuse of power in 2018; he was
sentenced in absentia to six years in prison. To a large extent the charges
brought against him are politically motivated, even if there may be a
substantive basis behind them. Now it is up to the Georgian government to
show it can uphold the rule of law. Instead of summarily detaining him, the
government should give Saakashvili the possibility of defending himself in a
fair trial under close international observation.

The E.U., acting in close coordination with the United States, must not only
continue its mediation efforts but also be clear in the messages it is sending
to Tbilisi. Georgia has much work ahead if it wishes to realize the full
potential of its far-reaching E.U. agreement and membership in the E.U.
Eastern Partnership, as well as its further integration with NATO.

Brussels and Washington must make clear that these goals can be achieved
only by respecting democratic principles and the rule of law, and by moving
away from the politics of revenge and polarization of justice.

The choice is up to Tbilisi. The future of the country hangs in the balance.

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Opinion: Duterte is worried about the

ICC. He should be.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte speaks at Villamor Air Base in Manila on Feb. 28. (Eloisa Lopez/Reuters)

Opinion by Carlos H. Conde

Today at 11:11 a.m. EDT

Carlos H. Conde, a former freelance journalist, is senior Philippines

researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Clarita Alia remains anguished, nearly 20 years after I first heard her
express her grief.

“His name was Danilo Lugay,” she told me over the phone recently from
Davao City, in the southern Philippines. Police killed Lugay in September
2020 during a drug raid; a news report of the killing said he had fought back
and police officers shot him. Lugay, 28, was the grandchild of Alia’s sister
Naneth.

Alia’s voice cracked as she described what happened — the same pained
voice that I heard when I interviewed her in 2002 for a report on the killing
of her sons Richard, Christopher and Bobby, all teenagers. Assailants later
murdered a fourth son, Fernando, in 2007. This unimaginable family
tragedy gave Alia, a vegetable vendor who lives in a slum community, the
label of poster mother for the city’s bloody “war on drugs,” in which police
use extrajudicial executions instead of prosecutions as a primary method of
punishing criminal suspects.

At the center of all this violence is Rodrigo Duterte, the longtime mayor of
Davao City who parlayed his tough-guy image into a potent political force
that got him elected president in 2016. Many Filipinos love, adore and make
excuses for his steady stream of crude, unrestrained remarks using the
pretext of law and order to sell his “drug war.” They believe that he is the
leader who — after decades of political dysfunction, corruption, insurgency
and growing crime — can turn the Philippines into “another Singapore.”

The cost of Duterte’s anti-drug campaign has been high. Since 2016, police
and their agents have killed at least 6,000 people — but likely closer to
30,000 — across the country. Human Rights Watch and others, including
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet,
have expressed alarm about the government’s systematic campaign of
violence and disregard for due process, in which, according to reports, police
routinely plant guns and drugs on bodies to justify their claim that suspects
“fought back.”

Rampant impunity has long protected Duterte and other officials from
prosecution in the Philippines for serious rights abuses. But Duterte appears
to have feared the reach of international justice. Soon after the February
2018 announcement by then-International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou
Bensouda that her office was closely examining allegations of crimes against
humanity during the president’s “drug war,” Duterte ordered the country’s
withdrawal from the ICC.

Killings committed since Nov. 1, 2011, when the Philippines joined the ICC,
are within the ICC’s jurisdiction, including those in Davao City. Duterte’s
efforts to evade ICC prosecution shields him and other officials only from
killings after March 2019, when the withdrawal took effect. But Alia’s sons
were killed in 2001, 2002 and 2007, while Duterte was mayor. Lugay was
killed in September 2020. All are outside the ICC’s jurisdiction.

“Why can’t our cases be investigated?” a distraught Alia said on the phone.
“What will happen to us?”

It’s a question that thousands of Filipino families ask each day, as Duterte’s
“war on drugs” rages. The current anti-drug campaign nationally has many
similarities with Duterte’s brutal campaign in Davao City, where petty
criminals, including street children, were shot or knifed to death, as in the
case of the Alia teenagers. The killings, which other cities have also copied,
continued during Duterte’s last term as mayor there, from 2013 to 2016.

But even with the limits on ICC prosecutions, there is now some hope that
those responsible for the thousands of drug war killings may face
consequences. On Sept. 15, the ICC formally opened an investigation into
allegations that Duterte committed crimes against humanity. This is among
the most hopeful news for human rights in the Philippines since the fall of
the dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986.

Duterte, who announced his retirement from politics this weekend, is

evidently rattled. He has lashed out at international bodies such as the U.N.
Human Rights Council, and barred U.N. human rights experts from entering
the country. He and his spokespersons insist that the ICC does not have
jurisdiction in the Philippines because, among other claims, the country’s
signing of the ICC treaty in 2011 was not published in the official gazette — a
preposterous and irrelevant claim that is undermined by Manila’s own act of
withdrawal from the statute.

“When can I ever get justice?” Alia asked me on the phone. For a mother
who has lost so much, there’s probably no answer that could ease her pain.
An ICC investigation at least provides hope that a measure of justice will be
done. And in the Philippines, that’s a big deal.

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OPINIONS ABOUT ASIA PACIFIC HAND CURATED

Duterte is worried about the How to stop the coming crisis The greatest gure in sports,
ICC. He should be. with North Korea maybe ever, just retired. You
Opinion • 2 hours ago Opinion • October 1, 2021 probably haven’t heard of him.
Opinion • September 28, 2021

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October 01