Radio and Television Martí launched a telephone line to receive reports of human rights violations in Cuba, which will eventually be transferred to international organizations by the Freedom House.
Freedom House, which promotes freedoms and democracy, and Radio y TV Martí, a government entity that broadcasts from the United States. Towards Cuba, they announced today in Miami a “strategic alliance” with what they described as an “extraordinary rebound” of human rights violations in the Caribbean island.
From today the journalistic group dedicates time of its grill to the promotion of this hot line directed “not only to activists” but to any person of the civil society of the island.
As the sister of scientist Ariel Ruiz Urquiola, present at the press conference, who was released in July under an extra-penal license.
“It is true that we are in the middle of the bullets, but it is important what they do from here, and to know that there will be a voice on the other side,” said Omara Ruíz Urquiola.
The news department of Radio and TV Martí will verify in a “reliable” manner all the complaints received and, in addition to publishing the journalistic investigations in its different media -radio, television and the digital portal-, these cases will be sent to Freedom House.
“We want to professionalize the process, not run with a complaint that although it seems striking may be something that is not true, we only bet on the truth, and we do not want to fail,” Tomás Regalado, director of the Office of Transmissions to Cuba, told Efe today. (OCB) of the US Government
With this system, Freedom House will be able to “systematize the information” that it will receive daily from TV Martí and report the cases directly to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH) or to the United Nations.
According to the director for Latin America of Freedom House, Carlos Ponce, people “are very afraid” to go to the organizations in favor of human rights that operate in Cuba, “because when they go there they see them entering and then chasing them”.
With the telephone line, they seek to establish a communication that avoids “risks” for the complainants and that “the impunity to which the Cuban regime is accustomed to overcome”, affirmed Ponce.
To verify and investigate the allegations, TV Martí will also work with a network of independent journalists within the island, something “determining”, according to Regalado, to establish contacts with members of civil society in the geographical areas where such complaints come from. .
“We have to eliminate the monotony and create new things, this project is special,” said the former mayor of Miami.
To exemplify the “importance” of spinning this network of investigation and report of each case, Regalado named the complaints that TV Martí has received in the last 72 hours, a total of eight, among which is the arrest of the leader of the Union Patriotic of Cuba, José Daniel Ferrer.
The president of the International Supervisory Commission of Crimes against Humanity of Castrimo “Justicia Cuba”, René Bolio, denounced today the “arbitrary” arrest of this opponent.
“We demand the immediate release of Ferrer García, due to the failure to comply with due process, and to be notoriously a case of political persecution,” Bolio said in a statement.
